Consumer Group Calls for Recall on iPad-Equipped Newborn 'Apptivity' Seat

Wow. Wall-e is truly becoming real.

Not sure I agree with their reasoning...

My first thought (mainly because it said recall) was that there was concern that the iPad could fall and hurt the kid. Oh well. I guess I was just not so attention seeking and pious in my views. I'll try harder next time.

Personally, I think we need to prepare our kids for the future. When they are "40"

(http://www.amazon.com/CTA-Digital-iPotty-Activity-Seat/dp/B00B3G8UGQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386711543&sr=8-1&keywords=iPad+potty)

It's not meant to left there 24/7. Over reacting much? Distract the baby for a hour or two. Even a screensaver like app would excite a baby.

Nearly 2000 signatures? Thats pretty pathetic to be honest.

Let the market decide.

My first thought when seeing this earlier was that there would be a recall for the iPad coming dislodged from the arm and hitting the baby in the chair.

My wife is due with our first child in just a couple months and there's no way we would buy this thing. All a baby needs are some dangling, brightly colored objects to paw at. If I had to guess, it probably helps develop coordination. Staring at a screen from the time you pop out of the womb sets you up for a lifetime of sedentary behavior. I feel like too many parents babysit their kids nowadays with an iPad and/or a Netflix subscription.

When my daughter gets older she can use Macs (if they still exist, yikes) and iPads but there will be limits. I had my NES when I was little, and today I have my Xbox One and iPad—but my mom was smart enough to make me go outside and play with my friends. Our neighborhood wasn't exactly poor—maybe lower middle class at best. So with a lack of shiny new toys we got pretty creative with coming up with imaginative games to play. Later on in middle school the internet was developing, and I was able to use it to learn lots of stuff about how to do graphic design and program apps and websites, which led to my future career in app and web design. So I can see the benefits of both. I think a good balance of spare time (outside of homework and chores) will be about ⅓ on devices and ⅔ outside playing, or inside if it's cold playing with legos or reading. Though I bet a lot of the reading will be done on devices, so that might have to be adjusted.

I hope iOS continues to add new and refine existing parental controls, especially filters for Safari. Or use TouchID to set daily time limits—especially for certain app categories such as games. Their fingerprint won't work, say, after 2 hours of use until the next day. That could be overridden by the parent, of course. But could keep them from sneaking in extra device time here and there.

I'd love to hear from other (responsible) parents on how they manage the time spent on devices vs. other types of play. I feel like a lot of it will be trial and error, and it probably depends on the kid.

Please, shouldn't this be parent decision? I'd be complaining more about the price.

this is insane.
babys now see angry birds for the first time, instead of real birds in the sky. this is ridiculous.

Wow. Wall-e is truly becoming real.

I was going to say that it looks like something out of a Terry Gilliam movie.

Aside from all the gaping flaws in the "let the market decide" or "don't buy it if you don't like it" arguments already made, there's one I didn't notice: When a product is targeted specifically at infants or small children, the person doing the deciding is not the one who has the potential to be harmed by it if there is indeed something fundamentally wrong with the product. In some cases, in fact, the benefit may be to the actual person doing the buying, while the harm may be passed on to the infant.

Smoking around an infant, for example. The parent may enjoy it, but the infant has no choice and can be substantially damaged by the act.

Or take it a step farther--let's say there was a legal, over-the-counter sleep aid drug for infants. A lazy parent could, for their own benefit, just keep their infant drugged up to keep the kid from making too much noise. This would almost certainly cause irreparable damage to the child's development. The child has no ability to make a decision about this one way or the other--it is forced on them by the parent.

Any parent can abuse their child, but laws exist for the protection of children specifically because they are not able to do so themselves, and must rely completely on their parents to raise them. If lazy parents start strapping their kids into a seat with a colored light show on an iPad in front of their face so they can go watch a movie--being told it's "educational" while, let's say hypothetically it actually causes stunted cognitive development--that ranges from either criminally false marketing of a product that is explicitly harmful to infants if used as intended, to child neglect if the parent understands the hazards of it and uses it anyway.

If, indeed, doctors have determined you shouldn't have your kid with a screen in front of their face for any significant amount of time before the age of 2 lest it cause some sort of permanent issue, then a product designed to do exactly that should not exist, any more than "baby vodka" or My First E-Cig.

I don't see anything wrong with this. It's up to parents to decide how they want to raise the baby.