The Robots are coming and they want your jobs

Experts believe that almost a third of the global workforce will be automated by 2030. But are universities preparing students for the rise of the office machines?

Had you popped into the equity trading floor at Goldman Sachs' New York headquarters in 2000, you would have walked into a bloodbath of the senses: 500 men and women projectile swearing, phones blaring, the dizzying aroma of adrenaline oozing from every human orifice. These days, you might just make out the lifeless whir of 200 high-speed servers over the ticking clock. Because those 500 people have been whittled down to three. The other 497 have been usurped by complex algorithms. 

These were not working stiffs: cleaners, receptionists or other service-industry hirelings already humbled by computers. They were university graduates with hard-fought degrees in subjects like business, finance or economics. Trouble was, for all their brainpower, passion and pedigree, algorithms just did the job better. They aren't the only victims. The computers, now, have caught the scent of blood.

"A lot of people assume automation is only going to affect blue-collar people, and that so long as you go to university you will be immune to that," says Martin Ford, author of Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future. "But that's not true, there will be a much broader impact."

This raises the question: as we move toward the brave new automated world, is a university degree in, say, economics, philosophy, English or anything else that isn't to do with fixing cobots (collaborative robots) or writing algorithms worth the PDF file it was exported on? Or is it, practically speaking, useless? And if so, what are universities doing about it?

"Most universities are simply not doing enough to prepare students for the automated workforce," says Nancy W Gleason, PhD, director of the Centre for Teaching and Learning at Singapore's Yale-NUS College, and the author ofHigher Education: Preparation for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. "We need to teach students to be cognitively flexible, to have the skills and confidence to try different jobs throughout their lives. In the gig economy, you're not going to have seven employers, you're going to have seven careers. People might say, 'Oh my degree in history didn't do me any good.' Well, guess what, neither will a degree in radiology, dentistry or law."

This is not a joke. Last year, a report by McKinsey Global Institute suggested that up to 800 million careers (or 30 percent of the global job force) – from doctors to accountants, lawyers to journalists – will be lost to computers by 2030, while every single worker on earth will need to adapt "as their occupations evolve alongside increasingly capable machines". Others suggest this number may be as high as 50 percent. "Machines are taking on cognitive capability, beginning to compete with our ability to reason, to make decisions and, most importantly, to learn," adds Ford. "At least over the next couple of decades, AI and robotics are going to eliminate huge amounts of jobs. Beyond that, it gets more unpredictable; we really don't know what's going to happen."

*

To find out more, I contacted 25 of the world's leading universities to ask what, if anything, they are doing to prepare students for the choppy waters of fluid work. Of America's eight Ivy League schools, only Dartmouth College had something to say; the rest either did not reply, were too busy or couldn't find the proper person for me to speak to. And of the eight UK universities I approached, the London School of Economics and University of Sheffield did not reply, while Leeds and Birmingham both couldn't find anyone suitable to comment. A press officer for the University of Cambridge said she wasn't "aware of anything Cambridge-specific".

Oxford, Bristol, Manchester and City, University of London, however, all got back to me. "Next year, we'll be introducing an interdisciplinary course unit that all of our undergraduates can take, and which looks at exactly this issue," said Caroline Jay, PhD, a senior lecturer in computer science at the University of Manchester.

According to its overview, the course, called AI: Robot Overlord, Replacement or Colleague?, aims to "equip Manchester graduates from all disciplines with an understanding of the impact this technology currently has, the way this is likely to change in the future and, crucially, the ability to grasp the opportunities it brings, whatever your chosen career."

"The whole point of universities is to equip people with the skills to learn," adds Jay. "Students are not just here to learn a set of facts, but to learn how things change, evolve and how they can fit into that future."

The University of Bristol takes a broader view. "If the economy is becoming more of a gig economy, preparing students to become entrepreneurial is something we take very seriously," says Dave Jarman of the university's Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

So the university has built Bristol Futures, a new initiative that offers a range of open online courses designed to provide "the opportunity for the development of core academic skills and key personal attributes to help students become adaptable, successful graduates". The courses currently offered – Innovation and Enterprise, Global Citizenship and Sustainable Futures – are not degrees per se, but run alongside a student's chosen subject.

"This is our long game," says Jarman. "We're looking at how we smuggle those ideas into anything from classics to chemistry. Of course, sometimes changing practice in a university is like turning round an oil tanker in a phone box, but we're in that process."

Dirk Erfurth, the careers service director at the University of Munich (LMU), in Germany, agrees. "You cannot expect every professor in every faculty to take these issues as their most serious concerns. That is not their task. It is our task in the careers service, as the bridge between the labour market and the academic world."

He says LMU offers funded overseas internships, mentoring programmes and holiday-season mini-courses (€95 (£85) for 40 hours of class time) in subjects like presentation and rhetoric, leadership, time management and communication, and conflict management, as well as a "professional education unit" for former students looking for a skills bump. Erfurth says LMU takes students' future employability very seriously, as long as the students are prepared to play the game.

"This is not about grades or certificates," he adds. "We want to show students that, if you invest a little bit of time and money in your skills, wonderful things can happen to you. You have to leave your comfort zone and go out into the world, to distinguish yourself from others, take internships, develop your open-mindedness, creative thinking, curiosity, networking and entrepreneurial spirit. Those are the skills that will make you employable in the future." This is what the University of Copenhagen calls an "interdisciplinary skills profile".

"We aim to improve students' opportunities to exploit the potential of digitalisation and big data both across the university and with our collaborated partners," says the university's vice-provost, Anni Søborg, echoing much of what I've already heard. "And we make explicit how programmes can be applied in the job market, including a focus on initiatives that ensure students have the requisite skills for innovation and entrepreneurship."

And so, over to America, which Dr Gleason says is "doing very little in higher education relative to other countries". "The truth is, we don't actually know all the jobs we are preparing students for," says Dartmouth's associate dean for the sciences, Dan Rockmore. "Dartmouth is the premier liberal arts university in the world. The liberal arts ethos is that a well-rounded and broad education, an exposure to the multidimensional nature of the great challenges of our day, are what prepares a mind for the unpredictable challenges of the world post-graduation. We aim to teach critical thinking, habits of mind that can be brought to bear in many different contexts."

He then pointed to the Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network, which gives students "the opportunity to try out ideas for and in the 'new economy'", along with its "flexible quarter" system that gives students the "opportunity to experience the workplaces of the new economy" all year round. "In short, a Dartmouth education will prepare students to take advantage of those [technological] transformations."

The key point here is that all these courses are optional. No students are forced to take them, and they offer no future-proofing guarantees. But then, is it really a university's responsibility to hold students' hands throughout their lives? Or is it, really, up to students?

"I would say this is like a gym membership, not a butler," says Jarman. "You don't pay your money and the goods turn up. You pay for an opportunity, but you've got to go in and lift the weights and run the distance. If you do those things, universities have got amazing facilities and people that can help you accelerate that process. But it doesn’t land on a plate."

University students – as Jonathan Black, the director of university career services at Oxford University, is keen to point out – are adults after all. "One of the things Oxford, and other universities, endeavour to do is to persuade people who are perfectly bright enough to benefit from a university education to consider our many extracurricular services, such as the careers department, student societies, volunteering or work experience in the summer. That's where they're going to get that experience, but they’ve got to realise they're getting it."

He went on: "But we're not going to tell students what to do. I think we'd be doing students a disservice if we hold their hand all the way until the end and then say, 'Here's your job.' We're here to lay the table, show students what's available, but it's up to them to decide if they want to eat."

The truth is, what keeps most university presidents up at night is not the robocalypse, but shorter-term threats to their survival, like competing for endowments and enrolment. But there is one university president whose dreamsare overrun by robots. That, Joseph E Aoun says, is his advantage: robots cannot dream. The president of Northeastern University (NU) in Boston has developed a strategy to fight back. He calls it "humanics".

"If robots are going to replace human beings in the workplace, then we need to become robot-proof," he says. "The rise of extraordinary artificial intelligence requires us to cultivate extraordinary human intelligence. Even today's most brilliant machines still have limitations. Machines do not yet have a capacity for creativity, innovation or inspiration."

His idea, essentially, is to give students the ability to solve the world's most urgent issues in a way that robots cannot – with empathy. Or, as he puts it: "I've not yet seen a computer cry."

Laid out in his book, Robot-Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, humanics has become a staple of Northeastern’s programme that requires computer science majors to, say, take side classes in theatre or improvisation. "Why? Because it allows them to start interacting with others, which is a simplistic but vital example of getting people to go beyond what they’re studying," he says. "Human interaction is going to be a vital skill in the future."

Aoun argues that the only way to create a curriculum for a "robot-proof" education is by fostering "purposeful integration of technical literacies, such as coding and data literacy, with human literacies, such as creativity, ethics, cultural agility and entrepreneurship".

But, he says, experiential learning is also essential, and so has developed an acclaimed co-operative education and career-development programme called Co-op at NU. "We have a network of 3,000 employers in 136 countries on all continents, including Antarctica, where the students apply for paid jobs for six months," he says. "There, they get the unique opportunity to learn how people interact in the workplace, what opportunities look like, what it's like to work in a different cultural setting; they start understanding themselves better. That is powerful and transformational."

The numbers speak for themselves: most students do two or three co-ops throughout their college years, and 92 percent of them find full-time work within nine months of graduating.

*

The flood of automation is coming. But Aoun and Gleason say simply teaching students to swim – as the handful of universities I spoke to are beginning to do – will not save them from drowning eventually. Instead, they agree, we need to build an arc. "We must move away from the idea of a university degree being front-loaded in the first 18 to 24 years of your life," says Gleason. "Instead of a three- to four-year model, students should be admitted for 20 years with the ability to come back and take classes for free whenever they want."

That is exactly what both NU and NUS, where Gleason works, are doing. NUS, for example, has launched two government-supported "lifelong learning institutes", where graduates can return at any stage of life to "upskill" in hundreds of courses – long and short – from psychology to Arabic, "business agility" to "cyber security for the internet of things". "We are looking at stacking courses together to re-skill adults," Gleason says. "It's a long road ahead, but the real low-lying fruit is more experiential learning, and less lectures."

As for NU, Aoun has overseen the establishment of a lifetime-learning network of campuses in Charlotte, North Carolina, Seattle, Silicon Valley, Toronto and San Francisco, where members can return to learn new skills. "Seventy-four percent of the population are what we call 'non-professional learners'," he says. "Ignore them and universities will become irrelevant. If we don't step in and integrate lifelong learning as part of our core mission, we become like the railway industry that saw the onset of the airline revolution and said, 'This is nothing to do with us.' They didn't see themselves in the transportation business, and their business suffered as a result."

None of this, of course, comes cheap. NUS and NU are both well-funded institutions. Gleason suggests a tax on robots would cover it. If not, industry needs to step up and cough up. "I don't see why industry shouldn't," she adds. "It's not like they won't be profiting from some of the jobs that go away."

So what, in the meantime, can students who don't go to NUS or NU – or one of the world's few other universities with similar ideas – do to future-proof their careers? The answer, really, is to become as human as humanly possible. We need to fight back with feelings. "The future labour market needs not content experts or information processors," says Gleason, "but creators, analysers, problem solvers, collaborators and lifelong learners who are able to acquire new skills as old ones quickly become obsolete. The best place you can learn those skills are in the liberal arts."

Maybe, as a start then, that degree in philosophy or English isn't such a bad idea after all.

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/kz5a73/the-robots-are-coming-and-they-want-your-job

How (and When) to Limit Kids' Tech Use

No one cares more about your child's well-being and success than you do. In today's digitally-fueled times, that means guiding him or her not just in the real world but in the always-on virtual one as well. Teach your children to use technology in a healthy way and pick up the skills and habits that will make them successful digital citizens. From 2-year-olds who seem to understand the iPad better than you to teenagers who need some (but not too much) freedom, we’ll walk you through how to make technology work for your family at each stage of the journey.

Top 3 Tips to Remember

A few basic parenting guidelines will help you establish ground rules and maintain tech harmony at home.

HANNAH JACOBS

1. AIM FOR BALANCE

It's clear that technology is here to stay and the world is becoming only more digitally driven. In many ways, that's a good thing. Technology can be empowering for kids of all ages, with tools that help children learn in fun and engaging ways, express their creativity and stay connected to others. Children who are tech-savvy will also be better prepared for a workforce that will be predominantly digital.

At the same time, parents naturally worry about their kids accessing inappropriate content online, the impact of too much screen time on healthy development and their children becoming tethered to technology.
As with most situations, a balanced approach to these new challenges works best. "The most important step is to establish a balanced or sustainable relationship with tech," says the social psychologist Adam Alter, author of “Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked.” You can liken it to aiming for a healthy diet, Dr. Alter explains: "Older kids understand the concept of balance intuitively -- they know that it’s important to eat healthy foods alongside candy and dessert, and the same is true of the 'empty calories' that come from spending too much time passively gazing at screens. There’s a time for screens, but not at the expense of time for physical activity and connecting with real people in real time."
Some things to keep in mind as you try to strike this delicate balance:
There's no single recipe for success, but you'll know it when you see it. Balance for your family will look different than it will for your neighbor because every family is unique and parenting styles and values vary. In general, though, if your family can reap the benefits of technology without feeling many of the harmful effects and you feel confident in how your children are using technology, you've likely found balance.
Watch for the warning signs of unhealthy tech usage. The psychologist Jon Lasser, who co-wrote "Tech Generation: Raising Balanced Kids in a Hyper-Connected World," says parents should note when:
Kids complain that they're bored or unhappy when they don't have access to technology
Tantrums or harsh resistance occur when you set screen time limits
Screen time interferes with sleep, school and face-to-face communication
Be prepared to revisit this topic again and again. As your children grow, so will their involvement with technology. Also, it's difficult to predict what the digital world will look like even just a few years from now. Your definition of healthy and unhealthy tech usage will need regular updates. Fun times ahead!
Some tips to evaluate the quality of your children's digital interactions (which you should do regularly):
Are they accessing age-appropriate content?
Are the apps they use interactive and thought-provoking rather than passive? Not all screen time is equal. Going back to the food analogy, 100 calories from a doughnut is not the same as 100 calories from a salad; an hour watching YouTube videos isn't the same as an hour spent in a digital art program.
Are the privacy settings for older children's social media and other online accounts set to restrict what strangers can see and who can contact your children?

Still set screen time limits to balance online and offline activities. Although quality is most important, you'll probably still want to set some screen time limits for your family to preserve time for activities beyond screens and tech. While the debate on exactly how many hours kids can spend on their screens before it becomes unhealthy rages on, you can draw firm lines for tech-free times, such as during dinner, in the car, or on school nights.

2. BE A ROLE MODEL

Technology's irresistible pull draws in parents as much as it does kids. We check our phones every hour, log late hours working or surfing the internet on our laptops, binge watch our favorite shows, and even engage in dangerous "distracted walking." Children are likely to not only copy our behavior, but they also feel like they have to compete with devices for our attention. Nearly half of parents in one study reported technology interfering with interactions with their child three or more times on a typical day.
Google and Apple are starting to address this growing concern about tech taking over our lives by adding new phone features such as time limits for specific apps (for Android) andstatistics on time spent on devices (for iOS). While digital tools can help us curb excessive gadget usage, practicing and demonstrating mindful use of technology ourselves will be the best way to teach children the critical skill of unplugging.
Set boundaries for work time and family time. A few key times to stay unpluggedinclude:
when picking up or dropping children at school, as this is a transitional time for them
After coming home from work, as that's time to reconnect with your family
during meals, including when dining out
during outings like trips to the park or zoo, or vacations when the focus is on family time
Know when you're really busy and need to be plugged in and when you don't. Often, it feels like there's a work or social emergency and you have to take that call, respond to a message, or check your email — but when you really think about it, it could wait until after you've finished that movie or game with your child.
Use media the way you want your children to. Follow common sense rules around tech like never texting while driving and avoiding oversharing on social media.

By practicing what you preach instead of the hypocritical "do as I say not what I do" approach, you emulate the habits you want your children to pick up and show them that there are times for using technology and times when we should be present in the real world.
3. MAKE TECH A FAMILY AFFAIR

Your family likely discusses important decisions that affect the group day-to-day, such as who's responsible for doing the dishes and where you should go for your next vacation. Technology use should take the same type of planning, so everyone's on board with the same expectations.
Set rules as a family. When you set limits with children, Dr. Lasser says, kids can start learning how to self-regulate and know when screen time is interfering too much with the rest of their lives. As a bonus, he adds: "Kids are also less likely to balk at limits if they have a role in creating and establishing them." You can create a family media use plan at the American Academy of Pediatrics' website.
Be involved with your child's tech experiences. Playing or watching alongside with your children offers several benefits. You'll be able to vet the content they are accessing, the child will learn more from the activity through your interaction, and you'll bond through the shared experience. If your children seem to be light years ahead in tech acumen compared with you, let them teach you — it's a confidence-booster for them and important for you to keep up with the new experiences they're having. This might mean sitting through dizzying Minecraft builds, Fortnite games or learning teenspeak, but at least you'll experience the virtual world together.
Tailor your approach to each child. As with other areas of parenting, what works for one child won't necessarily work for another, depending on their ages, personalities, and needs. Your 10-year-old might be more careful about not playing inappropriate games or keeping your computer free of viruses than your 12-year-old. Your 12-year-old might not want a phone even though her friends all have one.
Age ranges aren't hard guidelines (including the ones in this guide). Instead, consider them a general roadmap for mentoring your children from an introduction to technology to making their own decisions about how to use it wisely.

Babies Under 2

They're surprisingly adept at tapping and swiping, but keep the phone and tablet away as much as possible (chats with Grandma are O.K.).


HANNAH JACOBS


One second you're holding your cooing, happy baby and the next she's bawling in the restaurant. Hand over a smartphone, though, and all is well again. It's no wonder parents often resort to electronicn devices to distract. With their endless array of dazzling apps and cartoons on YouTube, gadgets grab babies' attention.
The problem is, a child's brain grows fastest in the first three years of life, which makes this period the most critical one for lingual, emotional, social and motor skills development. Being able to experience the real world with all of her senses and through live interaction with others will be far more beneficial to a baby than interacting with a screen. A picture of a ball, even if it bounces and makes a sound on the screen, isn't as rich an experience as playing with an actual ball.
It's O.K. to introduce your children to technology, but it should be a tiny percentage of their time at this age and ideally be shared with you since babies are social learners. The majority of their awake time should be spent doing what babies do best: Absorbing everything around them and developing their big brains.

FOR ANY SCREEN TIME, FOCUS ON QUALITY

The jury's still out on the long-standing debate of "How much screen time is too much?" In 2016, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) revised its previous recommendationof no screen time for children under 2. The new guidelines were broadened a bit, with recommendations for only video chatting for children under 18 months, co-watching high-quality programs, such as the classic Sesame Street or Wonder Pets! for children ages 18 to 24 months, one hour a day of screen time for children ages 2 to 5 years, and "consistent limits" on screen time for children ages 6 and above.

While these recommendations are looser than the group’s 2010 ones, they might still be too restrictive for many families—and possibly unnecessary. A study from Oxford University published in December 2017 found no consistent correlation between parents who followed the A.A.P. screen time guidelines and young children's well being. That study’s lead author, Dr. Andrew Pryzbylski, said in a statement, "If anything, our findings suggest the broader family context, how parents set rules about digital screen time, and if they’re actively engaged in exploring the digital world together, are more important than the raw screen time."

Here are some tips for finding the right balance for your baby:
Limit tech usage to the bare minimum. The A.A.P. recommends limiting tech use to video chatting — for example with a traveling parent or relatives who are far away. The one-to-one conversations, even on screen, can help babies as they develop critical language skills.
Skip the "educational" videos. Products like Baby Einstein DVDs and other videos marketed as helping babies' brains grow have been linked to developmental issues, sleep problems and delays in learning essential skills like vocabulary.
Co-view and co-play. Parents are busier than ever, with work, meals to make, household chores, and taking care of other family members. Still, instead of using technology as an electronic pacifier or babysitter, if you're unable to tend to the baby for a moment, give the baby toys or books that will help her use all her senses. When using a tablet or phone with your baby, talk, read, sing or play with them to nourish their brain development. Interactive books can be engaging, as can musical apps or ones that teach children to recognize letters, numbers, colors, and shapes. (Best Kids Apps offers a curated list.)

PROTECT YOUR DEVICES

While too much technology exposure can be dangerous for your baby, your baby can also be hazardous for your technology. The best protection is prevention: Lock down your devices so kids can't accidentally make in-app purchases or destroy your devices.
Kid-proof your phone and tablet with protective cases that have thick padding, are easy to clean, and are easy for small hands to hold. Amazon offers a case for its Fire tablet, while there are numerous options for iPad owners.
Set up parental controls on your devices. For Android, use the Family Link app to manage apps and set screen time limits. For iOS, go to Settings > General > Restrictions to limit apps and features.
Once your child is old enough to understand basic instructions, start teaching how to take care of these devices, with rules like: "Don't eat or drink around the computer,” “Don't leave the iPad on the floor, “ “Your phone is not a coaster.” And when they are older, consider when it’s appropriate to ask them to help pay for any damage that results when they disregard your warnings.


Toddlers and Preschoolers (2-5 Years)

Play, watch and browse together — while carving out more tech-free time.
HANNAH JACOBS


Once your child is running about and eager to learn all the things, it'll be hard to keep electronic devices away. A survey by Erikson Institute found that an overwhelming 85 percent of parents allow their children under age 6 to use technology at home and 86 percent of parents surveyed said they found benefits for their young children's tech usages, including literacy, school readiness and school success. While there are more apps and gadgets than ever before explicitly designed for toddlers, you'll still want to make tech a small slice of their larger learning and activities pie.
MAKE TECH TIME BONDING TIME

At this age, children are learning prosocial behavior: sharing, helping, donating and benefiting other people. It's the age when kids learn to give and take. Technology can help with this developmental stage when you co-play with them, taking turns and exploring a game or digital book or video together. Now (and, honestly, at every other age), children want your undivided attention — even when their focus seems to be mostly directed at a screen.

CHOOSING GAMES AND APPS

You'll want to do this for your kids in any age group, but as soon as possible, get into the habit of checking age ratings for digital content. Stephen Balkam, the founder and C.E.O. of the Family Online Safety Institute, a nonprofit that represents members such as Amazon and Verizon with the aim of making the online world safer for children and families, recommends checking the International Age Rating Coalition (IARC) ratings versus app store ratings. Google, Microsoft, Nintendo and many other major tech companies use IARC ratings when producing user content, and these ratings are linked to national age rating systems.
Some toddler-friendly apps include Kiddle, Google's visual search engine for kids, and Kidoz, a curated collection of children's apps and content. CommonSenseMedia.org offers reviews of apps and games sorted by age group. It's important to keep in mind that age recommendations in app stores and sites like YouTube haven't always been accurate, though (some providers go out of their way to infiltrate the listings with disturbing content masquerading as child-friendly) so the best recourse is to vet the content your kids are exposed to yourself.

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SET TECH-FREE TIMES AND SPACES

Establish rules for when the family should not be on their devices, such as two hours before bedtime and during meal times. Similarly, set up screen-free zones in your home. For example, mobile devices, computers and TVs are not allowed in the dining room or bedrooms. Firm rules like these — that everyone in the family follows — make sure everyone gets tech breaks and family time.

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Young Children (6-12 Years)

Now's the time to set up and reinforce healthy tech habits.

HANNAH JACOBS


Children at the grade school age level will likely be using technology on a daily basis. As they still look to you for guidance, this is a pivotal time to establish and reinforce the appropriate use of technology and the benefits your family can gain from it.

SET UP CHILD ACCOUNTS

Kids in this age range may need to use a computer for homework. The built-in parental controls in Windows (called Microsoft Family) and macOS (called Parental Controls in system preferences) can help you set time limits and also limit apps and web usage.
As much as you might try to train them, there will be accidents: a laptop dropped on the floor, milk spilled on the keyboard, screens broken from mysterious "I didn't do that!" causes. The best protection is to designate certain devices specifically for children to use (maybe your old ones); if you have a mission-critical computer or tablet that you use for work, keep your kids off it.

Chromebooks are inexpensive laptops, so those might be a good choice for young children. And if you keep devices in a central location, such as a family room, you'll be better able to monitor your kids' tech usage and be more engaged with them when they go online.


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ENCOURAGE CREATIVITY

Technology has a lot to offer children, but the apps you choose to expose your kids to make a difference. If your child is a tinkerer and likes to build things, you could try:
Osmo, which merges real-world objects with digital ones on the iPad for a more tactile learning experience.
Scratch, developed by M.I.T., teaches children logical thinking through creating stories, animations and games.
Toontastic will boost creativity for your future movie maker or writer.
Try family-friendly active video games for the Wii, Playstation, or Xbox, such asWipeout: Create & Crash.

PRIVACY AND SECURITY BEST PRACTICES

Start the safety conversation early and speak about it often. Remind kids that what goes online stays online and that they should never share personally identifiable or sensitive information. "It may not be realistic for parents to become experts on every new app that becomes popular," Mr. Balkam says, "but by establishing an open conversation with their child from the start, they can help them stay safe. Children who are used to talking about what they do online are more likely to tell someone if they are worried or upset by something that happens in their digital life."
F.O.S.I.'s online safety cards for kids' technology can help you set up the ground rules for your children when you give them a new device.
WATCH OUT FOR CYBERBULLYING

Bullying — both online and offline — becomes a potential issue for children once they're in grade school. "The research on this topic generally shows that kids' online lives mirror their offline lives," says Lisa Damour, author of "Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood." Her general guidance for parents to give their kids:
Do not be a passive bystander if you witness bullying, online or in real life.
Alert an adult.
Stand up to the bully on behalf of the victim.
Go out of your way to support the victim, such as including the person in your activities or checking in to see they're O.K.
Stopbullying.gov offers more advice for parents and children to prevent and deal with bullying in general.

THEIR OWN PHONE?
At this age, your kids might be clamoring for a phone of their own, since it's likely some of their friends have them. According to Nielsen research, the most predominant age when kids get a phone with a service plan is 10, followed by 8, and then 9 and 11 (tied for third). Most parents give their children phones so they can easily get in touch or to track kids' location for safety reasons.
But just because all the other kids have a phone doesn't mean your child is ready for one. Things you'll want to consider before buying them phones:
Are they responsible with their belongings?
Will they follow your rules around phone use?
Can they be trusted to use text, photos and video responsibly?
You'll need to check your child's maturity level here and consider your family's values. For example, if a phone is needed for safety reasons, a "dumb phone" (remember those?) or burner phone might be a solution. There's no magic age number, but most experts recommend waiting as long as possible to delay kids' exposure to online bullies, child predators, sexting and the distractions of social media

 https://www.nytimes.com/guides/smarterliving/family-technology?smid=tw-share