Digital Kids: how children are using devices, apps and media in 2013

The most interesting things about Angry Birds in 2013 aren't the games, good as they are. It's the company's move into two very different areas: shortform TV animation and education.

On the former front, the company's Angry Birds Toons channel launched in March within developer Rovio's various games, and by September had notched up more than 1bn views of its short cartoons and trailers.

My four year-old discovered it a couple of weeks ago, and not only is it all he wants when he gets his hands on my tablet; it's also led to him digging out our Angry Birds plush toys from a dusty corner and taking them to bed. He basically loves Angry Birds without playing the games.

Watch that model of distributing cartoons through apps: it's something that other developers like Outfit7 (with Talking Friends) and ZeptoLab (with Cut the Rope) are trying too. They're not that fussed about TV deals for their animation because they don't need them to reach a massive audience.

And education? The Angry Birds Playground initiative might be even more interesting, as Rovio works with the University of Helsinki on an educational programme covering maths, science, music, language, arts and crafts, physical education and social interaction.

Rovio's Sanna Lukanda explained more in a Guardian interview:

"It's not just games we're talking about here: it's a full 360-degree approach to learning, where games are just one part of it. It's not learning by sitting down and playing with a digital device. There's a real substance to it, and a healthy balance between rest, play and work. We feel it's necessary to talk about healthy nutrition and physical exercise, as part of this approach to learning, balance and wellbeing...

We are studying the formats of the content carefully. We certainly believe a traditional book is good for certain parts, and also that it's important for children to use pen and paper. We also want the children to start learning about music through composing themselves, so we have the five-string instrument. It's a real instrument, not a toy. We already see them enjoying the feeling that they can accomplish something, and of music as something composed by people."

It's launching first in China, which is also interesting. But is this all just about selling more games and related merchandise? "This is not a licensing thing, and Rovio is not a games company any more. It's a media company, and like many other media companies, it has an educational arm," said Lukander.

I'm no expert in sentiment analysis, but...

The Ofcom Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes report had some good stats on kids and music, too. 32% of 8-11 year-olds and 66% of 12-15 year-olds listen to music on their mobile phones – the third most popular activity behind texting and calling.

Meanwhile, Ofcom found that 29% of 8-11 year-olds and 59% of 12-15 year-olds say they watch or download music videos. Most of that is likely to be YouTube.

Here's an article from earlier in the year: 10 mobile games for kids with £69.99 in-app purchase options. A rogues gallery including Snoopy, SpongeBob SquarePants, My Little Pony, Skylanders and other familiar brands.

But are they rogues? If parents are on top of their in-app purchase restrictions, some developers argue that there isn't a problem in offering such high tiers of virtual items for sale in a game that children will be playing. Others argue that it's not a good thing to do at all, given the likelihood that a lot of parents still won't have their settings locked down.

True fact: when I showed some of these screenshots in a talk at the Children's Media Conference in July, it was Snoopy that made the entire room gasp in shock, then sigh in disappointment.

Another true fact: I worried after writing the 10 mobile games feature that it had simply stoked the growing view that all kids' apps weren't to be trusted, so followed up with a 50 best apps for kids from 2013 that parents can trust roundup. There are some marvellous apps in there.

But yes, views on in-app purchases: how high should they go, and where does responsibility fall between developers, parents and app store owners like Apple and Google?

That moment you realise modern three year-olds can play Temple Run better than you can...

Chris Pitcher, a secondary-school computing teacher, emails with a very relevant question:

"What about kids who don't have access to the Internet, tablets or other devices? Do they risk being left behind both culturally and educationally? Some schools have the budget to throw devices at students whereas others do not or are not interested."

Is there any research out there on this? Post a comment if you're aware of some. It's something I've noticed at media and tech industry conferences: the tendency for speakers to say things like "Well, now that every child has an iPad..."

That's quite possibly true for children of parents in the media and tech industries, but it's not for the population as a whole – the Ofcom report cited earlier suggests 42% of British 5-15 year-olds have access to a tablet at home.

But yes, risks of being left behind in a new digital divide?

This is from March, but it's still a really good read from Nick Bilton at the New York Times. The focus: lots of young children are using tablets, but what might the neurological effects be on their brains?

It cites a report from the Millennium Cohort Study in the UK about children's media usage:

"Those who watched more than three hours of television, videos or DVDs a day had a higher chance of conduct problems, emotional symptoms and relationship problems by the time they were 7 than children who did not. The study, of a sample of 11,000 children, found that children who played video games — often age-appropriate games — for the same amount of time did not show any signs of negative behavioral changes by the same age."

Yet Bilton also quotes professor Sherry Turkle on the potential downside: an always-available digital device may not help children learn skills to alleviate boredom and interact with their peers.

"Learning about solitude and being alone is the bedrock of early development, and you don’t want your kids to miss out on that because you’re pacifying them with a device... They need to be able to explore their imagination. To be able to gather themselves and know who they are. So someday they can form a relationship with another person without a panic of being alone."

The problem for parents is that a lot of these big, challenging questions about the effect that new devices and media forms have on children simply won't be answered for a few years. The current crop of iKids are the guinea pigs, for better or worse.

An email from British firm Dubit, which works with brands like the BBC, Cartoon Network and PBS Kids on digital projects, and further back (2000) launched the first 3D Flash virtual world for children. CEO Ian Douthwaite has some thoughts on 2014:

"We’re expecting 2014 to the year of larger scale family-focused digital entertainment. While there is no avoiding the fact that children love mobile devices, we’re seeing IP owners become more concerned about discoverability and retention, which is difficult for Apps and mini-games to achieve.

This is making more brands lean more towards immersive experiences, with wider gameplay and stronger social features, rather than quick-fix apps. Likewise, we recognise that a way to circumvent the over populated app stores is through games which involve parents as well as children – kids may be increasingly digital savvy but parents are the gatekeepers and can introduce children to apps they approve of.

Apps and web-based games which involve parents will have a distinct advantage next year, much in the same way that family-play helped make the Wii such a huge hit."

It's another counter to that "apps as digital babysitters" argument, perhaps, if the apps that succeed are the ones that encourage parents to be a part of the play and/or education?

More from SuperAwesome's survey of British children.

London-based MakieLab is one of the most interesting British startups in the children's entertainment world. It started off with a focus on 3D printing, with children able to customise their own dolls using its website or app, then order them.

CEO Alice Taylor explained the genesis of the company in an interview with The Guardian:

"We started with the question of whether virtual goods could produce physical goods. Would 3D printing mean we could make virtual crates and barrels into real crates and barrels? The short answer was yes, but nobody was going to buy a crate or a barrel…"

Since then, the company has launched its own stand in London store Selfridges, and worked on an upcoming tablet game with a theme of designing clothes – the twist being they can then be ordered for real. MakieLab is also working on an animated TV show for girls based on its characters and world.

In an appearance at the MIPJunior conference this month, Taylor talked about the likely importance of tablets going forward for all forms of children's entertainment:

"The tablet has replaced the computer for the kid at home. They will no longer go and sit down with a mouse and turn on the big screen and click around with the mouse… There is no doubt that every kid will have one."

This is fun: a short film by media planning and buying firm Generation Media on how children's media consumption has changed through the ages.

Something my children have been loving this month is Toca Mini, the latest iOS app from Swedish developer Toca Boca. It's a creative app for making mini characters, a bit reminiscent of Nintendo's Miis.

Toca Boca is an interesting company too: 47m downloads of its apps so far, and a deliberate philosophy of focusing on a.) learning through play rather than explicit education, and b.) not using in-app purchases.

Here's what its CEO Björn Jeffery told the Guardian in an interview earlier this year that this isn't because the company thinks in-app purchases are always bad:

"There's a good way of doing it and a bad way of doing it. Unfortunately, most people that do it for kids are doing it in the bad way.

I don't think you should sell consumable items: Smurfberries and the like. I don't think you should do that at all. You should have a conscience. But there is a certain case for expansion packs where you get new content of some sort, where the payment is outside the gameplay behind a parental lock...

Trust takes a very long time to build up, but you can ruin it very quickly. If you start messing with it, you might sell a lot of IAP in the short term, but in the long term you may sell less overall."

He was also good on his response to a regular criticism of children's apps: that they're just "digital babysitters" designed to keep children quiet so parents don't have to, well, parent:

"As an app developer, our intention is never to replace the parent, and I've never met a developer who tries to replace physical play with digital toys. The two aren't mutually exclusive, and they can even be combined.

Some of these arguments are hypothetical: if kids only used apps all the time, that would be bad. Well, yes, but if kids played football all the time, and that was the only thing they did, that would be bad too. Why would you hold the iPad to that standard?"

Well, would you?

Dr. Leslie Haddon from the London School of Economics emails pointing me to another report: Net Children Go Mobile, which was published earlier this month.

It studies " the post-desktop media ecology that children inhabit and its consequences on young people’s online experiences", and has thrown up some interesting stats.

"The average age of first internet use is still dropping,being now 8 years old in the four countries. However, the age at which children start using the internet varies consistently by country, age group and, to a lesser extent, by gender.

European kids are increasingly mobile, and increasingly social: 53% of children aged 9 to 16 own a smartphone, and 48% use it to access the internet.

Increasingly privatised access: 26% of children use the smartphones in mobility, but more and more children tend to use it in their own bedrooms (39%)."

Time for another research report, this time from Tablets for Schools, which conducted a study of what happened when tablets were given to every child in four secondary schools between 2012 and 2013.

"Results suggest that long-term use of the Tablet has a profound effect on pedagogy, and that pupils benefit from having access to content both at school and at home.

Pupils appear to have greater engagement with learning, collaboration with peers increases, and teachers can monitor individual progress effectively. There are some concerns about pupil distraction and managing time effectively.

It is clear that schools need time to adjust to the introduction of one-to-one devices, and that the functions of the Tablet need to be understood by teachers, together with the changes to pedagogy that are brought about by an increase in independent learning."

I smiled at the section on those concerns around pupil distraction, where students were caught using messaging and other apps during lessons.

"The concept of 'distractibility' is unclear. For example, some students claimed music helped them concentrate, others were unable to multitask, and it was also found that a large number of the 5% of students who were 'distracted' during lessons were actually 'also' doing work. However, the key is to have clear rules, effective classroom management, and educating students in using tablets responsibly."

A lot of this comes down to trust, of course. But it does also raise the vision of a teacher rushing to one side of the room to boot someone off Facebook, while five children on the other side of the room merrily fire up Clash of Clans...

Apple said last week that it has a 94% share of the education tablets market, although it's not entirely clear where that stat came from. But what about tablets in the home?

There's a growing sense that a lot of kids will be getting Android tablets under the Christmas tree come 25 December, with a number of models jostling for parents' attention. Samsung's Galaxy Tab 3 Kids tablet got a UK release date yesterday, and it'll be competing with the impressive Tesco Hudl, the not-so-impressive Argos MyTablet, and Amazon's latest Kindle Fires.

It'll be fascinating to see how the number of children with their own tablets rises over the Christmas period, with devices below £130 falling into Christmas gift territory for a growing number of parents.

What apps to get for them, though? The Guardian's 50 best Android apps for kids from 2013 feature would be a start, although with several of the tablets above running their own curated app stores, it's unclear how many will be available.

Liam Berriman from the University of Sussex's Centre for Innovation and Research in Childhood and Youth has emailed about a research project he's involved in called Face 2 Face which looks at how children's lives are shaped around movement between face-to-face and online interactions:

"Face 2 Face is a 12 month project that aims to develop methodological tools for researching the temporal rhythms of children's everyday lives - be these the long and slow processes that might be captured in stories that children and families tell about themselves, or the more intensive temporalities that structure the course of a day or characterise the life cycle of a 'craze' or an argument. Funded by the National Centre for Research Methods, the project will develop and evaluate a range of methods for exploring the movement between face-to-face and online interactions."

He's also got a really useful feed of news sources and reports on digital kids on Bundlr, which covers topics including children and coding, digital childhood reports and children, data and privacy.

From earlier this year, here's a video on Hakitzu, an app from UK firm Kuato Studios that aims to teach children programming skills... through big, fighty virtual robots.

Many more children are using smart devices to get education and entertainment, as well as going online. But what are the risks?

A recent study by the London School of Economics – Zero to Eight: Young Children and their Internet Use – noted that the fact that kids are going online at younger ages, and suggested that "their lack of technical, critical and social skills may pose a greater risk than for older children". This blog post by Sonia Livingstone has more on that:

"It is not uncommon for parents to allow very young children to use smartphones and tablets to play games, watch videos and the range of apps aimed specifically at younger children is growing rapidly. It has not been established that children under nine years of age have the capacity to engage with the internet in a safe and beneficial manner in all circumstances.

This is particularly the case when young children are accessing social sites intended for teenagers and adults, such as Facebook and YouTube; but, greater transparency regarding how data are collected, collated, used and shared via children’s apps specifically aimed at the younger age group, and the provision of opt-out choices for parents and children is also urgently needed."

Having read that report, I then saw an announcement this week by the American Academy of Pediatrics that seemed relevant: How to Make a Family Media Use Plan. It suggested that parents should sit down to make a media use plan for their family:

"Make a media use plan for your family. Take into account not only the quantity, but the quality and location of media use. Consider TVs, phones, tablets and computers. The rules should be written down and agreed upon by all family members."

Suggested rules include keeping screens out of children's bedrooms; substituting unstructured play and human interaction for screen time for under-twos; co-viewing TV shows with children and discussing values; keeping computers in public parts of the home; and talking to children about ideas like digital footprints and being "good digital citizens".

Children's TV show Yo Gabba Gabba is fabulous, but now one of its creators, Scott Schultz, is working on something new. It's called Hi BabyBoo! and it's a collaboration between his production company The Magic Store and apps firm Night & Day Studios.

They're trying to raise $150k on crowdfunding site Kickstarter to get the project up and running, and it sounds rather marvellous:

"We envision a show overflowing with fun music that provides the foundation for beautiful visuals. In addition to the musical genius of the songwriters at the Magic Store, imagine a sweet instrumental lullaby from the Flaming Lips, Low, or Band of Horses. Or what about a fun song from Frank Black, Mates of State or MGMT? I'm just dreaming out loud here but if I've learned anything from making Yo Gabba Gabba, it's to dream big and collaborate with amazing people.

It starts and ends with a new cast of cuddly puppet friends who play with real kids. It's also about human characters who peekaboo in with a funny facial expression. And a cast wouldn't be complete without cute animated characters to be friends with."

For the prospect of MGMT appearing with puppets on a kids' show, I'm in. But this is also an interesting example of a wider trend: TV producers and apps developers working together from the start of a project as creative partners, rather than the TV company just licensing its brand out to the app folk later.

The Kickstarter pitch video is above: what do you think?

Some more stats on kids and tablets in the UK, this time from a survey of 1,000 parents of 2-6 year-olds by OnePoll, commissioned by the developer of the official Justin's World apps for children's TV star Justin Fletcher earlier this year.

Its findings claimed that 38% of two year-olds and 61% of three year-olds are playing and learning on tablets, with 4% of two year-olds and 8% of three year-olds actually owning their own device, rising to 19% of four year-olds.

(I suspect a lot of these are pass-on tablets from parents who've upgraded to newer models.)

What are 2-3 year-olds (or "iTods" as OnePoll dubbed them) doing with a tablet? Playing with educational apps and/or games is the most popular use, ahead of watching children's TV shows, YouTube and video-calls with family members.

Earlier in the year, Fletcher talked to The Guardian about why he's making his own apps:

"I'm a bit antiquated when it comes to technology, but I'm astounded at the way children are now using apps from a very young age as a learning tool. It seems like a natural progression to explore that format... The key is the simplicity of the format. It's not too busy, there's no background and no distraction. I wanted to take what we do on television to create that on the phone or tablet."

He's not the only children's TV personality getting interactive, either: here's an interview with Fletcher's fellow CBeebies star Phil Gallagher (aka Mister Maker) about his first app.

Any word-cloud about what kids are doing digitally will see Minecraft looming large, as above. Angry Birds, Temple Run, FIFA and Minion Rush all feature too.

The latter is somewhat under the radar for the wider games industry, but Despicable Me: Minion Rush (to give its full title) is something of a mobile monster: 100m downloads in three months on iOS and Android earlier this year.

And while we're on the subject of Minecraft, I can't recommend highly enough my colleague Keith Stuart's recent feature – Minecraft at 33 million users – a personal story – in which he talked about his own child's experience with the game:

"This is particularly resonant to me, and I suspect many other parents with autistic children. My seven-year-old son, Zac, was confirmed on the scale earlier this year, although in a lot of ways we've always known. He has a somewhat limited vocabulary, and finds noisy social situations like schoolyards frightening and confusing; he is demonstrative, but has difficulty with empathy. We have watched as his younger brother, Albie, has overtaken him on things like reading and writing. But he is funny and imaginative and wonderful.

And like a lot of children with an autism spectrum condition, he loves Minecraft. From the moment I downloaded the Xbox 360 edition and handed controllers to him and his brother Albie, they have been addicts. At first, they simply trudged across the rolling landscapes, randomly attacking the sheep, cows and ducks that graze each Minecraft world. They would throw together weird hovels, filled with random doors and windows, huge gaps in the walls, bizarre jutting extensions, like nightmarish sets from a German expressionistic horror movie."

Architecture in 2030 is going to be an interesting thing, if the Minecraft generation are putting their skills to use in the real world...

Play-i is a US startup that's just launched a $250k crowdfunding campaign for its two robots – Bo and Yana – which will help children learn to code in the Scratch and Blockly languages using apps, music and games (as in physical games: the robots can play tag and hide'n'seek).

The robots will be shipping in the summer of 2014, although developers can get early access to the products and their API. Three days in, and Play-i has already raised $218k of its target.

Children's virtual world Moshi Monsters has 70m registered users, but it's facing a tricky time as its young users migrate to tablets. Earlier this month, CEO Michael Acton Smith talked about the challenges this is presenting.

"I'll be honest, it's been really tough. We thought we'd waltz in and have a successful app, and as most people have found, that universe is really tough. It's great because anyone can create an app, but that's why it's tough. There's so much content... Where I see more our competitors emerging from are definitely in the App Store, everything from Talking Tom to Temple Run to Angry Birds, these extraordinary apps getting tens of millions of downloads. That's where kids are spending a lot of their time these days."

The company is still working on its fully-fledged tablet app for Moshi Monsters, but mobile looms large in its plans for new, non-Moshi worlds and characters too. It's working on three new projects, all of which will be mobile-first.

"They will always start, these new brands, in the mobile and tablet space. And if they're successful then we will start expanding them into different media... Some of the apps we launch will use in-app purchases, some will be paid apps, and some will be completely free and used to generate revenue through making characters more popular."

There's more in The Guardian's interview with Acton Smith, including his belief that children's apps can build business models based on in-app purchases in an ethical way, despite recent controversies around kids splashing their parents' cash on virtual items without permission.

I'm enjoying the word-clouds from SuperAwesome: this time, favourite TV characters for kids in Stratford. Is it too late for the BBC to make Gary Lineker the next Doctor Who?

More research from Nielsen, but this time the parent company. It asked American parents about their children's tablet use, and found 54% saying their kids use the devices for educational purposes. It also dug into what children are doing with tablets at school:

Moshi Monsters is marvellous, but does it skew younger? You might think so, but research from another British firm, Dubit, found earlier this year that 10% of 11-16 year-olds here were still playing it, while 17% were on Disney's Club Penguin.

That said, adult games were creeping in too: 7% on Runescape and 6% on World of Warcraft, although the fashion-focused Stardoll virtual world also had a decent audience.

Word-cloud time: what are children in Stratford doing online?

Some more research, this time from Kantar Media's recent FutureProof study, which found that 48% of adults in households with children have a tablet. It also posed a question about the implications:

"Devices like tablets have made technology accessible to young children and while parents are conscious that their kids need to be digitally literate, there's also a concern around the wide open world that these devices provide access to."

This video posted on the Raspberry Pi blog is marvellous: Seven year-old Amelia and five year-old Oliver have used Raspberry Pi to "rig up their house to scare any trick-or-treaters who might visit tomorrow" (i.e. today). More instructions on how they did it can be found here.

The photo above really is my six year-old's first ever attempt at coding yesterday – with genuinely no input from me about what he should type between the quote marks. Let's just say I had something in my eye for a few minutes after seeing it.

We'd just set up The Fuze, a computer for kids based on Raspberry Pi, which has an emphasis on teaching children BASIC. It's good so far, but it made me wonder: what are your recommendations for children taking their first steps in coding?

What languages are good to start with – I've been mulling Scratch, but am open to suggestions. Any thoughts on the merits of initiatives like Code Club and Fire Tech Camp? Or apps like Hopscotch, Light-bot and Hakitzu? Post a comment if you have views.

Children's network SuperAwesome has been travelling the country asking children about their digital media usage. Here's one of its findings (it's tweeting more throughout the day, apparently).

Heard of qCraft? It's the work of Google's Quantum A.I. Lab: a modpack for Minecraft – a game that's hugely popular among children – that aims to get kids interested in quantum physics.

"Where will future quantum computer scientists come from? Our best guess: Minecraft," explained Google when it unveiled qCraft earlier this month.

"Millions of kids are spending a whole lot of hours in Minecraft, not just digging caves and fighting monsters, but building assembly lines, space shuttles, and programmable computers, all in the name of experimentation and discovery. So how do we get these smart, creative kids excited about quantum physics?"

How about kids in America? Kim Wilde is on my internal jukebox for the rest of the morning now, but it's well worth reading the survey released earlier this week by Common Sense Media, based on a survey of 1,463 parents of children aged eight and under.

It notes a big spike in tablet ownership for US families in the last two years: "Among families with children eight and under, there has been a five-fold increase in ownership of tablets (from 8% to 40%), and the percent of children with access to some sort of smart mobile device at home has jumped from half (52%) to three-quarters (75%)."

The research has also made headlines for its finding that 38% of children under two years old have used a mobile device, up from 10% in 2011. Too young? My kids may have swiped a jammy hand across my tablet every so often when they were toddlers, but I'm not sure they actually "used" it.

Let's kick off the research element to today with the latest report by UK telecoms regulator Ofcom. Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes came out in early October, and has masses of data on how British children are getting their entertainment across different devices.

There's no way to summarise all its contents here, but the tablet stats are particularly noteworthy:

"Around one quarter of children aged 12– 15 (26%) and 18% aged 8-11 have their own tablet computer, while household ownership of a tablet has more than doubled since 2012 (51% vs. 20%). Use of a tablet computer at home has tripled among 5-15s since 2012 (42% vs.14%) while one-quarter (28%) of 3-4s use a tablet computer at home."

Also note that children are now less likely than in 2012 to have a television, games console or radio in their bedrooms. Are tablets leading them back to the living room?