A tiny hot tub, 45 Spider-Man walkie-talkies, 112 water slides: A Utah father warned parents of young children to check their Alexa voice device settings after his son ordered nearly $1,000 worth of toys from Amazon .
“Parents, make sure you turn off voice purchases in your Alexa app so this doesn’t happen to you,” papa Tucker Bonham said in a recent video on TikTok, reported by The Mirror on Friday.
The father-of-three shared his unhappiness when he realized nearly $1,000 worth of toys ordered from Amazon had to be delivered to his home that day and the days that followed.
By entering the device application, he could have listened again to the commands recorded by his 5-year-old son.
“Alexa, give me a monster truck that jumps 23 inches off the ground. Alexa adds 45 Spider-Man walkie talkies for kids […] a small whirlpool […] 112 water slides in my cart. “Alexa, get me a rocket that’s 45 feet off the ground,” the kid reportedly commanded in the excerpts shared by his father, which reached more than 2.6 million people on the platform.
In total, the boy spoke to the device for more than two hours, his father said, describing the recordings as “quite entertaining”.
But according to Dr. Anmol Arora of Cambridge University, writing the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood, this type of interaction between a “socially and emotionally” developing child and such a device could have long-term implications for “empathy, compassion and critical thinking.” according to The Mirror.
“With digital devices, there is no expectation that polite expressions such as “please” or “thank you” will be used. It is not necessary to consider the tone of voice or to know whether the order issued could be interpreted as rude or obnoxious,” he would have clarified.