12 ms·

Tech execs who raise their kids tech-free or limit their screen time (2020)

156 points by evo_9 4y ago

darthrupert 4y ago
Seems completely normal. Don't parents do this generally?
- beezlebroxxxxxx 4y ago
  It used to be far more common, waned over the last 2 decades, but now it's coming back into fashion. Generally, phones and tablets are often replacements for baby sitters, or more sadly, interacting with a child. The idea of plopping your kid infront of a TV or tablet for a couple hours "to calm them down" is very common. Some do it because they are tired, other because it is simply easy, among other reasons.
  - mythhouse 4y ago
    yea I've seen this too. suprising how many people are not interested in being parents but decide to have kids for whatever reason.
    - SoftTalker 4y ago
      Your assumption is that they decided anything.
- LarryMullins 4y ago
  Back in the 90s, my brothers and I had our screen time limited by egg timers. 30 minutes a day normally, 60 if our grades were good, 0 if our grades were poor. This was for games/TV, computer time spent on school work or other research was not included. This was not common at the time, most of my friends had unlimited screentime, a few of them had to abide by rules similar to mine. Also, the computer was a big thing in the middle of the living room, not something I could slip into my pocket. So auditing for rule compliance was a lot easier. And the three of us shared one computer for most of that time, so if anybody was cheating the timer and taking more time, the odds of being ratted out were pretty good. In retrospect I think the rules were worthwhile, because they kept me active outdoors. And because in college I got to see the damage video game addiction can do to some people. It's like alcohol in that most people can enjoy it fine but a substantial minority ruin their lives with it. Parents would be very careless to not place reasonable limits on how much alcohol their children drink each day.
ctvo 4y ago
I don't think a lot of people dispute that more screen time is harmful. Not in itself, but usually because that screen time is spent on social media or platforms like YouTube. It harms our self image, attention span, spreads conspiracy theories, and who knows what else. Even being somewhat aware of this parents make the tradeoff. Imagine if cigarettes didn't have an age limit and while smoking your kids were calm, quiet, and easier to manage. What tradeoffs would parents have made? I'd guess a lot more of us would have respiratory issues. I wouldn't doubt there's a correlation between screen time and socio-economics. Having more money gives parents a choice. They can provide more enriching activities, hire a nanny, spend time directly with their children, n things that are viable alternatives to an iPad that a family with less may not have access to.
- aga98mtl 4y ago
  > I don't think a lot of people dispute that more screen time is harmful. I dispute it. Me and my friends played video games a lot, watched a lot of tv, etc. We all turned out fine. I think most people did the exact same thing and turned out fine too. Screen time = harm is an idea that flies in the face of the common reality lived by everyone born since 1980. This idea sounds a lot like people who thought novels were dangerous, that comic books were dangerous, that rock and roll was dangerous, etc.
  - thenerdhead 4y ago
    Do you still do those things a lot? Do you have a hard time quitting them? Turning out fine is not the problem here. It's the addiction that is formed creating habits that are extremely difficult to give up. This only gets worse each generation due to even more time in front of screens. Kids from the 80s spent more time outside than those from the 90s and so on. https://www.childinthecity.org/2018/01/15/children-spend-half-the-time-playing-outside-in-comparison-to-their-parents https://www.childinthecity.org/2018/01/15/children-spend-hal...
- LarryMullins 4y ago
  > I don't think a lot of people dispute that more screen time is harmful. Not in itself, but usually because that screen time is spent on social media or platforms like YouTube. It's both. A poor information diet is harmful of course, but so is screen use in general. Screen use is a sedentary activity which damages your body. At least at work we get compensated for the damage, like a construction worker who gets compensated for wearing out his body with hard labor. The programmer pay is better and the damage more manageable, but it's still not harmless. Too much time in front of a screen will atrophy your muscles and slow your metabolism. You can offset this damage by getting a gym membership, an active hobby, etc. But kids have trouble finding a healthy balance (not least because so many screen-activities are designed to be addictive) and that's why screen time limits are useful.
chollida1 4y ago
> In Steve Jobs' household, dinnertime was reserved for face-to-face conversation with his children — meaning no iPads or iPhones in sight. I mean, not having phones at the diner table seems to be the norm. I'm sure there are some families who read their phones at the diner table but its certainly not the norm around my friend group. > "I have times when I take away all my kids' phones, especially if we're on a family vacation, because I want people to interact with each other," said Wojcick. "So, I take away their phones and say: 'We're all going to focus on being present today.'" Again, this seems to be by far the norm in my friend group. If you are spending a fortune to take your family on vacation, then we expect our kids to be present and enjoy the vacation. Play in the ocean, or the splash pads or rides at amusement parks. These don't seem to be all that extreme and just normal parenting.
- kqr 4y ago
  I know of several families (the parents on both my side and my wife's side) where reading the newspaper over breakfast is normal. Only these days the newspaper is often a digital subscription on a tablet or phone. It's another small step to browse social media (after all, that's how a lot of people get their news) in the same way, or over different meals than breakfast. All in all, I share your observations, but I'm also not surprised if other people have to make that decision consciously.
  - anotherman554 4y ago
    Reading the newspaper at breakfast is an old TV trope. If TV is any indication it's socially acceptable to read things during the first meal of the day but not the latter ones.
    - googlryas 4y ago
      It's not just a trope, because generally, in the 20th century, newspapers were delivered in the mornings. So reading while eating breakfast and seeing what is happening in the world before you started your day is what many people actually did.
    - 4y ago
lnsru 4y ago
Rich people do not need cheap entertainment. Why to buy a kid debilitating app when you can get best piano or best horse riding teacher in town. The world of the riches is a bit different. I am not talking about middle management rich. I am talking about the richt people like in this article.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- pcurve 4y ago
  I agree. I feel a bit uncomfortable with the premise of this article. It's quasi deifying the tech execs. "CEO Evan Spiegel grew up without TV, and credits the technology restriction to his success". Sigh. Only if things were that simple. I'm sure it was one of hundreds of factors that worked in his favors.
  - spacemadness 4y ago
    It’s basically a financial tabloid. They all do this—pump out worship of the rich and successful that gets eaten up by the masses of temporarily embarrassed millionaires that read it and try to emulate what they do.
    - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
      > masses of temporarily embarrassed millionaires The "managerial class" people who actually read this stuff are often literally millionaires if you count their inflated home values and retirement funds. This is a magazine to be read by doctors, lawyer, investment bankers and techies, not people who work outdoors. The sliced of the economic ladder who are often derided by people slightly up the ladder as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" for not sharing the same views mostly don't care what the billionaires are up to unless one of them tries to buy an election presides over some technological breakthrough or some other highly newsworthy event.
  - kqr 4y ago
    Or he was successful despite the restriction! There's really no way to know just from one sample.
rwbt 4y ago
Just an observation, I'm a parent of two toddlers and try to limit screen time as much as possible. But if we ever go to my in laws or relatives places they always have a TV blaring in the background. I try not to make a fuss about limiting TV or screen time when we're visiting but they do know my views on screen time. They are completely fine giving iPads and allowing kids to watch YouTube for hours. I have no idea what it's effects are long term but their kids seem to be doing ok in school so far.
- orwin 4y ago
  I'm not a professionnal, but i've worked with kids for years before going into CS and development, and i have a surpising advice: Screen are OK. What you want is your kid to experiment. Constantly, with different things. Even doing nothing for some time can be stimulating, if you're with them. TV, radio, music on the background is a good idea (maybe mixing the medias a bit). Having stuff to look at (animated images!) is nice. The danger is cutting off social relationships and contact, and as long as you're present, this won't happen. And consider youth summer camps.
  - a-dub 4y ago
    my childhood had computers that had lots of rough edges and required a lot of problem solving in order to just get them to function. i can't help but wonder if today's tech gadgets that both work consistently, have beautifully polished ux and are geared towards consumption deny kids this kind of skill development opportunity. that said, the scope and scale of free learning resources available today is really mind boggling.
    - LarryMullins 4y ago
      > i can't help but wonder if today's tech gadgets that both work consistently, have beautifully polished ux and are geared towards consumption deny kids this kind of skill development opportunity. Certainly the case. Watching inane youtube videos on an ipad won't teach you anything more about technology than being a couch potato in front of a TV. Using a technological artifact is not intrinsically educational. I've heard plenty of stories about "I was a gamer and that's why I learned how to use computers", but those stories are from a time when getting a game to run required troubleshooting, finding and reading informational resources, etc. The iOS appstore isn't teaching any of this.
superkuh 4y ago
"screen time" limits, as if all screens were exactly the same, is such a bogus concept. Screens are not inherently bad, or good, or anything anymore than a window is bad or good. Or any rectangular slice of field of view... It's mass hysteria behavior much like prior generation's freak-outs over printed newspapers, radio, or television. If you want to have limits for time spent on youtube do that. The screen isn't the problem.
- beezlebroxxxxxx 4y ago
  "Screen time" is just the term that most people use for "use of technology", in this case TV, and other computer tech (tablets, desktops, phones). What they are really talking about is the applications or "services" the kids are addicted to staring at and using by way of the screens. > Screens are not inherently bad, or good, or anything anymore than a window is bad or good. Once you understand it's not really the screens as such, but the things the kids are looking at by way of the screens, then the value neutral claim kind of falls apart because the things the kids are looking at by way of the screens are made to be addictive and optimized to an absurd degree for that effect of habit formation. Tech companies have been on a decades long move to remove the concept of "just a screen", an obvious example being TVs which are now all "smart". Seeing as we know that habit formation is easier to bring about in children (their habits and behaviour as children defined by their plastic nature at that age) it's within reason to be worried that an industry and parenting practice is essentially enabling intense habit formation in children for material gain. I wouldn't let imprecise language get in the way of the main issue: is addiction to certain services and technology something we want for our children? The fact that tech execs have decided "no" seems to be ironic considering they have no problem with other children doing it.
  - xlii 4y ago
    I know people who limit heavily usage of the devices (1-2h per day at most), but those kids have Instagram, FB etc., even though kids are way too young to use this kind of tech (<10 years old, so accounts would be locked out if reported). On the other side of the spectrum I know 11-year olds who spend 6-7h per day on FT calls with their group. In the end, both behaviours are screen time.
trosi 4y ago
It's like noticing that McDonald's execs don't take their kids to eat fast food every day. Too much screen time can be dangerous for anyone.
- the_only_law 4y ago
  Would make for about as interesting as article/conversation too.
- weakfortress 4y ago
  I generally find the most technically competent people I work with generally are simpletons when it comes to technology. Once you see how the sausage is made the master plan of the technocracy becomes obvious.
tomhallett 4y ago
For Christmas, I bought my kids a physical set of encylopedias [1], usually $600, but black friday sale for $400. My son wanted to know "What are the top 30 soccer teams in the world cup all time?". Instead of googling it, which would have given him a listacle article with random facts and other clickbait, the encyclopedia had: * Winners and runners up for the past 15 world cups * a break down of soccer per continent, comparing and contrasting them He then went and totaled how many wins different countries have gotten.... For a family like mine which can afford $400 for a set of books, this has been an amazing purchase which is a far superior first step to "pull out an ipad and google it". [1]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0716601214 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0716601214
- core-utility 4y ago
  And for families who can't afford $400, library cards are free.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - tester457 4y ago
    And for families without access to libraries, torrents are free
  - tomhallett 4y ago
    Totally agree. I try to take them to the library often, but (for families who can afford it) the convenience is nice because they can research something on their own without a trip to the library - at which point they probably would have lost interest. My goal is to tighten feedback loops for learning and discovery, without using a computer. Questions they've answered which probably wouldn't have risen to the level of "let's go to the library today/tomorrow": * what are the signs of the Chinese zodiac? which one am i? * what is the different between a trademark and a copyright? why does it say "R" vs "TM"? (I gave an answer off the type of my head, but they clearly weren't happy with it.... haha)
- bfgoodrich 4y ago
gdubs 4y ago
Honestly the hardest thing to do as a parent comes down to setting a good example. If we want our kids to do more than scroll mindlessly for hours and hours, it's incredibly impactful for us to model that behavior. (I'm nowhere near as good about this as I'd like to be.) With our first kid we were pretty adamant about screen time restriction at a young age. By kid three, the restrictions had loosened significantly. There was also a pandemic in there — but in addition to having a lot more on our hands as parents, we established things like family games at night etc. We watched Avatar the Last Airbender as a family and it was a great thing to do together. I introduced the kids to Sim City Classic and Scratch programming. It's all about balance but ultimately, as parents we gotta "walk the walk" and model the behavior we want to see in our kids.
- thenerdhead 4y ago
  One of the best things I've done is locked my phone in my office and only model reading around them. Funny enough, they pick up their books and try to read (mostly looking at pictures cause they're young). Modeling good habits is really important.
foxandmouse 4y ago
This is like saying rich people are more cultured cause they travel more...
bfgoodrich 4y ago
[dead]
geek_at 4y ago
When word of my XP based grading system got out I had lots of interviews with different TV stations. Most notable RTL which is a German kinda trashy TV station and I had a chat with the producer assigned with my story. To my amazement he disallowed hits children the TV entirely because he states it was only trash and no good for a developing mind. I had to try hard not to laugh when his station was a heavy part of the problem in the German speaking world
- cheschire 4y ago
  All of their stations, it's hard to express just how broad of an negative impact the RTL media group has on the quality of modern entertainment in Germany.
  - barbazoo 4y ago
    Bauer sucht Frau is pretty good, no? :D
axpy906 4y ago
The number of screen types has increased since I was a child in the 90’s. We only had TVs. Now kids are exposed to phones, tablets, games and watches in addition to the tv. So many opportunities and so many more channels as a parent I need to block or watch out for.
nonrandomstring 4y ago
Screen time is only part of it. As a Digital Vegan I'm nore focused on screen quality. The newest command line user in our family is 7. I gave her a Raspberry Pi last Christmas and loaded one thing; a python shell "PlayOS" that I wrote to make everything a three or four letter command. The idea is to improve her reading and writing/typing by putting everything she wants a few keystrokes away on the command line. So far we have: music - plays a random tune from her music collection music abba - selects something more specific see - shows something visual, for example; see me - random photos from the holiday album see octonauts - an undersea cartoon plays read - stories and rhymes say - make the computer speak (festival - which she calls robot voice) Basically, each time she expresses an interest I add a python tuple which is a parsing template like alias + exec. After that she memorises the command. By 9 I expect her to have mastered a computer by typing, including sending emails to mom and dad etc. When she's had enough she knows the poweroff command - which it's own kind of fun. Most of her friends drag their fingers over images on tablets. They get into a tantrum if it's taken away from them. They are addicts before they are 10. Hopefully I'm helping build a life-long skill, but I dread the day her friends, pawing at screen like retarded monkeys, tell her that phones are better :) Yes, there are physiological reasons to limit screen time too. But that's not my threat model at present. Time to boredom on PlayOS is always less than 1 hour.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  I really like the idea ( and it is likely not a bad way to introduce the kid to command line eventually ). Consider adding it on github ( or similar ). I am relatively certain you will get an audience for it.
- 88stacks 4y ago
  amazing, can you write a full blog post about this.I want to do something similar.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- patrickdavey 4y ago
  Love this idea. Could you just expand a little on PlayOS? It's this running an underlying OS which then boots into a bash console running your repl? Just curious, would love to do something similar (or use yours if it was available!)
submeta 4y ago
These Executives are restricting the screen time of their children for a number of reasons. Some executives, like Evan Spiegel and Sundar Pichai, grew up without much access to technology and credit the technology restriction to their success. They may want to replicate this experience for their own children. Other executives, like Steve Jobs, value face-to-face conversation and interaction and believe that technology can be a distraction from these types of interactions. Some executives, like Susan Wojcicki, want their children to learn how to manage technology responsibly and balance screen time with other activities. Others, like Alexis Ohanian and Serena Williams, want to limit their daughter's screen time as she gets older to ensure that she doesn't become overly reliant on or addicted to technology.
- saghm 4y ago
  > Others, like Alexis Ohanian and Serena Williams, want to limit their daughter's screen time as she gets older to ensure that she doesn't become overly reliant on or addicted to technology I had an interesting epiphany when reading this sentence. At first, my reaction was that this was a bit of a different comparison to the others, given that Serena Williams is much more famous than her husband, and she's known not for technology but for being arguably the most dominant athlete of an entire generation (not just in her sport, and not just among women, but like, decades of winning tournaments at the highest level is basically unparalleled). But then I realized that most of these other people mentioned also have another parent alongside them, and the fact that they're not famous doesn't mean that they don't have equally strong opinions about how to raise a child, and ideally most parenting couples will be cooperative and not just "the most famous person's opinions win". I wonder if a lot of these famous executives didn't come up with their parenting strategies on their own, but after discussion and inspiration from their partner as well. Put in that light, it's a lot harder for me to just assume hypocrisy when I know I've grown and changed so much for the better since finding my partner to settle down with for the rest of my life. We don't have any desire for children of our own, but it seems pretty logical that if it were something we wanted, the initial ideas I had when we started discussing parenting would potentially evolve through insights I would gain from my partner, since that's exactly what's happened with all of the discussions we've had about long-term plans that we do have.
dang 4y ago
I seem to recall other threads about this but other than the following, I can't find them: Why Gates and Jobs shielded their kids from tech - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16251875 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16251875 - Jan 2018 (9 comments) Anybody? Edit: there are these: Silicon Valley’s supposed obsession with tech-free private schools (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30746379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30746379 - March 2022 (116 comments) A Silicon Valley School That Doesn’t Compute (2011) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18340767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18340767 - Oct 2018 (22 comments) A Silicon Valley School That Doesn’t Compute - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3145080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3145080 - Oct 2011 (40 comments)
thenerdhead 4y ago
There's that scene in Scarface about "Don't get high on your own supply". Those who are selling the products tend to not be the consumers of them. Tech, Fast Food, Drugs, etc. Moderation and information diets are especially helpful for those of us who can't afford people to raise our kids for us.
VyseofArcadia 4y ago
I'm sure my bias is showing, but I think my mom's solution worked pretty well. No such thing as limiting screen time, but I did have limits on the kinds of activities I was allowed to do and when. No video games on school nights. Sunday is fine but only before dinner and only if my homework was finished. Computer time was limited to half an hour and only if my homework was finished, and I could only run whitelisted "educational" software. No formal limits on TV watching, but in practice my parents had grown up shows they wanted to watch that I found boring, so my TV time was effectively limited to e.g. when they were busy cooking dinner. No limits for any activity on weekends as long as homework, chores, and miscellaneous family activities were done. I thought of this as digital pig-out time, and I'm sure my parents thought of it as, "do what we want because the kids are playing video games" time. All the above activity limits expired when I got into high school. I guess they'd rather me do nerd stuff than getting into trouble with drugs, alcohol, or girls. And indeed, I spent this time teaching myself C so I guess it worked. No children of our own yet, but we plan to adopt a similar system, with modern internet-connected screens like phones and/or tablets lumped into the "computer time" category.
- friend_and_foe 4y ago
  I'm guessing you're in your 30s, maybe late 20s, this is how most of us grew up. It's not the same anymore. "Nerd stuff" these days is watching Disney movies and playing games. We taught ourselves nerd stuff because we had to dig to get to the candy inside. These days you don't have to dig, one click install and done, the digging is grinding for loot boxes or whatever. A person can use these machines hours a day every day of the week for years and not learn a single thing about actually operating them, they're kiosks for consumption to most people. To learn real nerd stuff requires deliberate effort now.
  - VyseofArcadia 4y ago
    Hit the nail on the head. I'm in my mid-30s. To learn anything on your own has always required effort. I've been driving almost every day for 20 years, and I still don't really know anything about cars. My mother-in-law has been using a computer every day since 1985, and she knows less about computers than I do about cars. "Needing to dig" is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for learning. I feel like the lack of a need to dig is a double-edged sword if anything. I knew I wanted to program the computer, but I had to scour the card catalog at the library for anything related to computers to find anything at all, and most of what I found was about BASIC. Now? It's a click away. On the other hand, I know where to look for information, how to read the docs, etc.
PakG1 4y ago
Lately, I don't even have time to watch TV or movies anymore, so we don't even have a TV. We of course have computers, tablets, and smartphones, given the world today. But we never put them in front of our toddler for her to watch. The only time we have her looking at a smartphone is when we do a video call to grandparents. These days, she's really excited for me to read books to her. She grabs her books off the shelves and brings them to me, and when we're done, she goes and grabs more. Last night, she kept wanting to go back to reading one called Barnyard Dance over and over again. She loves it. After experiencing life with her not caring about screens, I'm actually quite excited and intrigued. I love that she's excited to read books, demands me to read them to her, and cries when I say it's time to stop and go sleep or go eat or whatever. I've not yet experienced life with her extensively in front of screens, but at this point, I think I enjoy life without screens for the toddler in terms of our family relationship, and I think I'll keep it going for as long as I can. She seems to be full of life without them, why try to fix what's not broken? Eventually though, I wouldn't mind if she became a software engineer, if that's how she's bent, so probably need to introduce screens sometime. But we'll put it off for as long as possible and when screens do come into her life, hopefully, she'll go at them with the same excitement she goes at books and also doesn't lose her love for books.
donsupreme 4y ago
This shouldn't be surprising. You think McDonald's exec have their kids eating happy meals all the time if at all?
GuB-42 4y ago
I don't have kids but am a bit conflicted with the desire to limit their screen time too much (reasonable limits are fine). Tech is their world, that's how they communicate, how they get their information and entertainment. For people who know how life was without the internet may feel like it is addiction, that it is "untrue", that nothing is better than face to face, that constant stimulation is bad, etc... But what if it is our problem and not theirs, that we have trouble adapting and are simply projecting our trouble to children, when themselves have no problem dealing with the situation. I mean, late GenX to early millenials lived their childhood in the world of TV, which is worse than what we have today in many ways, and they are fine! I trust children of today, they will make something great, and we will get lost, like the old geezers we are starting to become.
- freedude 4y ago
  "I don't have kids but am a bit conflicted with the desire to limit their screen time too much" What you do in moderation your children will do in excess.
weakfortress 4y ago
When I was growing up computers were dumb and hard. To be a kid using a computer you not only needed to develop the smarts to be able to USE the damn thing, but to make use of it you needed to spend a lot of time...reading. As I got older things like iCQ and IRC were popular and generally you simply met other like-minded people and could generally get by on anonymity. Communities were far better, there was no such thing and "doing it for the <social media platform>". It was hard to melt your brain on albinoblacksheep or newgrounds because content wasn't released on a millisecond basis. You could realistically binge on these similar to kids today and be stuck waiting weeks to months before the next round of brain melting content came out. Don't get me wrong I played plenty of video games on the computer. However, I had to figure out how to even do that to get started. Moreover, we didn't have always-on internet. You called in and put a stupid phone on a machine. Then modems came out. Good luck binging on anything when your mom needed the phone to gossip with her friends. I suppose this is no different than any technical field. Once things are made easy enough a caveman can do it, the next generation loses the creativity and ingenuity their fore-bearers had. Now, screen time is implied to be negative. As it should be. Your average kid's screen time is not sitting at a terminal trying to puzzle out how to make a computer work. They are not sitting watching 8 hours of programming videos, or math videos, or Carl Sagan's cosmos. They aren't listening to audiobooks of war and peace. They are, quite literally, melting their brain with the videographic equivalent of cocaine. I am of the opinion parents these days who allow their kids unrestricted time on TikTok/Facebook/Youtube/etc are doing them a major developmental disservice. The entire social media machine is powered by designed-in-a-laboratory techniques to keep you locked in. If an adult, with all their life experience, cannot resist such temptations expecting a child to do the same is non-sensical. It's gotten far too easy to not only use a computer, but to become hopelessly addicted to content farms via the "always-on" new world. Kids just aren't being kids anymore. Times were different back then. Some people may disagree, but the "nerd" kids 30 years ago were smarter, faster, and better than such kids today. No different than our grandparents having to be the same way back when. They had to be. Now, things are easier. For better or worse. The same technology that could've raised the new generation to be even better than us was instead co-opted by advertisers to hopelessly addict children and adults to what amounts to just a different form of pornography (which, coincidentally was ALSO harder for us to get...I digress). I guess this is more of a thesis on the state of the world than just computers...it's all related.
paulpauper 4y ago
Not a fan of this. I think kids should be allowed to do what they want, within reason. Screen time is good for learning , good for keeping busy, entertainment, and so on. Telling someone they cannot do something may lead to resentment,
uconnectlol 4y ago
On one hand, they're morons, on the other hand, they helped kill the tech industry, so they're right for helping their kids avoid wasting their time using tech (as in actually wasting time, not alluding to addiction bullshit).

156 points by evo_9 4y ago

darthrupert 4y ago

Seems completely normal. Don't parents do this generally?

beezlebroxxxxxx 4y ago
It used to be far more common, waned over the last 2 decades, but now it's coming back into fashion. Generally, phones and tablets are often replacements for baby sitters, or more sadly, interacting with a child. The idea of plopping your kid infront of a TV or tablet for a couple hours "to calm them down" is very common. Some do it because they are tired, other because it is simply easy, among other reasons.
- mythhouse 4y ago
  yea I've seen this too. suprising how many people are not interested in being parents but decide to have kids for whatever reason.
  - SoftTalker 4y ago
    Your assumption is that they decided anything.
LarryMullins 4y ago
Back in the 90s, my brothers and I had our screen time limited by egg timers. 30 minutes a day normally, 60 if our grades were good, 0 if our grades were poor. This was for games/TV, computer time spent on school work or other research was not included. This was not common at the time, most of my friends had unlimited screentime, a few of them had to abide by rules similar to mine. Also, the computer was a big thing in the middle of the living room, not something I could slip into my pocket. So auditing for rule compliance was a lot easier. And the three of us shared one computer for most of that time, so if anybody was cheating the timer and taking more time, the odds of being ratted out were pretty good. In retrospect I think the rules were worthwhile, because they kept me active outdoors. And because in college I got to see the damage video game addiction can do to some people. It's like alcohol in that most people can enjoy it fine but a substantial minority ruin their lives with it. Parents would be very careless to not place reasonable limits on how much alcohol their children drink each day.

ctvo 4y ago

I don't think a lot of people dispute that more screen time is harmful. Not in itself, but usually because that screen time is spent on social media or platforms like YouTube. It harms our self image, attention span, spreads conspiracy theories, and who knows what else. Even being somewhat aware of this parents make the tradeoff. Imagine if cigarettes didn't have an age limit and while smoking your kids were calm, quiet, and easier to manage. What tradeoffs would parents have made? I'd guess a lot more of us would have respiratory issues. I wouldn't doubt there's a correlation between screen time and socio-economics. Having more money gives parents a choice. They can provide more enriching activities, hire a nanny, spend time directly with their children, n things that are viable alternatives to an iPad that a family with less may not have access to.

aga98mtl 4y ago
> I don't think a lot of people dispute that more screen time is harmful. I dispute it. Me and my friends played video games a lot, watched a lot of tv, etc. We all turned out fine. I think most people did the exact same thing and turned out fine too. Screen time = harm is an idea that flies in the face of the common reality lived by everyone born since 1980. This idea sounds a lot like people who thought novels were dangerous, that comic books were dangerous, that rock and roll was dangerous, etc.
- thenerdhead 4y ago
  Do you still do those things a lot? Do you have a hard time quitting them? Turning out fine is not the problem here. It's the addiction that is formed creating habits that are extremely difficult to give up. This only gets worse each generation due to even more time in front of screens. Kids from the 80s spent more time outside than those from the 90s and so on. https://www.childinthecity.org/2018/01/15/children-spend-half-the-time-playing-outside-in-comparison-to-their-parents https://www.childinthecity.org/2018/01/15/children-spend-hal...
LarryMullins 4y ago
> I don't think a lot of people dispute that more screen time is harmful. Not in itself, but usually because that screen time is spent on social media or platforms like YouTube. It's both. A poor information diet is harmful of course, but so is screen use in general. Screen use is a sedentary activity which damages your body. At least at work we get compensated for the damage, like a construction worker who gets compensated for wearing out his body with hard labor. The programmer pay is better and the damage more manageable, but it's still not harmless. Too much time in front of a screen will atrophy your muscles and slow your metabolism. You can offset this damage by getting a gym membership, an active hobby, etc. But kids have trouble finding a healthy balance (not least because so many screen-activities are designed to be addictive) and that's why screen time limits are useful.

chollida1 4y ago

> In Steve Jobs' household, dinnertime was reserved for face-to-face conversation with his children — meaning no iPads or iPhones in sight. I mean, not having phones at the diner table seems to be the norm. I'm sure there are some families who read their phones at the diner table but its certainly not the norm around my friend group. > "I have times when I take away all my kids' phones, especially if we're on a family vacation, because I want people to interact with each other," said Wojcick. "So, I take away their phones and say: 'We're all going to focus on being present today.'" Again, this seems to be by far the norm in my friend group. If you are spending a fortune to take your family on vacation, then we expect our kids to be present and enjoy the vacation. Play in the ocean, or the splash pads or rides at amusement parks. These don't seem to be all that extreme and just normal parenting.

kqr 4y ago
I know of several families (the parents on both my side and my wife's side) where reading the newspaper over breakfast is normal. Only these days the newspaper is often a digital subscription on a tablet or phone. It's another small step to browse social media (after all, that's how a lot of people get their news) in the same way, or over different meals than breakfast. All in all, I share your observations, but I'm also not surprised if other people have to make that decision consciously.
- anotherman554 4y ago
  Reading the newspaper at breakfast is an old TV trope. If TV is any indication it's socially acceptable to read things during the first meal of the day but not the latter ones.
  - googlryas 4y ago
    It's not just a trope, because generally, in the 20th century, newspapers were delivered in the mornings. So reading while eating breakfast and seeing what is happening in the world before you started your day is what many people actually did.
  - 4y ago

lnsru 4y ago

Rich people do not need cheap entertainment. Why to buy a kid debilitating app when you can get best piano or best horse riding teacher in town. The world of the riches is a bit different. I am not talking about middle management rich. I am talking about the richt people like in this article.

deleted 4y ago
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pcurve 4y ago
I agree. I feel a bit uncomfortable with the premise of this article. It's quasi deifying the tech execs. "CEO Evan Spiegel grew up without TV, and credits the technology restriction to his success". Sigh. Only if things were that simple. I'm sure it was one of hundreds of factors that worked in his favors.
- spacemadness 4y ago
  It’s basically a financial tabloid. They all do this—pump out worship of the rich and successful that gets eaten up by the masses of temporarily embarrassed millionaires that read it and try to emulate what they do.
  - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    > masses of temporarily embarrassed millionaires The "managerial class" people who actually read this stuff are often literally millionaires if you count their inflated home values and retirement funds. This is a magazine to be read by doctors, lawyer, investment bankers and techies, not people who work outdoors. The sliced of the economic ladder who are often derided by people slightly up the ladder as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" for not sharing the same views mostly don't care what the billionaires are up to unless one of them tries to buy an election presides over some technological breakthrough or some other highly newsworthy event.
- kqr 4y ago
  Or he was successful despite the restriction! There's really no way to know just from one sample.

rwbt 4y ago

Just an observation, I'm a parent of two toddlers and try to limit screen time as much as possible. But if we ever go to my in laws or relatives places they always have a TV blaring in the background. I try not to make a fuss about limiting TV or screen time when we're visiting but they do know my views on screen time. They are completely fine giving iPads and allowing kids to watch YouTube for hours. I have no idea what it's effects are long term but their kids seem to be doing ok in school so far.

orwin 4y ago
I'm not a professionnal, but i've worked with kids for years before going into CS and development, and i have a surpising advice: Screen are OK. What you want is your kid to experiment. Constantly, with different things. Even doing nothing for some time can be stimulating, if you're with them. TV, radio, music on the background is a good idea (maybe mixing the medias a bit). Having stuff to look at (animated images!) is nice. The danger is cutting off social relationships and contact, and as long as you're present, this won't happen. And consider youth summer camps.
- a-dub 4y ago
  my childhood had computers that had lots of rough edges and required a lot of problem solving in order to just get them to function. i can't help but wonder if today's tech gadgets that both work consistently, have beautifully polished ux and are geared towards consumption deny kids this kind of skill development opportunity. that said, the scope and scale of free learning resources available today is really mind boggling.
  - LarryMullins 4y ago
    > i can't help but wonder if today's tech gadgets that both work consistently, have beautifully polished ux and are geared towards consumption deny kids this kind of skill development opportunity. Certainly the case. Watching inane youtube videos on an ipad won't teach you anything more about technology than being a couch potato in front of a TV. Using a technological artifact is not intrinsically educational. I've heard plenty of stories about "I was a gamer and that's why I learned how to use computers", but those stories are from a time when getting a game to run required troubleshooting, finding and reading informational resources, etc. The iOS appstore isn't teaching any of this.

superkuh 4y ago

"screen time" limits, as if all screens were exactly the same, is such a bogus concept. Screens are not inherently bad, or good, or anything anymore than a window is bad or good. Or any rectangular slice of field of view... It's mass hysteria behavior much like prior generation's freak-outs over printed newspapers, radio, or television. If you want to have limits for time spent on youtube do that. The screen isn't the problem.

beezlebroxxxxxx 4y ago
"Screen time" is just the term that most people use for "use of technology", in this case TV, and other computer tech (tablets, desktops, phones). What they are really talking about is the applications or "services" the kids are addicted to staring at and using by way of the screens. > Screens are not inherently bad, or good, or anything anymore than a window is bad or good. Once you understand it's not really the screens as such, but the things the kids are looking at by way of the screens, then the value neutral claim kind of falls apart because the things the kids are looking at by way of the screens are made to be addictive and optimized to an absurd degree for that effect of habit formation. Tech companies have been on a decades long move to remove the concept of "just a screen", an obvious example being TVs which are now all "smart". Seeing as we know that habit formation is easier to bring about in children (their habits and behaviour as children defined by their plastic nature at that age) it's within reason to be worried that an industry and parenting practice is essentially enabling intense habit formation in children for material gain. I wouldn't let imprecise language get in the way of the main issue: is addiction to certain services and technology something we want for our children? The fact that tech execs have decided "no" seems to be ironic considering they have no problem with other children doing it.
- xlii 4y ago
  I know people who limit heavily usage of the devices (1-2h per day at most), but those kids have Instagram, FB etc., even though kids are way too young to use this kind of tech (<10 years old, so accounts would be locked out if reported). On the other side of the spectrum I know 11-year olds who spend 6-7h per day on FT calls with their group. In the end, both behaviours are screen time.

trosi 4y ago

It's like noticing that McDonald's execs don't take their kids to eat fast food every day. Too much screen time can be dangerous for anyone.

the_only_law 4y ago
Would make for about as interesting as article/conversation too.
weakfortress 4y ago
I generally find the most technically competent people I work with generally are simpletons when it comes to technology. Once you see how the sausage is made the master plan of the technocracy becomes obvious.

tomhallett 4y ago

For Christmas, I bought my kids a physical set of encylopedias [1], usually $600, but black friday sale for $400. My son wanted to know "What are the top 30 soccer teams in the world cup all time?". Instead of googling it, which would have given him a listacle article with random facts and other clickbait, the encyclopedia had: * Winners and runners up for the past 15 world cups * a break down of soccer per continent, comparing and contrasting them He then went and totaled how many wins different countries have gotten.... For a family like mine which can afford $400 for a set of books, this has been an amazing purchase which is a far superior first step to "pull out an ipad and google it". [1]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0716601214 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0716601214

core-utility 4y ago
And for families who can't afford $400, library cards are free.
- deleted 4y ago
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- tester457 4y ago
  And for families without access to libraries, torrents are free
- tomhallett 4y ago
  Totally agree. I try to take them to the library often, but (for families who can afford it) the convenience is nice because they can research something on their own without a trip to the library - at which point they probably would have lost interest. My goal is to tighten feedback loops for learning and discovery, without using a computer. Questions they've answered which probably wouldn't have risen to the level of "let's go to the library today/tomorrow": * what are the signs of the Chinese zodiac? which one am i? * what is the different between a trademark and a copyright? why does it say "R" vs "TM"? (I gave an answer off the type of my head, but they clearly weren't happy with it.... haha)
bfgoodrich 4y ago

gdubs 4y ago

Honestly the hardest thing to do as a parent comes down to setting a good example. If we want our kids to do more than scroll mindlessly for hours and hours, it's incredibly impactful for us to model that behavior. (I'm nowhere near as good about this as I'd like to be.) With our first kid we were pretty adamant about screen time restriction at a young age. By kid three, the restrictions had loosened significantly. There was also a pandemic in there — but in addition to having a lot more on our hands as parents, we established things like family games at night etc. We watched Avatar the Last Airbender as a family and it was a great thing to do together. I introduced the kids to Sim City Classic and Scratch programming. It's all about balance but ultimately, as parents we gotta "walk the walk" and model the behavior we want to see in our kids.

thenerdhead 4y ago
One of the best things I've done is locked my phone in my office and only model reading around them. Funny enough, they pick up their books and try to read (mostly looking at pictures cause they're young). Modeling good habits is really important.

foxandmouse 4y ago

This is like saying rich people are more cultured cause they travel more...

bfgoodrich 4y ago

[dead]

geek_at 4y ago

When word of my XP based grading system got out I had lots of interviews with different TV stations. Most notable RTL which is a German kinda trashy TV station and I had a chat with the producer assigned with my story. To my amazement he disallowed hits children the TV entirely because he states it was only trash and no good for a developing mind. I had to try hard not to laugh when his station was a heavy part of the problem in the German speaking world

cheschire 4y ago
All of their stations, it's hard to express just how broad of an negative impact the RTL media group has on the quality of modern entertainment in Germany.
- barbazoo 4y ago
  Bauer sucht Frau is pretty good, no? :D

axpy906 4y ago

The number of screen types has increased since I was a child in the 90’s. We only had TVs. Now kids are exposed to phones, tablets, games and watches in addition to the tv. So many opportunities and so many more channels as a parent I need to block or watch out for.

nonrandomstring 4y ago

Screen time is only part of it. As a Digital Vegan I'm nore focused on screen quality. The newest command line user in our family is 7. I gave her a Raspberry Pi last Christmas and loaded one thing; a python shell "PlayOS" that I wrote to make everything a three or four letter command. The idea is to improve her reading and writing/typing by putting everything she wants a few keystrokes away on the command line. So far we have: music - plays a random tune from her music collection music abba - selects something more specific see - shows something visual, for example; see me - random photos from the holiday album see octonauts - an undersea cartoon plays read - stories and rhymes say - make the computer speak (festival - which she calls robot voice) Basically, each time she expresses an interest I add a python tuple which is a parsing template like alias + exec. After that she memorises the command. By 9 I expect her to have mastered a computer by typing, including sending emails to mom and dad etc. When she's had enough she knows the poweroff command - which it's own kind of fun. Most of her friends drag their fingers over images on tablets. They get into a tantrum if it's taken away from them. They are addicts before they are 10. Hopefully I'm helping build a life-long skill, but I dread the day her friends, pawing at screen like retarded monkeys, tell her that phones are better :) Yes, there are physiological reasons to limit screen time too. But that's not my threat model at present. Time to boredom on PlayOS is always less than 1 hour.

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
I really like the idea ( and it is likely not a bad way to introduce the kid to command line eventually ). Consider adding it on github ( or similar ). I am relatively certain you will get an audience for it.
88stacks 4y ago
amazing, can you write a full blog post about this.I want to do something similar.
deleted 4y ago
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patrickdavey 4y ago
Love this idea. Could you just expand a little on PlayOS? It's this running an underlying OS which then boots into a bash console running your repl? Just curious, would love to do something similar (or use yours if it was available!)

submeta 4y ago

These Executives are restricting the screen time of their children for a number of reasons. Some executives, like Evan Spiegel and Sundar Pichai, grew up without much access to technology and credit the technology restriction to their success. They may want to replicate this experience for their own children. Other executives, like Steve Jobs, value face-to-face conversation and interaction and believe that technology can be a distraction from these types of interactions. Some executives, like Susan Wojcicki, want their children to learn how to manage technology responsibly and balance screen time with other activities. Others, like Alexis Ohanian and Serena Williams, want to limit their daughter's screen time as she gets older to ensure that she doesn't become overly reliant on or addicted to technology.

saghm 4y ago
> Others, like Alexis Ohanian and Serena Williams, want to limit their daughter's screen time as she gets older to ensure that she doesn't become overly reliant on or addicted to technology I had an interesting epiphany when reading this sentence. At first, my reaction was that this was a bit of a different comparison to the others, given that Serena Williams is much more famous than her husband, and she's known not for technology but for being arguably the most dominant athlete of an entire generation (not just in her sport, and not just among women, but like, decades of winning tournaments at the highest level is basically unparalleled). But then I realized that most of these other people mentioned also have another parent alongside them, and the fact that they're not famous doesn't mean that they don't have equally strong opinions about how to raise a child, and ideally most parenting couples will be cooperative and not just "the most famous person's opinions win". I wonder if a lot of these famous executives didn't come up with their parenting strategies on their own, but after discussion and inspiration from their partner as well. Put in that light, it's a lot harder for me to just assume hypocrisy when I know I've grown and changed so much for the better since finding my partner to settle down with for the rest of my life. We don't have any desire for children of our own, but it seems pretty logical that if it were something we wanted, the initial ideas I had when we started discussing parenting would potentially evolve through insights I would gain from my partner, since that's exactly what's happened with all of the discussions we've had about long-term plans that we do have.

dang 4y ago

I seem to recall other threads about this but other than the following, I can't find them: Why Gates and Jobs shielded their kids from tech - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16251875 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16251875 - Jan 2018 (9 comments) Anybody? Edit: there are these: Silicon Valley’s supposed obsession with tech-free private schools (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30746379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30746379 - March 2022 (116 comments) A Silicon Valley School That Doesn’t Compute (2011) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18340767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18340767 - Oct 2018 (22 comments) A Silicon Valley School That Doesn’t Compute - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3145080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3145080 - Oct 2011 (40 comments)

thenerdhead 4y ago

There's that scene in Scarface about "Don't get high on your own supply". Those who are selling the products tend to not be the consumers of them. Tech, Fast Food, Drugs, etc. Moderation and information diets are especially helpful for those of us who can't afford people to raise our kids for us.

VyseofArcadia 4y ago

I'm sure my bias is showing, but I think my mom's solution worked pretty well. No such thing as limiting screen time, but I did have limits on the kinds of activities I was allowed to do and when. No video games on school nights. Sunday is fine but only before dinner and only if my homework was finished. Computer time was limited to half an hour and only if my homework was finished, and I could only run whitelisted "educational" software. No formal limits on TV watching, but in practice my parents had grown up shows they wanted to watch that I found boring, so my TV time was effectively limited to e.g. when they were busy cooking dinner. No limits for any activity on weekends as long as homework, chores, and miscellaneous family activities were done. I thought of this as digital pig-out time, and I'm sure my parents thought of it as, "do what we want because the kids are playing video games" time. All the above activity limits expired when I got into high school. I guess they'd rather me do nerd stuff than getting into trouble with drugs, alcohol, or girls. And indeed, I spent this time teaching myself C so I guess it worked. No children of our own yet, but we plan to adopt a similar system, with modern internet-connected screens like phones and/or tablets lumped into the "computer time" category.

friend_and_foe 4y ago
I'm guessing you're in your 30s, maybe late 20s, this is how most of us grew up. It's not the same anymore. "Nerd stuff" these days is watching Disney movies and playing games. We taught ourselves nerd stuff because we had to dig to get to the candy inside. These days you don't have to dig, one click install and done, the digging is grinding for loot boxes or whatever. A person can use these machines hours a day every day of the week for years and not learn a single thing about actually operating them, they're kiosks for consumption to most people. To learn real nerd stuff requires deliberate effort now.
- VyseofArcadia 4y ago
  Hit the nail on the head. I'm in my mid-30s. To learn anything on your own has always required effort. I've been driving almost every day for 20 years, and I still don't really know anything about cars. My mother-in-law has been using a computer every day since 1985, and she knows less about computers than I do about cars. "Needing to dig" is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for learning. I feel like the lack of a need to dig is a double-edged sword if anything. I knew I wanted to program the computer, but I had to scour the card catalog at the library for anything related to computers to find anything at all, and most of what I found was about BASIC. Now? It's a click away. On the other hand, I know where to look for information, how to read the docs, etc.

PakG1 4y ago

Lately, I don't even have time to watch TV or movies anymore, so we don't even have a TV. We of course have computers, tablets, and smartphones, given the world today. But we never put them in front of our toddler for her to watch. The only time we have her looking at a smartphone is when we do a video call to grandparents. These days, she's really excited for me to read books to her. She grabs her books off the shelves and brings them to me, and when we're done, she goes and grabs more. Last night, she kept wanting to go back to reading one called Barnyard Dance over and over again. She loves it. After experiencing life with her not caring about screens, I'm actually quite excited and intrigued. I love that she's excited to read books, demands me to read them to her, and cries when I say it's time to stop and go sleep or go eat or whatever. I've not yet experienced life with her extensively in front of screens, but at this point, I think I enjoy life without screens for the toddler in terms of our family relationship, and I think I'll keep it going for as long as I can. She seems to be full of life without them, why try to fix what's not broken? Eventually though, I wouldn't mind if she became a software engineer, if that's how she's bent, so probably need to introduce screens sometime. But we'll put it off for as long as possible and when screens do come into her life, hopefully, she'll go at them with the same excitement she goes at books and also doesn't lose her love for books.

donsupreme 4y ago

This shouldn't be surprising. You think McDonald's exec have their kids eating happy meals all the time if at all?

GuB-42 4y ago

I don't have kids but am a bit conflicted with the desire to limit their screen time too much (reasonable limits are fine). Tech is their world, that's how they communicate, how they get their information and entertainment. For people who know how life was without the internet may feel like it is addiction, that it is "untrue", that nothing is better than face to face, that constant stimulation is bad, etc... But what if it is our problem and not theirs, that we have trouble adapting and are simply projecting our trouble to children, when themselves have no problem dealing with the situation. I mean, late GenX to early millenials lived their childhood in the world of TV, which is worse than what we have today in many ways, and they are fine! I trust children of today, they will make something great, and we will get lost, like the old geezers we are starting to become.

freedude 4y ago
"I don't have kids but am a bit conflicted with the desire to limit their screen time too much" What you do in moderation your children will do in excess.

weakfortress 4y ago

When I was growing up computers were dumb and hard. To be a kid using a computer you not only needed to develop the smarts to be able to USE the damn thing, but to make use of it you needed to spend a lot of time...reading. As I got older things like iCQ and IRC were popular and generally you simply met other like-minded people and could generally get by on anonymity. Communities were far better, there was no such thing and "doing it for the <social media platform>". It was hard to melt your brain on albinoblacksheep or newgrounds because content wasn't released on a millisecond basis. You could realistically binge on these similar to kids today and be stuck waiting weeks to months before the next round of brain melting content came out. Don't get me wrong I played plenty of video games on the computer. However, I had to figure out how to even do that to get started. Moreover, we didn't have always-on internet. You called in and put a stupid phone on a machine. Then modems came out. Good luck binging on anything when your mom needed the phone to gossip with her friends. I suppose this is no different than any technical field. Once things are made easy enough a caveman can do it, the next generation loses the creativity and ingenuity their fore-bearers had. Now, screen time is implied to be negative. As it should be. Your average kid's screen time is not sitting at a terminal trying to puzzle out how to make a computer work. They are not sitting watching 8 hours of programming videos, or math videos, or Carl Sagan's cosmos. They aren't listening to audiobooks of war and peace. They are, quite literally, melting their brain with the videographic equivalent of cocaine. I am of the opinion parents these days who allow their kids unrestricted time on TikTok/Facebook/Youtube/etc are doing them a major developmental disservice. The entire social media machine is powered by designed-in-a-laboratory techniques to keep you locked in. If an adult, with all their life experience, cannot resist such temptations expecting a child to do the same is non-sensical. It's gotten far too easy to not only use a computer, but to become hopelessly addicted to content farms via the "always-on" new world. Kids just aren't being kids anymore. Times were different back then. Some people may disagree, but the "nerd" kids 30 years ago were smarter, faster, and better than such kids today. No different than our grandparents having to be the same way back when. They had to be. Now, things are easier. For better or worse. The same technology that could've raised the new generation to be even better than us was instead co-opted by advertisers to hopelessly addict children and adults to what amounts to just a different form of pornography (which, coincidentally was ALSO harder for us to get...I digress). I guess this is more of a thesis on the state of the world than just computers...it's all related.

paulpauper 4y ago

Not a fan of this. I think kids should be allowed to do what they want, within reason. Screen time is good for learning , good for keeping busy, entertainment, and so on. Telling someone they cannot do something may lead to resentment,

uconnectlol 4y ago

On one hand, they're morons, on the other hand, they helped kill the tech industry, so they're right for helping their kids avoid wasting their time using tech (as in actually wasting time, not alluding to addiction bullshit).