Get or build a PC instead of getting a console. Introduce to kid to games. After a while, say “you know, computers can do other stuff besides play games” and introduce the kid to that as well.

Tell them to keep their personal life completely separate from their online life. NO personal info shared online.

Well I got my first PC when I was 5 (2005), and I just learnt to use the PC by myself (because my parents didn’t understand it) over several years.

When I will eventually have a child, these would be my steps to encourage them to use a PC:

• Tell them that they can play paid games for free and show them how to do it
• Give general internet usage tips
• Convince them that a PC worths way more than a console, because you can play way more games on it, and you can also do a bunch more things with it

I don’t think a 5 year old will understand a PC’s usefullnes for sure, but their receptors will definitely be turned on after hearing FREE GAMES.

I’ve been using computers longer than that and when I started I had to type commands into DOS to play games. It was never scary. My dad showed me how to do it and wrote down the commands for me and I took it from there.

Old computer no wifi, as a kid I just explored the computer menus and played the few offline games, drew in paint, by like 10 I had swapped to adobe flash off some piraxy yt videos, maybe load it up with software that could be fun for kids to use

Scratch is a good one, might be too young, but learn to think like a coder while playing around

The BBC Microbit was designed for exactly this scenario: https://microbit.org/

If you want them to have a more desktop-like environment, the Raspberry Pi has kid-specific projects: https://www.raspberrypi.org/learn/

Or you can get a Pi Kano kit and it has everything you need: https://www.kano.me/

Keep it disconnected from the internet is the first thing I thought of.

(Warning - yes, I know they won’t understand fully anything of the following, but they will understand some and will remember it’s not magic.)

First, show them how to make a paper animation (quickly changing pictures, lots of paper and two pencils are enough, don’t even need two pencils, but eh).

Second, show them how to make a paper computer (look it up, there are even ready books for children ; that is a bit more complex, you’ll need to cut some for registers and the “windows” to indicate current values and you’ll do the operations manually, and you’ll need more turning pencils).

Third, find some book about microprocessor design - I’m serious, you just have to show them in it the pictures about what is a decoder and what is a datapath and ALU, and what are interrupts, and what are registers (program counter and two-three other ones, suppose), and explain how this relates to the paper computer. Not much more.

Then you tell them that a computer is just many microprocessors running their programs, some run small simple programs to control dedicated devices, and some run big long complex programs. After that you show them some of the devices - like hard drive, RAM, video, audio, network card, thingies on the board. And tell that they work with other devices, like keyboards and displays connected electrically. And tell that this looks like a city.

For 6 years old this is not so good (but just like people normally do with airplanes and trains, you still should try, just this shouldn’t be your only try by far), but when I was 8-9 years old and wanted to learn, someone explaining step 3 to me would have helped.

Step 1 my dad had done, step 2 I think he did too, and it was in some book for preschool education I read, I didn’t know it was sky cool back then. Step 3 is more of an encouragement when you can’t quite mentally make the leap, from small elements which you know can be combined into complex things, to complex things themselves.

This is not an advice to teach a toddler computer design. Just like people don’t teach toddlers railway design or civilian engineering or automotive or airplane design. They still tell them various things of how those work, and build models, so they don’t have ideas from medieval bestiaries about these being magical monsters.

You pretty much had the answer in the query there is think. Just present it as toy to be handled.

To get more into detail, you probably would prefer those you can indeed pull apart and handle like toys than the “modern” slick ones. I see people mentioning raspberry pi. It’s hard to fear it looking at its guts with bare eyes. After they fried a few chips pressing soldering iron for too long they will have zero respect for electrical computers.

Maybe my https://fabien.benetou.fr/Content/BuildingAComputer could help.

I also answered your question in https://lemmy.ml/post/38363131/21987482 but it’s intertwined.

I wouldn’t “teach” them what a computer is, I would co-explore with them instead.

an apple 2 or c64 and some type-in-the-program magazines

Install something like edubuntu/endless os with gcompiz

Just some idea: archive.org (and ruffle) for old flash games

desktop computer

https://eater.net/8bit

His videos are a great learning resources too

Minecraft (Java) with Mods