5 ms·

The real issue behind this, like often, is that what is bad for the children is actually also very bad for the parents, but they think they can get away with th

The real issue behind this, like often, is that what is bad for the children is actually also very bad for the parents, but they think they can get away with their particular dose: cigarette, alcohol, sleep deprivation, bad eating habits, not enough exercice, toxic env, etc. It's the same with screens: it takes a toll on everybody, no matter the age. It's very easy to verify: go on a screen diet, but be very active during it. Don't sleep more, don't eat better, don't try to be less stressed. Just remove as much screen as you can. You may first notice a withdraw period, depending on your screen consumption. Passed that, your energy goes up, you eat better, your social life improves, your ability to focus as well, and you are actually more efficient for tasks that can't be shortcuted using screen-based tools. Now as a computer scientist, I keep using screen hours and hours every day, knowing that. That's the whole problem: knowing the cause is not enough to solve an issue. It's even harder since screens are at the center of a lot of work and fun related activities of our modern lifes. I even had to buy a dumb watch to avoid looking at my phone to get the time. Of course, if you don't solve the issue for you, kids will see that you give them advices you are not following yourself. And I distinctly remember as a child that as soon as I noticed this about an adult, I lost respect for what they tried to teach me at the moment. Being young != being stupid.

rayiner 8y ago
> It's the same with screens: it takes a toll on everybody, no matter the age. The article says the opposite!!
- sametmax 8y ago
  Yes, and I disagree with the article. Studies from 30 years ago screamed about health and TV, corelating bad eating and sleeping patterns with screen time. Suddenly one article says that it's not true for new techs. I'm really not convinced. Just because you are less passive in front of a smartphone or a laptop doesn't negate the screen effect.
  - asark 8y ago
    I'm increasingly convinced the worst health effects of tech are mostly about sleep, with any secondary effects being negligible by comparison. I'd challenge anyone who thinks they "just can't" sleep on a normal schedule to drop all light-emitting devices and all artificial lighting aside from a couple candles, a bit after sunset in the Winter, or at sunset in the Summer. See if you still can't, or if you just don't want to. Not that I blame individuals for it, as it's really damn hard to stay away from all this hyper-engaging stuff at night. I haven't been able to. But trying that for a couple weeks gave me some serious insight into the why of my lifetime of screwed-up sleep. It's incredibly bright nighttime lighting (try the candle thing and see if you aren't surprised at how obnoxiously and unnecessarily bright even a single 60w bulb is after) and screen-based media (TV on up) to blame, entirely. Turns out if you light your house up like it's daytime, then put 1,000,000x the top-quality entertainment an emperor of yesteryear could hope to command on a given night right at your fingertips, it's very hard to sleep. Go figure. But that's what's overwhelmingly the norm now for most people's evenings.
    - NoodleIncident 8y ago
      Honestly, I think I'd rather take <X> years off the end of my life than cut out my favorite activities from the only hours of the day that are really mine to allocate. It's time I'm losing either way, and sacrificing those hours on the altar of better sleep now, when I'm the youngest I'll ever be, doesn't appeal to me at all. Basically, any suggestion to improve sleep by boring myself to death for 6 hours is a non-starter, and the holier-than-thou attitude of people on the internet who do so is starting to annoy me.
      - asark 8y ago
        > Basically, any suggestion to improve sleep by boring myself to death for 6 hours is a non-starter, and the holier-than-thou attitude of people on the internet who do so is starting to annoy me. Sure, but the flip side is you get a whole lot of "I just can't sleep a normal number of hours at a normal time, I guess I'm just built differently" and... well, no, probably not. I mean maybe. But probably not. You just like Netflix or late-night hacking or video games or whatever, too much to get a healthy amount of sleep. So does everyone else, to varying degrees. And it's less a trade against end-of-life years as a trade against your ability to remember what you did or learned today tomorrow, and much shorter term mental and physical health issues (harder time with weight and blood pressure, generally lower energy and happiness, and so on). Though yeah, go for it. Most of the rest of us do, too, just not because sleep is some really hard thing that people are bad at and ordinary daytime schedules are unreasonable and demanding like many special Internet snowflakes claim (Nb not accusing you of making any such claim), but because our homes are, 24/7, more entertaining and brighter than a mid-tier amusement park.
WhompingWindows 8y ago
Where is your non-opinion-based, hard evidence that screen-time is "the same" as these bad things: cigarettes, alcohol, sleep deprivation, etc. Those things can be MASSIVELY bad for you, as we all know, however there is simply NOT the evidence base to support that claim for screen time. I understand it's a newer phenomenon than those other negative influences, thus hard to know as of yet. Still, before you spout off very long pseudo-scientific opinions: provide data and evidence.
- watwut 8y ago
  I can tell from experience that a kid or adult having too much "screen time" is annoying drag to people around right now. It is not just about whether kid will be 0.5% more aggressive 10 years after. It is that he or she treats others (familly, siblings) badly now. It is also that such person is visibly loosing abilities like communication, patience, dealing with IRL setbacks, willingNess to do homework etc and parents have to intervene. When these direct issues don't happen, parents care less. Waiting for study that confirms that some other kids are impatient jerks (or are not) after 3 hours of play is meaningless, because you a.) you are raising this one b.) they don't fund large scale studies over details like that.
  - antpls 8y ago
    > It is that he or she treats others (familly, siblings) badly now Maybe his/her family treated him/her badly, and they don't even realize it. Maybe that kid will be happier without his/her family. Nothing wrong with that as far as I know. Maybe the kid doesn't want to do homework, because homework is an aberration of our modern society? Just my opinion.
    - watwut 8y ago
      I will put the abused kid aside and will assume non-abusive family. I will also put aside a kid that is about to go to foster care or something. First, the kid is not and will not be without family. The kid is living inside a family. In the long term, the kid is supposed to be able to have family of their own. That requires both ability to communicate when they treat you bad without knowing it and ability to not treat other people badly. Long term functional relationships are not possible if you solve problems by hiding. That includes both spousal and work relationships. I don't know why you went toward a kid that is without family. Because I was talking about kid that is impatient, reacts to IRL setbacks with temper tantrums or yelling or accusing people or picking on them or otherwise jerk behavior. Your examples are like exactly attitudes that parent don't want the kids to get. Including the idea that historical kids rich enough to not have to work significant part of day would not be expected to learn a lot. There were periods like that, when middle class was strong and secure, but not calling it a norm where opposite is aberration is absurd.
roel_v 8y ago
My strategy is to be a screen addicted zombie to the point that my children will hate phones so much they run away from them. Seems to be working so far.

rayiner 8y ago

> It's the same with screens: it takes a toll on everybody, no matter the age. The article says the opposite!!

sametmax 8y ago
Yes, and I disagree with the article. Studies from 30 years ago screamed about health and TV, corelating bad eating and sleeping patterns with screen time. Suddenly one article says that it's not true for new techs. I'm really not convinced. Just because you are less passive in front of a smartphone or a laptop doesn't negate the screen effect.
- asark 8y ago
  I'm increasingly convinced the worst health effects of tech are mostly about sleep, with any secondary effects being negligible by comparison. I'd challenge anyone who thinks they "just can't" sleep on a normal schedule to drop all light-emitting devices and all artificial lighting aside from a couple candles, a bit after sunset in the Winter, or at sunset in the Summer. See if you still can't, or if you just don't want to. Not that I blame individuals for it, as it's really damn hard to stay away from all this hyper-engaging stuff at night. I haven't been able to. But trying that for a couple weeks gave me some serious insight into the why of my lifetime of screwed-up sleep. It's incredibly bright nighttime lighting (try the candle thing and see if you aren't surprised at how obnoxiously and unnecessarily bright even a single 60w bulb is after) and screen-based media (TV on up) to blame, entirely. Turns out if you light your house up like it's daytime, then put 1,000,000x the top-quality entertainment an emperor of yesteryear could hope to command on a given night right at your fingertips, it's very hard to sleep. Go figure. But that's what's overwhelmingly the norm now for most people's evenings.
  - NoodleIncident 8y ago
    Honestly, I think I'd rather take <X> years off the end of my life than cut out my favorite activities from the only hours of the day that are really mine to allocate. It's time I'm losing either way, and sacrificing those hours on the altar of better sleep now, when I'm the youngest I'll ever be, doesn't appeal to me at all. Basically, any suggestion to improve sleep by boring myself to death for 6 hours is a non-starter, and the holier-than-thou attitude of people on the internet who do so is starting to annoy me.
    - asark 8y ago
      > Basically, any suggestion to improve sleep by boring myself to death for 6 hours is a non-starter, and the holier-than-thou attitude of people on the internet who do so is starting to annoy me. Sure, but the flip side is you get a whole lot of "I just can't sleep a normal number of hours at a normal time, I guess I'm just built differently" and... well, no, probably not. I mean maybe. But probably not. You just like Netflix or late-night hacking or video games or whatever, too much to get a healthy amount of sleep. So does everyone else, to varying degrees. And it's less a trade against end-of-life years as a trade against your ability to remember what you did or learned today tomorrow, and much shorter term mental and physical health issues (harder time with weight and blood pressure, generally lower energy and happiness, and so on). Though yeah, go for it. Most of the rest of us do, too, just not because sleep is some really hard thing that people are bad at and ordinary daytime schedules are unreasonable and demanding like many special Internet snowflakes claim (Nb not accusing you of making any such claim), but because our homes are, 24/7, more entertaining and brighter than a mid-tier amusement park.

WhompingWindows 8y ago

Where is your non-opinion-based, hard evidence that screen-time is "the same" as these bad things: cigarettes, alcohol, sleep deprivation, etc. Those things can be MASSIVELY bad for you, as we all know, however there is simply NOT the evidence base to support that claim for screen time. I understand it's a newer phenomenon than those other negative influences, thus hard to know as of yet. Still, before you spout off very long pseudo-scientific opinions: provide data and evidence.

watwut 8y ago
I can tell from experience that a kid or adult having too much "screen time" is annoying drag to people around right now. It is not just about whether kid will be 0.5% more aggressive 10 years after. It is that he or she treats others (familly, siblings) badly now. It is also that such person is visibly loosing abilities like communication, patience, dealing with IRL setbacks, willingNess to do homework etc and parents have to intervene. When these direct issues don't happen, parents care less. Waiting for study that confirms that some other kids are impatient jerks (or are not) after 3 hours of play is meaningless, because you a.) you are raising this one b.) they don't fund large scale studies over details like that.
- antpls 8y ago
  > It is that he or she treats others (familly, siblings) badly now Maybe his/her family treated him/her badly, and they don't even realize it. Maybe that kid will be happier without his/her family. Nothing wrong with that as far as I know. Maybe the kid doesn't want to do homework, because homework is an aberration of our modern society? Just my opinion.
  - watwut 8y ago
    I will put the abused kid aside and will assume non-abusive family. I will also put aside a kid that is about to go to foster care or something. First, the kid is not and will not be without family. The kid is living inside a family. In the long term, the kid is supposed to be able to have family of their own. That requires both ability to communicate when they treat you bad without knowing it and ability to not treat other people badly. Long term functional relationships are not possible if you solve problems by hiding. That includes both spousal and work relationships. I don't know why you went toward a kid that is without family. Because I was talking about kid that is impatient, reacts to IRL setbacks with temper tantrums or yelling or accusing people or picking on them or otherwise jerk behavior. Your examples are like exactly attitudes that parent don't want the kids to get. Including the idea that historical kids rich enough to not have to work significant part of day would not be expected to learn a lot. There were periods like that, when middle class was strong and secure, but not calling it a norm where opposite is aberration is absurd.

roel_v 8y ago

My strategy is to be a screen addicted zombie to the point that my children will hate phones so much they run away from them. Seems to be working so far.