Toddler Tweets

I just found out Liam McDermott has a Twitter account. What? That’s preposterous! But first I had to ask, “Who is Liam McDermott?”
 He is a 3-year-old boy, son of Tori Spelling and Dean McDermott. My second thought was, “Can the kid even type?”

To find out, I logged onto the site, where I was invited to “get short, timely messages from Liam McDermott” by following him @liamsworld. As enticing as that sounds, I’m not sure what timely events Liam would be covering in his tweets.

By the looks of his most recent posts, followers can learn a lot about his bathroom habits and his feelings on the television shows his mother subjects him to. He has come around in his thinking on “Bethanny Getting Married,” through repeated exposures, although he still prefers “Scooby Doo.” 
Child prodigy and/or baby genius, he is not.

Liam provides typical toddler chatter in 140 characters or less. Or, rather, his mother does. As his bio states, his Twitter account delivers daily quotes as dictated to his mother. Daily quotes? Dictated? More like random blabber his mother thinks the world is anxious to hear. But does the world really want to be instantly and perpetually updated on the idle thoughts of a 3-year-old?


Yes, yes they do. Tens of thousands of people do, anyway. To be exact, 25,685 followers want to know what the child of Ms. Spelling of 90210 fame and Dean McDermott of Ms. Spelling fame has to say. And the followers don’t just follow. They actively engage. They write in. They find the child adorable or hilarious in the snapshots posted on TweetPhoto. A 3-year-old they don’t know? A toddler they have never met?


While they have never met, I imagine the followers feel they know Liam. They know his position on vampires and spiders and they know how he sends his mom off as she leaves for a trip. “Bye, Sexy Poo. You are da Bomb!” That’s worth a lol, right?


I suppose Tori & Dean, together of Home Sweet Hollywood on Oxygen, don’t have enough exposure. The kids need to get into the act, too. Well, it is a family business, but is it our business? How young is too young to tweet? Before they can read and write? Before they can use the toilet proficiently? Birth?


I was actually being sarcastic about that last one, but I just found out I shouldn’t be. Babies can now tweet in-utero. The twittering fetal monitoring device, Kickbee, senses when the baby kicks and sends a message to Twitter or an IPhone to update the expectant Papa-and anyone else dying to know the fetus’s every movement. You’re never too young to start using technology, right?

Thanks for the offer of instant updates on fetuses and for the invitation to follow the tweeting toddler @liamsworld, but I’m not sure that’s a world I want to enter.

Your thoughts?

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