Disciplining today’s tech-savvy child is easier said than done — take away the TV, they turn to the tablet. Take away the tablet, they turn to their phone. Take away the phone, and they turn to the old smartphone you left in the junk drawer six months ago.
In an effort to circumvent this seemingly never-ending cyclical process of web addiction, a company has developed a piece of technology to lend assistance to the modern-day parent.
Kudoso is a router that only turns Internet access on after household chores have been completed. The device recently finalized its design phase, and developer Rob Irizarry has now turned to Kickstarter to secure funding for mass production.
On the Kickstarter page itself, Irizarry addresses the dilemma facing today’s parent, which led to the development of this technology:
“Parents today are faced with a dilemma about how to manage the amount of time their kids spend on the internet and the content they are exposed to,” he writes. “Kudoso lets your children earn points — by doing chores, studying or even exercising — that allow them to access the internet sites you approve for blocks of time that you define.”
The latter point addresses one of the future goals for Kudoso, and that is to incorporate a fitness app that rewards children with Internet access so long as they complete a prespecified exercise regimen.
As a child carries out a chore or completes a specific exercise, they earn currency that can be “spent” to access websites. Parents can set which sites are more “expensive” than others, thereby allowing them to make sites deemed educational more affordable than those considered “entertainment.”
Irizarry believes his technology is more effective than other projects on the market due to Kudoso’s ability to block Internet access throughout the whole home. Competitor technologies use software that gets installed on the computer, laptop, or smartphone, which can be easily bypassed by the child when he / she turns to another device to access the web.
Along with being sold as a pre-installed router, Kudoso will also be made available as a piece of software that can be installed on a range of routers from other manufacturers.
To better protect today’s Ethernet connections, you need to start at the board level
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