13 Cool Smart Home Gadgets for Kids in 2023

Switching to smart home gadgets can effectively cater to different home needs. Granted that you can afford them, they are certainly a good investment. Recent years have seen a giant leap in technology as it has become more intuitive at meeting user’s needs.

The portfolio of gadgets and apps available enables us to conserve energy, assist kids with learning and homework, and have more control over our lives. It also allows tasks to be achieved faster, granting families more quality time with each other. The variety of tasks some of these smart gadgets for kids can perform ensures that all family members can enjoy benefits tailored to their needs.

Tasks that previously had to be carried out manually like controlling the lights and playing music can now be automated through voice commands. A popular device that has enhanced how families use technology within the home is Alexa, a smart assistance gadget. Kids have the most fun asking it questions and getting it to do various tasks. Alexa and other such smart assistants have also addressed accessibility concerns for the elderly and for individuals with disabilities.

This is an important reason why more and more people are making the switch toward smart homes. In a smart home, kids can be monitored remotely by their parents when they are away on business. This provides them with peace of mind that their loved ones are safe.

Some gadgets are also designed to detect water and gas leaks as well as toxic elements in the air, ensuring a safer living environment for the whole family.

Designing a Child-Friendly Smart Home

In a world where technology is changing at an alarming rate, ensuring your children’s security and well-being is far less of a challenge than it was before. Parents can employ smart security systems to keep children safe at home, provide controlled access to entertainment, and remotely control devices to conserve energy. Following are some interesting ideas to design a child-friendly smart home:

Today’s generation is more tech-savvy than their parents and that’s only natural. However, being kids, they will often forget to turn off the lights, fans, television, and other appliances. By employing smart home gadgets, energy usage in the home can be easily monitored and controlled remotely.

Philips Hue White is one such gadget that keeps kids and forgetful adults at the forefront of its design. The appliance, like many others, can be controlled through a smartphone app with an internet connection from anywhere in the world.

Motion sensors and timers are also a helpful addition to homes with kids who may often forget to turn off appliances.

A task that demanded regular visits to the grocery store has also been simplified with the introduction of smart refrigerators, which are rapidly gaining popularity among families. With these fridges a part of a smart home, kids and adults can enjoy an array of features like:

Some new models also come equipped with cameras so parents can monitor the home and their children’s activities while they are away. Most smart fridges are even compatible with all the popular smart assistants like Google Home, Alexa and Cortana.

A drawback of technology is the ready availability of all kinds of content on the internet at any hour of the day. This may lead to kids overusing or inappropriately using technology, which could be detrimental. Therefore, the ability to control access to television, gaming and entertainment content is an important feature that smart gadgets provide to concerned parents.

A variety of apps work in conjunction with smart gadgets to control when kids can use TVs if the parents are away from home. All smart televisions now also come with content control to restrict mature content.

Protecting kids often involves keeping them safe from visible as well as unseen threats. Environmental threats, like that of harmful gases such as carbon monoxide, fall into such a category. Smart gadgets come capable of monitoring smoke and other harmful gases in the air and send notifications to the concerned authorities when something goes amiss.

Little kids are excitable and adventurous and as a result, they can often end up in trouble. Smart cabinets provide a solution to this. Parents can store medicines inside these cabinets, which can only be accessed through an app. By installing these in a smart home, kids can be prevented from accidentally ingesting toxic substances.

Installing smart sensors around the home, especially in dangerous areas like the tool shed or the swimming pool, allows parents to monitor their kids’ movements. They will get notified when their kids wander near a potentially dangerous area of the home. As parents can’t follow their kids around all the time, this is a helpful feature that allows them to ensure their kids’ safety both inside and outside the home.

To help make the nighttime bathroom trips easier, motion sensors can be installed in hallways that turn on the lights at low brightness. Hence, the lights won’t be too overpowering while preventing kids and adults from tripping and falling over.

Keeping track of kids’ activities can be difficult at times for working parents, but modern technology has a solution for that as well. Home video surveillance gadgets allow parents to ensure the safety of their kids with 24-hour livestream easily accessible on any device in the world. Video monitoring also allows parents to get notified whenever someone enters or exits the house. It also provides alerts of suspicious movement around the house.

Kids in school may often return home before their parents, in which case they may have to spend quite some time without supervision. Parents can share access to the smart lock with their kids, allowing them to enter the house without any hassle.

Kids might also occasionally forget to lock the door once they’re inside, posing a threat to their safety. Smart door locks will notify parents when such an occurrence happens so that the doors can be locked remotely through the app.

Apps can also be programmed to allow entry to a list of trusted friends and family if the children are ever in need or have an emergency.

Video doorbells aren’t a new security gadget, but smart homes now allow these videos to be streamed to mobile devices, letting parents see who’s ringing the doorbell when their kids are home alone. They can then either allow entry to the visitor through the app or call their kids with instructions on how to respond to them.

Geofencing utilizes GPS data to create virtual boundaries for selected users. This will allow parents to specify an area their kids can roam freely in, such as from home to school. An alert is sent to the parents’ devices when children leave this area.