DESPITE being good at using technology, children are useless at adult pursuits like pub brawls or running a small business.
After assessing children’s abilities in other areas besides iPads, the Institute for Studies now believes children may not be better at everything than adults.
Professor Henry Brubaker said: “When it comes to using smartphones, tablets and digiboxes, children make adults look like grunting, sausage-fingered cavemen.
“But get a six-year-old boy to drive a car from Plymouth to Norwich or to intervene in a pub fight and they’re absolutely useless.
“Similarly, if you ask a four-year-old girl to carry out a relatively simple adult task like applying for an EU start-up grant for a plastic extrusion moulding business they rapidly lose interest and start talking about dollies.
“Slaughtering a pig, filing for divorce, carrying out a company-wide financial audit – these are all things that children are shockingly inept at.”
Prof Brubaker said adults could avoid being humiliated by children by only competing with them at adult activities, for example arguing with garage mechanics, rather than playing Angry Birds.
Seven-year-old Nikki Hollis said: “I kept laughing at daddy because he is so rubbish at instant messaging, so he said I could try paying the mortgage instead. Unfortunately my £2.50 a week pocket money didn’t cover it and now we live in a car.”
