Meet Dot, the new children's show character inspiring girls to embrace tech

Dot is like a lot of 8-year-old girls in 2016 — spirited, smart and savvy when it comes to all things tech. Although Dot is a cartoon, she is doing real-world work to inspire girls to take these qualities into their adult lives.

A new children's show, Dot, featuring the young character recently premiered in the hopes of tackling tech's gender gap. The titular character is a spunky girl with insatiable curiosity about the world — and she uses technology to help learn, create and explore. 

The groundbreaking show explores what it's like to live as a child — particularly a young girl — in a tech-focused world.

SEE ALSO: To let girls in, the tech industry is thinking pink. But that isn't enough.

Dot premiered on Sprout, a popular children's channel owned by NBC, on Oct. 22. The series' executive producer is Randi Zuckerberg — a tech entrepreneur, early Facebook employee and sister of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg — and is based on her 2013 children's book of the same name.

The show will air regularly on Saturdays at 11 a.m. ET on Sprout, which broadcasts to almost 60 million American homes.

Image: Dot/Sprout

Tech's gender gap is a well-known problem with staying power. A new report from nonprofit Girls Who Code suggests the percentage of women in tech is actually declining, and expected to fall from 24 percent to 22 percent over the next 10 years.

In the decade Zuckerberg spent in Silicon Valley — a place she tells AdWeek is expected to be the "center of forward-thinking" ideals — one question constantly plagued her: "Why can I count the number of women executives on one hand? Or people of color?"

To help address the gap, Zuckerberg created the character of Dot in 2013 to inspire young girls to see tech as exciting and engaging. Dot, she says, is a role model for girls to picture themselves in a tech industry dominated by white men. 

"I grew so frustrated by so few women in the room wherever I went," Zuckerberg tells NPR of her time in the industry. "It was a fantastic decade, but also a lonely one. And so I thought, what if we could get more messages out into pop culture with female role models for young girls, showing them how exciting and cool and wonderful this world of technology is? Maybe that could inspire the next generation of leaders."

In the show, Dot goes on everyday adventures with her best friend, Hal — a young boy of color meant to inspire kids of color to see themselves in the tech industry, too. Along the way, the two rely on tech to enhance their real-world experiences, constantly using their tablets to guide them along the way. But the pair also engages with high tech as well, experimenting with robots, drones and 3D-printing, according to Zuckerberg.

"Dot and her group of friends don't look like your typical cast of characters," Zuckerberg tells AdWeek. "I wanted them to reflect all levels of diversity." 

Image: Dot/Sprout

Children can also engage with Dot online through a series of games and activities created by Sprout. The site teaches kids how to use tech, honing in on five principles: responsibility, respect, safety, kindness and patience. 

Yet, Zuckerberg understands that encouraging kids to engage with tech can be contentious for parents who are sometimes hesitant to increase screen time. 

Though the gender gap in tech is undeniable, there is also the often-critiqued charge that kids are constantly plugged into technology. This, Zuckerberg tells NPR, sometimes keeps parents from encouraging more tech-based engagement than their kids already have. 

She hopes, then, that Dot can be a source of inspiration for young kids while also lessening the hesitation parents have to embrace a tech-focused world.

"When [adults] think of screen time, we immediately go to a place of anxiety and fear," she tells NPR. "But children don't feel that way. To them, the future is fun. They don't think about, now I'm using tech, and now I'm not."