Parenting in the Digital Age

Dot is like a lot of 8-year-old girls in 2016 — spirited, smart and savvy when it comes to all things tech. Although Dot is a cartoon, she is doing real-world work to inspire girls to take these qualities into their adult lives.



A new children's show, Dot, featuring the young character recently premiered in the hopes of tackling tech's gender gap. The titular character is a spunky girl with insatiable curiosity about the world — and she uses technology to help learn, create and explore.

The groundbreaking show explores what it's like to live as a child — particularly a young girl — in a tech-focused world.



[...]

To help address the gap, Zuckerberg created the character of Dot in 2013 to inspire young girls to see tech as exciting and engaging. Dot, she says, is a role model for girls to picture themselves in a tech industry dominated by white men.

"I grew so frustrated by so few women in the room wherever I went," Zuckerberg tells NPR of her time in the industry. "It was a fantastic decade, but also a lonely one. And so I thought, what if we could get more messages out into pop culture with female role models for young girls, showing them how exciting and cool and wonderful this world of technology is? Maybe that could inspire the next generation of leaders."

In the show, Dot goes on everyday adventures with her best friend, Hal — a young boy of color meant to inspire kids of color to see themselves in the tech industry, too. Along the way, the two rely on tech to enhance their real-world experiences, constantly using their tablets to guide them along the way. But the pair also engages with high tech as well, experimenting with robots, drones and 3D-printing, according to Zuckerberg.

"Dot and her group of friends don't look like your typical cast of characters," Zuckerberg tells AdWeek. "I wanted them to reflect all levels of diversity."

[...]

She hopes, then, that Dot can be a source of inspiration for young kids while also lessening the hesitation parents have to embrace a tech-focused world.

"When [adults] think of screen time, we immediately go to a place of anxiety and fear," she tells NPR. "But children don't feel that way. To them, the future is fun. They don't think about, now I'm using tech, and now I'm not."

Source mashable.com