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I have a 2 year old who gets very little screen time. When he does get some, his facial expression looks like that of someone on drugs. He stops paying attentio

I have a 2 year old who gets very little screen time. When he does get some, his facial expression looks like that of someone on drugs. He stops paying attention to anything else, he barely answers to anything, he only reacts to complain if an ad interrupts the video, or to move his head or complain if you're between him and the screen. Intuitively, that doesn't look healthy to me, I don't need to look at data to know that. Especially because it's not a reaction that he has to anything else (no other thing, even things he likes a lot, sucks his attention that much... breastfeeding gets close but even when breastfeeding he's less of a zombie than in front of a screen, he does play with things using his hand, foot, etc.) so it doesn't feel normal. And I find it very sad to see kids who spend hours a day in that state instead of interacting with the world, playing, etc. At 4 months old it's not so obvious because they interact less in general and don't have a lot of obvious states beyond "crying" and "not crying", but check his reactions to the screen when she gets a little older and you will see.

Moru 5y ago
I would not worry too much about this. I see this behaviour in my kid but also her mother and mothers mother. It's something that runs in the family. And her family didn't have TV or other media the last 50 years and they still all have the zombie trait. Our family however grew up with TV from early age and we do not have the zombie trait.
krageon 5y ago
> looks like that of someone on drugs So relaxed (or very activated)? Generally what people think of when they say "like they're on drugs" are just normal states that they disapprove of because it suits the narrative. In this case, the narrative is "screen time is bad". That means it is suitable to condemn it by making a parallel with something destructive, to make it feel like it has some association (which it neither physically nor mentally has been proven to have).
- valvar 5y ago
  To further illustrate that point, would you say that someone who is deeply concentrated while reading a book or solving a puzzle looks like they're on drugs?
  - watwut 5y ago
    If the kid throws massive temper tamtrum when I want it to put off the book/puzzle and go eat dinner with family, absolutely yes. If the kid refuses to engage with others, mistreats siblings or other relatives when the activity ends, yes. If the kid reads/solves and then behaves normally, then it is different.
    - krageon 5y ago
      If your child throws any kind of tantrum when you tell them to do something, regardless of activity, that is an indicator something isn't right in the core of how they were raised: Tantrums are bad behaviour and should never happen. That's entirely separate from what they are doing at the time, good behaviour (towards you) should be entirely independent of the environment.
      - watwut 5y ago
        1.) Different activities and situations cause different behaviors. 2.) What you said is purely ridiculous. The "tamptrums should never happen" is wishful thinking. It is a goal to produce adult that don't throws tamptrums. 3.) Kids behavior is in fact heavily dependent on environment. Half of classroom management and child raising is literally all about that. 4.) Even many adults rage when gaming and after. Evan adults are irritable and annoyed after gaming.
        the_af 5y ago
        Agreed, plus the personality matters. Some kids are more agrressive or tantrum prone than others, given the same environment. You can attempt to control it, but it's impossible to control and correct 100%. Kids have personalities!
- fps_doug 5y ago
  OTOH I noticed that kids < 10yrs tend to get overexcited or even slightly aggressive after watching TV. They're more likely to quarrel, if you have two or more. Obviously this might also depend on what they're watching, but if it's a TV show and they get denied watching another episode it does resemble a drug addict not getting their next fix somehow. ;-) We have some casual acquaintance we visited two or three times. Their then-4yo was constantly on an iPad on YouTube Kids, switching videos every 20 seconds. Just watching him was infuriating. You had rather innocent or mundane videos of e.g. model trains driving around, but before you could start to pay attention to any details or any kind of narrative, he'd switch to a video of kids in a swimming pool full of orbeez, then something Sesame-street-like. And they just let him keep doing that since he'd throw a tantrum if they take away the iPad. They have to let him watch that stuff at the table, otherwise he wouldn't eat. Fast forward to last year, he got into elementary school and was absolutely unable to pay attention to anything. Teachers made him see doctors, he's on medication now, but that was half a year ago so no idea how things are going today. Now I'm sure someone will pull the "are we sure we got cause and effect right here?" card, but even if that kid had some kind of predisposition, nobody can tell me that just putting up with the kid's tantrums when he was still four (or whatever age he started at, this was just when I first saw this) and taking away the iPad, going outside more would not have significantly improved the outcome here.
  - krageon 5y ago
    The problems you described seem to me like they have nothing to do with screen time and everything to do with consistent, attentive parenting. We definitely agree that that is crucial.
    - fps_doug 5y ago
      Sure, it's not as simple as having one isolated reason, but would you expect the same outcome if you replaced the iPad by books and leave everything else the same? I'm having a hard time imagining this. Yes, it's multiple factors coming together, but nothing beats the destructive impact of too much TV/smartphone/tablet on little kids, except maybe severe abuse or actual drugs.
- croo 5y ago
  No it means that literally nothing else makes the kid behave this specific way. It's a catatonic state where the kids senses are clearly overwhelmed, they do not move at all(!!) and their responsiveness degrades to near zero. After screen time the otherwise normal kid starts to behave erratically, seems like they have the need to compensate with more movement for the monitoneless time. If you try to talk about what they saw it becomes clear that they failed to process what they saw and multiple days and multiple hours of talking would be needed to wade through something as simple as half hour of David Attenborough animal documentary. Wether enough scientific fact has been gathered to understand the inner workings and circumstances are irrevelant, the cognitive weight of TV exist as a matter of fact. Now there are of course difference between TV and monitor and screen time. What causes the problems are TV like stuff - passive, movie-ish information. Drawing lines in paint or typing buttons to see them appear on notepad is definetly another thing - the information flow and actions there are controlled by the kid and there is another huge difference if the parent is there explaining. Not the monitor itself is the problem, but the absolutely overwhelming quantities of raw information which designed specifically to catch and hold an adults attention. Kids simply have no means to absorb or escape it. On my experience kids over 4-6 years starts to absorb some of the information and kids over 8 can sit through a disney movie with sufferable consequences.
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago
    Wait, this does not match my experience at all. I don't allow my daughter to watch youtube or have a tablet, but she plays the nintendo switch. She describes everything, she learns stuff, and even tell me about the game afterwards by herself (she is 3). The major problem is that she does not realize when she is bored or tired. To be fair, that's a problem with many activities, but boredom with toys is way more evident (she would just step away), while with videogames she would just get incredibly demanding (I can't do this, I can't do that, this is scary, changes level, even though it's stuff she has already done). She also chooses and replays the same levels to discover more (and she does!)
otabdeveloper4 5y ago
> When he does get some, his facial expression looks like that of someone on drugs. Yes, exactly. Screens are extremely addictive to kids. (Adults too, I suppose, but that's their own responsibility.)
- watwut 5y ago
  There is absolutely nothing addictive about "screen". It is when that screen plays youtube or kiddy game that it become addictive. If you put the kid in front of tablet without fun stuff, the kid will get bored quickly.
  - em500 5y ago
    Yup. Just give them a tablet without any games and network connection, load it up with text, music or some (foreign) language phrasebook that you'd want them to learn. They'll get bored very quickly, but if they don't they learn something new. It's a win either way.
    - watwut 5y ago
      Yes, it will become exactly the same as any other educational toy. They play a bit and then stop. And even if you put games there, games are not created equals. Some games make them happy, engaged and they stop playing them fairly easy. Other games makes them grumpy, angry and they will act out when you want them to end.
  - the_af 5y ago
    Not true in my experience. My 2-year old is addicted to the screen itself. It can be videos of cartoons of course, but also videos of trains, trucks, animals, sometimes she finds a programming-related conference I'm watching interesting (less interesting than a cartoon, but interesting enough to pay attention).
- bpizzi 5y ago
  > Screens are extremely addictive to kids. (Adults too, I suppose, but that's their own responsibility.) No, wrong. What can be addictive is the content displayed by the screen and the eventual interaction that the kid have with this content. Put a kid in front of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viOkh9al0xM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viOkh9al0xM (`This is the Train Driver's/engineers/operator/conductors view from the Bergen Line and the Famous Flåm Railway in Norway in Northern Europe.`), and start a 30s countdown: the kid will have left the screen before, guaranteed.
watwut 5y ago
I would argue that it is all about selection of what the kid watches/plays. The tablet playing documentary about history of taxes is 100% guaranteed to bore the kid.

Moru 5y ago

I would not worry too much about this. I see this behaviour in my kid but also her mother and mothers mother. It's something that runs in the family. And her family didn't have TV or other media the last 50 years and they still all have the zombie trait. Our family however grew up with TV from early age and we do not have the zombie trait.

krageon 5y ago

> looks like that of someone on drugs So relaxed (or very activated)? Generally what people think of when they say "like they're on drugs" are just normal states that they disapprove of because it suits the narrative. In this case, the narrative is "screen time is bad". That means it is suitable to condemn it by making a parallel with something destructive, to make it feel like it has some association (which it neither physically nor mentally has been proven to have).

valvar 5y ago
To further illustrate that point, would you say that someone who is deeply concentrated while reading a book or solving a puzzle looks like they're on drugs?
- watwut 5y ago
  If the kid throws massive temper tamtrum when I want it to put off the book/puzzle and go eat dinner with family, absolutely yes. If the kid refuses to engage with others, mistreats siblings or other relatives when the activity ends, yes. If the kid reads/solves and then behaves normally, then it is different.
  - krageon 5y ago
    If your child throws any kind of tantrum when you tell them to do something, regardless of activity, that is an indicator something isn't right in the core of how they were raised: Tantrums are bad behaviour and should never happen. That's entirely separate from what they are doing at the time, good behaviour (towards you) should be entirely independent of the environment.
    - watwut 5y ago
      1.) Different activities and situations cause different behaviors. 2.) What you said is purely ridiculous. The "tamptrums should never happen" is wishful thinking. It is a goal to produce adult that don't throws tamptrums. 3.) Kids behavior is in fact heavily dependent on environment. Half of classroom management and child raising is literally all about that. 4.) Even many adults rage when gaming and after. Evan adults are irritable and annoyed after gaming.
      - the_af 5y ago
        Agreed, plus the personality matters. Some kids are more agrressive or tantrum prone than others, given the same environment. You can attempt to control it, but it's impossible to control and correct 100%. Kids have personalities!
fps_doug 5y ago
OTOH I noticed that kids < 10yrs tend to get overexcited or even slightly aggressive after watching TV. They're more likely to quarrel, if you have two or more. Obviously this might also depend on what they're watching, but if it's a TV show and they get denied watching another episode it does resemble a drug addict not getting their next fix somehow. ;-) We have some casual acquaintance we visited two or three times. Their then-4yo was constantly on an iPad on YouTube Kids, switching videos every 20 seconds. Just watching him was infuriating. You had rather innocent or mundane videos of e.g. model trains driving around, but before you could start to pay attention to any details or any kind of narrative, he'd switch to a video of kids in a swimming pool full of orbeez, then something Sesame-street-like. And they just let him keep doing that since he'd throw a tantrum if they take away the iPad. They have to let him watch that stuff at the table, otherwise he wouldn't eat. Fast forward to last year, he got into elementary school and was absolutely unable to pay attention to anything. Teachers made him see doctors, he's on medication now, but that was half a year ago so no idea how things are going today. Now I'm sure someone will pull the "are we sure we got cause and effect right here?" card, but even if that kid had some kind of predisposition, nobody can tell me that just putting up with the kid's tantrums when he was still four (or whatever age he started at, this was just when I first saw this) and taking away the iPad, going outside more would not have significantly improved the outcome here.
- krageon 5y ago
  The problems you described seem to me like they have nothing to do with screen time and everything to do with consistent, attentive parenting. We definitely agree that that is crucial.
  - fps_doug 5y ago
    Sure, it's not as simple as having one isolated reason, but would you expect the same outcome if you replaced the iPad by books and leave everything else the same? I'm having a hard time imagining this. Yes, it's multiple factors coming together, but nothing beats the destructive impact of too much TV/smartphone/tablet on little kids, except maybe severe abuse or actual drugs.
croo 5y ago
No it means that literally nothing else makes the kid behave this specific way. It's a catatonic state where the kids senses are clearly overwhelmed, they do not move at all(!!) and their responsiveness degrades to near zero. After screen time the otherwise normal kid starts to behave erratically, seems like they have the need to compensate with more movement for the monitoneless time. If you try to talk about what they saw it becomes clear that they failed to process what they saw and multiple days and multiple hours of talking would be needed to wade through something as simple as half hour of David Attenborough animal documentary. Wether enough scientific fact has been gathered to understand the inner workings and circumstances are irrevelant, the cognitive weight of TV exist as a matter of fact. Now there are of course difference between TV and monitor and screen time. What causes the problems are TV like stuff - passive, movie-ish information. Drawing lines in paint or typing buttons to see them appear on notepad is definetly another thing - the information flow and actions there are controlled by the kid and there is another huge difference if the parent is there explaining. Not the monitor itself is the problem, but the absolutely overwhelming quantities of raw information which designed specifically to catch and hold an adults attention. Kids simply have no means to absorb or escape it. On my experience kids over 4-6 years starts to absorb some of the information and kids over 8 can sit through a disney movie with sufferable consequences.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago
  Wait, this does not match my experience at all. I don't allow my daughter to watch youtube or have a tablet, but she plays the nintendo switch. She describes everything, she learns stuff, and even tell me about the game afterwards by herself (she is 3). The major problem is that she does not realize when she is bored or tired. To be fair, that's a problem with many activities, but boredom with toys is way more evident (she would just step away), while with videogames she would just get incredibly demanding (I can't do this, I can't do that, this is scary, changes level, even though it's stuff she has already done). She also chooses and replays the same levels to discover more (and she does!)

otabdeveloper4 5y ago

> When he does get some, his facial expression looks like that of someone on drugs. Yes, exactly. Screens are extremely addictive to kids. (Adults too, I suppose, but that's their own responsibility.)

watwut 5y ago
There is absolutely nothing addictive about "screen". It is when that screen plays youtube or kiddy game that it become addictive. If you put the kid in front of tablet without fun stuff, the kid will get bored quickly.
- em500 5y ago
  Yup. Just give them a tablet without any games and network connection, load it up with text, music or some (foreign) language phrasebook that you'd want them to learn. They'll get bored very quickly, but if they don't they learn something new. It's a win either way.
  - watwut 5y ago
    Yes, it will become exactly the same as any other educational toy. They play a bit and then stop. And even if you put games there, games are not created equals. Some games make them happy, engaged and they stop playing them fairly easy. Other games makes them grumpy, angry and they will act out when you want them to end.
- the_af 5y ago
  Not true in my experience. My 2-year old is addicted to the screen itself. It can be videos of cartoons of course, but also videos of trains, trucks, animals, sometimes she finds a programming-related conference I'm watching interesting (less interesting than a cartoon, but interesting enough to pay attention).
bpizzi 5y ago
> Screens are extremely addictive to kids. (Adults too, I suppose, but that's their own responsibility.) No, wrong. What can be addictive is the content displayed by the screen and the eventual interaction that the kid have with this content. Put a kid in front of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viOkh9al0xM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viOkh9al0xM (`This is the Train Driver's/engineers/operator/conductors view from the Bergen Line and the Famous Flåm Railway in Norway in Northern Europe.`), and start a 30s countdown: the kid will have left the screen before, guaranteed.

watwut 5y ago

I would argue that it is all about selection of what the kid watches/plays. The tablet playing documentary about history of taxes is 100% guaranteed to bore the kid.