Playtime Increasingly Digital – and That's Not Necessarily a Bad Thing

By Emily Westhoven

The D is for Digital report released at the inaugural Sandbox Summit™ held at the 2008 International Consumer Electronics Show finds that today's parents represent the first generation of parents to have grown up as true digital kids themselves. That makes today's parents more comfortable with technology than previous generations, but not nearly as comfortable as their children. Children are interacting with digital media younger. According to the report, the average age when a child begins venturing into the digital world dropped from 8 years to 6-1/2 years old in just the past two years.

Is digital play a good or bad thing?

"It's not an either or world any more – it's an AND world," says Claire Green, president of the Parents' Choice Foundation. "We're all learning a new language of play today. It's incumbent on parents and marketers to merge traditional and tech play and make sure our kids are getting a balanced media diet – just as we manage our kids' nutrition. An occasional piece of pizza isn't a problem."

For marketers, Green advises, "Just because you can put a chip in a toy doesnt mean you should. No matter how impressive the technology may be, the toy may not be the right place for it. Technology should make sense for the toy, the child, and the play – it should enhance the play and learning, not dictate it.

"It's vitally important that children are given the time, the place and the freedom to play – with tech and traditional toys. Children need to try new things and, yes, to fail. That's how they'll learn to be creative and open-ended, critical thinkers."

Families Find Time – on Business Trips, Volunteering

By Carol Knight

The latest US Census Bureau data is encouraging, showing that parents and kids are making a greater effort to spend quality time together. A 2005 Census Bureau report found the number of adolescents eating with their family most nights increased by 23% since 1998.

Stouffer's is capitalizing on that trend with its Dinner Moments campaign. The campaign provides consumers with tools to tell a story about their family dinner. The site includes story-starter questions, video clips and a make-your-own placemat activity. A print campaign in mom-focused magazines includes pull-out family dinner story- starter cards.

In a similar effort, Panasonic has launched its Bring Back Family Time Campaign, which shows families getting together with a suite of Panasonic High Definition products. Panasonic has enlisted Mommy and Me founder Dr. Cindy Bunin-Nurik to provide actionable tips for creating more family time available on the campaign site.

Kids Tag Along on Business Trips

According to the Travel Industry Association, children tagged along on 32.2 million business trips in 2000, a 250% jump over the prior decade. Some companies are encouraging business travelers to bring the family. The Park Hyatt hotels have created a "kidscierge" service to entertain children while mom or dad is in a meeting. For its latest annual convention, The American Dental Association hired ACCENT on Children Arrangements to provide on-site day care and activities for tots to teens at the convention center.

Family Volunteer Time

Another way families are finding time together is through shared volunteer experiences. The first Saturday in November is now designated as National Family Volunteer Day. The Points of Light Foundation & Volunteer Center National Network created the day to highlight the benefits of family volunteering and offer families another way to get together.

Life cereal's new campaign is Making Your Best Days Happen, a plan to jumpstart a family's best day. Included in this print campaign is a pull-out fortune teller game with answers such as: "Today, pretend the car is a spaceship," or, "Let the kids tell the bedtime stories tonight."

Marketers Aim to Give Mom More Time

By Pamela Brill

Cold, hard cash or 25 hours in a day? Having to choose between winning the lottery or gaining an extra hour may, surprisingly, be a tossup for some parents. But it's no secret to marketers that target products to time-starved moms and dads eager to make their lives a bit more manageable, whether it's getting kids off to school without a hitch or putting dinner on the table in a matter of minutes.

Packaging proclaiming "simpler" and "more efficient" appeals to today's generation of consumers who have become accustomed to communication delivered in lightning speed and hot food in an instant. Below is a sampling of some of the latest innovations that aim to give busy parents a break.

Task Masters

For the parent who carpools regularly comes Divide the Ride, a free-of-charge Web-based service that simplifies the task of setting a carpool schedule with other families based on individual schedules and driving responsibilities. The carpool calendar is e-mailed to everyone in the group – along with text messages and e-mail reminders – eliminating the hassle of individual reminders.

Flipping through the pages of a weekly planner can be frustrating, not to mention time-consuming. WeekDate ($29.95) speaks to the paper-centric planner who's not one for high-tech, but can appreciate having all the information she needs right at her fingertips. In this layer-by-layer calendar (available in weekly and monthly wall versions), appointments need only be jotted down once: monthly entries are on top, weeklies on the bottom, and specific appointments in between.

Dinner is Served

Savoring a home-cooked meal is often reserved for weekends when homework, bathtime and other nightly routines aren't as pressing. Thanks to the re-emergence of the slow cooker phenomenon, families are once again able to sit down at the dinner table and enjoy a meal that trumps takeout any day. Among the latest in this revamped product line is the Crock-Pot® VersaWare® Pro Slow Cooker (Crock-Pot.com; $79.99), featuring a digital timer that includes programming options ranging from 30 minutes to 20 hours. And the Crock-Pot VersaWare pot is designed to go from stovetop to table to refrigerator, so there's less to clean up.

Moms and the Internet: Time for 'To-do-tainment'

By Marta Loeb

While traditional media do not appear to be going the way of the dinosaur, the Internet is ushering in a new form of mom media consumption: "To-do-tainment." Moms don't want to grind through their to-do list; they want to be entertained.

Meet Amy: She's a stay-at-home working mom of two. Amy logs into eLance to check her bids. While the screen is loading she opens CNN to check the day's headlines. Then she quickly checks her email and watches a video of her niece's first steps, sends a quick note and, before she goes back to eLance, opens PeaPod.com to start importing her grocery list.

A June 2007 Burst Media Online Insights survey found that the Web has become an indispensable component in the daily life of women around the US, with two-thirds of the women indicating that their daily routine would be significantly disrupted without Internet access.

When asked what the Internet CAN'T do, moms say it doesn't make them relax or de-program like TV or magazines. Moms still read magazines for pleasure and watch TV for entertainment.