The classic driveway pastime, rebuilt for kids growing up online.

The idea came from my own daughter (whose recess activity throughout second grade has been starting various businesses: a spa, a salon, a bracelet shop, etc.). One night she saw an ad for an ecommerce platform we’ll call “Schmopify” and asked me what it was. Pretty quickly she connected the dots and asked for her own “Schmopify” to take her budding bracelet business online.

I set out looking for a kid-safe version of what she was picturing and couldn’t find one that let kids build their own storefront (with a platform designed and built for her age group as the primary user), much less one that also taught the business fundamentals behind her choices. When we were growing up, we got our first experience running a business with a lemonade stand in the driveway. This is the same idea updated for a generation growing up online.

I think a lot, as a mom, about how to teach my kids healthy boundaries and the safe use of technology. I want to impart to them that technology can actually be used productively to make something, run a real business, and interact with their community, but I don’t see that gray area or nuance in how we talk about ‘screens for kids’ today. Lemonade Stand has a different approach, one that I believe sets kids up for long-term success with technology.

Keeping kids away from tech isn’t the answer. Instead, we need to teach kids how to use technology to achieve their goals with reasonable boundaries and incentives for getting offline too. Lemonade Stand is a first step in teaching kids to use technology productively and creatively to actually achieve their goals.