A tech critic’s guide to holiday gift-giving

Black Friday seems to get longer with every passing year, but even when a day becomes a week (or several) it still signals the holiday shopping season is in full gear with Christmas looming a month in the distance. As the trees go up, decorations adorn every facet of our communities, and Christmas music begins to feel inescapable, many people are wondering what to buy for their friends and loved ones — and it’s not uncommon for some those gifts to end up being some hyped-up tech product.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with gifting those you care about a piece of technology, but far too often people aren’t thinking about the broader consequences that come with those gifts — and are then foisted onto people who may be completely oblivious to what they’re signing up for. As givers of gifts, we need to consider what else we’re giving with popular tech products that frequently get passed on this time of year.

As we head into the holiday season, I decided it would be a good time for a guide to help you consider what tech not to give to those you care about. Trying to make people’s lives a bit more convenient and stress-free is great, but sometimes that also means saddling them with more surveillance and potentially even worse as a result. Feel free to share the guide around so others are considering what they’re really giving when they gift certain tech products.

Alexa smart speaker

An Alexa smart speaker. Photo: Unsplash/Jonathan Borba

I don’t know if these are as popular as they were a few years ago, but at one time it felt like they were such a common gift because so many people use Amazon and have Prime, and they’re pretty cheap too — a strategy by the company to try to get them in more households. This isn’t just an Amazon problem; I point to Alexa because it’s the most popular, but really, I mean the Google Homes and all the rest too.

Let’s be clear about these products: you’re effectively sticking a microphone in the middle of your home that’s recording everything going on around it. Is that really something you’re comfortable with? Even more, is it something you’re comfortable foisting on someone you love? There’s been plenty of reporting over the years confirming this problem with supposedly “smart” speakers like Alexa and Google Home. Amazon used to have an option to “opt out” of having your recordings sent to the company, but it was removed earlier this year.

On top of that, the speakers are simply not as convenient and useful as the companies promised they would be. Apple is the most notable example of this, as Siri has always been an underwhelming entry into the voice assistant market, but in truth, Alexa and Google Home have significant limitations of their own. Many people who get these devices end up using them for a bit, then they just sit around, vacuuming up all the sounds happening around them.

The business hasn’t even worked out for the companies: Amazon has been losing money hand over fist from its Alexa division, because it’s actually only useful for a narrow range of tasks and hasn’t contributed to a lot of sales of other products through the speakers as the company hoped. Truthfully, how hard is it to put on some music and turn on a light without the need of a privacy-violating gadget that was given an upbeat voice to make you see it as a friend?

The smart speaker gets a big “do not buy” recommendation, but it’s also closely related to many of the other products I’ll be suggesting you do not pick up this holiday season. This one leads directly into our next product, or category of products, because it’s served as the tech companies’ solution to try to push a new wave of voice assistant hardware onto the public.

Chatbot devices

The Folotoy Kumma bear. Photo: Public Interest Research Group

Thanks to the AI hype of the past couple years, tech companies are trying to jam chatbots into just about everything they can think of. There have been a wave of devices you’re expected to clip onto your clothes to converse with your AI “personal assistant,” if not “friend,” and quite frankly, I couldn’t think of something worse to push onto someone you care about.

First of all, these devices replicate all the problems with the smart speakers: namely, that they need to listen to everything you say and that happens around you, and it’s really not clear what’s happening with all that data. Just to give one example, ChatGPT-maker OpenAI pushes chatbots as a health or therapy service, but unlike when interacting with the medical system, none of that very sensitive information shared with the company is protected. It’s a massive vulnerability, and just the tip of the iceberg.

Putting aside the massive environmental issues with using generative AI, there are also a growing number of concerning stories from the interactions people are having with what are unproven and understudied technologies being pushed by companies competing to dominate a new segment of the tech industry. A company called FoloToy released a teddy bear stuffed with ChatGPT, only for researchers to find it would tell kids how to light matches and engage in sexual conversations. This is a perennial problem with kids interacting with chatbots.

Meta’s chatbot was allowed to have “sensual” discussions with children until the company was pilloried for it, and after Tesla rolled xAI’s Grok out in its cars, one mother reported the chatbot asked her 12-year-old child to “send nudes.” Generative AI products should be nowhere near kids, but there’s also good reason to worry about the effect they can have on adults.

There’s already a growing body of research suggesting chatbot use can negatively affect people’s critical thinking skills and ability to retain information from what they’re reading or engaging with. But even more concerning are the stories of chatbot dependence, where people begin having long conversations with their computers only to be misled about what exactly they’re communicating with and potentially led down some dark paths that can cause them to have a mental breakdown or even try to take their own lives. In some tragic cases, they’ve even been successful.

Grandma getting run over by a reindeer is one thing. But being driven to insanity by a chatbot probably isn’t something anyone wants to be responsible for this holiday season. Don’t give them a device infused with generative AI, but shy away from any other AI subscriptions or AI-generated content while you’re at it.

Ring doorbell

A Ring doorbell. Photo: Amazon

Speaking of a reindeer taking down grandma, a Ring doorbell might be able to capture that kind of footage so you have proof of what happened. But like with the smart speaker, there’s so much more that comes with that purchase. Amazon — and other companies pushing camera doorbells — want you to think they’re making you safer by giving you insight into what’s happening around your home. Ring doorbell ads often also try to make them appear fun, with people putting on a show for the doorbell. But that’s little more than a public relations campaign.

For me, the camera doorbell is the perfect example of a technology that makes people believe they’re safer when really making them more paranoid and anxious as they see their neighborhood and community with deep and unwarranted suspicion. People become aware of things that had already been happening around their home for ages without them knowing about it and they become like big brother, spying out everything once the camera detects movement. It gets even worse when this paranoia meets social media, whether through snitching apps like Nextdoor or the spread of clips on platforms like Facebook that convince others to fear their surroundings and vastly overestimate the amount of crime happening in their vicinity.

Camera doorbells are social cancer as a technology, breaking down social solidarity and further encouraging people to see strangers with suspicion. They make people a participant in the surveillance state, even aiding the oppressive power of police, while convincing them their home is their sanctuary — where they can hole up and keep ordering products from Amazon, food from DoorDash, and consuming content on Netflix — contributing to the erosion of their own community in the process.

Meta “AI” glasses

Meta Ray-Ban glasses. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Speaking of the consequences of mass surveillance we don’t often consider, it’s time to get to one of the recent big tech pushes: “smart” or “AI” glasses. There’s a reason that people sporting these things a decade ago were dubbed “Glassholes” (in reference to Google Glass) and the reasons to shun those who put camera glasses on their faces have not changed.

When Google tried to make “smart” glasses a thing ten years ago, they were pretty damn ugly. One of the standout photos of that moment is of a tech booster taking a shower while wearing them — it certainly didn’t help the company make the sell to the public. Their appearance made them easy to pick out, so if you ran into someone in the street or at a bar wearing Google Glass, you knew they could be filming you and you could react accordingly (by pulling them off their face, of course).

The tech companies do not seem to have taken the lesson that the general public does not want people walking around with cameras on their faces. Instead, they’ve decided to make them look better: Meta has an agreement with Ray-Ban and Oakley, while Google partnered with Warby Parker. They want the camera glasses to blend in to reduce the risk of their users having them ripped off their faces, as happened to the Glassholes. But it’s still wrong to be walking around with a camera on your face, especially since it makes it easy for people to do a quick modification to turn off the indicator that’s supposed to show the camera is on. They’re also, of course, trying to cram chatbots into them, which brings a whole slew of additional problems we’ve already gone over.

The smart glasses are on the pricier side of some of the gifts we’ve gone over in this guide, but they’re worth calling out all the same because of the push companies like Meta and Google have put behind them. They might be among the newer gadgets, but this isn’t one where your loved one needs to be an early adopter.

The bigger picture

Photo: Unsplash/Luke Chesser

In general, I’d say to be wary of any of this tech that relies on listening in and tracking everything you do, such that I’d even extend it to a lot of fitness and biometrics trackers like an Apple Watch or Oura Ring, and possibly even a lot of smart home devices that leave your home vulnerable to hackers. Is it really necessary to turn yourself or your loved ones into quantified beings and is it really so hard to do things around your home the old fashioned way, without needing to control it all through an app?

Ultimately, a lot of these products make me think of a concept called luxury surveillance coined by Chris Gilliard and the late David Golumbia a few years ago. They were arguing that there’s a line where forms of surveillance can feel oppressive to some — particularly poorer and marginalized groups in society — but that more privileged groups can feel are actually benefiting from them by making their lives easier or more convenient. Yet, Gilliard and Golumbia argue that line can easily shift, and while the surveillance may once have felt it was worth the trade off, it can quickly become an oppressive force for a much wider swath of people.

“We need to develop a much deeper way of talking about surveillance technology and a much richer set of measures with which to regulate their use,” they wrote. “Just as much, we need to recognize that voluntarily adopting surveillance isn’t an isolated choice we make only for ourselves but one that impacts others in a variety of ways we may not recognize.” That’s something to consider in our everyday lives as much as when we’re choosing what to gift to others.

What to give instead

After criticizing a whole range of technologies that might have seemed like good gifts before you started reading this article, you’re probably wondering what you can give your friends and family members. Well luckily, there are plenty of options that won’t enlist them into the expansion of the surveillance state, the erosion of their rights, the empowerment of some of the worse people on the planet, or potentially putting them in the crosshairs of a poorly built chatbot.

Maybe they don’t need new tech at all. Consider putting a bit of time into making them something sentimental, or if you don’t have the time for that, finding a homemade gift made by an artisan at a local shop in your community or even on Etsy. What about a nicely scented candle or a comfy blanket or some tasty cookies or chocolates to go along with a physical book you picked out just for them? You could grab them a subscription to a less mainstream streaming service like Criterion or Mubi, even pick them out a Blu-ray they might like, or offer to spend an afternoon with them that includes a trip to the bookstore or cinema.

Not convinced and still want some kind of tech product? Alright then. Give them a gift to help them reclaim some of their time and concentration. You could grab them a small block made by Brick or Unpluq that will let them lock themselves out of social media and any other apps that are distracting them — maybe even from enjoying that book or movie you gave them.