Preteens Build Top Selling iPhone App

Published July 02, 2009 @ 09:34AM PT

A great little article published by Inc. Magazine yesterday tells the story of Finn and Owen Voorhees, 9 and 11 year old brothers who recently designed an iPhone application that became one of the top selling apps.

The application was pretty simple. Called MathTime, it's a math drill program that allows people to practice their math skills in a rapid paced, fun environment. Owen taught himself how to do the coding and had his younger brother Finn design the logos in Photoshop.

Of the experience, Owen said: "I thought it would be cool...It's really cool to make something work, to make a little money, to do something like this and see it up..It started booming...I woke up and I was like, I'm an entrepreneur now."

I like this story for a couple reasons.

First of all, it's such an affirmation of the creativity and capacity of young people. If you encourage them to explore instead of boxing them into stereotypes of what they can achieve, amazing things can happen.

The other piece of this though is how different it is for these young creatives to have a platform for their work. Photoshop and the Apple App store coding platform gave them the tools they need to build something; the App Store gave them a place where they can be affirmed for their good work and where they value they created could be accessed by others.

This is one of the powers of technology that I've been most excited about. I've had the lens of an extremely precocious younger brother to see just how both hardware and software can unleash creativity.

I think it's worth thinking dilligently about the platforms for socially impactful creativity we encourage with young people as well. I love that groups like Do Something and Ashoka Youth Venture promote, reward, and highlight exceptional work of young leaders, but I want to see that facilitation of youth creative towards social problems institutionalized in schools across the country.

Are there good examples of where this is happening?

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Comments (3)

Fantastic!!

Posted by C L on 07/02/2009 @ 10:10AM PT
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Love this story. I tweeted (@MuhammmadAtt) and blogged (http://cr8destroy.wordpress.com) this the other day. . :)

Posted by Muhammad At-Tauhidi on 07/03/2009 @ 05:15PM PT
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It's not that kids can think outside of the box any better than adults, they just don't know a box exists.

Yet, when we tell them there are boundaries, they shy away from fully exploring their creativity, stifling innovations through adulthood. Ask any adult how many great ideas they've come up with over their lifetime and you'd be amazed at what could have been innovated.

I help teach an entrepreneurial class at a local high school where one of the students had an idea to invent a mechanism for leaking toilets. He said he couldn't invent it though because he would have to get a patent for it and he "didn't know any lawyers."

Melissa Rose

www.bizinaboxx.com

Posted by Melissa Rose on 11/03/2009 @ 08:24PM PT
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Author

Nathaniel is the founder of Assetmap, a San Francisco-based startup that builds web tools to help people better visualize and leverage their social capital. Before that, he was the founding director of the Northwestern University Center for Global Engagement.