Parents are spending liberally on electronic products for children as young as two. Sara Yap finds out more.
When Kylie Choong bought her nine-year-old son Dylan an iPad, his younger brother Darius begged to be given one too. Out of fairness, she bought an iPod Touch for three-year-old Darius to share with her third child, two-year-old Drayden.
Ms Choong does not think her sons are too young for such costly gadgets. In fact, Dylan was only three years old when she bought him a Gameboy Advance handheld game console.
“I want my kids to be trendy. I don’t want them to feel inferior; I don’t want them to see people having things they don’t have,” said Ms Choong, a human resource manager.
Dylan, Darius and Drayden belong to an unlikely market — young children aged 12 and below with no spending power. Drawn to “hip factor” of possessing such items. they are snapping up smartphones, e-book readers, laptops and game consoles.
Parents do not want their children to miss out on the trendy gadgets of today, said Mr. Jonah Joaquin, 29, who works in frontline sales at iStudio, a store specialising in selling Apple products.
Every weekend, Mr. Joaquin sees three out of 10 customers patronizing the store to buy products such as the iPad and iPhone for their young children of primary school-going age and younger.
Children are savvy customers too, keeping up-to-date with the latest gadget and making informed choices, according to mobile phone promoter Lew Ying Tong, who from 2010 to April last year saw a daily average of seven to 10 parents buying smartphones for their children. The most popular item was the iPhone 4.
School Clerk Jane Tan recently bought her 12-year-old daughter Kai Lin an iRiver Cover Store and iPhone 4.
The iRiver, an e-book reader, was purchased during an IT Fair in 2009. Kai Lin’s aunt had bought the device for her son at a technology fair back then. Not wanting Kai Lin to feel left out, Ms Tan bought one for her as well.
“As a parent, I didn’t want to disappoint my child,” said Ms Tan, 55. “If children cannot keep up with the trends, they will feel left behind. They may ask their parents why they cannot have (the same gadgets) their friends own.”
Some parents have capitalized on the “cool” factor of owning such products to motivate their children to achieve certain goals, offering the iPad and iPhone to their children in exchange for stellar examination results.
General manager Tan Yeok Leng gave his son Hong Rui a Creative MP4 as a reward for his good Primary Four examination results. Today, 13-year-old Hong Rui has his eyes set on the iPad 2 and he plans to ask his father to buy it for him if he excels in his exams.
Consumer electronics retailers said that advertisements and savvy marketing campaigns has helped popularise certain gadgets.
“The media presents (Apple products) as a ‘must-have’. Apple products have become a status symbol” said Mr. Joaquin.
However, school counselor Goh Eng Keng warns that gadget games are addictive because of their easy-to-master nature. Young children will find it difficult to stop using gadgets, leading to prolonged gameplay.
She suggests that parents moderate their children’s use of electronic devices, and even reap benefits from using these electronic gadgets.
Many of these gadgets are equipped with connections to the Internet, so children now have access to a ‘wealth of information’, said Ms Goh. For example, they can be used for academic purposes after downloading e- books and educational games for their children.
“Ultimately, it is important for children to know how to use such devices as they are living in an age where everything is digital,” said Ms Goh.
Some parents are unwilling to buy electronic gadgets for their young children. The main reason given is that children—especially those aged 12 and below—are not mature enough to moderate their usage of such devices.
Civil servant Neo Boon Sim, 41, does not plan on buying any electronic gadgets for his two children anytime soon.
“I deliberately choose not to buy such devices for them. Even when they reach Primary 5 or 6, I still don’t think they will be mature enough to control their usage (of these gadgets),” said Mr Neo.
This edited article was written as an assignment for the News Writing and Reporting class at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University.
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