Four small preschool children are sitting in a semi-circle around their teacher, in a large, bright room in a Georgian house in Bath. The nursery belongs to the Snapdragons chain, one of the first in the UK to offer iPads to its children soon after the tablet was launched in April 2010. The shelves are full of books, but the children are not looking at books. They are listening to their teacher, Amy Porter, read aloud an interactive story from an iPad about Zub the monster. The children bend towards the screen as if its glow were pulling them closer. They creep forward, the circle tightens and the iPad disappears from view beneath four heads of supremely shiny hair. Their engagement is absolute. They are kneeling, bobbly undersides of socks poking out from beneath their bottoms, feet as neatly folded and intently composed as adult hands at rest in a lap.
Since their launch, tablets have become increasingly popular in preschool and early-years learning. And, in growing numbers, parents are buying them for home use. John Lewis predicted that it would sell one tablet every 15 seconds in the runup to Christmas. By December, the Tesco Hudl had become so hard to find it was selling on eBay for £180 instead of £119. Then Aldi joined the budget price war with the launch of a rival tablet for £80.
If you are an adult in possession of both a tablet and children, the children are likely to take possession of the tablet. According to Ofcom's latest report on the subject, household ownership of tablet computers has more than doubled from 20% in 2012 to 51%; where there are children in those households, they tend to be users too. When the Common Sense Report on media use by children aged up to eight in the US was published last autumn, it found that as many children (7%) have their own tablets as adults did two years ago (8%). Given the fivefold rise in adult ownership of tablets in the US since 2011, it seems reasonable to expect a similarly large leap in the number of children owning and using tablets by 2015.
But the strength of children's engagement with the devices can sometimes appear sinister, even cultish. There are countless YouTube videos of toddlers sliding thwarted fingers along the pages of magazines, trying to unlock them. One friend claims her child's first word was not "Mum" or "Dad" but "iPad". In March the tabloids reported that a four-year-old girl was receiving treatment as "Britain's youngest iPad addict". The clinical psychologist Linda Blair, who notes an increase in parents asking her about their children's tablet usage, says she would never hand her iPad to a toddler. But many parents happily do just that, while others are so concerned about the impact of technology on their children that they leave the room to use their mobile. Which is right? Do parents who choose to limit or deny access to tablets deprive their children of technological intelligence, or are they keeping them safe from an as yet unknown harm?