Giving iPads to babies is tantamount to child abuse because it is ‘playing Russian roulette’ with their development, a psychologist has claimed.

Dr Richard House warned that devices such as tablets are ‘unnecessary, inappropriate and harmful’ for young children.

The former senior lecturer in early childhood at Winchester University believes parents should ‘proceed with caution’ to avoid a ‘developmental catastrophe’.

Dr House, who founded the organisation Early Childhood Action (ECA) and is one of the early years advisors supporting the Save Childhood Movement's Too Much Too Soon Campaign, spoke out amid mounting evidence of youngsters’ addiction to screens.

Writing in Nursery World magazine, he said suggestions babies and toddlers should use iPads were ‘deeply disturbing’.

He said electronic images lead to an ‘indirect and distorted experience of the world’.

‘The real, human-relational and natural world is challenging for all human beings to understand,’ he said.

‘To confuse children when they have hardly begun to get a handle on this world, by introducing them to virtual, techno-magical worlds, is surely an absurd reversal of the natural order of things.’

Dr House pointed to the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendation that children under two should not use screen-based technology at all – and that older children’s access should be limited.

He also cited Dr Lee Hadlington, an ICT researcher at De Montfort University, Leicester, who recently admitted ‘we don’t know what’s actually happening to our cognition when we are using this technology and that’s the important thing’. Dr House wrote: ‘If this is the case with adults, how much more is it relevant to young children whose brains are still at very early stages of development.

 ‘It seems that the arrogance of modern technology (together with ruthless commercialism) knows no bounds. On the basis of what I’ve argued here, giving iPads to babies is tantamount to child abuse.

‘It’s akin to playing Russian roulette with children’s development.’