My son was 5 when I found him with an iPad under his covers at 11pm. Yes, I should have scoured his room before tucking him in. Yes, he definitely did know the rules about when he could and could not use the iPad. Yet here we were, at almost midnight, trying to enter the words wizard 101 cheats into Google, which looked something like “wzrd 101 chats*”. So I went through the Internet History (which he hadn’t yet learnt to clear – oh those days of innocence! ) and saw that he hadn’t been exposed to anything concerning. Suffice to say I kept a better hold on the iPad from then on.
That was in 2012 and I already had 8 devices from which it was possible to browse the Internet in my one parent and 3 child home including:
My Household Internet Device Stocktake, 2012:
• 2 laptops
• 1 iPad
• 2 Nintendo DS
• 1 Nintendo Wii
• 1 iPhone
• 1 Nexus 7 tablet
*You can anonymously contribute to our community based family home device stocktakehere on our surveys page.
Recent studies tell us that the average number of such devices in the family home is increasing rapidly. In 2013 the average number of Internet connected devices in the family home for the UK, USA and Australia were 6, 5 & 7 respectively. Some of this trend relates to new and emerging devices that now connect to the Internet, Smart TV’s are a great example of a recent development. But mostly this explosion of numbers of devices in the family home can be attributed to the repurposing by parents of their older technology; smart phones, tablets to their children.
In 2013 the average number of Internet connected devices in the family home for the UK, USA and Australia were 6, 5 & 7 respectively.
So back in my house our devices, which being small, mobile and in constant need of charge, were scattered about our meagre 3 bedroom house with seeming gay abandon – no matter how often I ranted and sighed about “the generation of instant gratification” and “talking care for your things” and listed how much each of these devices, who’s value seemed to pendulum between critically important whereabouts to valueless and disposable floor clutter, cost the senior member of their tribe. Clearly I had lost control of the physical situation of the status of these devices, let alone what the children were doing on them and when.
Clearly I had lost control of the physical situation of the status of these devices, let alone what the children were doing on them and when.
I wanted to be able to see when a device was being used, who was online at anytime, what sites they were visiting, and when (especially when they were meant to be doing their homework). With the increase in multi-screening I wanted to see how long they were spending online each day/week. There were partial solutions that I could purchase/configure/install on multiple devices where I could garner most of this information. But not from one dashboard, not ALL of this information, and not without dropping a very sizeable amount of coin and spending a rather ridiculous amount of time setting it all up and reading lots of instruction booklets.
There were partial solutions that I could purchase/configure/install on multiple devices where I could garner most of this information. But not from one dashboard, not ALL of this information, and not without dropping a very sizeable amount of coin
This very challenge of managing the multiple devices accessing the Internet in our homes and feeling a loss of control of the situation was the primary motivator to start up Humbuzz. Humbuzz is almost here. We can’t wait to show it to you! Stay updated with us via our newsletter, Facebook or Twitter pages and you’ll be one of the first to know when all of our hard work and research comes together with release of the Humbuzz box.
* Another start up founder recently confided in me about his 4 year old sons love of Bob the Builder and his attempts at googling “bob”… you can only image!
Humbuzz are building product to help keep your children safe online but also conscientiously seek to contribute to parent’s understanding of the way their children access the Internet and how they interact in the cyber realm.
