According to a small survey, about 70 percent of parents allow very small children, ranging in age from 6 months to 4 years old, play with mobile devices without supervision. About 65 percent of these same parents admit to using mobile devices as a way to distract or placate upset children, and about a third said their kids actually liked to use more than one device at a time.

“That’s huge,” says Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a professor of psychology at Temple University. “If children are sitting by themselves glued to digital candy, we simply don’t know what the consequences are for their early social development.” (New York Times)