From: CNN
Growing up with Alexa: A child’s relationship with Amazon’s voice assistant
October 25, 2018
The first four words my toddler understood were “mom,” “dad,” “cat” and “Alexa.”
Cameron first recognized the name of Amazon’s voice assistant while sitting, covered in spaghetti sauce, in his high chair. I’d no sooner said “Alexa” than he whipped his head around to look at the Echo speaker tucked behind the potted golden pothos on the bookcase. He’d heard me say “Alexa” plenty of times before (I often wondered if he thought it was the plant responding), but this time he knew the Echo would light up and say something.
To Cameron, now 20 months old, Alexa isn’t just a virtual assistant — she’s the house DJ, the reminder to take the lasagna out of the oven and the one who dims the lights when we’re too tired to get off the couch. When Alexa responds a beat or so later, he smiles.
Cameron’s relationship with Alexa is increasingly common, experts say, and having the word in a toddler’s early language skillset isn’t as surprising as you’d think.
“Any word you say a lot becomes an early word for little kids,” said Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, president of the International Society for Infant Studies. “You probably say, ‘Alexa’ often because you start a sentence with it to play a song. Anything that generates a response is a likely candidate for an early word — no matter what it is.”
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