I should be clearer. My point in that sentence was that what I observe kids doing with iPads is not drawing or writing or coding or making music or reading books or ..., which might be meaningfully comparable to drawing with crayons. Almost everything I see is games and videos, and I am not an expert or super careful observer but it seems like the tendency is toward games and videos that require little thinking and are designed to be maximally addictive.
I don’t mean that every kid who is sitting on the subway with an iPad also spends every moment at home doing the same.
But some of them unfortunately do spend lots of time at home glued to screens. I have multiple friends whose older kids have serious problems with TV, video game, social media, etc. habits, which start crowding out many other activities, with the parents not really knowing what to do about it because they don’t want to have a fight every day.
And some young kids who might not be on their video / game machine at home are doing it a lot in contexts where kids would have in the past either been engaged with the world or entertaining themselves. There is a vast difference between a 3-year-old riding around in a stroller looking at a smartphone vs. a 3-year-old walking around on their own feet looking at the world and talking to the adults walking with them.
These devices seem fine to break out occasionally when the parent desperately needs a break from demands on their attention. But there are kids using these devices for extended periods every day.
P.S. The same goes for adults: people should trade their smartphones for a book or a conversation with the person next to them or just some daydreaming from time to time.