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Comment by veidr | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious: don't any other people here think 2-year-old kids shouldn't be playing iPad games at all?

I'm convinced that watching TV is harmful to a child's intellectual development. (And there's an established body of evidence to support that.)

As a kid, I hated my hippie Montessori teacher mom for allowing me only one hour of TV per week as a kid in the late 70s and early 80s (elementary school; I usually chose the Duke boys, and later Knight Rider). But, as an adult, I cite it often as one of the things I admire most about the way she raised me (no limits on books, nor daytime outdoor play after school, nor building things), especially after coming to understand how much easier it is to set a precocious and hyper wild little monkey in front of the boob tube so the parents can get a couple hours of peace.

I do think video games (especially good ones) are probably much less harmful than TV, and that they do even have some net positives for the user, in terms of developing various human abilities (cognitive and otherwise). But isn't two years old too young? Shouldn't kids of that age, instead of learning in-game physics, be learning real physics? Like with balls, marbles, and blocks, running and falling down, and not with animated honeypots and flying unicorns?

My own kid won't be here for a few more months, so I'm not preaching; just honestly asking. I know little kids love iPad games... but they love eating sugar cubes, too.

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> don't any other people here think 2-year-old kids shouldn't be playing iPad games at all? > My own kid won't be here for a few more months, so I'm not preaching; just honestly asking. > Shouldn't kids of that age, instead of learning in-game physics, be learning real physics? Like with balls, marbles, and blocks, running and falling down, and not with animated honeypots and flying unicorns?

You are in fact preaching, just not from direct experience raising children.

Please do not give your future 2-year-old marbles to learn physics with. Choking hazard. Harder to swallow an iPad.

Our former 2 year-old and current two year-old have neither choked on their marbles. Why? Supervision. You play with your kids and then you can stop them doing stupid things that are going to cause them high-level harm.

The hard part I find is letting them hurt themselves as part of their learning.

Indeed our 2 year-old just used a kitchen knife (about as long as his forearm) for the first time a couple of weeks ago to chop the potatoes he peeled. Close supervision.

"He could swallow a marble", well yes, he could bash his brother's head in with the corner of an iPad, get hit by a meteorite, run in to a wall, drown himself in the toilet, etc..

> Please do not give your future 2-year-old marbles to learn physics with. Choking hazard. Harder to swallow an iPad.

I don't care if I get down voted but this made me laugh so hard.

No he isn't preaching, just stating common sense.

If you supervise your children, they won't swallow marbles or anything else. There are many vendors of wood toys (usually European) that are meant for small children. An ipad, is in the same realm as TV -- not meant for small kids.

two year olds are great with marbles when supervised. most of them have long abandoned the idea of putting non-food into their mouths by this age, and their development thrives on supervision and interaction regardless of what materials they are exploring.

> Please do not give your future 2-year-old marbles to learn physics with. Choking hazard.

You're aware that they put CHOKING HAZARD labels on things not because those things should be kept away from children at all times, but to alert inattentive parents to supervise their children?

The CHOKING HAZARD is not an intrinsic property of the object, but rather of the situation.

Your average 2 year old is awake for anything from 10-14 hours, so even you let your kid play with the iPad 2 hours a day (which I'm sure most people will agree is a lot), that still leaves 8-12 hours a day for Not iPad. I can't speak for all 2 year olds, but my 2 year old needs some down time after 8 hours of running around and general playing.

Further there is a lot more to the iPad than simply "video games". For example, my daughter loves looking at pictures. Both of herself and her friends, but also of her grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles, people whom she only sees a few times year and so the photos are the main way she has to remember them between visits. And even the "video games" are genuinely educational, teaching things like shape matching, colours, the names of animals and so on.

Then there is the "selfish" aspect. After 3 hours running around the playground followed by an hour of playing the build-a-tower-of-blocks-and-knock-them-down game I want a few minutes to enjoy the luxuries of life, like going to the bathroom by myself or drinking a cup of coffee without someone trying to spill it, and the iPad is a good way to distract her for those precious minutes.

My son (4yo) barely watches TV (maybe one hour a week or so) but spends a good amount of time on the iPad.

There's a wide range of activities on the iPad, going from plain video games to pure learning bits (letters, sounds, cooking, 3d moves etc) which makes it much more interesting than only "video games" IMO (and this generates a lot of discussions centered around learning too!).

On the frequency of use: it's pretty much like email for adults. You have to learn when to stop and when to do something else, learn to keep a balance.

At first we had small cards (like 2 x 10mn and 1 x 20mn for each day) to ensure he would not spend more time than we thought was good for him.

Now he mostly plays at his own rhythm, and tend to say at some point: "Dad, I played a lot on the iPad, now I need to take some fresh air".

Apart from that, all the remaining signs (learning to write, space placement, handling legos, social exchanges, sport etc) show no "damages" caused by the iPad :)

In conclusion: for me balance is everything (but like for most subjects); and there's a lot of good things to pick in the iPad.

Well, sounds like your son is doing great, that's wonderful. :)

I concede your point that the iPad can stretch/blur the notion of what a "game" is, in interesting ways. Although I am inclined to limit my kids' "screen time" (to zero, at two years old), I would never choose to limit my kids' "book time",.

But perhaps my thinking about it is too coarse, since iPad apps can be hybrids of both, or combine their attributes into something completely new.

Perhaps I will try out your time ticket idea and see how it goes. (But not from 2 years old... maybe 3 or 4.)

I have a <2 year old daughter right now and while it may be a bit soon to compare, I think she would benifit from having something that she wants to focus on for more than a couple of minutes. Right now she can be actively playing or passively consuming, though the latter does not interest her much and she just wanders off or ask for attention. Some interactivity might do well at this age.

On a side note I don't own an iPad nor intend to. Maybe a wii (she's already pretty curious about the tv remote control). However, I'll probably hold that off and let her enjoy the real world for a while.

"But perhaps my thinking about it is too coarse, since iPad apps can be hybrids of both."

Right. How would your screen time limitation work if the screen was being used to read a book? And the book may be even more interactive than a traditional book. Then there's a line that can get crossed where the book has now become a game. But even then, if it's educational and informative as a book is, why limit that just because it's on a screen?

>And the book may be even more interactive than a traditional book. //

Books are not interactive. Isn't that the point, they're supposed to be entirely passive objects used solely to feed ideas to the imagination/consciousness/memory.

>why limit that just because it's on a screen? //

To encourage the child to develop interaction in the real world first.

Books are not interactive

Kids books often are. Many of my daughters favorite books have lots of flaps and pull tabs that make things move. Opening the flap on the third thing and seeing the number '3' or guessing which item is in which box based only on the shape of the box and then opening the box to see if you where right is endless fun if you're into that sort of thing.

Aren't they more like games in handy book-a-like format?

This I think promotes my point (I would!).

If you only ever share pop-up books, coloring books, sticker books, flap-books, texture books, carpet books (they have samples of carpet in them), etc., with your child then they're not being exposed to the central concept of receiving ideas from a passive medium and giving life to those ideas internally without a proscribed pattern as to how one should do that.

Mind you I've no strong evidence that the move through object presentation, to picture based story, to picture accompanied story, and on to pure prose, genuinely does lead to a development of imagination (rather than say just accompany such a development).

Aren't they more like games in handy book-a-like format?

Some, perhaps, but far from all of them. Most of them have the basic linear narrative structure of books and encourage the basic process of starting at page 1 and following the 'story' page by page to the end. The pop-ups and flaps assist in driving the story rather than replacing them.

I've been revising my attitudes towards TV lately. There's good content on the TV, while content on iPad is not necessarily getting any better - mostly addictive games that bide the player to come back again and again. BBC produces a lot of accessible programs about engineering, history.

> I'm convinced that watching TV is harmful to a child's intellectual development. (And there's an established body of evidence to support that.)

There might be evidence that early exposure to television, before the child's neurological development is ready to deal with it, is harmful. But I'm not aware of "an established body of evidence" proving that TV is harmful. Do you have sources? I'm very interested in seeing such sources, as I used to be under the impression that TV is harmful, but I am now convinced otherwise.

Be careful ignoring the scientific method here. You are equating a fear of bad side effects from TV with bad side effects with iPad use. Fear is not the scientific method.

There are many dimensions to consider when evaluating harm. For example, in early childhood development, the child desperately wants to imitate the adult (or role model), and will suffer certain side effects (e.g., problems with self confidence) if forbidden to imitate. Thus even if there is harm in using the iPad, there could easily be more harm in forbidding its use (but this can easily be remedied by never allowing the child to see the adult using the iPad).

I urge you to be careful about following any lines of parenting that mold the child (e.g., the child should be outside playing ball, not inside doing X). I see parents force their kids to conform with preset ideas of how a child should be, ignoring how early child development works, and thus cause pscyhological harm (e.g., internalization of fear of the parent). An analogy would be the parent teaching the child how to walk by grabbing the kid's legs and moving them in micro-adjustments; the kid will end up with poor motor control.

You should take a look at the research - there is established evidence for the impact of television on language development. The book NurtureShock gives a nice overview, but if you want to go directly to the research papers it looks like there are plenty of papers like this:

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/128/5/1040.abs...

The problem with TV in particular seems to be the lack of interactivity. Children learn best by getting meaningful feedback from other people, and television cannot provide that. iPad apps and computers should be able to overcome that limitation, but I think we're early in the process of understanding the most effective ways to provide that for children, especially young children.

Thanks. That particular example is about children under two years. Do you have anything for older children? Under two years falls in my category of being neurologically unprepared to deal with the stimuli from TV. But what about at 4, or 6? The children are in a very different development stage, and (from my current, but always adapting, perspective) it becomes a balance of negatives and positives. For example, I have seen how TV accelerates understanding of social situations --- it is like having exercises at the end of a calculus chapter, but for preparing for the variety of social situations one will encounter, and learning to account for someone else's perspective.

Child development research shows that screen time - any form - is not beneficial for during the first several years. (even if it is 'educational', it will do nothing to aid the child's development in any way). No wonder Disney, owner of Baby Einstein, was required to reimburse families up to the cost of four DVDs, for falsely advertising that the Baby Einstein DVDs would improve or develop the child's intellect.

You know, iPads are awesome for kids. You know why?

2 yr olds can't pull the key caps off of them.

(unlike, say, macbook pros.)

So, I've got three, from 2.5 to 7.5. They've seen mommy and daddy working with computers and ipads all their life. (well, ipads for the last 2 years). No tv. Minimal netflix. A little screen time for other stuff, maybe a couple hours a week. Their latest thing is downloading lego instructions and reviewing them to see how stuff goes together, and to see if they have enough parts to build some of the sets we haven't bought.

The third one has gotten a lot more screen time than the other two at their ages, just because he's got to do what the big boys are doing. He's only twigged on to what a mouse does in the last couple of months, because the ipad is so much more direct. If the touch screen doesn't work, then it's a broken computer. It's strange seeing that distinction so differently between the kids, as the older ones didn't get the whole touch screen thing till they were much older.

There's a lot of interesting observations you can make about UI when you're watching someone with a much different POV than you have.

My son watched TV when he was small - after a full day of high stimulus activities in an educational daycare program, he needed downtime. He started playing with the Xbox 360 when he was five and saved his money from odd jobs for us and neighbors and bought himself a Wii when he was 9.

Maybe he won't be the next Steve Jobs because of it.

But what has been interesting is that recently, he is much less interested in TV and video games and far more interested in physical world gaming with his peers: Bey Blades, Pokemon, Yugioh, and in particular Warhammer. He's been buying figures, paints and brushes not the latest version of Madden with his money.

Keep in mind that it was easier for your mother to do what she did than it is to do something similar today - kids programming wasn't available on 13 channels 24x365 and it was considered inappropriate to market to children in the way that is now standard [see Juliet Schor's Born to Buy: http://www.amazon.com/Born-Buy-Commercialized-Consumer-Cultu...]

> I'm convinced that watching TV is harmful to a child's intellectual development. (And there's an established body of evidence to support that.)

Is there? I dislike children being raised by television as much as the next guy, but the chapter in Freakonomics on child development says there's no correlation between children's test scores and the amount of television they watch, according to the data from ECLS (http://nces.ed.gov/ecls/).

(edited to correct typo)

Umm .. there's no correlation between test scores and intelligence these days, either though ..

Are test scores the only indicators of a child's development? I know enough people who have excellent test scores but have no initiative, no confidence, no curiosity, no hunger for learning things that are not on the test, no drive and no creativity.

Of course, anecdote != data, so meh. But I do have a hunch that TV and social media both breed a passive consumption habit that can be hard to detect and even harder to get rid of.

I don't think they're the only ones, or that they're particularly good ones, but they are some of the only ones that we can measure.

That said, our anecdotes at least agree. I'm with you on that hunch, too.

I think there may be significant benefits to working with these types of abstractions at a vary young age. Learning to code before I knew who to write in my native language might have harmed my ability to write in English but it created a level of comfort when dealing with programming code that may not be available to people who started later in life.

Playing games may not seem productive, but the types of games children play do prepare them for more complex challenges later in life, and if anything I think computers will become more important over time. So, I suspect spending a few hours a week banging on an iPad is probably more useful than harmful for the average 2 year old.

As a hacker, I'm sure you know, ideals are often different than what actually happens. I often see kids in restaurants. Half of them are screechy. The other half have something to play with. Usually iPads or iPhones, because they're easy to carry, and don't get boring. They're not a choking hazard and won't cut you. Sure, you might like the idea of keeping them away from video games, but it's probably not going to work out that well when you become a parent. The real world is often more difficult than general statements on HN.

He implied it was hard, not easy.

You see my kids on a plane, and I've probably deployed the i devices. Waaaay more freely than they get at home. It's a treat, and it can work well in reasonably sized doses.

Regrettably one of the biggest offenders in terms of usability for kids apps is Apple itself. The introduction of multi-touch gestures made a complete mess out of kids apps. For example, if you've ever watched a young one interact with an iPad you would have seen them plant their paws on the screen and do things with 3+ fingers very frequently.

Imagine what happens then: The whole app moves up, down or worst, sideways and switches to another app altogether. This interrupts the experience and is very confusing. I've seen this first hand. It is truly perplexing for children in the 2 to 7 year old range.

Another side-effect is that this makes it nearly impossible to write apps that actually encourage the little ones to fully engage and plant their paws on the device. Without turning off multi-touch gestures the app won't be good for more than three seconds of use. What's worst is that you also stand a good chance to get negative reviews on the app store from frustrated parents who don't understand that this is not the developer's fault.

Imagine the thrill of driving around town while your kids is playing with the iPad in the back seat and complaining/whining/crying every thirty seconds because he/she accidentally switched from the nice educational app you had them play with to your Facebook page due to accidentally using the app switching gesture. Brilliant.

While multi-touch gestures might be a good idea (I as an adult never use them) they provide no way for developers to disable them within their app, thus causing usability problems for kids (and probably some use cases with people with motor impediments).

Yes, the user can disable multi-touch altogether from settings. As an app developer you have to decide whether or not you want to put up a notice, warning or info page on your app warning parents about this problem and recommending that they disable multi-touch. Might you incur Apple's wrath for doing so? Don't know.

I think this is probably a significant part of why multitasking gestures are turned off by default. They won't ever be on for any device whose owner doesn't feel comfortable poking around in Settings.

I've seen an app on startup recommend turning them off if they're on. (Which doesn't mean that Apple considers that OK, of course, just that the reviewer of that one app did.)

> As an app developer you have to decide whether or not you want to put up a notice, warning or info page on your app warning parents about this problem and recommending that they disable multi-touch. Might you incur Apple's wrath for doing so? Don't know.

Ouch. I hadn't even thought of that.

I was just going to say it's ridiculous that you have this powerful device with advanced touch screen and you're developing software for it, but Apple prevents you from simply exerting control over the device.

A non-crippled OS should give you near exclusive access with minimal meddling, like Desktop PC games. Full screen, raw touch data and no accidental gestures.

I don't understand why hackers could abide by this.

(the next part is a bit off topic btw, but maybe some professional iOS app devs can shed some light on the matter for me?)

I work with kids (a bit older, ages 8-12) teach them to do creative things on the computer (GameMaker, GIMP, some HTML, etc). I'm still working to figure out a good method to learn them actual code (not all, but some are definitely smart enough). A lot of them ask me if I can teach them "how to make apps". I don't know (don't have a smartphone or tablet), but at some point I thought ok let's figure that out.

The kid had an iPod Touch so we started looking around for some iOS SDK or whatever (I feared writing a whole app would be too large of a project for him, but now I wanted to know and it taught us both a valuable lesson).

Can anyone who writes iOS apps maybe confirm this for me, because it seems pretty much impossible:

- You can't actually load an app that you just coded onto your own device, to try it out. Instead you can only test it in an emulator.

- The only way to get the new app onto the actual device is via the AppStore. Is that really true? Do even professional app developers not see their app run on an actual device instead of the emulator before the app is in a suitable state (as judged from the emulator tests) to place on the AppStore and even then only if they or someone buys it? Really?

- This SDK/emulator kit is only available for the Mac. So if you don't own a Mac, you can't develop iOS apps.

- Money. Does the SDK/emulator kit cost money or not? I couldn't figure it out because I stopped looking as soon as I saw it was Mac-only, anyway. But depending on which route I took through the Apple ID developer program website, it alternatively told me it was free and that it cost me $100. And then to be able to place the program onto a physical device I own, I need to pay a yearly $100 for the AppStore?

(I probably got some details wrong here and maybe I missed some programs or ways to do things so please correct me)

The centre I work at is mostly run by volunteers and doesn't use Macs or has $100/yr to give to Apple for the "privilege" of teaching a new generation of hacker kids how to develop applications for their petty locked up hardware/software universe. So there won't be any "how to make apps for iOS" lessons in the foreseeable future.

That's what I learned. And the kid that joined me on this wild goose chase learned that he most definitely will be getting an Android as his next smartphone.

The iOS devkit is Mac-only. You will also have to pay a $99 yearly fee to Apple for the right to develop apps that get listed on the App Store.

However, that $99 fee also includes the right to get a testing certificate that lets you push what you develop onto an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch to test with. So if you sign up for the developer program, you can test on a real device. You just can't get it loaded onto other people's devices without going through the Apple approval process.

Xcode (the IDE) itself is free. You can probably run iOS apps in a simulator (note it is NOT an emulator) with the free download, but forget about testing on an actual device.

Clearly this program is aimed at professional developers, and for them it is worth the price -- the iOS ecosystem and SDKs being far more developed and refined than Android's. But for a bunch of young padawans just starting out in coding it is prohibitively expensive unfortunately.

Aside from these problems, Objective-C is a bit much for a rank beginner, especially a kid, to bite off and chew. So, for that matter, is Java. It would be possible, and probably a lot more practical, to introduce them to JavaScript and have them develop "Web apps" that run inside an iPhone's Safari web browser. Some quite sophisticated games are possible this way with HTML 5.

Awesome, thanks for that answer!

The testing certificate makes sense, I was really wondering about that, there's only so much you can test in a simulator (touch screen behaviour, for instance. I'd assume you could emulate it with a mouse, but you can't test the full UX that way).

Good call on the JS/webapps too. I hadn't really considered what language one develops iOS apps in when I started investigating, but from what I've seen about Objective-C, I agree it would be a bit too much.

Personally I was aiming to get them interested in writing simple Python programs, perhaps with PyGame so they can quickly get some graphics on the screen (text console output doesn't have a lot of appeal I'm afraid..). Most important reason is that Python lacks boilerplate--I don't want to make the kids do all sorts of boring set up coding before they get to see some results. (second most important reason is that it's the language I'm currently using most)

Boilerplate might be a bit of an issue with JS web apps too. But "can I put my (GameMaker) game on my website?" is a question asked even more often than how to make apps :) [it is possible btw, but not with the free version of GameMaker]. So maybe I could set up some simple framework with a JS Canvas and see if they'll bite. Maybe even better would be just to code some simple game for myself, for fun, show it off, and I already know of at least two kids that will try real hard to figure out how I pulled that off, and they'll be happy to find out it was written inside the same HTML tags they wrote their website with :) (another good reason is, before I caught the Python-bug, I was coding JS all day :) )

Anyway, thanks again for your explanation!

I know some (adult) people who are itching to get into (video) game design. The first thing I always tell them is "Learn to program. Start with Python." Then I point them to PyGame to let them get started building the kinds of programs they set out to build, quickly.

This despite Scheme being my favorite programming language, and the one I "think" in. But Python really is the micro BASIC of the 21st century. It's the best "type commands at it and see what happens" language for beginners. Not to diminish its obvious appeal to professionals, of course.

I'm with you, but it has to be a choice based on each parent's values. I personally LOVE video games, but my 2 year old hasn't even seen one yet, and I'm not trying to get her into them any time soon. Especially with TV I think there is plenty of time for kids to learn about it later, and they likely will not need my help to do so. Kids aren't missing anything by not playing games / watching TV, but if they spend too much of their time doing either of those they will miss out. My biggest concern is that I do not want media robbing my kids of their childhood.

Yeah, that's what I mean. I am sympathetic to onemoreact's opinion above that gaming does imbue the child with a useful mastery over abstract/virtual environments and activities, and that those skills are growing more important as we humans augment ourselves with technology. I just think that 2 is probably too young; those benefits are almost certainly going to accrue even if the child never touches a video game until, say, 5.

There's a good TED talk where they go into the differences in language processing in a child of 12 months vs 15 months. Infants and very young children are doing so fucking much to deal with learning the basic rules of the real world, and how to process human language. (One of the notable things is that American children exposed to a real human speaking Chinese to them on a regular basis were able to differentiate the sounds of Chinese as well as Chinese kids; those in control groups exposed to video of people speaking Chinese didn't fare any better than regular American kids.)

I feel like the awesome and mysterious stuff going on in the child's mind at that age in order to come to grips with the real world, in its awesome complexity, is too important to be displaced by addictive recreational activities that can just as well come later. I don't want them to become masters of the small and limited worlds in which games exist, at the expense of a diminished mastery of the intricacies and awesome breadth of the actual world we live in.

Languages are near and dear to my heart, so if anybody else is looking for that TED talk, here it is:

https://www.ted.com/talks/patricia_kuhl_the_linguistic_geniu...

> don't any other people here think 2-year-old kids shouldn't be playing iPad games at all?

I'd be surprised if there were (m)any people who think a 2 year-old should not use an iPad "at all".

I guess the jury is still out since my children are 6 and 22 months but so far the iPad seems like a spectacular device for them...certainly better than books. My son has been playing memory games, alphabet, numbers, spanish, songs, angry birds, plants v zombies, drawing, facetime, pattern matching, etc, etc, etc. I'm not sure how this is going to end up badly.

We don't have a TV in our house, but we do have iPads. I would argue that an iPad is a much better TV - given the right app, it can really help a child sit down, focus, and learn things under their own steam, without that Brave New World programming that comes from most TV sets.

Its a matter of balance, though. My kids get tons of time with the blocks and marbles (we play "kügel-bahn" like mad in our Austrian household - a form of "real-world" Marble Madness) but then we're also partial to a little Pacman now and then. The kids love both options, but given the choice, and if the sun is shining, they'd much rather be outside kicking dirt and climbing trees. The point is: engage your kids, and don't ever leave them alone watching TV. That is pure evil.

it can really help a child sit down, focus, and learn things under their own steam, without that Brave New World programming that comes from most TV sets.

Hyperfocus is a symptom of ADHD.

A single sentence is not enough evidence to diagnose someone with a mental illness.

Absolutely, which is why I didn't say mere "focus." Just something to be aware of when deciding the benefits of a technology.

If it were up to total strangers, our kids would have been medicated into zombie-mode already. No thanks!

I'm just making an observation.

ADHD is a load of crap, and diagnosis of it is a purely western endeavour with very little actual merit.

> ADHD is a load of crap, and diagnosis of it is a purely western endeavour with very little actual merit.

With all due respect, I must ask: have you ever interacted with an individual diagnosed with (severe) ADHD?

Also, please clarify: are you claiming that those whom have been diagnosed with ADHD aren't sick or that they've been incorrectly diagnosed?

I appreciate your time and look forward to your responses on this matter.

My opinions are irrelevant against the backdrop of the collective mainstream agreement about 'the way things are', but I will say this: I think anyone getting offended about the opinion that ADHD, and the mental-health industry in general, are a load of crap .. needs to take a vacation somewhere less supportive of decadent navel-gazing.

Thank you, L. Ron.

You're welcome, Herr Doktor.

> My opinions are irrelevant against the backdrop of the collective mainstream agreement about 'the way things are', but I will say this: I think anyone getting offended about the opinion that ADHD, and the mental-health industry in general, are a load of crap .. needs to take a vacation somewhere less supportive of decadent navel-gazing.

I never claimed to be offended by your statements, but as an individual with ADHD, I'm interested in exploring this further.

In particular, I'm interested in the treatment(s) you reckon'll help the most with my symptoms. If you'd like, we can arrange a one-on-one IM session to discuss them, as these matters require individual attention, rather than broad generalizations over a particular (diagnosed) group.

I, once again, appreciate your time and look forward to your responses on this matter.

2 is too young to be doing it regularly, but once in a while is fine. It's the passivity, the two-dimensionality, setting them up with a need for constant entertainment.

Also, let's not pretend it's ok because it's educational. Everything is educational when you're 2. You get a better education making a salad chopping cucumber and carrots with a crinkle cutter than playing an iPad game.

My kids are 11 and 8.

On salad chopping vs iPad game: why not do both?

My son prepares tiramisus, sushis etc with us, and he watched the recipes on the iPad :)

Then I definitely agree on the "constant entertainment" point: I'm doing my best to ensure he knows to "do nothing" a bit each day.

Over-stimulating is something I'm very careful about!

>I'm doing my best to ensure he knows to "do nothing" a bit each day. //

Could you expand on this and be specific please?

It's very different from TV. Anecdotal, but:

My two-year old loves to push buttons. Remote controls, toys, any buttons with some feedback (and many without) are fair game. On iPad/iPhone, spends as much time on any typing app watching letters appear as he does on a game (only tried a game or two). Trickiest bit really is getting him out of whatever menu he wanders into - author was dead-on there.

TV he'll watch for 10-15 minutes and wander/play with something else, sometimes glancing up when something catches his attention.

I'm with you that with either device these are doses of 15-20 minutes not "babysitting." But "at all" is extreme.

Spot on observations. Your mother did it right. Do the same thing for your child.

We do something similar with our 20-mo old. We're less hardcore about the TV^WNetflix thing than your mother. If he wants to watch Eeebee or Old MacDonanld he tells us and we let him (within reason).

About 4 weeks ago, he learned to play with Duplo building blocks (which we've had for several months), and he almost never asks to watch TV now. We estimate he used to watch about 6 hrs/week before.

I feel that with the TV watching, that cable TV with commercials is worse than something like Netflix with no-commercials.

The iPad is just a tool. It depends on how you use it.

My personal experience (Android Tablet user/iPod touch user) here.

a) The iPod touch keeps my daughter occupied whilst we are waitig for food. Do I really want my 3 year old daughter getting restless in restaurant and annoying everyone else? The parameters are set such that i) iPod touch usage stops once the food arrives and ii) Drawing only (because there is no sound). It allows her to explore her creativity

b) Flash cards - My 3 year old plays this on her own and learns how to spell through this

c) Photo albums on the iPod touch - She proudly takes her own pictures and has a great time relating her pictures and experience to other people. IMHO, this is great way for her to open up her otherwise shy nature

d) Learning the motion of writing letters and numbers even before she can hold a pencil properly

e) Nursery Rhymes on the iPod touch. She loves it

There are no-no of course. Some of them are a) No TV shows on the iPod touch b) No games on the iPod touch (except Angry Birds, which is for the father's entertainment) c) No pop music

OK, let me help you with my personal case related to this:

I have two handicapped children. One of whom is severely handicapped and even at age 18 has a mental age of around 6. I would make every argument given in this article and then some. The most "fun" I've had with an iPad is when she was placed recently in a group home and I had to protect it against all sorts of things she accidentally does, as well as underpaid staffers (not my decision there by the way) who may well want to play with it when she's at school.

Other "child" is around 20 and mainly has the issues you would normally associate with Tourette's. Guess how many of these arguments still hold water given his problems with fine motor control and tendency to react based on impulse?

Now I think that shows that whether you feel a 2 year old should use an iPad (and regardless of whether you think they should they probably will), I think the article makes a case that certainly expands well to anyone with usability limitations.

We recently implemented a policy for my 6 year old that consists of "you may watch 30 minutes of TV per day for each book [of unspecified length] that you read that day."

So far he hasn't started reading more books, but he's started playing outside / imaginatively more. Even though it didn't have 100% the desired effect, I love the outcome still.

You are over generalizing by blaming an entire medium. There is very appropriate content for children on iPad and on TV and there is very inappropriate content for children in some books.

Granted, the nature of the medium plays a role, there is probably a much higher likelihood of bad / non-stimulating content on TV than in books. However, given that the iPad can act as a book, it logically follows it should have good content as well.

> I'm convinced that watching TV is harmful to a child's intellectual development

Is the TV having a negative impact? Or is the child just suffering because they arent having a positive impact from other experiences? I think an hour or so in front of a good educational (in the broad sense) TV show, game or iPad app could be great, but repeated days with no other stimulation/interaction is the real problem.

I'm thinking my kids won't use any tech until they can read. What good does it do them otherwise, anyway? As a toy for a few minutes, perhaps. I think people use tv/ipad/etc as a way to avoid having to interact with their kids for long periods of time. That's how it works for a lot of people I know.

Time spent on an iPad by a 2-4 year old is time spent not learning more important things.

Do you think it's okay to read picture books with your 2 year old child, or use other simple interactive devices like a See 'n Say [0]? If not, why? If so, what distinction do you see between those and supervised iPad usage? It's not like a 2 year old is going to be using the iPad unsupervised and accidentally browsing to inappropriate material as is possible with unsupervised TV viewing.

[0] Those circular toys that play animal sounds. http://www.fisher-price.com/fp.aspx?st=10&e=sandslanding

My nine month old, started playing with my phone at 2 months old.

We let her play with pictures and she LOVES the xylophone app along with the Piano app.

I think you will find it much different reality than you actually think.

Similar story, my 14 month old mocks everything we do. If I knock on a door, he knocks on the door, if I sneeze, he'll try to make a sneeze sound, if I fold laundry, well...he'll unfold it and scatter it on the floor, but you get the idea. But since we use the phone, he wants to use the phone, there's no avoiding it.

I don't see the big issue, it's something in his environment that he's curious about. It's not a direct physical danger, I let him explore it.

Our 17 month old is similarly into imitation. Kids have fantastic imaginations. Our 17 month old couldn't care whether it is a phone or an old cardboard box that he is holding up to his ear. The advantage of a cardboard box is that it seamlessly transforms into a car or a ball on demand!

Check out the book "Not a box". Utterly charming, its a favorite of my 2yr old.

I'm all about apps that promote early learning (pre-school) type of content.

I built one of such apps (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/toddler-trainer-hd/id49632353...) and took extra care to tuck away all menus and settings in a triple-clicked menu, so toddlers can't access it.

Interesting article and suggestions. I'll have to incorporate a few of the ideas.

>And there's an established body of evidence to support that

I don't think there is any evidence to support that at all. Do you have a source?

Recent HN discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3126020

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