The Interesting Things that Toddlers have Innocently Bought on their Parents’ Smartphones

Today I read a very informative article by S M Mamunur Rahman, entitled “For God’s Sake, Don’t Do This to Your Kids”, in which he outlines the many risks that parents expose their infant loved ones to when they give them unfettered access to their Smartphones. I highly recommend that you read it — it raises very concerning risks that people expose young ones to, in exchange for “peace” in the household.

This led me to think: if an increasing number of busy, distracted parents are placing their mobile phones into the tiny hands of their infants to occupy them, how much damage can they do?

As confirmed by Rachel Pancare in her article “How Do Bright Colors Appeal to Kids?” (Sciencing.com), bright colours stand out in young childrens’ fields of vision, as they learn to make sense of their environments.

Therefore, the brightly - coloured apps on a mobile phone would hold an enormous appeal to them, attracting their small thumbs and fingers.

I have a Smartphone, and most of its apps are either password protected or have 2-factor authentication (involving either facial recognition or a code sent via a text message) to gain entry.

Thus, any young exploring thumbs would not find their way into my banking app to accidentally pay bills or send money overseas.

However, there are a number of apps which would lead an exploring young mind down many wonderful paths, many potentially leading to the parents paying for the journey…

Two of these are my Outlook and Gmail apps, which allow entry right away if not signed out. The journey of wonder can lead to unsuspecting clicks on links in scam emails, thus introducing the device to potential downloads of malicious viruses such as malware and spyware. The parents may be unaware of this until they notice suspicious transactions on their credit cards and bank accounts.

A more harmless consequence may be that one of the parents’ managers at their workplace may receive an urgent Sunday afternoon email with the message “m)83@5-*&BBw”, necessitating a rather sweaty response ASAP on Monday morning.

Another may be that the happily unaware parent may find themselves locked out of Zoom meetings, a consequence of the limit of attempted passwords on the app having been reached.

A very likely result of infant access to a mobile phone may be the discovery of the bright orange Menulog app, which enables access right away. A few infant fumbles later, the front door bell rings, resulting in this occurring unintentionally:

This may also result in this occurring unintentionally:

Instances in which the infant operator of a mobile phone has made interesting purchases

In January 2022, a 22-month- old toddler in New Jersey, USA, made an unplanned USD $1700 furniture purchase on his parents’ Smartphone. The family had just moved into their new home and the mother had started buying furniture online, leaving the site with its shopping cart open on her phone. Not long afterwards, the family received unexpected gifts — a steady stream of large cardboard boxes from Walmart. The story has a happy ending — Walmart has committed to give the family refunds for the furniture they return, as long as it is unopened.

In July 2013, a very surprised father in Connecticut found out that he was now the owner of a 1962 Austin Healey Sprite, thanks to his 14 month old daughter making the purchase by bidding on EBay. The family found out when they received an email congratulating them that they were the highest bidder. The price was USD $225, with the vintage car needing a mountain of work to bring it to roadworthy condition. They decided to keep it for their daughter’s future use (if petrol cars are still a thing then…).

In 2016, a rather cute little 18-month-old treasure by the name of Ella, who lived in Stockport, England, was given access to the family laptop and bought a flight from Fuerteventura in Spain back to the UK, paying in Euros via PayPal. Her mother decided that it was time for a holiday and then found a bargain flight there and discount accommodation to complete the vacation.

Continuing the practice of underage bidders for family vehicles online, Alex, from Cheadle Hulme, UK, relishing his unsupervised access to his mother’s phone, completed the highest bid for a Rover car (£1,000) on Ebay. His mother only realised that she was about to become its new owner when the seller messaged her, asking when she was going to collect it. When she informed him that the bid was from her son, he was not impressed, as he would now have to restart the bidding process. She also advised that she did not need a new car, and could not even drive at that time.

Another mother from Cheadle Hulme, shared that her one-year-old daughter Minnie loves shopping online, her random purchases including:

18kg of brown rice

22kg of teddy-bear stuffing

12 jars of peanut butter

A justin Bieber cutout

A bottle for a rabbit hutch

She did say that she needed to put a passcode on her phone. Maybe a frantic glance at her mobile banking to find only £5.75 remaining of her salary and 12 furniture-containing boxes enroute to her residence will make her do this…

What parents can do to protect their devices when they are in young hands

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Although it is not a good idea to allow unlimited device access to young hands, eyes and minds, there are precautions that parents can take to ensure that their next holiday destination is not left up to a 15-month old or that they are surprised when a courier company’s light truck appears in their driveway:

* Ensure that you secure your phone with a passcode

This makes sure that young fingers cannot gain access.

* Do not have your credit card details in your browser or shopping apps

Although this will result in credit card numbers having to be entered manually whenever a purchase is made, it will ensure that an infant’s potential shopping spree will not end up in financial heartache for parents.

I have my Paypal linked to a Debit Mastercard, which then accesses a bank account which only contains a small balance. Any accidental purchase will be unsuccessful due to lack of funds. I only top up this account via inline banking when I make purchases via PayPal.

* Consider putting a childsafe app onto your device

These protect your privacy, there are a number of apps which can protect your privacy from curious young fingers.

It you have an Android device, one app is AppLock, which allows block to be placed on contacts, text messages, Facebook and GMail.

Apple has a feature called Guided Access on its Smart devices. This enables restrictions to be placed on individual apps, and is accessed by either Face ID or a passcode.

In Conclusion

As I stated above, while it is not a good idea to give your infant unlimited access to your phone , there are a number of safeguards that parents can put onto their devices to avoid financial heartbreak.

I hope that this has been informative!