Entertainment

iWant one!

What the tech! Some parents are parking their kids in front of iPads to keep them quiet. (Caitlin Thorne Hersey)

Betty Draper would kill for an iPad. The “Mad Men” housewife known for snapping “Go watch TV!” at her children would find an even better electronic babysitter in today’s hottest gadget of choice.

Originally marketed as a sophisticated e-reader and multimedia toy for adults, Apple’s iPad is finding its true calling as a pricey diversion for cranky, restless tots.

“I’ve been out to dinner several times recently where I noticed parents at nearby tables who had kids with iPads,” says Brooklyn blogger Erica Reitman, who writes for the blog F – – ked in Park Slope.

“Those little suckers did not make a peep all night. As far as I’m concerned, I’d like to ensure every child within the borders of Park Slope gets their own iPad, pronto!”

With 30,000 apps and a simple touch-screen interface that even a 2-year-old can figure out, the iPad seems tailor-made to entertain and educate New York’s youngest generation, which, after all, will be growing up in a world dominated by mobile and touch-screen technology. One market-research firm, Gartner, predicts 50 percent of computer sales for kids 15 and under will be touch screen by 2015 — as opposed to the 2 percent they accounted for in 2009.

Although kids’ fascination with Apple’s touch-screen iPhone is hardly news, the up-and-coming iPad is the real gadget to watch. And because it’s interactive, the iPad holds an obvious intellectual advantage over television: If kids are actually drawing with an art app or turning “book” pages or playing games, at least they’re not staring slack-jawed at the idiot box, right? (Or could it possibly be that iPads are just hipper than TVs?)

Computer World magazine has nominated the gadget as children’s toy of the year. “I believe that in the under-12 market, the iPad will dominate without any real competition and will completely change children’s culture,” wrote Mike Elgan. And with a large number of iPad buyers falling into the parent-age category — one Yahoo survey this summer found 36 percent of users in the 35 to 44 age range — it makes sense that many of them will fall into small hands.

One iPad parent is 32-year-old Jersey City resident Edwin Iskander, developer of the Infant Arcade series of apps, the latest of which is “Logan and the Upside-Down Sea.” His two children, a 2-year-old son and 7-month-old daughter, are already familiar with the device, he says. “They love the apps,” says Iskander.

“Initially, my son wouldn’t know how to read the books or anything, but he’d be engaged with the characters and the on-screen animation. He could quickly understand you could interact with the device by touching it.”

Iskander believes his kids’ early exposure to the iPad may give them a leg up as they get older. “The future is going to go this way,” he says, “so they’re going to have to adapt. I personally feel it will give them an advantage. I mean, versus someone who’s never touched a computer until they were 5 or 7, they’re definitely going to have an advantage in terms of knowing how to interact with these digital devices.”

That said, Iskander and his wife have recently pared down the amount of time their son spends on the iPad.

“He’s getting a little too good for our taste. It’s scary,” Iskander admits. “He can unlock [the iPad], go to apps [and] he’ll know that it’s on mute and he’ll know how to adjust the volume.”

On YouTube, online videos abound of adorable 2- and 3-year-olds dexterously working the touch screen. Even celebrity toddler Suri Cruise reportedly has her own iPad; back in June, the 4-year-old daughter of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes was spotted playing with the gadget, while her parents dined, at West Village restaurant Il Cantinori.

Of course, there are occasional incidents of kiddie iPadding gone awry — like the 3-year-old girl in Sydney, Australia, whose mother discovered she had purchased $50 worth of apps.

One mother The Post spoke to, 39-year-old technology writer Tobey Grumet Segal, says she has to make sure her 4½-year-old son doesn’t buy any movies when he’s on the iPad. “The first thing he tries to do is go to Netflix and download videos,” she says.

More ominously, some parents and experts are sounding the alarm over what they see as an abdication of actual parenting — or an outright hazard to children’s developmental health.

“These technologies are changing kids’ brains,” warns educational psychologist Jane M. Healy, author of “Your Child’s Growing Mind,” who says parents who rely heavily on the iPad for kiddie entertainment are messing with a fundamental growing and learning process.

“A child who is sitting glued — and they do get glued — to one of these electronic screens is not actually manipulating things with his or her hands, not doing something original, and not using his or her brain the way they would be when doing something active and creative,” says Healy.

“This is a critical period in the brain. And these screens are so reductive — they reduce their experience to a very low level of brain function.”

What’s more, she says, kids who spend their formative years staring at a screen and flipping from app to app instead of, say, playing on the playground, could develop severely stunted attention spans — which may cause serious problems as they get older. “These are people who can’t settle down, who can’t hold a job — they don’t have any self-regulation at all,” Healy says. “They flip from thing to thing and can’t plan, can’t organize, have trouble with social relationships.”

For God’s sake, frazzled parents may argue, they’re not hooking their kids up to the device forever, just using it occasionally to head off a tantrum or distract a hyperactive child in a challenging situation.

“I use it for travel, and I’ll let them use it if we’re in a restaurant and we’ve been there a while and they’re about to melt down,” says Segal, whose other son is 2.

But she knows it’s a slippery slope, and worries about negative effects. Segal says she actually thinks the iPad might be more insidious than TV. “I feel like it’s a matter of keeping their attention span longer. To be honest, I’d rather have my son at least watch a show all the way through and pay attention to it. When he uses the iPad, it’s a couple of minutes and then he does something else.”

Other health concerns are cropping up, too. Last week, a study out of Stanford University claimed iPad screens can become germ cesspools. And some experts worry about the little-researched effect of spending so much time in close proximity to a wireless transmitter. Dr. Devra Davis, who wrote “Disconnect,” about the dangers of cellphone radiation, has similar fears about other mobile devices — especially when it comes to kids. “We’re basically conducting an experiment on ourselves and our children,” she says. “My concern is that microwave energy is not something we want to have around young children. Studies with this in animals have shown that you can create biochemical markers that . . . increase the risk of cancer.”

However, a recent article in Scientific American countered Davis’ claims. “Physics shows that it is virtually impossible for cellphones to cause cancer,” wrote Michael Shermer.

Another concern, says 42-year-old mom Liz Gumbinner, creator of the blog Cool Mom Tech, is a kind of Pavlovian training with the iPad — as soon as they see that blue screen, they chill out.

“I don’t like seeing kids in restaurants who are so easily pacified with technology,” says Gumbinner, whose children are 3 and 5. “I think, you know, ideally you teach your kids how to sit still and behave in a restaurant. I’m proud that my kids know how to do that without electronic distraction.”

Tots Ready for App time

Drawing Pad, $1.99

drawingpadapp.com

A “mobile art studio” which includes virtual crayons, markers, paintbrushes, stickers and more.

Fish School HD, $1.99

duckduckmoosedesign.com

Schools of fish become numbers, letters, shapes and colors.

AlphaBaby, free

littlepotatosoftware.com

Select, move, adjust and listen to letters of the alphabet. Pics and audio can be customized.

Smule Magic

Piano, 99 cents

magicpiano.smule.com

Tunes can be played on spiral keyboards or beams of light; group-play version available on Piano Roulette.

Alice for the iPad, $8.99

atomicantelope.com

Abridged (52 pages) version of Lewis Carroll’s classic, with illustrations animated so kids can move them.

123 World Geography HD Coloring Book, $1.99

kidcalc.wordpress.com

Teaches letters and numbers in English, Spanish, French and German; features live Google maps, music and animation.

Star Walk, $2.99

vitotechnology.com

Astronomy guide includes star spotter feature that uses GPS to show which constellations should be visible.

Math Bingo, 99 cents

abcya.com

Uses various levels of math problems to complete numbered bingo boards.

The Cat in the Hat, $3.99

oceanhousemedia.com

Animated adaptation of Dr. Seuss classic has three settings: “Auto Play,” “Read to Me” and “Read It Myself.”

Super Why!, $2.99

pbskids.org/mobile

Collection of interactive reading games uses main characters from the PBS series of the same title.