While I don't necessarily disagree with the notion of minimizing television exposure this is starting to develop a smell of dogma.
The one thing we know about young kids is that in spite of our tendency to treat them like delicate petals they are actually incredibly robust and the idea that 30 minutes of well chosen television in a day can be so harmful that it outweighs the benefit of the tremendous relief it may give a parent to have this small amount of time to do other tasks - or god forbid, relax for a few minutes - seems crazy to me.
There are an awful lot of things in a modern house that are TV-like (big bright screen, moving images, sound) so is watching moving video on a computer or tablet screen better or worse than the same amount of TV?
Do the negative effects end the moment you can interact with what's on screen? How much do you have to interact with what's on screen, is there a threshold?
The way it's getting I could imagine people getting all cargo-cult with this thinking, eschewing their TV's & plonking their kids in front of the computer (to watch the same content) instead.
The one thing we know about young kids is that in spite of our tendency to treat them like delicate petals they are actually incredibly robust and the idea that 30 minutes of well chosen television in a day can be so harmful that it outweighs the benefit of the tremendous relief it may give a parent to have this small amount of time to do other tasks - or god forbid, relax for a few minutes - seems crazy to me.