How Three-Year-Olds Use The App Store

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George Dearing‘s three-year-old son got his hands on dad’s iPhone and – oops – found himself staring at the App Store. While it was still logged in to dad’s iTunes account.

So he did what any three-year-old would do in the same position: he went shopping, while dad’s attention was elsewhere. The image above is George’s screenshot of the digital receipt that arrived later on.

As George points out, the lad was attracted by the colors and shapes he saw in icons and screenshots. Which is how a mishmash of stuff like Wheels on the bus, Doodle Jump, and I Am T-Pain ended up as a surprise package of new stuff for George to play with.

(What a great idea for Apple: the Daily Kids Pick! A handful of random apps, as chosen by a random three-year-old given an iPhone for 10 minutes. Only $15!)

George makes a serious point, though: “What kind of message does it send to companies trying to capture attention in crowded app stores?”

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Thanks to George for the pic and the story.

About the author

gilest

Giles Turnbull is a freelance writer in England. He writes for the Press Association and The Morning News. He has a website you can ignore and a Twitter account you needn't follow.

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Posted in Humor, iPhone, News |

  • Namhar

    i think developers should make children attracting icons, just incase if a kid got his hands on dad’s iphone with itunes account logged in. i think its a good strategy for making money. i sure would do that if i was a developer : )

  • Bud

    Well, at least the majority were free. Smart kid!

  • bubbakush

    i know about that i hate putting in my password but
    i wish you had to enter it for transactions everytime.
    my daughter bought like 50 bucks worth of games.
    same age :-)

  • Charli

    i think the key point is ‘don’t let your kids play with your phone without supervision’

  • ChuckEye

    Clearly there are parenting issues when the three year old is buying content rated for 4+… ;)

  • http://byron.bluebearstudio.com Byron

    What this tells you is that being in the top 100 is really important to being discovered :)

  • http://presh.it preshit

    Lucky for him Apple pulled the ‘I’m Rich’ app from the store.

  • Skunk Ape

    LOL@ I am T-Pain