Kids And Technologies: Smart Speakers

Early adopters commonly used smart speakers such as Amazon Echo and Google Assistant as timers, home speakers and news readers. Today, one in six Americans own a smart speaker such as Amazon Echo (aka Alexa) or Google Home, making intelligent speakers the fastest growing consumer technology when compared with virtual reality, augmented reality and wearables. As a parent and a technologist who founded Visionarus, a company that develops advanced access control systems for gated communities based on speech recognition, I'm always looking for ways I can introduce and experience disruptive technology with my child. After doing my due diligence and researching on the most common concerns parents, educators, security and privacy communities have related to this new technology, I experimentally gave my kindergarten-age son a smart speaker for Christmas. Six-plus months later, I believe this experiment positively expanded his knowledge, developed his logical thinking, entertained him, improved his writing and even helped him let go of his fear of the dark.