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Parental Digital Behavior
Parents may spend hours looking for further information on parenting needs for their individual child. These needs encompass developmental and educational needs for the child, as well as simplifying procedures surrounding supplying a child with basic needs. Luckily, new tech tools such as apps can help parents navigate difficult situations.
Digital Tools for Parents of Young Children
- The Bright Parenting App offers personalized lessons for parents searching for easily accessible answers to their child's behavior problems. The app specializes in lessons targeted at children aged 2-10.
- Jenzy is a digital shoe sizing tool that helps parents of children aged 0-6 find the correct shoe size across a variety of brands and styles while shopping online.
- News-O-Matic is an educational tool designed to allow parents to teach their children about media literacy while also promoting their reading skills. This app is marketed toward children aged 6-12.
Bright Parenting App
- Bright Parenting is an app for cell-phone use. The app is free to download and offers a free lesson, but then access to all their lesson plans costs $4.99 a month.
- Each lesson plan consists of parenting information surrounding the "most requested parenting topics," all rolled in to a 2-5 minute daily lesson plan.
- Lessons are targeted at parents of children with behavioral problems who are attempting to be nurturing while at the same time "setting clear limits for children." These lessons are targeted at common troublesome behavior of children aged 2-10.
- The app also makes sure parents or other assigned caregivers receive the same lessons, so that both they and their children can be on the same page.
- Reviews on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store appear predominately positive. Parents express that the app helps keep "parenting goals to the front of their mind" and helps remind them of information that continues to be "relevant" from day to day.
- Bright Parenting has also garnered some interest online among parents of children with ADHD, since it has special courses geared toward behavioral problems. Additionally, the app's head of clinical development is Dr. Joanna Robin, Ph.D. and the founder and head of Westchester Anxiety Treatment and Psychological Services.
Jenzy
- Jenzy is an app designed to help parents with purchasing the correct size of shoe for their children due to sizing errors and fewer department stores with varieties of children's shoes.
- The app is designed to help parents who have a difficult time finding a shoe in their child's size in the store but run into issues with the varying child shoe sizing standards when they attempt to order online.
- To use the app and purchase shoes, all a parent has to do is snap a photo of their child's foot. The sizing experts at Jenzy size the child's foot, and then they utilize their partnerships with different brands to ensure the correct size is ordered for that brand's sizing standard.
- Jenzy specializes in sizing shoes of children aged 0-6.
- To date, Jenzy has a rating of 4.6 of 5 on the Apple App Store, out of 154 reviews. Multiple reviews mentioned the excellent customer service and feasibility of shopping for shoes in a way that avoids toddler meltdowns.
News-O-Matic
- News-O-Matic is a children's newspaper app designed to help promote children aged 6-12 to read nonfiction and news articles.
- The app is designed as an educational tool that can be used either in the classroom or at home. The app publishes five news articles daily, along with activities to help promote children learning from the articles.
- Each article is written by a child psychologist, so children can learn about sensitive subject matter in a non-threatening way.
- The app also features tools for parents, so they can speak to their child about media literacy.
- Parents report the app helped their children learn to love reading and provided a helpful tool for children who preferred to read nonfiction. However, some parents did express some concern with different bugs on the app, the subscription fee, and the settings for children's reading levels.
The description of "young children" was categorized by the researcher as children aged 12 and under, as this is before the teenage stage. The sample of digital tools presented by this research attempted to target specific issues involving child interaction and education, as detailed in the research strategy. Jenzy was included for its unique use as a digital tool designed to simplify parent online shopping. The effectiveness of each tool was determined based upon the number of positive reviews and amount of downloads, which mark the number of parents who have used the tool.