<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;" align="center">Robotic voice assistants like Amazon&rsquo;s Alexa, Google Home, Microsoft&rsquo;s Cortana have quickly been placed in homes across the country. ;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Millions of families use them to play music, order dinner, turn on and off the lights, ask random questions like &ldquo;what&rsquo;s the weather?&rdquo; and &ldquo;what sound does a whale make?&rdquo;, etc.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Ken Yarmosh&rsquo;s, a 36-year-old Northern Virginia app developer, family is not only accustomed to these devices, but has high expectations.  ;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&ldquo;Yarmosh&rsquo;s 2-year-old son has been so enthralled by Alexa that he tries to speak with coasters and other cylindrical objects that look like Amazon&rsquo;s device. Meanwhile, Yarmosh&rsquo;s now 5-year-old son, in comparing his two assistants, came to believe Google knew him better,&rdquo; writes <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Quartz.</em> ;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Besides being harsh critics of these robots, parents are reporting that these gadgets are encouraging poor manners in their children.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Think about it. These robots have the highest tolerance level. Kids can say whatever they want over and over and they won&rsquo;t be reprimanded for their tone of voice or if they were polite.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve found my kids pushing the virtual assistant further than they would push a human,&rdquo; says Avi Greengart, a tech analyst in New Jersey and father of five to <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Quartz</em>. &ldquo;[Alexa] never says &lsquo;That was rude&rsquo; or &lsquo;I&rsquo;m tired of you asking me the same question over and over again.&#8217;&rdquo;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Amazon had not intended for its Echo product to take off with the younger generation. But since it&rsquo;s remarkably easy to use, it has. ;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&ldquo;Unlike the iPad, which children have taken to with ease (ever see a toddler try to swipe a book or TV?), the Amazon Echo doesn&rsquo;t require them to learn new gestures or even know how to read. Mimicking their parents, they quickly discover that if they start a sentence with &ldquo;Alexa,&rdquo; the speaker will perk up and (for the most part) do as they say,&rdquo; writes <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Quartz. </em> ;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The thing Amazon or the other companies didn&rsquo;t think of was incorporating politeness. When using the Amazon Echo, the user merely says &ldquo;Alexa..&rdquo; instead of &ldquo;Alexa please&hellip;&rdquo; <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> ;</span>Then when a &ldquo;thank you&rdquo; isn&rsquo;t given, Alexa just moves on to answering the next question or completing the next task.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Even though children know these robots aren&rsquo;t alive, they have been woven into the fabric of their lives, making them attached to them in some manner. ;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&ldquo;Peter Kahn, a developmental psychologist at the University of Washington studies human-robot interaction. He told ;Judith Shulevitz, writing for ;The New Republic, that even though kids understand that robots aren&rsquo;t ;human, they still see virtual personalities as ;being ;sort of ;alive. Kahn says, &ldquo;we&rsquo;re creating a new category of being,&rdquo; a &ldquo;personified non-animal semi-conscious half-agent.&rdquo; A child interacting with one of Kahn&rsquo;s robots told him, &ldquo;He&rsquo;s like, he&rsquo;s half living, half not,&rdquo; writes Robby Berman for <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Big Think.</em>  ;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">With that being said, kids still boss these virtual assistants around. But, is it really Amazon&rsquo;s (or the others) job to teach children proper manners? However, it does make it hard to reaffirm manners.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&ldquo;One of the responsibilities of parents is to teach your kids social graces,&rdquo; said Greengart, &ldquo;and this is a box you speak to as if it were a person who does not require social graces.&rdquo;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Lucy Hume at etiquette authority Debrett&#8217;s has some tips on how parents can help stop their child from showing these poor manners.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&#8216;Children learn by example, so if they hear their parents speaking politely to a digital assistant they&rsquo;ll pick up on that,&rdquo; said Hume to the <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dailymail</em>. &ldquo;However, I think children can tell the difference between a robot and a human being and act accordingly.&rdquo; ;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This is exactly what Manu Kumar, father of two and founder of the Palo Alto investment firm K9 Ventures has done.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&ldquo;I have told my son that if he doesn&rsquo;t say &lsquo;thank you&rsquo; or &lsquo;please&rsquo; that Alexa will stop listening to him,&rdquo; said Kumar.  ;</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So with this issue building momentum, will Amazon offer a new option that encourages politeness?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">&ldquo;The pro-polite arguments have some parents longing for a kid or family mode, where Alexa will only respond when she hears the magic word,&rdquo; said <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Quartz.</em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This would encourage better manners all around.</p>
<p> ;</p>