The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC), directed by Susan Linn, Ed.D. ’90, has filed complaints with the Federal Trade Commission against mobile apps for babies marketed as educational by toymaker Fisher-Price and software developer Open Solutions, according to yesterday’s New York Times. Linn founded the CCFC in 2000 “as an activist response to the rapidly escalating problem of commercialism encroaching on the lives of children.” (Read more about her work in “Toddling Consumers,” from the Harvard Magazine archives.)
The Bits article by Natasha Singer in the Times noted:
As mobile devices supplant television as entertainment vehicles for younger children, media and software companies increasingly see opportunities in the baby learning app market. But the complaint to the F.T.C. by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, the same nonprofit group that helped prompt “Baby Einstein” to backtrack from its educational claims, challenges the idea that such apps provide more than simple entertainment value.
Linn, an instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, told the Times that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that parents avoid screen media for children younger than two years old. Yet the current push to market baby learning programs in mobile formats could increase the amount of time infants spend in front of screens, and affect their brain development. “This is one of our main concerns and why we take this industry on,” she explained.
