Alexa & Siri could be impairing your child’s mental development, researchers say

Over the past few years, AI-powered voice assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri have become ubiquitous.

Some frazzled parents now rely on these sci-fi-esque applications to do everything, from telling bedtime stories to engaging in simple conversations with their children.

But some researchers suggest that, while convenient, relying too much on these computer-programmed tools might actually be hindering children’s mental development.

“The assignment of mental and social attributes to the devices may negatively affect children’s cognitive and social development,” says a recent report from University of Cambridge researchers Ananya Arora and Anmol Arora.

While some preliminary research suggests that voice-activated devices could aid in improving children’s conversational skills by challenging verbal mistakes, our increasing reliance on them means that sometimes they are used as substitutes for real interactions.

It’s not just a case of too much technology being bad for you. According to the researchers, “there are increasing suggestions that such devices may act as ‘friends’ to children,” which view them as beings with rights and feelings.

This means that children might not develop the proper social etiquette that exists in normal human interactions, such as saying “please” and “thank you”. Tone of voice is also not a concern to machines, nor whether certain commands can come across as rude.

The researchers added that “while in normal human interactions, a child would usually receive constructive feedback if they were to behave inappropriately, this is beyond the scope of a smart device”. Amazon has made strides in this respect, adding an optional function that recognises whether something is being asked politely and thanking the speaker, if so.

Learning, too, is an area of concern. Because machines reply with the minimum necessary when answering a question, they don’t provide the context that adults might, nor do they examine the child’s thinking process. “The process of searching for information is an important learning experience, which teaches critical thinking and logical reasoning,” said the researchers.

However, some experts think fears of cognitive impairment might be overblown. Dr Caroline Fitpatrick, Canada Research Chair in Digital Media Use by Children, told the Guardian that, as long as parents enforce limits on gadget use and make sure children got a good amount of social interaction, there should be little to worry about.