Smart Homes: How technology is making life easier for parents

By Brandon Livesay|

Smart displays have become the entry point for future-proofing your home.
Technology has become so ingrained in the next generation’s lives that fed-up parents can also use it to their advantage.


It’s the high-pitched scream every parent with more than one child knows all too well.

Depending on if you are the oldest or youngest, teasing your sibling is an essential part of life while growing up.

Unfortunately for mums and dads it means lots of yelling and running around the house to try and find where the brawl is happening this time.

But times are changing, technology has become so ingrained in the next generation’s lives that fed-up parents can also use it to their advantage.

Smart homes can do more than just tell you the time, Matt Bereda the VP of Global Consumer Marketing at Lenovo tells 9Homes.

“There’s a lot of camera controls, security, speakers. One of my colleagues has a basement and his problem was the kids are always down in the basement and whenever it was time for dinner he has to open the door and yell down to them,” Bereda said.

“Sometimes they have music on or they’re giggling, so he has to walk down the stairs.

“Now he can just pull up the camera, and he see his two boys wrestling and he can send a message from there to the Google smart speakers that’s down there and say ‘hey guys knock it off.’”

Camera, speakers and smart displays are increasingly common in households and they can do a whole lot more than break up little spats with your kids.

“Over the holidays my kids were convinced dad wasn’t hip enough,” Bereda told 9Homes from CES, the world’s most famous consumer electronics show.

“They were educating me who Marshmellow head is. On YouTube they put out a year in review and I watched it and I didn’t recognise a lot of the folks in there, and I didn’t get a lot of the jokes about Fortnite or whatever.

“So right away they are shouting out commands to the Lenovo Smart Display and saying ‘show videos with Ninja,’ ‘show videos with the heart dancing song (Drake’s music video In My Feelings)’.

“For them it was like, boom. Turn to technology and away they run with it.”

And while some parents may find the thought of a smart home foreign, Bereda warns that it’s fast becoming the new norm for the next generation.

“That’s where they start, it’s their baseline. And the next generation will start at an even higher point,” he said.

“Younger generations are now used to a certain way of using things and they think, why aren’t all things like that?”

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Brandon Livesay was a guest of Lenovo at CES 2019.

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