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Parent here. The problem is the battle you are up against when trying to limit screen time. When it is the iPad vs. anything else constructive or worthwhile, th

Parent here. The problem is the battle you are up against when trying to limit screen time. When it is the iPad vs. anything else constructive or worthwhile, the iPad is almost always going to win. The best minds of our generation have figured out how to addict us to screens and have succeeded. Moreover, as a parent, it is often a difficult and incessant struggle to monitor and control content (e.g., age inappropriate YouTube videos). And the large tech companies don’t seem interested in solving these problems. Just the opposite.

jacobolus 8y ago
It seems to me that a big part of the problem is parents’ screen time. Kids I see (disclaimer: mostly in the <5 years old range) desperately want to play with other people, but often are left bored while the adults / older kids around are stuck staring at their smartphones. Fertile ground to develop their own screen addictions. Instead of monitoring and controlling kids’ content, how about working with them on some physical projects, reading aloud, going for a hike, or even doing chores together?
- hrktb 8y ago
  I wonder how much time in average we got playing with our parents. I was in primary schoold in the 80s and I remember seeing my father 10 min before going to bed, my mother was mostly dealing with stuff (administrative tasks, house keeping, shopping, cooking, checking homeworks) and outside of Scrabble I don’t remember playing anything with her. We’d watch tv news or vapid tv drama together at best, rest of time I’d do whatever I wanted as long as it wasn’t hurting anyone nor illegal. Compared to that it seems to me parents nowadays are a lot more feeling guilty of not spending enough time with their kids, even as they spend a ton more in my opinion.
  - jacobolus 8y ago
    I imagine this varies a bit from person to person. My impression is that the best way to learn anything is with at least a significant amount of time spent deliberately practicing under expert supervision/tutoring. You want to be working at just the right difficulty, neither mindlessly repeating stuff that is too easy nor stuck on a project with too large a scope or too difficult prerequisites. Lots of “our time” (i.e. yours and mine) growing up in the 80s was surely wasted. I know I could have learned a whole lot more working 1:1 with an expert tutor/mentor instead of in an above average school class of 30 kids. I know some kids who had very high-touch mentorship and turned into real prodigies. (Of course, some others are pushed by controlling parents and feel resentful.) Even when it comes to extracurricular activities (like building stuff out of Legos, solving logic puzzles, cooking, playing sports, or whatever), I could have learned a whole lot more than I did if I wasn’t left mostly to my own devices, but had someone occasionally suggest challenging projects or show me some new ideas at my current level or fix up my misconceptions. And my parents surely spent far more time with me than average, especially in the first few years. I learned a great many things just fiddling around for hours and hours by myself, but most of that learning was grossly inefficient.
  - mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
    I’m about same age as you and I don’t remember spending much if any time with my parents. The same goes for all the kids I knew. Most of us kids played with each other or toys we had around the house. I spent a lot of time at my grandparents but even there nobody played with me. We did go to parks often so there was joint activities but they were very hands off. These days I am a father to a 1 year old and I’ve been spending a lot of time with him (work from home on my own schedule). My worry is that I will spend too much time with him as he grows up, and not leave enough space for him to develop on his own through exploration and individuality. Of course I haven’t had to deal with screen time yet and I realize that will be a serious challenge. My goal is to get rid of any smart devices by the time he is curious about them. We don’t own iPads or tablets in general and I don’t plan on buying any. I have no doubts I can curtail my own phone browsing usage but say the same for my wife who is constantly on hers.
- nstart 8y ago
  My god. This. As a father of one I constantly see this. I take my 2 year old son to the park regularly. I carry a small knapsack and leave the phone in it with it configured to ring only if my wife calls (basically customized priority notification settings). We have a great time. Sure he likes to sometimes sit and pull blades of grass for 45 minutes instead of really running around but I stay somewhere around and be with him. And he's happy. I say this because there's two interesting behaviours I've seen. One is, if I have ever pulled my phone out to quickly check WhatsApp or anything else, he becomes angsty and does things like trying to pour sand on his head (this is mostly fine dust sand). I might be inclined to say he's bored. But there are lots times I can be 50m away and watching him play with grass and he'll look back at me every so often. As long as he knows I'm interested in what he's doing, he doesn't do that stuff. It's not out of fear either. I don't express much when he pours sand on himself. It's just attention. The second interesting thing I see is all the parents on their phones. It's terrible. They walk around like zombies, barely interested in their children. But always a step behind them. And their child will be doing something quite safe. Of course if you looked at them at that exact moment you'd think they are in a potentially dangerous situation. Like riding their bike at the side of a drain. I'll see the child do this for 2 minutes, suddenly the parent looks up and yells at them to stop. The child looks disappointed and they watch the parent vanish back into zombie mode. It's bizzare and heartbreaking. And all this passes on to the children. I see parents checking phones during outings and telling children to put theirs away and talk to each other. Sigh. Not going to work.
amelius 8y ago
Wait, the iPad doesn't have parental controls?
- hrktb 8y ago
  an interesting dynamic is that advanced parental controls came with newer versions only, with no backport. Kids tend to get handed down devices, so for some families there will be a significant lag between the availability of the fine grain controls and the day their kids will be subjected to it. Apple is generaly good with retro-compatibility so less a complaint than just an observation.
- extra88 8y ago
  It does, I don't know how easy they are to set up. When an iPad is shared with kids and grown-ups, the grown-ups aren't going to want it to be locked down. It also won't solve the problem of inappropriate content within an app like YouTube. You've probably seen the stories about the creepy stuff that could be found even within YouTube Kids.

jacobolus 8y ago

It seems to me that a big part of the problem is parents’ screen time. Kids I see (disclaimer: mostly in the <5 years old range) desperately want to play with other people, but often are left bored while the adults / older kids around are stuck staring at their smartphones. Fertile ground to develop their own screen addictions. Instead of monitoring and controlling kids’ content, how about working with them on some physical projects, reading aloud, going for a hike, or even doing chores together?

hrktb 8y ago
I wonder how much time in average we got playing with our parents. I was in primary schoold in the 80s and I remember seeing my father 10 min before going to bed, my mother was mostly dealing with stuff (administrative tasks, house keeping, shopping, cooking, checking homeworks) and outside of Scrabble I don’t remember playing anything with her. We’d watch tv news or vapid tv drama together at best, rest of time I’d do whatever I wanted as long as it wasn’t hurting anyone nor illegal. Compared to that it seems to me parents nowadays are a lot more feeling guilty of not spending enough time with their kids, even as they spend a ton more in my opinion.
- jacobolus 8y ago
  I imagine this varies a bit from person to person. My impression is that the best way to learn anything is with at least a significant amount of time spent deliberately practicing under expert supervision/tutoring. You want to be working at just the right difficulty, neither mindlessly repeating stuff that is too easy nor stuck on a project with too large a scope or too difficult prerequisites. Lots of “our time” (i.e. yours and mine) growing up in the 80s was surely wasted. I know I could have learned a whole lot more working 1:1 with an expert tutor/mentor instead of in an above average school class of 30 kids. I know some kids who had very high-touch mentorship and turned into real prodigies. (Of course, some others are pushed by controlling parents and feel resentful.) Even when it comes to extracurricular activities (like building stuff out of Legos, solving logic puzzles, cooking, playing sports, or whatever), I could have learned a whole lot more than I did if I wasn’t left mostly to my own devices, but had someone occasionally suggest challenging projects or show me some new ideas at my current level or fix up my misconceptions. And my parents surely spent far more time with me than average, especially in the first few years. I learned a great many things just fiddling around for hours and hours by myself, but most of that learning was grossly inefficient.
- mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
  I’m about same age as you and I don’t remember spending much if any time with my parents. The same goes for all the kids I knew. Most of us kids played with each other or toys we had around the house. I spent a lot of time at my grandparents but even there nobody played with me. We did go to parks often so there was joint activities but they were very hands off. These days I am a father to a 1 year old and I’ve been spending a lot of time with him (work from home on my own schedule). My worry is that I will spend too much time with him as he grows up, and not leave enough space for him to develop on his own through exploration and individuality. Of course I haven’t had to deal with screen time yet and I realize that will be a serious challenge. My goal is to get rid of any smart devices by the time he is curious about them. We don’t own iPads or tablets in general and I don’t plan on buying any. I have no doubts I can curtail my own phone browsing usage but say the same for my wife who is constantly on hers.
nstart 8y ago
My god. This. As a father of one I constantly see this. I take my 2 year old son to the park regularly. I carry a small knapsack and leave the phone in it with it configured to ring only if my wife calls (basically customized priority notification settings). We have a great time. Sure he likes to sometimes sit and pull blades of grass for 45 minutes instead of really running around but I stay somewhere around and be with him. And he's happy. I say this because there's two interesting behaviours I've seen. One is, if I have ever pulled my phone out to quickly check WhatsApp or anything else, he becomes angsty and does things like trying to pour sand on his head (this is mostly fine dust sand). I might be inclined to say he's bored. But there are lots times I can be 50m away and watching him play with grass and he'll look back at me every so often. As long as he knows I'm interested in what he's doing, he doesn't do that stuff. It's not out of fear either. I don't express much when he pours sand on himself. It's just attention. The second interesting thing I see is all the parents on their phones. It's terrible. They walk around like zombies, barely interested in their children. But always a step behind them. And their child will be doing something quite safe. Of course if you looked at them at that exact moment you'd think they are in a potentially dangerous situation. Like riding their bike at the side of a drain. I'll see the child do this for 2 minutes, suddenly the parent looks up and yells at them to stop. The child looks disappointed and they watch the parent vanish back into zombie mode. It's bizzare and heartbreaking. And all this passes on to the children. I see parents checking phones during outings and telling children to put theirs away and talk to each other. Sigh. Not going to work.

amelius 8y ago

Wait, the iPad doesn't have parental controls?

hrktb 8y ago
an interesting dynamic is that advanced parental controls came with newer versions only, with no backport. Kids tend to get handed down devices, so for some families there will be a significant lag between the availability of the fine grain controls and the day their kids will be subjected to it. Apple is generaly good with retro-compatibility so less a complaint than just an observation.
extra88 8y ago
It does, I don't know how easy they are to set up. When an iPad is shared with kids and grown-ups, the grown-ups aren't going to want it to be locked down. It also won't solve the problem of inappropriate content within an app like YouTube. You've probably seen the stories about the creepy stuff that could be found even within YouTube Kids.