Letters: Letters: Technology and Toddlers

To the Editor:

Re “Where Apps Become Child’s Play” (Prototype, July 8), a look at how Fisher-Price and others are coming up with new products:

Call me a Luddite, but isn’t it enough that we have grade-school children with cellphones? Must we inculcate technology in babies, too?

I delight when my 3-year-old grandson “delivers” orange juice and milk to me in the same Fisher-Price plastic carrier and bottles his father played with in the ’70s. “Do you want chocolate or plain, Nonnie?” he asks. He grins as I pretend to consume it. We make a human connection.

But now that same company has developed the Laugh & Learn Apptivity Case (also available for iPods and iPhones) and is shown testing it with a 9-month-old.

Technology has its place, but it will never replace human interaction. Let’s keep it out of the nursery.

Lois A. Engel

Washington, July 8