iPhone is the new stuffed toy

While most adults admit they cannot do without their cellphones for more than a couple of hours, kids, some as young as three, are getting sucked in too. The best pacifier to hand out to a bawling kid, the mobile phone is turning into a favourite toy children are finding tough to let go off

When Nina Fernandez, a Mumbai ophthalmologist could not find her iPhone, the last place she checked was her two-and-a-half year old's toy room. As she opened the dark room late that evening, a strange faint light emanated from a corner. The glow from her iPhone screen lit up her son's face as he watched it transfixed.
This is not an unusual moment.

Veer Sinh busy with his mother Nisha's iPhone. Pics/Anuja Gupta

As cell phones revolutionise the way we communicate, they are also slowly turning into pacifiers; those that allow parents to dine quietly or watch television in peace. Very young kids are enjoying themselves, tapping on the wonderfully bright display screen while the slightly older lot is fiddling with apps and the Internet. Is the cell phone becoming this age's stuffed toy?

Fernandez says, "It started a year ago. He, like all toddlers, would cry or demand attention. I would try everything to keep him quietu00a0-- switch on the TV, pass him his toys, but they wouldn't distract him for long. On casually handing him my phone one day, he was hooked. Now, a year later, he asks me for the cell phone."

One of the reasons behind this strange attraction is simplicity of use. The iPhone, for instance, has become a runaway success because apart from cutting edge technology, it's easy enough for dummies to operate. It's only natural then that technologically unaware adults and even toddlers can figure it out.

Nisha Sinh, a hairstylist from Malad says her three year-old son Veer operates her iPhone better than her. "Every other day, he shows me a new feature on my phone." Veer, a student of preschool, fidgets with Sinh's phone about half an hour every day. Sometimes, he isn't too happy about returning it to his mom. But she has worked out a dealu00a0-- every time the phone rings or there's a message received, she must get it back.

And with phone companies targetting kids themselves, it's only getting complicated. Plenty of apps are available in the market, all of them labelled 'educational'. Some of these teach toddlers letters of the English alphabet, while others enhance memory through puzzles. Veer plays memory-boosting puzzles and listens to Humpty Dumpty among a bunch of favourite nursery rhymes. "When I was that age, I don't remember being that smart," Sinh shrugs.

Voices of concern question whether it's possible to 'learn' while sitting alone with a phone instead of listening and interacting with a real bunch of people. It's perhaps as dangerous as staring into a TV screen for hours. France has already banned kids under three from watching endless hours of television.

The warning is based on a 2008 ruling by the High Audiovisual Council that stated: Television viewing hurts the development of children under three years and poses a certain number of risks, encouraging passivity, slow language acquisition, over-excitedness, troubles with sleep and concentration as well as dependence on screens.

In August last year, Dr Aric Sigman, an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society proposed a TV ban for toddlers and severely rationed viewing for other youngsters to protect their health and family life. TV viewing is linked to ills ranging from obesity and heart disease to poor grades, inattentiveness and lack of empathy, he told an EU parliamentary working group on the 'quality of childhood'.

Lopamudra Bhowmik, a homemaker and mother of two sons, believes that the phone has the potential to become addictive too. Her seven-year old son Vedaant Achuthan has already finished reading HG Well's science fiction classic The Invisible Man and another titled The Art Of War, on her LG phone's ebook reader application.
u00a0
"He uses the phone to read and play games but I don't allow him to use it for long. It can become addictive. For instance, when no one is around to monitor him, like when he is at his grandparents' home, he forgets how time passes, fiddling with the phone for hours."

Juhu-based psychiatrist Anjali Chhabria believes mobile phone addiction levels in tweens and teens are on the rise because they have used it incessantly when they were younger. She was surprised to see an eight month-old baby in a pram at the airport fiddling with an iPad, while the father stood nearby.

"Recently, a nine year-old boy whose mum and dad are separating spoke with me. He was upset that his father ignored him. He said, 'Why can't dad call me on my phone?' Cellphone usage and ownership has become so common that kids think it incorrect that someone does not contact them on their own phone."

Hyderabad firm makes phone for five year-olds

SatTracx, a company based in Hyderabad, launched the SatTracx Child Phone two months ago. Aimed at children aged five to 13, the phone is more a safety device. With the press of a single button, the child can send an SOS SMS to any of four preconfigured numbers.

A child cannot call anyu00a0 number other than one authorised by the parent, and the parent can locate the child through GPS and Cell tower triangulation technologies. The phone does not have a display screen or games, and hence cannot distract the child. Phani Madhav, a marketing executive of SatTracx says, "After speaking with parents and pre-school authorities, we realised that there was a demand for such a phone through which parents could ensure their child's safety."

Radiation alert

While there has been no conclusive scientific evidence of health problems from the usage of cell phones, researchers and doctors worry that children could be more vulnerable to exposure from cell phones given their thinner skulls and still-developing brains.

The French government in 2009, was worried enough to ban the sale of cell phones designed for children under six years of age and disallowed any advertising of mobile phones directed at children under 12. According to a Swedish study, children and teenagers are five times more likely to get brain cancer from mobile phones, causing concern that there may be an epidemic of the disease for young people later in life.

The handbook

Your guide to the entertaining (& addictive) world of edu apps

>>u00a0WetWoo: The app pulls videos from YouTube and provides them in kid-friendly packages on the iPhone. The content available for viewing is determined according to the age range ufffd either 3-5, 6-8 or 9+. A child can watch anything from a Tom & Jerry cartoon to a documentary on Abraham Lincoln.

>> Spelling flash cards: This app makes it fun and easy to go over the alphabet phonetics, spelling and reading. With colourful illustrations and recorded audio for each letter, a child can learn how to recognise and sound out alphabet letters.

>> Pocket Zoo: The app streams live videos of animals at zoos around the world. It also adds extras like animal facts, animal sounds and the ability to snap photos from the feeds and save them.