In my role as a freelance journalist and blogger, I often get sent press releases about new services and products for children, from food, games, clothing, books and medical products it would seem that there is no end to the 'stuff' that brands can market to us vulnerable, product-hungry parents.

Over the last twelve months, I've been increasingly contacted about apps. From apps to monitor the number of calories you're consuming each day during your pregnancy, to apps which encourage children to brush their teeth for the required amount of time to apps which help you to teach your children to read and write, apps are clearly becoming the new trend in the vast product range targeted at parents.

Some are purely gimmicks and others may have some real benefit and value to us, but I can't help thinking that we will soon have stopped parenting our children entirely and will just leave everything to apps. Do we really need a cartoon rabbit to tell our children to brush their teeth? Could we not do the job equally well ourselves? Do we really need the characters in the stories we read to our children to move around on the page and make noises when they are part of the action - or is it OK to leave that to our children's imaginations? Do we really have to spoon-feed them all this endless over-stimulation?

While I'm not denying that an emergency bout of Angry Birds (which now has over 10 million downloads) has its place in an airport lounge while you wait for the 'Flight Delayed' sign to turn into a 'Boarding Now' sign, I'm just not comfortable with all these apps dominating our lives. For the most part they seem to be simply unnecessary and at best they are a temporary distraction. I accept that I may be in the minority here, so please forgive me for being a luddite.

Now, if there was an app to get your child to eat their dinner without complaining, I may be converted. Until then, I'm happy to be app free. What about you?

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