Company designs app for family play

Reports abound about how high-tech can drive a wedge between parents and children, but Chinese education entrepreneurs are showing how smartphones can also be used as a tool to build family bonds.

At the annual assembly of the World Organization for Early Childhood Education in the US in Washington at the end of July, a Chinese family-play cellphone application received significant attention for the way it used technology to serve family relationships.

China has 120 million families with children under age 6, a potentially huge market for family-play development.