I appreciate the criticism, but I really don't feel that my child's cognitive development has been devalued in any way due to his occasionally being able to communicate with the Echo. The vast majority of his communication is with other people - which he loves participating in. I'll concede that these devices do probably attempt to sell us stuff, but up to this point, I have not seen anything from the Echo that I would consider nefarious or that seems like it might cause harm to my child's growth. In fact, my experience is that the Echo is basically harmless, especially compared to the behavioral problems that I've seen in children who watch TV or Youtube extensively (which I do not allow).