Apps for Teaching Kids to Manage Money: What to Check Before You Choose

A money app for kids is worth it if it leaves an idea your child can tell you about afterward. You have to separate two things that look alike: your child wanting to come back to the app and your child learning something with it. The first is produced by design; the second, by content.

How to do it

Before installing, check five things. Privacy: what data it asks for, and if it requires more than a name and age, ask what for. Content: one idea per session, not a shower of points. Age: whether the material changes between a 5-year-old and a 9-year-old. Cost: price and how to cancel visible before paying. And the five-minute test: use it with your child and ask at the end "what did you learn?" and "what did the character decide?" If they answer with an idea, for example "he saved to buy later," the app taught something.

What it's for

For your child, the screen stops being something you only tap and becomes something you think about. They feel capable when they can explain an idea to you, and that weighs more than a badge. For you, you move from guilt about screen time to one concrete question: you know whether that time left something behind.

What the research says

The American Academy of Pediatrics, in Media and Young Minds (2016), recommends that adults accompany young children's digital content and connect it to their lives. Lepper, Greene and Nisbett (1973) found that an expected reward can lower inner interest in an activity; that's why points with no content behind them can turn play into a chore. Nir Eyal, in Hooked, describes how many apps are designed to be returned to out of habit.

What you'll see over time

In the first weeks your child answers little to the question, so you ask it anyway every time. Between one and six months, with a good app, they start telling ideas without being asked and using them at the store. In the long run they tell an app that entertains from one that teaches, and choose by that criterion.

Signs it's working

It's working when they use the app's words in daily life, when they ask to do the activity together and when they don't protest at the end of the session. If they only ask for more points or more time, the app is entertaining: switch apps or shorten sessions.