Sounds like a lot of these apps are simple games to give kids practice recognizing letters and how groups of letters work together. But I'm not sure why that's

Sounds like a lot of these apps are simple games to give kids practice recognizing letters and how groups of letters work together. But I'm not sure why that's a problem--as the article says, kids have been learning to read this way since the Stone Age. And if parents are downloading the apps, do they really need expert guidance on what age or developmental stage they're suited for? Can't they just say, "oh, we were singing the ABC song with Johnny today--let's download a couple of alphabet games and see how he likes them?"