6 ms·

I really wish this was discussed more often. As a parent, I am constantly bombarded with people telling me I should limit my kids' "screen time." Generational

I really wish this was discussed more often. As a parent, I am constantly bombarded with people telling me I should limit my kids' "screen time." Generational skepticism of new technology is played out. Can we move on yet?

jedberg 6y ago
Yeah me too. Anecdotally with my two children, they make huge educational jumps every time we increase their screen time. Screen time for us was playing games with an educational value and watching TV with at least some educational value. Recently we've started letting the five year old watch TV purely for entertainment, and the three year old sometimes watches too, but even then, both of them suddenly got a lot better at storytelling and coming up with their own original stories. So even "pure entertainment" seems to have educational value for the kids. The rule in our house is that you can't use a screen if the sun is up unless it's a weekend. That seems to be a good balance (although under the current conditions that's flexible if the screen is for an online class).
- jrochkind1 6y ago
  You started out I was expecting you to be very liberal with 'screen time', especially agreeing with the GP who seemed the same. But: > The rule in our house is that you can't use a screen if the sun is up unless it's a weekend I think that's actually limiting screentime more than most US households, you aren't actually on the "no need to limit screentime" side at all!
  - jedberg 6y ago
    It's important to note that we are night owls. The kids have TV basically from 7pm (when I turn on Jeopardy regardless of sunset) until they go to bed around 11pm. And during the current situation, sometimes they go to bed around 1-3am. So they actually get a lot more screen time than most of their peers.
    - noir_lord 6y ago
      Yeah, we've shifted to later as well, I'm a night owl by inclination, the boy seems to be as well, he'll crash from 3am til 12pm then get up. Given he's happy I'm not rocking that boat.
    - tasuki 6y ago
      Five and three year old go to bed around 1-3am? I don't necessarily have an opinion on that, but it surprises me :)
      - jedberg 6y ago
        They also wake up around 11am-1pm, so they still get 10 hours of sleep. :) Turns out not every kid loves mornings!
        tasuki 6y ago
        I know I didn't!
    - jrochkind1 6y ago
      I think they still get less "screen time" than a lot of kids I know, especially since pandemic time at home skyrocket.
- eanzenberg 6y ago
  I think limiting screen time is to allow young kids to concentrate on tasks for longer periods of time. This is recommended by most pediatricians. Our kids, who are home with us and in the same room as where both me and my wife work, are able to play by themselves for the most part every weekday from 9-12pm.
- ryandrake 6y ago
  I think it's irrational. "Screen time" is today's Dungeons and Dragons and heavy metal. People are doing things differently today than I did at that age, therefore it's bad and needs to be limited.
  - noir_lord 6y ago
    I love the fact that my generation (nearly 40) and the one after me both grew up playing ultra violent games and listening to rap etc and yet the crime statistics for violent crime are lower than they've been for about a century. Schadenfreude on that one.
  - rxhernandez 6y ago
    As a millennial who spent most of the past decade behind a computer screen (and probably the previous decade before that inside of books), I mourn the time I lost that could have been spent interacting with the world. Moreover, maybe both sides are right? Maybe you need heavy "screen interaction" to be successful in this world and maybe too much time is being consumed by screens rather than physically interacting with the world. Maybe there is a balance that isn't close to being struck by most. Maybe I would like my future children (if I have them) to interpret the world largely through their own eyes rather than a clickbait interpretation manufactured to get more money.
- deeblering4 6y ago
  My partner and I were just having a similar conversation. About how we "feel bad" when our child uses their tablet a lot in a day but we're not quite sure why. When using the tablet they are playing educational games about sorting/identifying shapes and colors, painting by numbers, solving puzzles, etc. Or watching/listening to songs that are teaching them colors, numbers, letters, etc. And dancing around because they like the music. These are drilling home lessons in a fun and repetitive way that we simply could not do for our child otherwise. And we've seen educational jumps from it too. Plus, let's be real, I make my living through a screen. So why is "screen time" stigmatized as a bad thing? I've come to the realization that screens are not an evil thing to be minimized at all costs. They are the most powerful tool of the modern age. It's just important to get some exercise and fresh air too.
goostavos 6y ago
Eh, I'm in camp "limit their screen time" if the screen time is all junk food. I also don't have kids, so what do I actually know? :) The only context for this opinion knowledge of the army of adults whose job it is to "maximize engagement" and give little dopamine hits. Some apps just seem predatory.
- sigfubar 6y ago
  It's the parents' job to teach kids how to tell junk food from healthy food; predatory apps from apps which add value; "you're the product" from "you're consuming the product". I do this with my kid, and technology is a boon for her. However, most adults aren't qualified to make the distinction between good and evil, so their kids suffer too.
  - eanzenberg 6y ago
    Lots of “teaching” is literally excluding from consumption for young kids. Parents know better than their kids, why entrust that kind of advanced decision making within them?
    - JoshTriplett 6y ago
      > why entrust that kind of advanced decision making within them? Because then there's a hope that they'll actually learn the underlying principle and make similar decisions in situations where someone else is not directly in control of their behavior. There are kids who don't get to eat ice cream before dinner at home because that's the rule, who will happily do so when over at someone else's house without their parents around to enforce that rule. Then there are kids who actually understand why they shouldn't eat ice cream before dinner, who will decline to do so even if they have the opportunity. (That doesn't mean they'll exercise perfect judgment every time, but then, there's also no guarantee they'll follow rules that aren't being enforced.) It's important to develop the critical thinking skills to filter out "junk food" content. (To clarify: I'm not talking about children too young to understand the concept, I'm talking about children more than old enough to make such decisions in an informed way. Roughly speaking, think 12, not 3.)
s_dev 6y ago
Both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates limited their kids screentime.
- lhorie 6y ago
  So did John Doe. Not sure I understand what the argument here is.
- jedberg 6y ago
  I don't think either of those people are well known for their excellence in parenting.
j45 6y ago
I find it's more helpful to see screen time in two buckets.. Creating/creative/thinking time spent on a screen is very different than passive consuming time.
exclusiv 6y ago
I'm with you but I think social media should be limited when they get to that point. Some parents also think you should be playing with your child at all times and that's absurd too. It's good for kids to learn how to entertain themselves and be creative as individuals. There's not much more obnoxious than kids who grew up with their parents always playing with them or managing their attention and the kids complain about being bored.
- saiya-jin 6y ago
  Most kids complaining (loudly) about being bored are from my experience those that are over-saturated with TV, phones, tablets etc. that are almost always around. Once you remove this (ie trip to remote nature/vacation), they can go slightly mental for a while. It seems to me that the recipe for that ideal self-sufficient-loving-smart-social-over-achieving kids that all parents seem to want to have is sort of a pipe dream, and it always has been, just environment changed. We all want them, but few will end up being one and its often not that much a fault of a parent. Plenty of love, plenty of time together, some time alone, some with others, well-managed discipline seems like a good start. I would add some traveling and exposure to foreign, exotic cultures. One can't avoid screen time these days, I mean if I want to show my kid to parents during Covid, it has to be via webcam. But passive aimless consumption isn't one for me, and for sure it won't be for my kids. I'll rather put them into rock climbing course. What happened to topics about billionaires forbidding the access to phones & TV to their kids before age of 7?
A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
Well, I agree that the issue needs careful examination. Not all screen time is created equal. That said, to an average person, screen time does not really equal educational applications, writing code or even reading. Instead, to most, it tends to mean Facebook, Netflix, Youtube, and increasingly creepier games designed to suck you in and bleed you( or your parents ) dry. I am saying this as an expecting parent. My parents were raised without TV and there is a clear difference on how they processed the information presented to them. Heavens know I do not process it the same way what with being basically raised on internet and tv. In short, I do not think we should move on. I think it is worthwhile to ask more nuanced questions than 'is screen time bad-discuss'.
eanzenberg 6y ago
>> Generational skepticism of new technology is played out. Can we move on yet? Is it, though? Spending lots of time in front of a TV is still considered harmful as it was half a century ago.
EamonnMR 6y ago
It's much harder to articulate "limit skinner box time" or "limit time spent using services that play on gambling impulses and give instant gratification like endless youtube playlists and mobile games."
egman_ekki 6y ago
There's a really interesting book called Digital Dementia that describes effects of modern digital tools on our brain. I'm not saying it's 100% correct, but interesting read nevertheless.
rietta 6y ago
I SURE am glad my parents didn't limit my screen time as a kid. I taught myself how to program from age 14 spending countless, countless late night hours staring at the DOS computer screen programming whatever caught my fancy. My career would look so much worse if my parents had forbade me from using the computer.
- saiya-jin 6y ago
  careers to many of us are far from being the most important things in our abysmally short lives
  - rietta 6y ago
    I find my work to be enjoyable and am glad it supports my family and my team members who work for us. It started out as literally me working crazy sleepless hours coding freelance using the self taught skills.
bityard 6y ago
Maybe those people telling you to limit screen time have different observations than you. It really depends on the individual child and my wife and I have first-hand experience with both ends of the spectrum. One of my kids thrives on screen time because she actively seeks out creative and informative non-passive activities. She is in control of her technology usage rather than the other way around. And even though we keep tabs on her, we trust her completely to manage her own time. The other gets limited screen time because if we don't put strict limits on it, he has absolutely immense self-control issues. He throws temper tantrums, claims to be bored all the time, picks arguments with others, refuses to follow simple instructions, and won't stay in bed for anything at bed time. Put simply: he displays all the hallmarks of chemical addiction with even a moderate amount of daily screen time. All of this is greatly decreased and comes very close to being a model citizen when we reduce his screen time down to only that which is required for his school work. And somewhere in there is the fact that human adolescent brains were not designed by evolution to sit indoors all day look at screens or books.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  > Maybe those people telling you to limit screen time have different observations than you. It really depends on the individual child and my wife and I have first-hand experience with both ends of the spectrum. But for those observations, is the problem the screen or what is on the screen? As a society, I'd like us to focus less on the former and more on the latter. A screen is just a window that become anything, and I don't see why it should be inherently more or less educative than any other experience. Let's say in the future we get perfect VR headsets that can perfectly replicate every sense. Would the conversation be different?

jedberg 6y ago

Yeah me too. Anecdotally with my two children, they make huge educational jumps every time we increase their screen time. Screen time for us was playing games with an educational value and watching TV with at least some educational value. Recently we've started letting the five year old watch TV purely for entertainment, and the three year old sometimes watches too, but even then, both of them suddenly got a lot better at storytelling and coming up with their own original stories. So even "pure entertainment" seems to have educational value for the kids. The rule in our house is that you can't use a screen if the sun is up unless it's a weekend. That seems to be a good balance (although under the current conditions that's flexible if the screen is for an online class).

jrochkind1 6y ago
You started out I was expecting you to be very liberal with 'screen time', especially agreeing with the GP who seemed the same. But: > The rule in our house is that you can't use a screen if the sun is up unless it's a weekend I think that's actually limiting screentime more than most US households, you aren't actually on the "no need to limit screentime" side at all!
- jedberg 6y ago
  It's important to note that we are night owls. The kids have TV basically from 7pm (when I turn on Jeopardy regardless of sunset) until they go to bed around 11pm. And during the current situation, sometimes they go to bed around 1-3am. So they actually get a lot more screen time than most of their peers.
  - noir_lord 6y ago
    Yeah, we've shifted to later as well, I'm a night owl by inclination, the boy seems to be as well, he'll crash from 3am til 12pm then get up. Given he's happy I'm not rocking that boat.
  - tasuki 6y ago
    Five and three year old go to bed around 1-3am? I don't necessarily have an opinion on that, but it surprises me :)
    - jedberg 6y ago
      They also wake up around 11am-1pm, so they still get 10 hours of sleep. :) Turns out not every kid loves mornings!
      - tasuki 6y ago
        I know I didn't!
  - jrochkind1 6y ago
    I think they still get less "screen time" than a lot of kids I know, especially since pandemic time at home skyrocket.
eanzenberg 6y ago
I think limiting screen time is to allow young kids to concentrate on tasks for longer periods of time. This is recommended by most pediatricians. Our kids, who are home with us and in the same room as where both me and my wife work, are able to play by themselves for the most part every weekday from 9-12pm.
ryandrake 6y ago
I think it's irrational. "Screen time" is today's Dungeons and Dragons and heavy metal. People are doing things differently today than I did at that age, therefore it's bad and needs to be limited.
- noir_lord 6y ago
  I love the fact that my generation (nearly 40) and the one after me both grew up playing ultra violent games and listening to rap etc and yet the crime statistics for violent crime are lower than they've been for about a century. Schadenfreude on that one.
- rxhernandez 6y ago
  As a millennial who spent most of the past decade behind a computer screen (and probably the previous decade before that inside of books), I mourn the time I lost that could have been spent interacting with the world. Moreover, maybe both sides are right? Maybe you need heavy "screen interaction" to be successful in this world and maybe too much time is being consumed by screens rather than physically interacting with the world. Maybe there is a balance that isn't close to being struck by most. Maybe I would like my future children (if I have them) to interpret the world largely through their own eyes rather than a clickbait interpretation manufactured to get more money.
deeblering4 6y ago
My partner and I were just having a similar conversation. About how we "feel bad" when our child uses their tablet a lot in a day but we're not quite sure why. When using the tablet they are playing educational games about sorting/identifying shapes and colors, painting by numbers, solving puzzles, etc. Or watching/listening to songs that are teaching them colors, numbers, letters, etc. And dancing around because they like the music. These are drilling home lessons in a fun and repetitive way that we simply could not do for our child otherwise. And we've seen educational jumps from it too. Plus, let's be real, I make my living through a screen. So why is "screen time" stigmatized as a bad thing? I've come to the realization that screens are not an evil thing to be minimized at all costs. They are the most powerful tool of the modern age. It's just important to get some exercise and fresh air too.

goostavos 6y ago

Eh, I'm in camp "limit their screen time" if the screen time is all junk food. I also don't have kids, so what do I actually know? :) The only context for this opinion knowledge of the army of adults whose job it is to "maximize engagement" and give little dopamine hits. Some apps just seem predatory.

sigfubar 6y ago
It's the parents' job to teach kids how to tell junk food from healthy food; predatory apps from apps which add value; "you're the product" from "you're consuming the product". I do this with my kid, and technology is a boon for her. However, most adults aren't qualified to make the distinction between good and evil, so their kids suffer too.
- eanzenberg 6y ago
  Lots of “teaching” is literally excluding from consumption for young kids. Parents know better than their kids, why entrust that kind of advanced decision making within them?
  - JoshTriplett 6y ago
    > why entrust that kind of advanced decision making within them? Because then there's a hope that they'll actually learn the underlying principle and make similar decisions in situations where someone else is not directly in control of their behavior. There are kids who don't get to eat ice cream before dinner at home because that's the rule, who will happily do so when over at someone else's house without their parents around to enforce that rule. Then there are kids who actually understand why they shouldn't eat ice cream before dinner, who will decline to do so even if they have the opportunity. (That doesn't mean they'll exercise perfect judgment every time, but then, there's also no guarantee they'll follow rules that aren't being enforced.) It's important to develop the critical thinking skills to filter out "junk food" content. (To clarify: I'm not talking about children too young to understand the concept, I'm talking about children more than old enough to make such decisions in an informed way. Roughly speaking, think 12, not 3.)

s_dev 6y ago

Both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates limited their kids screentime.

lhorie 6y ago
So did John Doe. Not sure I understand what the argument here is.
jedberg 6y ago
I don't think either of those people are well known for their excellence in parenting.

j45 6y ago

I find it's more helpful to see screen time in two buckets.. Creating/creative/thinking time spent on a screen is very different than passive consuming time.

exclusiv 6y ago

I'm with you but I think social media should be limited when they get to that point. Some parents also think you should be playing with your child at all times and that's absurd too. It's good for kids to learn how to entertain themselves and be creative as individuals. There's not much more obnoxious than kids who grew up with their parents always playing with them or managing their attention and the kids complain about being bored.

saiya-jin 6y ago
Most kids complaining (loudly) about being bored are from my experience those that are over-saturated with TV, phones, tablets etc. that are almost always around. Once you remove this (ie trip to remote nature/vacation), they can go slightly mental for a while. It seems to me that the recipe for that ideal self-sufficient-loving-smart-social-over-achieving kids that all parents seem to want to have is sort of a pipe dream, and it always has been, just environment changed. We all want them, but few will end up being one and its often not that much a fault of a parent. Plenty of love, plenty of time together, some time alone, some with others, well-managed discipline seems like a good start. I would add some traveling and exposure to foreign, exotic cultures. One can't avoid screen time these days, I mean if I want to show my kid to parents during Covid, it has to be via webcam. But passive aimless consumption isn't one for me, and for sure it won't be for my kids. I'll rather put them into rock climbing course. What happened to topics about billionaires forbidding the access to phones & TV to their kids before age of 7?

A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago

Well, I agree that the issue needs careful examination. Not all screen time is created equal. That said, to an average person, screen time does not really equal educational applications, writing code or even reading. Instead, to most, it tends to mean Facebook, Netflix, Youtube, and increasingly creepier games designed to suck you in and bleed you( or your parents ) dry. I am saying this as an expecting parent. My parents were raised without TV and there is a clear difference on how they processed the information presented to them. Heavens know I do not process it the same way what with being basically raised on internet and tv. In short, I do not think we should move on. I think it is worthwhile to ask more nuanced questions than 'is screen time bad-discuss'.

eanzenberg 6y ago

>> Generational skepticism of new technology is played out. Can we move on yet? Is it, though? Spending lots of time in front of a TV is still considered harmful as it was half a century ago.

EamonnMR 6y ago

It's much harder to articulate "limit skinner box time" or "limit time spent using services that play on gambling impulses and give instant gratification like endless youtube playlists and mobile games."

egman_ekki 6y ago

There's a really interesting book called Digital Dementia that describes effects of modern digital tools on our brain. I'm not saying it's 100% correct, but interesting read nevertheless.

rietta 6y ago

I SURE am glad my parents didn't limit my screen time as a kid. I taught myself how to program from age 14 spending countless, countless late night hours staring at the DOS computer screen programming whatever caught my fancy. My career would look so much worse if my parents had forbade me from using the computer.

saiya-jin 6y ago
careers to many of us are far from being the most important things in our abysmally short lives
- rietta 6y ago
  I find my work to be enjoyable and am glad it supports my family and my team members who work for us. It started out as literally me working crazy sleepless hours coding freelance using the self taught skills.

bityard 6y ago

Maybe those people telling you to limit screen time have different observations than you. It really depends on the individual child and my wife and I have first-hand experience with both ends of the spectrum. One of my kids thrives on screen time because she actively seeks out creative and informative non-passive activities. She is in control of her technology usage rather than the other way around. And even though we keep tabs on her, we trust her completely to manage her own time. The other gets limited screen time because if we don't put strict limits on it, he has absolutely immense self-control issues. He throws temper tantrums, claims to be bored all the time, picks arguments with others, refuses to follow simple instructions, and won't stay in bed for anything at bed time. Put simply: he displays all the hallmarks of chemical addiction with even a moderate amount of daily screen time. All of this is greatly decreased and comes very close to being a model citizen when we reduce his screen time down to only that which is required for his school work. And somewhere in there is the fact that human adolescent brains were not designed by evolution to sit indoors all day look at screens or books.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago
> Maybe those people telling you to limit screen time have different observations than you. It really depends on the individual child and my wife and I have first-hand experience with both ends of the spectrum. But for those observations, is the problem the screen or what is on the screen? As a society, I'd like us to focus less on the former and more on the latter. A screen is just a window that become anything, and I don't see why it should be inherently more or less educative than any other experience. Let's say in the future we get perfect VR headsets that can perfectly replicate every sense. Would the conversation be different?