Why I Won’t Be Encouraging Our Child To Use Manners With Alexa
I’ve spent the last four years of my career focusing on using technology for good and working on projects that support societal impact. Throughout this time I’ve watched as new technologies have emerged and become integrated into our day to day lives. It has become clear to me that we are are in extremely murky waters when it comes to establishing ethics and boundaries with human-computer interactions.
So what does that look like in our lives? How do we as parents begin to navigate the world of robots and digital assistants as they become more and more entrenched in our day to day?
There are many schools of thought about how we should approach introducing devices into our children’s lives. Take Alexa for example, some say ban the device, some say work with the device and embrace it, others are happy to have some “support” in the parenting department through a digital assistant. In fact, parents have reportedly gone as far to give feedback that they would like support on lessons they are teaching their kids. Thus, Amazon has implemented some new supportive nuances.
According to Toni Reid, (Vice President of Customer Experience at Amazon), and an article on NPR: The “magic word” feature offers positive reinforcement: When you say “Please,” it replies “thanks for asking so nicely.” If you tell Alexa you’re sad, it will “empathize,” and suggest it can play you a song, or that you should talk to a friend. Reid describes Alexa’s personality as “humble, smart, helpful, sometimes funny.” In other words, have Alexa start supporting your parenting initiatives, like making sure your child has good manners and understands empathy from a machine-learned perspective. Some parents have said it would be great if Alexa withheld information from a child if he or she does not use the right manners when asking a question etc. When I ask myself how I feel about this, the answer is- not good.
So where does that leave us long term when we start outsourcing parenting to our digital assistant? I have read so many articles and researched this, and the truth is its early days still in terms of how this affects children long term and when it comes to research on how this will play out in the future, we aren’t there yet.
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What should we do in the meantime? In my opinion, this really comes down to common sense. If we as a population start to outsource our parenting we are going to be in deep trouble. So, that is why I won’t be encouraging our son to use please and thank you when interacting with Alexa. I also will not be encouraging the potential for mock empathetic scenarios or conversations.
Why? Alexa is a device that can be consulted for information and it’s used to coordinate interactions in households with smart appliances and furniture among other things. Alexa cannot feel compassion, empathy, reassure a child, love a child or provide face to face interaction. Therefore, from my perspective, giving this device (which is essentially equivalent to a search tool or calculator back in the day) any human courtesy or emotional connection in our home would be starting out on the wrong foot and creating the opportunity for confusion for our son.
We are on the precipice of everything becoming smart and interactive so it’s hard to say where we should start when it comes to teaching children how to interact with the device. That said, I remember manners was one of the first things I learned when it came to how we should treat people so I feel like we should start the same place with devices. They are not people, therefore, we don’t use manners.
At the moment, we’ve got to pay close attention and cherish what cannot be replaced by machines. We are in charge of how we foster love, empathy and how we teach our children to communicate. It’s our responsibility to show our children how we navigate this new landscape ( everyone’s got their own way of doing things in their home). I’m not a doctor or a psychologist etc but I’ll say this- when it comes to interactions with these devices, I do not prescribe manners.
I want to end by saying that in our home we are running toward technology and we are not banning it, but we are definitely putting together rules so that our child benefits from technology and understands that it should never be replaced or confused with human interaction. A device is a device and always will be.
