6 ms·

I could talk about this for hours, but "screen time" is too vague - placing a kid in front of a youtube autoplay stream is vastly different than playing a word

by klik99 7y ago

I could talk about this for hours, but "screen time" is too vague - placing a kid in front of a youtube autoplay stream is vastly different than playing a word game on the iPad with their parents right next to them. I've found low effort, high stimulus creates bad behaviour, which is obvious. But specifically, it creates a low effort flow state, setting false expectations about life in general, and parents should make sure to minimize this kind of media. However we found a few good apps, and both my kids knew the alphabet before 1 year old, and my 2 year old is drawing Chinese characters (he's spent 1/4th of his life in China) thanks to good apps, and having parents present while using them. And passive media isn't all bad, How Things Work and David Attenborough, and anything space related has taught my kids a lot. I wish more studies would not focus on "book time" vs "screen time", because what's really important is interactivity, such as being present with your child for them to bounce things off you, or apps that give small rewards for high effort tasks, rather than large rewards for low effort tasks - it just so happens that books are more conducive to this, but if you actually pay attention to what your child is doing, screens can be a powerful tool. That being said, it's really tough being a parent, and sometimes you just want to put some high stimulus thing on the screen to get a break - in my experience, it's only bad when that becomes a habit or norm.

rmolin88 7y ago
>both my kids knew the alphabet before 1 year old, and my 2 year old is drawing Chinese characters I honestly find this hard to believe. Maybe you have one special kid that knows the alphabet before one. But two?? The US Department of Education says [0] by age 3-4 start working simple things, like I love you. [0]: https://www2.ed.gov/parents/academic/help/reader/part9.html https://www2.ed.gov/parents/academic/help/reader/part9.html
- ianhawes 7y ago
  I also find this hard to believe. We use similar alphabet learning apps with my 15 month old, who is progressing very well in other aspects, but she has not yet grasped the alphabet.
  - roland35 7y ago
    I would not worry about it! It will all even out by the time they get to school and see what all the other children are doing!
- klik99 7y ago
  It is true, though I'll give two minor concessions/clarifications: My 2 year old is basically 3 - his birthday is in Feb, close enough that calling him 2-year-old is bending the truth, but not technically breaking it :) The alphabet thing is totally true - Largely due to Endless Alphabet, which is a rare really well designed learning app - but I will say that learning what sounds go with what alphabet letters is a specific type of education that really plays to the screen strengths and isn't as transferable to other types of education. The fact that I don't have another example like that one to demonstrate the power of educational apps shows that this might be exception rather than the rule. On Endless Alphabet, when you drag the letters around (something kids get right away) it repeats the letter pronunciation again and again in different ways, and it still cracks them up. Then we finish dragging them, you get treated to a little funny animated video that are really well made. So they could play with that for hours, and knew all the pronunciations from there, and the order from the song (well the song is basically how I still know it). We'd test them when we pass signs on the street/sidewalk, and they did struggle, but both would get all the letters before they turned 1. You wouldn't believe how badly most kids apps are made, even the big ones like hooked on phonics. Things like supporting multi-touch are essential since they don't have great motor skills, and not nailing that can be really confusing and frustrating for a child, who tends to think everything is because they can't do it, not because the app didn't implement it well. And the rest of the "Endless X" apps teaching other skills (maths, music) don't work as well as Endless Alphabet, I think it works exceedingly well for the specific memorization task of matching sounds to icons.
  - siegecraft 7y ago
    Do you have any other app (or even linux/Windows/Mac software) recommendations? There's just so much crap out there..
- klik99 7y ago
  Reading the guidelines now, "Use known letters (or their best attempt to write the letters) to represent written language especially for meaningful words like their names or phrases such as "I love you."" - they weren't WRITING letters before 1. That would be crazy, simply because their muscles aren't nearly developed enough to do that kind of detailed work by 1. My oldest didn't start writing his name out until 3. Also, the US Dept of Education guidelines are really like "if this isn't happening by this age, then there's a problem" - in terms of brains, kids develop at vastly different speeds - they can jump ahead and then fall behind - I personally didn't get math until a very late age thanks to a good teacher, thank god standardized testing wasn't the norm or else I would have been put on the "slow track". My older son is advanced in some ways, but way behind in others. There is no blueprint for what kids should know when, and advancement is closer to a random walk than a linear progression. (how the physical body develops, which bounds stuff like speaking, writing, etc is pretty linear though)
- jessaustin 7y ago
  But two?? Wouldn't we expect the performances of siblings to be correlated?
silviot 7y ago
You summarised very well many problems with this article. I'd like to add one more. They draw a comparison between "a preschooler who is often read to by a caregiver" and "a preschooler who likely spends an average of two hours a day playing on screens". I'm sure many kids correspond to both descriptions.
jacobolus 7y ago
> kids knew the alphabet before 1 year old Not to pick on you, but this seems like a completely superficial goal. As far as I can tell listening comprehension is by far the most important foundational language/reasoning skill. I would be quite surprised if, all else equal, there were any long-term difference between a kid who learns the alphabet at age 1 and a kid who learns the alphabet at age 4. On the other hand, the kids whose parents read to them for 1+ hours per day end up way ahead of their peers who aren’t read to.
- klik99 7y ago
  Getting off topic, since I just wanted to point out that screens CAN be good, and the more research lumps all "screen time" together the less research there is into HOW they can be better. But we didn't push it or anything - my older one was just into the endless alphabet app, and that basic desire to be an expert on something made him point it out - my younger one always to keep up with the older one. I doubt I would have forced them to do it if I wanted it as a goal - I just try to encourage them to get deep on what they're already showing an interest in at this point. And that usually just takes praising the work they put in (and not the results), and answering any questions they have. (edit) And yeah, there's no long-term differences, as a friend said "every adult knows how to st in a toilet". I say in another comment - advancement is more a random walk than a linear progression, in adulthood as well as toddlers.
  - jacobolus 7y ago
    Fair enough. There’s certainly nothing wrong with knowing the alphabet. I’m just a bit jaded and fed up with a parenting culture / education system that focuses on rushing toward specific arbitrary milestones and memorizing lots of trivia, instead of trying to immerse little humans into a culture where skills and tools are learned through practical use and competence grows slowly over time. E.g., in a different domain, it isn’t going to especially help anything if a kid takes their first steps at 9 months, and all of those special-purpose baby walker tools are essentially useless, but the kid who has tremendous core strength/stamina because they get lots of exercise crawling all around is going to come out ahead of average even if they don’t start walking until 14 months.
jerf 7y ago
"placing a kid in front of a youtube autoplay stream is vastly different than playing a word game on the iPad with their parents right next to them." Based on my own experiences and internal states, I would still observe that "screen time" tends to have problems at a very low sensory level, in that even when you're doing something educational, you still have the problem that relatively tiny inputs tend to produce outsized sensory effects compared to what the rest of the world yields. I have to admit I cringe a tiny bit when my kids are playing their mandatory educational games and they correctly add two numbers together, and they get a loud chicken squawk and an animation. That's not how the real world works, you do not get loud sounds and animations simply for adding two numbers together. Even if your forebrain is getting trained in something useful like numbers, you can still be feeding dubious input to the lower-level brain systems. But, that said, screens are a part of the modern world and they must be learned to be dealt with, and it's still better to have something interactive and productive be the bulk of the time than mere flashy empty calories. I'd even distinguish between good video that you engage with, think about, try to guess what's next, think about what makes it work, and video where it's merely flashy-flash bang-boom entertainment. There's a time and a place for the latter; we all need R&R, but it's not large. There is a way to recover some value even from the over-stimulative nature of the media, which is that as they grow up, they're going to be under attack by advertisers and journalists (but I repeat myself) who abuse overstimulation as much as they possibly can to convince you to do something that costs you but benefits them by overloading your brain, basically. Some training and practice in resisting such things is helpful.
- klik99 7y ago
  "relatively tiny inputs tend to produce outsized sensory effects" - this is what I was getting at with "low effort, high stimulus", and it's def bad. My point is by dismissing "screen time" wholesale, we create an environment where those types of /quote educational game /unquote are the only option. When people who are serious about education won't take apps/games seriously, they leave a vacuum filled by at best the pure sugar empty calories, and at worst by microtransaction scams. Any app that has a call to action in it gets deleted from the iPad my kids use. It's like saying all movies are trash because the most popular movies are trash. And this is reflected by the current state of educational games - I know there are good ones because I've seen my kids learn with them, and I believe there could be MORE good ones, but the people who have the empathy and experience to make good ones have already thrown away the proverbial baby with the proverbial bath water
Waterluvian 7y ago
FWIW my then one year old knew the alphabet and how to count to 10 in three languages, count backwards from 20 in English, and we very often dumped him in front of a screen. We never structured any learning time on those subjects. He picked it all up from his wooden letter board and YouTube. He's now two and when he has an off day because mom and dad are sick or exhausted with the baby, he gets a lot of screen time. And he will on his own take what he's been watching and apply it to his building blocks and other toys. He will spend an hour singing to himself and counting as he plays "Speedy the Number Train" with Duplo. So much anecdata and so much parental fear. Justifiably so because you only get one chance at this and everyone's afraid of screwing up their kid. But I'm still incredibly skeptical that much of this matters a whole lot. My own parental advice that I'm following for myself but not trying to push on anyone: above all else, configure my life so that I _always_ have a few hours a day of dedicated time with them. It doesn't matter much what we actually do. And avoid at all costs over-structuring their day or play. Let them lead.
- theengway 7y ago
  FWIW my then 3mo beat me in checkers with the technique he learned from a _book_ I accidentally left on my desk. Now he’s 6mo and when we play I easily win using tricks I learned by watching _youtube_ videos. YMMV
  - anotherone17 7y ago
    I wish I could believe this statement. At 3mo the motor control is not sufficiently developed to precisely move pieces, nevermind read a book. Can you offer proof? Please amaze me.
    - analognoise 7y ago
      It was obviously snark. "We avoided screen time in the womb and my child could communicate with full Morse code using kicks at 8 months of gestation. Now let me tell you how to parent."
      - 7y ago
lukego 7y ago
I allow my kids (4 & 5) a fair bit of screen time. They each have a ThinkPad and they love Minecraft. They are learning to read and type to search the inventory, surf Curseforge for mods, and navigate the dialog boxes in MultiMC for installing the add-ons. They can watch YouTube too, which is inevitably Minecraft tutorials, which they immediately want to put into practice. I'm happy to see this. They have their own projects and they are learning lots of random real-world skills to move those projects forward. They are having "hard fun" in Seymour Papert's terms. I'm still maintaining their configuration.nix for now though...
K0SM0S 7y ago
> "screen time" is too vague In a world where most adults of the current generation spend almost more time in front of the screen than away from it, one would indeed think that "screen time" means nothing in and of itself. I think we also completely fail in every way to measure the benefit — because adaption, evolution tells us one thing: while there are "better" and "worse" paths, it's only ever retrospectively; the corrolary is that it's almost impossible to actually predict evolution, to "design" it — it's sci-fi, for now. So I've always been wary of applied fields faced with a paradigm change, in history: they always tend to lag a lot, even more so than people outside the field — perhaps because they're so deep in it that they can't see what's obvious to a bystander, idk. Note that it's healthy, in science — skepticism is what makes us great, in a way, because we don't condone "intuition" as "theory" unlike any other endeavor of the human mind. But science is not up to predict individual let alone social evolution, a far, far cry from it that's even on the side of "maybe's" in some abstract idealistic future. Right now, we're left with trying to make the best out of what we've got to prepare kids for a future we can't see ourselves, and we probably take a cue or two for our own life in that process — I'll let you be the judge of whether parenting is a learning experience... My intuition, deep down, is that a reasonable¹ dose of exposure to technological tools is very desirable in developing one's fluency with said tech; and may constitute one of these hard to measure but clearly obvious — you "know it when you see it" — difference between "nerds" or "geeks" and the "computer illiterate" (which, I observe, are less but still many in the millenials generation compared to X and boomers, contrary to my initial intuition). Generally, I think one should trust each step of the way their "gut feeling" about the development of their children, and adjust accordingly, remain in a "safe zone", sane defaults when in doubt. It's also been shown to a convincing extent that "just trying hard, for real" and "showing up, being there" and being very human in simply trying to communicate with children, is as sure as we have of a recipe for success — because it's bound to be very relevant, very ad hoc to your own situation, and thus that of your children. Go against the grain if it makes them better if your eyes and in their experience of life, just don't ignore hard facts from other parents as well. ---- ¹ By "reasonable" I mean not impairing other development; but it's also "reasonable" to envision that some skills are less useful nowadays than 50 or 500 years ago (despite the brain's ability for them, and our ability to measure abstractly relevant "improvements" or "impairments" here or there). Conversely that some are more useful, but we may not yet test for these.
memco 7y ago
One thing missing for me is if reading print books is different from ebooks and read along books? I’m legally blind so I spend a majority of my reading time on some kind of electronic device because I can zoom or enlarge text. Articles like this don’t differentiate whether the medium or the activity is the problem so I’m left wondering if reading with my kid on an iPad is worse than a print book or not and whether having someone else read for us together is different than if I read to her myself. I spent so much of my youth playing video games that I’m not concerned it’ll be a huge factor in her life but it would be great to be able to be better informed about the pros and cons of each approach.
- gdubs 7y ago
  Just another parent here, but regardless of the medium, what you are doing is reading with your kids. You’re able to stop, explain something when it’s clear your kid isn’t following. They’re able to see the words your focused on. All of those micro interactions are what make reading with your kids valuable — the fact that you use a tool that enables you to have that experience with your kid doesn’t take away from that. (Just my opinion.)
victor106 7y ago
> thanks to good apps, and having parents present while using them. I wonder what apps did you use?
- dmnd 7y ago
  I'm also interested in which apps klik99 recommends. Here are the apps I've whitelisted on my 3 year old's iPad. I don't like having video on there because I found passive video consumption dominates all other activities. I've found with a hand-picked set of apps, she naturally self-limits her screen time. - Metamorphabet. An alphabet toy with high production values. https://metamorphabet.com/ https://metamorphabet.com/ - Endless Alphabet. Discussed elsewhere in this thread. https://www.originatorkids.com/?p=564 https://www.originatorkids.com/?p=564 - Flow Free. A simple puzzle game kids seem to love. Lots of levels. Make sure to remove the ads. https://www.bigduckgames.com/flowfree https://www.bigduckgames.com/flowfree - Divide by Sheep. Actually a pretty difficult game, but for some reason she loves it. https://www.tinybuild.com/dividebysheep https://www.tinybuild.com/dividebysheep. - Busy Shapes. Simple put the shape in the hole game. Recently has been crashing, though. https://montessori.edokiacademy.com/en/our-games/discovery/busy-shapes https://montessori.edokiacademy.com/en/our-games/discovery/b... - Crazy Gears. A puzzle game that builds intuition about mechanics. See also Busy Water by the same developer. https://montessori.edokiacademy.com/en/our-games/discovery/crazy-gears https://montessori.edokiacademy.com/en/our-games/discovery/c... - Khan Academy Kids. A pretty large library of educational content that nevertheless is engaging enough to compete with the other apps she has access to. Does have a few videos though. https://www.khanacademy.org/kids https://www.khanacademy.org/kids
cr0sh 7y ago
> but if you actually pay attention to what your child is doing, screens can be a powerful tool. I related elsewhere how my parents, long since passed away, read to me from physical books and encouraged my education. I don't have children, but I think you have hit the nail on the head; ultimately everything is just a tool - the important part is the parents interacting with their child's education, using the tools they have available. I have no doubt that had my mother had access to an ipad or whatever, that she would have used that as well to teach and encourage my learning. As it was, the only other media besides books was television - and so PBS and "Sesame Street" was on, and she'd watch it with me. But other shows she liked were also educational to an extent - such as game shows; Price is Right can teach a lot of things about money and counting, and Wheel of Fortune can teach words and letters. But it wasn't just plopping me down in front of the TV - she was there with me, asking me questions, teaching me how to figure out things on my own. Which is what you are also doing with your children, but using the tools that are available today; but I think even if you didn't have access to those tools, you'd still find a way to interact and teach your children, and that's the best thing they could ever have. They'll also remember it for life.
turtlebits 7y ago
Screen time is inherently lazy. Young children do not have complex learning/entertainment requirements where a book or pens and paper wouldn’t suffice. Make your own entertainment/learning tools, it’s part of the fun. So even though you may think the educational aspect as well as bring present is good enough, you’re still training your kids to go straight to screens instead of putting in effort or just being bored. Finding things to do, being creative is a part of being a kid, and at that age, IMO, you’re doing a huge disservice to them.

by klik99 7y ago

rmolin88 7y ago

>both my kids knew the alphabet before 1 year old, and my 2 year old is drawing Chinese characters I honestly find this hard to believe. Maybe you have one special kid that knows the alphabet before one. But two?? The US Department of Education says [0] by age 3-4 start working simple things, like I love you. [0]: https://www2.ed.gov/parents/academic/help/reader/part9.html https://www2.ed.gov/parents/academic/help/reader/part9.html

ianhawes 7y ago
I also find this hard to believe. We use similar alphabet learning apps with my 15 month old, who is progressing very well in other aspects, but she has not yet grasped the alphabet.
- roland35 7y ago
  I would not worry about it! It will all even out by the time they get to school and see what all the other children are doing!
klik99 7y ago
It is true, though I'll give two minor concessions/clarifications: My 2 year old is basically 3 - his birthday is in Feb, close enough that calling him 2-year-old is bending the truth, but not technically breaking it :) The alphabet thing is totally true - Largely due to Endless Alphabet, which is a rare really well designed learning app - but I will say that learning what sounds go with what alphabet letters is a specific type of education that really plays to the screen strengths and isn't as transferable to other types of education. The fact that I don't have another example like that one to demonstrate the power of educational apps shows that this might be exception rather than the rule. On Endless Alphabet, when you drag the letters around (something kids get right away) it repeats the letter pronunciation again and again in different ways, and it still cracks them up. Then we finish dragging them, you get treated to a little funny animated video that are really well made. So they could play with that for hours, and knew all the pronunciations from there, and the order from the song (well the song is basically how I still know it). We'd test them when we pass signs on the street/sidewalk, and they did struggle, but both would get all the letters before they turned 1. You wouldn't believe how badly most kids apps are made, even the big ones like hooked on phonics. Things like supporting multi-touch are essential since they don't have great motor skills, and not nailing that can be really confusing and frustrating for a child, who tends to think everything is because they can't do it, not because the app didn't implement it well. And the rest of the "Endless X" apps teaching other skills (maths, music) don't work as well as Endless Alphabet, I think it works exceedingly well for the specific memorization task of matching sounds to icons.
- siegecraft 7y ago
  Do you have any other app (or even linux/Windows/Mac software) recommendations? There's just so much crap out there..
klik99 7y ago
Reading the guidelines now, "Use known letters (or their best attempt to write the letters) to represent written language especially for meaningful words like their names or phrases such as "I love you."" - they weren't WRITING letters before 1. That would be crazy, simply because their muscles aren't nearly developed enough to do that kind of detailed work by 1. My oldest didn't start writing his name out until 3. Also, the US Dept of Education guidelines are really like "if this isn't happening by this age, then there's a problem" - in terms of brains, kids develop at vastly different speeds - they can jump ahead and then fall behind - I personally didn't get math until a very late age thanks to a good teacher, thank god standardized testing wasn't the norm or else I would have been put on the "slow track". My older son is advanced in some ways, but way behind in others. There is no blueprint for what kids should know when, and advancement is closer to a random walk than a linear progression. (how the physical body develops, which bounds stuff like speaking, writing, etc is pretty linear though)
jessaustin 7y ago
But two?? Wouldn't we expect the performances of siblings to be correlated?

silviot 7y ago

You summarised very well many problems with this article. I'd like to add one more. They draw a comparison between "a preschooler who is often read to by a caregiver" and "a preschooler who likely spends an average of two hours a day playing on screens". I'm sure many kids correspond to both descriptions.

jacobolus 7y ago

> kids knew the alphabet before 1 year old Not to pick on you, but this seems like a completely superficial goal. As far as I can tell listening comprehension is by far the most important foundational language/reasoning skill. I would be quite surprised if, all else equal, there were any long-term difference between a kid who learns the alphabet at age 1 and a kid who learns the alphabet at age 4. On the other hand, the kids whose parents read to them for 1+ hours per day end up way ahead of their peers who aren’t read to.

klik99 7y ago
Getting off topic, since I just wanted to point out that screens CAN be good, and the more research lumps all "screen time" together the less research there is into HOW they can be better. But we didn't push it or anything - my older one was just into the endless alphabet app, and that basic desire to be an expert on something made him point it out - my younger one always to keep up with the older one. I doubt I would have forced them to do it if I wanted it as a goal - I just try to encourage them to get deep on what they're already showing an interest in at this point. And that usually just takes praising the work they put in (and not the results), and answering any questions they have. (edit) And yeah, there's no long-term differences, as a friend said "every adult knows how to st in a toilet". I say in another comment - advancement is more a random walk than a linear progression, in adulthood as well as toddlers.
- jacobolus 7y ago
  Fair enough. There’s certainly nothing wrong with knowing the alphabet. I’m just a bit jaded and fed up with a parenting culture / education system that focuses on rushing toward specific arbitrary milestones and memorizing lots of trivia, instead of trying to immerse little humans into a culture where skills and tools are learned through practical use and competence grows slowly over time. E.g., in a different domain, it isn’t going to especially help anything if a kid takes their first steps at 9 months, and all of those special-purpose baby walker tools are essentially useless, but the kid who has tremendous core strength/stamina because they get lots of exercise crawling all around is going to come out ahead of average even if they don’t start walking until 14 months.

jerf 7y ago

"placing a kid in front of a youtube autoplay stream is vastly different than playing a word game on the iPad with their parents right next to them." Based on my own experiences and internal states, I would still observe that "screen time" tends to have problems at a very low sensory level, in that even when you're doing something educational, you still have the problem that relatively tiny inputs tend to produce outsized sensory effects compared to what the rest of the world yields. I have to admit I cringe a tiny bit when my kids are playing their mandatory educational games and they correctly add two numbers together, and they get a loud chicken squawk and an animation. That's not how the real world works, you do not get loud sounds and animations simply for adding two numbers together. Even if your forebrain is getting trained in something useful like numbers, you can still be feeding dubious input to the lower-level brain systems. But, that said, screens are a part of the modern world and they must be learned to be dealt with, and it's still better to have something interactive and productive be the bulk of the time than mere flashy empty calories. I'd even distinguish between good video that you engage with, think about, try to guess what's next, think about what makes it work, and video where it's merely flashy-flash bang-boom entertainment. There's a time and a place for the latter; we all need R&R, but it's not large. There is a way to recover some value even from the over-stimulative nature of the media, which is that as they grow up, they're going to be under attack by advertisers and journalists (but I repeat myself) who abuse overstimulation as much as they possibly can to convince you to do something that costs you but benefits them by overloading your brain, basically. Some training and practice in resisting such things is helpful.

klik99 7y ago
"relatively tiny inputs tend to produce outsized sensory effects" - this is what I was getting at with "low effort, high stimulus", and it's def bad. My point is by dismissing "screen time" wholesale, we create an environment where those types of /quote educational game /unquote are the only option. When people who are serious about education won't take apps/games seriously, they leave a vacuum filled by at best the pure sugar empty calories, and at worst by microtransaction scams. Any app that has a call to action in it gets deleted from the iPad my kids use. It's like saying all movies are trash because the most popular movies are trash. And this is reflected by the current state of educational games - I know there are good ones because I've seen my kids learn with them, and I believe there could be MORE good ones, but the people who have the empathy and experience to make good ones have already thrown away the proverbial baby with the proverbial bath water

Waterluvian 7y ago

FWIW my then one year old knew the alphabet and how to count to 10 in three languages, count backwards from 20 in English, and we very often dumped him in front of a screen. We never structured any learning time on those subjects. He picked it all up from his wooden letter board and YouTube. He's now two and when he has an off day because mom and dad are sick or exhausted with the baby, he gets a lot of screen time. And he will on his own take what he's been watching and apply it to his building blocks and other toys. He will spend an hour singing to himself and counting as he plays "Speedy the Number Train" with Duplo. So much anecdata and so much parental fear. Justifiably so because you only get one chance at this and everyone's afraid of screwing up their kid. But I'm still incredibly skeptical that much of this matters a whole lot. My own parental advice that I'm following for myself but not trying to push on anyone: above all else, configure my life so that I _always_ have a few hours a day of dedicated time with them. It doesn't matter much what we actually do. And avoid at all costs over-structuring their day or play. Let them lead.

theengway 7y ago
FWIW my then 3mo beat me in checkers with the technique he learned from a _book_ I accidentally left on my desk. Now he’s 6mo and when we play I easily win using tricks I learned by watching _youtube_ videos. YMMV
- anotherone17 7y ago
  I wish I could believe this statement. At 3mo the motor control is not sufficiently developed to precisely move pieces, nevermind read a book. Can you offer proof? Please amaze me.
  - analognoise 7y ago
    It was obviously snark. "We avoided screen time in the womb and my child could communicate with full Morse code using kicks at 8 months of gestation. Now let me tell you how to parent."
    - 7y ago

lukego 7y ago

I allow my kids (4 & 5) a fair bit of screen time. They each have a ThinkPad and they love Minecraft. They are learning to read and type to search the inventory, surf Curseforge for mods, and navigate the dialog boxes in MultiMC for installing the add-ons. They can watch YouTube too, which is inevitably Minecraft tutorials, which they immediately want to put into practice. I'm happy to see this. They have their own projects and they are learning lots of random real-world skills to move those projects forward. They are having "hard fun" in Seymour Papert's terms. I'm still maintaining their configuration.nix for now though...

K0SM0S 7y ago

> "screen time" is too vague In a world where most adults of the current generation spend almost more time in front of the screen than away from it, one would indeed think that "screen time" means nothing in and of itself. I think we also completely fail in every way to measure the benefit — because adaption, evolution tells us one thing: while there are "better" and "worse" paths, it's only ever retrospectively; the corrolary is that it's almost impossible to actually predict evolution, to "design" it — it's sci-fi, for now. So I've always been wary of applied fields faced with a paradigm change, in history: they always tend to lag a lot, even more so than people outside the field — perhaps because they're so deep in it that they can't see what's obvious to a bystander, idk. Note that it's healthy, in science — skepticism is what makes us great, in a way, because we don't condone "intuition" as "theory" unlike any other endeavor of the human mind. But science is not up to predict individual let alone social evolution, a far, far cry from it that's even on the side of "maybe's" in some abstract idealistic future. Right now, we're left with trying to make the best out of what we've got to prepare kids for a future we can't see ourselves, and we probably take a cue or two for our own life in that process — I'll let you be the judge of whether parenting is a learning experience... My intuition, deep down, is that a reasonable¹ dose of exposure to technological tools is very desirable in developing one's fluency with said tech; and may constitute one of these hard to measure but clearly obvious — you "know it when you see it" — difference between "nerds" or "geeks" and the "computer illiterate" (which, I observe, are less but still many in the millenials generation compared to X and boomers, contrary to my initial intuition). Generally, I think one should trust each step of the way their "gut feeling" about the development of their children, and adjust accordingly, remain in a "safe zone", sane defaults when in doubt. It's also been shown to a convincing extent that "just trying hard, for real" and "showing up, being there" and being very human in simply trying to communicate with children, is as sure as we have of a recipe for success — because it's bound to be very relevant, very ad hoc to your own situation, and thus that of your children. Go against the grain if it makes them better if your eyes and in their experience of life, just don't ignore hard facts from other parents as well. ---- ¹ By "reasonable" I mean not impairing other development; but it's also "reasonable" to envision that some skills are less useful nowadays than 50 or 500 years ago (despite the brain's ability for them, and our ability to measure abstractly relevant "improvements" or "impairments" here or there). Conversely that some are more useful, but we may not yet test for these.

memco 7y ago

One thing missing for me is if reading print books is different from ebooks and read along books? I’m legally blind so I spend a majority of my reading time on some kind of electronic device because I can zoom or enlarge text. Articles like this don’t differentiate whether the medium or the activity is the problem so I’m left wondering if reading with my kid on an iPad is worse than a print book or not and whether having someone else read for us together is different than if I read to her myself. I spent so much of my youth playing video games that I’m not concerned it’ll be a huge factor in her life but it would be great to be able to be better informed about the pros and cons of each approach.

gdubs 7y ago
Just another parent here, but regardless of the medium, what you are doing is reading with your kids. You’re able to stop, explain something when it’s clear your kid isn’t following. They’re able to see the words your focused on. All of those micro interactions are what make reading with your kids valuable — the fact that you use a tool that enables you to have that experience with your kid doesn’t take away from that. (Just my opinion.)

victor106 7y ago

> thanks to good apps, and having parents present while using them. I wonder what apps did you use?

dmnd 7y ago
I'm also interested in which apps klik99 recommends. Here are the apps I've whitelisted on my 3 year old's iPad. I don't like having video on there because I found passive video consumption dominates all other activities. I've found with a hand-picked set of apps, she naturally self-limits her screen time. - Metamorphabet. An alphabet toy with high production values. https://metamorphabet.com/ https://metamorphabet.com/ - Endless Alphabet. Discussed elsewhere in this thread. https://www.originatorkids.com/?p=564 https://www.originatorkids.com/?p=564 - Flow Free. A simple puzzle game kids seem to love. Lots of levels. Make sure to remove the ads. https://www.bigduckgames.com/flowfree https://www.bigduckgames.com/flowfree - Divide by Sheep. Actually a pretty difficult game, but for some reason she loves it. https://www.tinybuild.com/dividebysheep https://www.tinybuild.com/dividebysheep. - Busy Shapes. Simple put the shape in the hole game. Recently has been crashing, though. https://montessori.edokiacademy.com/en/our-games/discovery/busy-shapes https://montessori.edokiacademy.com/en/our-games/discovery/b... - Crazy Gears. A puzzle game that builds intuition about mechanics. See also Busy Water by the same developer. https://montessori.edokiacademy.com/en/our-games/discovery/crazy-gears https://montessori.edokiacademy.com/en/our-games/discovery/c... - Khan Academy Kids. A pretty large library of educational content that nevertheless is engaging enough to compete with the other apps she has access to. Does have a few videos though. https://www.khanacademy.org/kids https://www.khanacademy.org/kids

cr0sh 7y ago

> but if you actually pay attention to what your child is doing, screens can be a powerful tool. I related elsewhere how my parents, long since passed away, read to me from physical books and encouraged my education. I don't have children, but I think you have hit the nail on the head; ultimately everything is just a tool - the important part is the parents interacting with their child's education, using the tools they have available. I have no doubt that had my mother had access to an ipad or whatever, that she would have used that as well to teach and encourage my learning. As it was, the only other media besides books was television - and so PBS and "Sesame Street" was on, and she'd watch it with me. But other shows she liked were also educational to an extent - such as game shows; Price is Right can teach a lot of things about money and counting, and Wheel of Fortune can teach words and letters. But it wasn't just plopping me down in front of the TV - she was there with me, asking me questions, teaching me how to figure out things on my own. Which is what you are also doing with your children, but using the tools that are available today; but I think even if you didn't have access to those tools, you'd still find a way to interact and teach your children, and that's the best thing they could ever have. They'll also remember it for life.

turtlebits 7y ago

Screen time is inherently lazy. Young children do not have complex learning/entertainment requirements where a book or pens and paper wouldn’t suffice. Make your own entertainment/learning tools, it’s part of the fun. So even though you may think the educational aspect as well as bring present is good enough, you’re still training your kids to go straight to screens instead of putting in effort or just being bored. Finding things to do, being creative is a part of being a kid, and at that age, IMO, you’re doing a huge disservice to them.