I’m at that age where many of my friends are in the process of having kids (hopefully not while reading this!), or just had their first child. Many conversations I have these days revolve around the newly created relationships between young, recently married couples and their first child. Memories and perhaps regrets of how they behaved as children creep into discussion followed by pleads to God that they’re new addition doesn’t ‘act like I did’.
While the child is young these virgin parents are scheming on how to use technology to be better, or at least better informed, parents. The simplest technology asset they have is their mobile phone. A recent study conducted by Harris Interactive found that parents, especially those with children under 6 years of age eagerly want text messaging alerts from their favorite brands/entities to make their parenting life easier.
Grocery coupons and promotions were the most popular among all parents, including among the subgroups with older children and teens.Don’t think that parents’ activities on mobile stops with texts. Parents considered several mobile activities at least somewhat important at higher rates than mobile users without children, including searching for retail locations (57% vs. 42%), making purchases (40% vs. 26%) and accessing the internet in general (63% vs. 48%).
The instantaneousness of mobile, with texts, mobile sites or apps is a valuable asset for any parent. Being able to find local information such as the nearest pharmacy, where to buy certain products, get nutritional information, get alerts on consumer product recalls, or even a video on how to change a diaper are useful tools for any parent. Today my lifeblood is my mobile device; I use it for everything – I can only imagine how useful it will be the day I end a conversation with “. . God please don’t let my kid do that.”