This Baby’s First Word Was ‘Alexa,’ As In The Amazon Digital Assistant

This baby learned how to say “Alexa” before “mama” or “dada” from the family constantly using the digital assistant.

By DAVID on June 7, 2018
(Photo Illustration by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

The scary point is that babies (and children in general) are basically being raised by technology. According to what the babies parents say, their baby son Joe said “Alexa” before ever saying the more typical “momma” or “dada.” Heck, my first word was “bottle,” and to this day I still get excited when there’s food.

I feel like a lot of our stories talk about technology, and that’s simply because it’s all around us all the time. We have supercomputers in our pockets and hand bags. Cars have WiFi hotspots these days, and even get software updates over-the-air. Cars are getting software updates – think about that for a second. We’re consumed by technology at home, at work, shopping, everywhere. That’s why I’m not surprised at all about this story about baby Joe saying “Alexa” as his first word.

Joe’s parents, Lottie and Mark, say that it’s actually Joe’s grandparents that have the Alexa device. Joe spends a lot of time over at their house, and it’s said that it was really the only thing that he was getting interaction from. “It was one of the few things he could get a reaction from at that time,” said Lottie. And that’s depressing that a baby who doesn’t even speak words isn’t getting attention. She continued, “We thought it was funny at first so we encouraged it.”

Of course though, Amazon knows children are using their Alexa devices, so they released one for kids. It has built-in parental controls, and will automatically censor music and prevent voice-ordering. Which is good for when a giant dollhouse shows up to your house. It will even read children’s books out loud to them. It’s really a digital parent/babysitter, but it just doesn’t have that interaction that kids need. Anyway, see more on baby Joe’s first word and how children interact with technology here.

Around the site