Six-year-old Katelyn Lunt standing next to Amazon delivery boxes
Kids are becoming fluent in technology at astonishingly young ages. A 2024 Common Sense Media report found that children under 8 now spend an average of 2 hours and 52 minutes a day on screens (much of it unsupervised). And as any parent knows, that combination of curiosity, confidence, and easy-to-navigate apps can lead to some very unexpected outcomes.
In fact, accidental kid-driven online purchases have been steadily rising for years, with Amazon and other platforms reporting thousands of refund requests each month from parents whose little ones mastered “Buy Now” faster than the alphabet.
That’s exactly what happened to 6-year-old Katelyn Lunt, who caused a whole lot of chaos after her online shopping spree, as per ABC News. In 2018, the first-grader from Utah used her mother's Amazon account to buy herself $350 worth of toys and video games.
Barbie can't watch. media0.giphy.com
According to Good Morning America, Lunt's mother Catherine was stunned to see Amazon delivery trucks pulling up in front of their home.
"Our family came home and the truck pulls up and all of these boxes are being pulled out of the truck," Catherine, who had no idea about Lunt's online splurge, told the news outlet.
Earlier that week, Catherine had told Lunt she could order one Barbie doll as a prize for doing extra chores at home. But the little girl had something else in mind. Instead of stopping at one toy, she added pages upon pages of items to the online shopping cart.
While her mom was tracking unrelated orders on the Amazon app, she suddenly noticed the avalanche of extra toys Lunt had slyly purchased. Catherine tried to cancel everything, but it was too late. The boxes were already on their way.
"They just started unloading box after box after box," Lunt's older cousin, Ria Diyaolu, recalled to BuzzFeed News. "Her mom went on her Amazon account and saw three pages of things she had ordered. She knew exactly what she was doing when she did it. I was so surprised that a 6-year-old knew how to do one-click, next-day shipping. She did not get grounded but she does not have access to the internet for a month."
Catherine learned the hard way that leaving her phone unattended with her daughter was a huge mistake. But instead of simply punishing Lunt, she decided to turn the mishap into a teachable moment.
Rather than keeping all the toys, the Lunt family chose to donate them to kids at Primary Children's Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah. CBS Philadelphia's official YouTube page shared photos and footage of Lunt and her mother delivering the toys—transforming an honest mistake into an act of generosity.
- YouTube www.youtube.com
Catherine later admitted that she should have been far more vigilant about handing over her phone without any restrictions, and she hopes other parents learn from her experience. With so many children navigating devices at earlier ages than ever before, she wants families to know about the security controls available on phones and shopping apps, so they don’t end up in the same situation.
Sure, Katelyn lost her internet privileges for a month, but she also gained something better: the chance to brighten the day of kids who needed it most. And Catherine gained a valuable reminder that in the age of one-click shopping, even a six-year-old can accidentally become a VIP Amazon customer.
Sometimes the best lessons happen when things don’t go as planned.
This article originally appeared 4 months ago.
