Sometimes it seems the internet is a lot like red wine. One week an expert warns that it’s terrible for you. The next comes a study proving its health benefits.

The latest among the internet doomsayers is German neuroscientist Dr Manfred Spitzer.

His argument is that “young children spend too much time using a computer, their brain development suffers and the deficits are irreversible”, writes Claudia Ehrenstein in the German daily Die Welt.

All of which has roused digital denizens to “vent their wrath across Germany”.

Spitzer reckons that using the internet “inevitably has a negative effect on learning”, stunting the developing brain’s ability to solve problems, reports Ehrenstein, in a piece translated at WorldCrunch.

Spitzer wants computers banned from early education. “In reality, using digital media in kindergarten or primary school is actually a way of getting children addicted,” he tells the paper, adding that he “believes it would be better if kids learned finger games to help them deal with numbers, instead of relying on computers”. But, surely, there’s an app for that.