Is iPad bad for children?

[gunug]

I have a beloved family member that has an Autism spectrum problem; so bright it's scary!  She's been handed an iPad for a brief time by a friend of family and now she's very excited to get one and her mother is seeing things like this:

QUOTE

Amid warnings from some researchers that tablets can cause developmental difficulties and problems including autism or attention deficit disorder, experts at the forum recommended not rushing to judgment.

"Technology maybe fosters some things and dampens others," Rosemarie Truglio, from the children's TV producers Sesame Workshop, said. "It's definitely about balance."

Lisa Guernsey, director of the Early Education Initiative at the New American Foundation, said that critics blaming devices like the iPad for child developmental problems should differentiate "between a cause and an association."

http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/heal...ticle-1.1054449

[Xairbusdriver]

QUOTE

a cause and an association

NO! No! It's always "cause and effect!" An "association" is something you join! Everything else is caused by... uhmn, a CAUSE!!! iPads are EVIL, just like TV and Rock 'n Roll! Well, I have severe concerns about rap "music" but you know what I mean! Why do people keep trying to make life complicated?! Everything is so simple, black and white, left/right, Republican/Democrat, PC/Mac!

[tacit]

Last I heard, autism and ADD were both strongly linked to genetic variations in the human genome, so unless one is arguing that the iPad causes genetic mutation, it'd be difficult to say that it causes either one...