Frustrated Austin father creates his own healthy smart phone
by Walt Maciborski
An Austin father has created “Pinwheel,” a smart phone designed to be a child’s first phone with comprehensive parental controls, curated apps, and no web browser or social media. (Image courtesy: Pinwheel)
Cyber threats lurk behind seemingly innocent swipes, links, and websites, along with predators trying to influence children or scam people out of money. It’s a Wild West and Austin father Dane Witbeck was frustrated navigating this world for his children when they got their first phone.
“One of my biggest frustrations was just that parental controls are fundamentally broken,” Dane said. “They have tons of loopholes in them. And as a parent, you have to feel like you have to have 80 degrees in order to keep your kids safe online.”
He says safety was just the beginning. “Beyond that, it’s how do I train them to use a phone so that they can actually be productive and meet, reach their goals and not be inhibited by some of this digital addiction that really affects kids today,” Dane said.
But Dane couldn’t find any apps or a solution he was happy with, so he designed a solution himself. “So, it’s basically a normal smart phone product,” Dane said as he showed off the phone. “You can see it’s got calling and texting at the bottom.”
“Pinwheel is a healthy smartphone company for kids between ten and 14 years old,” Dane said. “So, a product for their first phone so they really understand and can get into phones in a healthy and thoughtful way.”
And to help parents raise kids to be digitally responsible adults. “So, you get full control over the phone from your phone, so you don’t have to take it from them which is something we hear a lot from iPhone parents,” Dane said. “It’s uncomfortable to take the phone from them.”
Dane says he wanted it to be easy right out of the box. “So that means it’s very simplistic, no web browser, no social media,” Dane said. “Calling and texting. (It) gives a parent the capability to review those things on their side, on their own phone, on an iPhone or android phone.
It doesn’t have a web browser, but Dane says it’s not a dumb phone. “We actually curate over a 1000 different apps that go on to the phone,” Dane said. “So, they’re apps that you know and have heard of things like Spotify or Adobe’s creative suite or sports learning apps, a bunch of apps that are already available in the ecosystem. But we actually look through them and then we write descriptions of them for parents from a parent’s perspective so that they can know what they’re putting in front of their child and that it’s appropriate for their age.”
Dane also just launched Pinwheel GPT. It’s like Chat GPT. “We’ve basically tailored our own chat bot that’s very similar but really specific for kids, simplistic answers, all kid appropriate answers,” Dane said. “But they can ask you anything all about anything they want to learn about from history to biographies to career choices, to how to interact with their friends and satisfy all their curiosities in a safe, really thought-out place.”
Top smartphone manufacturers have the Pinwheel operating system already installed or Pinwheel works with most major carriers so you can add it to your current family plan.
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