Why Kids Seem Technologically Gifted

Last week I had the pleasure of spending an entire week with my soon-to-be 5-year-old granddaughter at Disney World. When any of my grandkids turn 5, my wife and I take them to Disney with just the two of us. No parents. No siblings. She is the 4th to have such a trip and we had a wonderful time.

As my granddaughter lives in Ohio, I had to get on a plane, fly out to Ohio, pick her up, and fly to Orlando where we met my wife. In case you are interested, the whole trip involved 8 flights for me and 4 for my granddaughter. My wife had an easy trip with non-stops between Salt Lake and Orlando for a total of 2 flights. She gets the arduous journey the next time.

While doing all that flying, my granddaughter enlightened me with her technical skills. She is only 4 but will be 5 in September. Our first flight together started on tiny regional jet known as a CRJ. It didn't have any screens to keep us entertained and so I pulled out my Kindle Fire, connected to the plane's WiFi, logged into Netflix as a "Kid," and gave it to my co-traveler. I assumed she would watch one of the cartoons I started for her. It didn't take long for her to grow tired of the show I picked out and she told me she wanted to watch "Alphabet." I had no idea what that meant. Several minutes later I leaned over and saw that she had stopped the cartoon and started watching "Wicked for Good." It hit me that Alphabet is how she remembered the Elphaba character from the popular musical.

I didn't have to show my granddaughter how to change videos nor how to find what she wanted to watch. She had no problem stumbling around Netflix's UI and finding what she wanted to watch. Later I saw her rewinding the video for favorite songs or fast forwarding over scary parts.

After watching my granddaughter I realized that she has no problem jumping into new technology and figuring out how to use it. She builds on past experiences and if she doesn't know how to do something, she just tries it. I compared that to how I look at new things and feel like I don't want to make mistakes and am much more afraid to try something. Little kids don't worry about it. If something goes wrong, they hand the screen back to an adult and say, "It broke," leaving you to solve the problem they created.

While I cannot adopt the attitude that someone else will always be there to fix my mistakes, I can show a little more courage and not be afraid to just try stuff. This is especially true on a streaming platform. There is very little you can do to dig yourself into a hole. About the worst thing you can do is log yourself out of the service and Netflix makes that nearly impossible. I really had to go searching around for that when it came time to check out of our accommodations. Borrowing from my granddaughter's fearlessness of just trying things, I figured it out and now guests visiting my condo in Orlando can't log in as me.