It’s no secret that technology usage in children has gone up significantly within the last decade or so. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 75% of households with children under the age of 5 and 81% with children between ages 5 to 17 owned some sort of touchscreen tablet.
And while screens and technology can be used to entertain, teach and keep children occupied, too much screen time can lead to real problems with their psychological development. The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry says that overdoing screen time can cause mood problems, sleep deprivation, lower school participation, heightened anxiety and more.
That’s why two first-years from Duke are trying to ameliorate this issue by creating AI-powered teddy bears that can provide educational content while restricting access to explicit information. With Bern, Co-Founders Avihan Jain and Conner Aldrich are on a mission to create a safe and mindful approach to children growing up with technology.
Bern was a part of the 2024 Duke Startup Showcase, where 36 student-led companies presented and pitched their ideas to local community members.
As Jain explains, the goal is to provide an option for kids—and parents—that bridges the old (teddy bear) and the new (tech).
“With iPad kids, either parents are anxious about children’s full access to the internet or kids would just have no access to technology in a tech-evolving world,” Jain said. “We don’t want either to be the only option for parents and children because there was no middle ground. So since teddy bears are typical household items and we’ve had those ourselves growing up, we came up with the idea of an intelligent companion for kids instead of an iPad.”
Despite their youth, Aldrich and Jain bring years of experience in AI software development and mechanical engineering. Jain is also already a seasoned entrepreneur, having founded two companies, one being based out of his hometown New Delhi, India. That startup, Tambav, creates artisanal Indian decor and gifts using traditional copper craftsmanship.
When they met for the first time over lunch, Aldrich and Jain not only bonded over their shared passion for innovative solutions, but, as seasoned travelers, they also discussed the number of children who use iPads, during most any occasion and in seemingly every corner of the globe. Disturbed by this epidemic of “iPad kids,” they then acknowledged that teddy bears used to be a staple in most every American household.
And they want to bring that staple back—but with a modern spin.
The current product design is a simple teddy bear that will have a microphone and micro-controller embedded inside. Jain says that the microphone will take in speech and the micro-controller will run the AI software on the cloud.
Aldrich is in charge of the software development for the bear, while Jain is using his manufacturing experience to create the actual teddy bear. Over the summer, he says he’ll be flying back to India to work on finalizing the design. They plan to launch a Version One between September and October this year.
The current idea for the bears is to slowly introduce new embedded “characters”—programmed to be experts on certain topics and that parents can technically control. A problem with unsupervised AI or internet access is that kids can look up and ask whatever they want. Bern plans to solve that pain point by creating a program and an app that will assign the bears a specific expert that will talk about specific fields, such as biology, astronomy or history.
“Although we’re not marketing [the bear] as an education tool, I strongly feel that once kids experience it, it will open an untapped market for kids’ education,” Jain said. “Kids can openly be curious about and ask why is the sky blue or how do we explore space… If a kid is interested in one field, parents can activate that field by, sort of, connecting them with an actual expert.”
Bern is currently running a wait list to gauge customer discovery. They are bootstrapping the startup for the time being, but want to explore crowdfunding options to test market demand and validation.
Jain says that because of the fast rate at which tech innovation is happening in our world, it’s almost impossible for kids not to interact with any form of it. He wants to bring back a safe way for them to grow up with technology and not lose their childhood to tech and iPads.
“Kids should have that soft companion that they could use when they’re at home or are alone,” Jain said. “We also want to make sure that parents feel safer to leave their kids with a teddy, instead of an iPad.”
