Speaking from a mother's perspective, it's quite a bit easier to brush kids' teeth (and to feel like you "got them all") of a sometimes squirmy child with an electric toothbrush set to low (I use the plug-in electric toothbrushes, not the disposable ones, as for whatever reason, they decided not to make those have circular brushes, which is the ideal shape for cleaning teeth - especially in tiny mouths!) rather than a traditional toothbrush.
It's also a heck of a lot easier to simulate the "round circular motions" that dentists prescribe to ensure proper teeth cleaning and reduce gum recession. It seems that we took a difficult and tedious task and made it easier so that hopefully more people will do it. I don't see that there is an ethical dilemma in having made toothbrushing more fun. We've also really improved floss from something that hardly anyone used and pretty much everyone disliked to cater to a wide range of mouths and personal preferences, from woven to wax to flavored to those little flossing sticks. I appreciate most products that promote personal hygeine and make it easier for parents to effectively care for their children's personal hygeine. It's resulted in a more educated (and dedicated!) populace on the matter of personal hygeine. Better mouth care means you get to keep your teeth longer and don't have to deal with dentures or implants, so you make a little investment now to save thousands later. It's not environmentally sound, but neither are those tons of plastic bottles - why can't we just go back to glass - everything tasted better out of glass - but of course, they lost money due to bottle breakage and kids got cut on glass and the movies show people fighting with glass bottles and so they brought in plastics with all their BPA and other harmful chemicals that pollute our landfill at a much faster rate than toothbrushes which we at least use for 3 months. Those little blue bristle toothbrush indicators that let you know when your toothbrush is no longer doing its job effectively are wonderful, and again, result in a populace that can better understand that toothbrushes don't last forever. Okay, that's all I have to say on toothbrushes - brushing kids' teeth is a difficult process, so if you don't get to do it every night, you can live vicariously through my pain! Don't even get me started on the voting machines!! Check out blackboxvoting.org, if you haven't already! Courtney ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
