Baby Shaker: A Fun Form Of Pretend Child Abuse!

It appears Apple has pulled an iPhone app that outraged child advocates and, well, makes you kind of queasy to read about.

Called “Baby Shaker,” the 99-cent app, developed by Sikalosoft, made iPhones cry incessantly like a baby while showing a charcoal drawing of a kid. How to comfort/quiet the needy squawker? You shake it. Hard. Ha, ha! So fun … it’s a crying baby and you shake it until the eyes become two red Xs … that’s hilari — oh, maybe not so much.

What’s weird is that Apple didn’t reject that app in the first place — they’ve rejected other violent ones. Oh, and ones with swear words. But Baby Shaker! Well, Baby Shaker had been available for download since Monday. Only now it’s been pulled so you’ll have to settle for something else.

Here’s what the critics say. From the LA Times and CNET:

“This horrible iPhone app will undoubtedly be downloaded thousands of times by others in that same young male demographic — the population group that is already statistically the most likely to shake babies,” Jennipher Dickens, communications director for the Sarah Jane Brain Foundation, said in the release. ” As a result of the child abuse my son endured in the form of shaken-baby syndrome, my son now has
irreversible brain damage.”