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I'm going to play devils advocate Can we stop screentime shaming people? We have had an ongoing moral panic about screentime for about a decade. Screentime is

I'm going to play devils advocate Can we stop screentime shaming people? We have had an ongoing moral panic about screentime for about a decade. Screentime is so broad and vast it now covers anything from chatting with your grandma to get her spaghetti recipe to playing WoW nonstop in your underwear to learning how to code on Youtube to make yourself better and more productive to using a Peloton bike to workout. The youngest generation has it the worst with helicopter parents sitting over their kids shoulders, filling their lives with activities to "keep them off screens". Yet the kids themselves never learn how to set their own limits or navigate free time. We fail to prepare for independence as actual adults, and just create a lot of anxiety and shame around screens themselves.

xyzzy_plugh 4y ago
> with the kids themselves never learning how to set their own limits or prepare for independence as actual adults To some extent this is not how parenting works. This is like giving heroin to an addict and letting them learn to set their own limits unattended. In practice, supervising addiction helps control it. Kids need some kind of supervision. It's much harder to get a kid to reduce screentime if they're used to unlimited screentime.
- sillysaurusx 4y ago
  I had complete and total freedom over my internet usage as a kid. I watched plenty of dark stuff, had sexual interactions, and made close friends. I turned out fine. It’s hard to see the moderates in any given situation, almost by definition. That includes moderate outcomes. Comparing the internet to heroin isn’t a moderate take. Having freedom when I was a kid directly prepared me for the rest of my life.
  - ouid 4y ago
    20k comment karma since 2019 seems like a lot of time on HN to me.
    - sillysaurusx 4y ago
      More like 100k since 2008. This is my tenth account or so. That’s the point; unless you’re saying that everyone with high karma is mentally unsound (which may or may not be a fair argument), being constantly online doesn’t seem to have much negative impact on most people.
      - throwaway290 4y ago
        Anecdotally I can almost get behind spending extreme amounts of time on HN/online in general being linked to worsening of mental health in some people (like me). I have periods of months of obsessive HN activity (feeling anxiety about missing a day) and during the same time all sorts of other problems and bad habits surface, from obsessive social media checking to completely unrelated stuff. Having one now. But even for people like me I wouldn't say being online causes those problems, more likely some third factor makes them be super online and also shows up as other issues, though it may be a feedback loop (removing the option of being constantly online could do good for me)
        sillysaurusx 4y ago
        I’ve felt similarly in the past. Ironically, what helped me was to focus on Twitter. Specifically producing quality tweets. I was able to build an audience at my own pace, and it led to quite a lot of opportunities. So in the same way one particular place isn’t always good to be, one solution is to spend time in a variety of spaces. I like irc/twitter/HN/tiktok, though I still lurk Reddit occasionally.
        HollowEyes 4y ago
        People do tend to hang out in particular haunts. Like specific forums. Probably once they have established some social connections/invested time. I haven't got WhatsApp, and the thought of it brings me out in hives. Would be difficult to step back from the web. SMS once had a huge draw, and that was an incredible time sink with less immediacy.
        4y ago
  - HollowEyes 4y ago
    I love heroin, but like the Internet it's slightly moreish.
  - BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
    I would caution against thinking that your successful outcome with unrestricted internet access as a kid justifies a laissez-faire attitude towards children accessing the Internet. I think some people have a better ability to self regulate than others, and you are likely one of those people. Additionally, your online experience didn’t have “the algorithm”. There really does seem to be something addicting about modern short form content and it seems quite different from the content found on the early Web.
tropicalbeach 4y ago
No because screens are terrible for your mental health. Most kids will sit there 24 hours a day if no one teaches them self control. Screens destroy relationships, health, and most of your existence if you have no self control which 90% of people don't.
- softwaredoug 4y ago
  "screens are terrible for your mental health" You have to use a lot of screentime for an effect to be shown. And the studies are always showing correlations, not causations. As an example, if you're a poorer family, with no time to spend 1-1 with your kids because you work 3 jobs. Are screens the root cause? Or is poverty the root cause?
  - njarboe 4y ago
    If the US didn't have overtime rules and required health care for full time jobs, people could work just a single job if they needed to work more hours to make ends meet. They would save a lot of time on commuting especially since many poor people use much slower public transportation to get to their jobs. They would also probably have more reliable schedules. Having a society that people only need to work 40hr/wk might be a good idea (hell, why not the 4 hour work week while we are at it) but the current system encouraging that seems to have failed.
enlyth 4y ago
Yeah I don't understand what am I supposed to do the rest of my time. Stare at the TV all evening like my parents do? Read a book? I already do that on the train, and it's also staring at something while sitting down. Cooking/exercise/chores? I already do that, and still have hours of time left over. Stare at the wall maybe? If there's one thing I hate, is other people preaching to you about how you should spend your time.
- throw_away1525 4y ago
  Ideally you would produce something instead of consuming it. Maybe music, woodworking, painting, writing, etc... Easier said than done, after having that insight years ago it has been on my to-do list permanently and yet here I am on the screen... After producing for 8 hours at work it is pretty hard to muster up the energy to produce things for myself in the evenings.
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    > Ideally you would produce something instead of consuming it. Why? I'm already "producing" a big part of my day. This "always be producing" mentality is more harmful than making time to relax, enjoy yourself in non-productive ways.
    - throw_away1525 4y ago
      You're right, there's a place for both active leisure and passive leisure. The problem I have is that our jobs rob us of the energy we need for active leisure, so we just end up doing passive leisure 100% of the time which I think is way out of balance.
      - andsoitis 4y ago
        > The problem I have is that our jobs rob us of the energy we need for active leisure, so we just end up doing passive leisure 100% of the time which I think is way out of balance. I don't know what the ratio is between active and passive leisure. Nor do I know for sure that people generally have more leisure time now than ever before, but I do suspect that is the case. But I do know that there are many companies that one might consider to be in the "active leisure industry" and that are profitable.
Eumenes 4y ago
Nope, if I'm hanging out with friends/family and they are glued to their phone, I shame them ... if some idiot bumps into me while walking or almost walks into moving traffic cause of their screen, you shame them. It's anti social behavior
kelseyfrog 4y ago
> Yet the kids themselves never learn how to set their own limits. Some do, some don't. My 2nd grader is happy to self regulate. My 4th grader will however spend 12-14 hours/day online and as the screentime accrues, become more likely to annoy, torment, and eventually act violently in response to perceived transgressions. We're otherwise a no tv, no videogame console, no tablets house. Not because we've decided not to have these things, but because a half-a-day binge has resulted in a kiddo rage-destroying the device at some point and not having the broken device any longer is a natural consequence to that behaviour. So no, I dont think all kiddos can typically learn to self regulate. The existence of some kiddos self regulating is not evidence that all of them can or that even the ones who can't are somehow "broken." Screens are a new tech and we're still learning the cultural-social technologies to interact with them healthily.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  Thank you for making this point. Not all kids are created equal. They all have varying traits, tendencies and idiosyncrasies. It is sheer madness to try to put 'one size fits all' form to it. You might be able to offer some guidance or even best practices, but even those have to be actually tested against the kid to see how they respond. Anecdotally, my siblings and me were very different and responded differently to praise and punishment. FWIW, I do think there is something damaging about screen time especially if it is just passive consumption ( brain is a muscle; if it unused, it will grow weak ) so I am personally trying to limit it. I already spend so much time with it at work ( and until recently, at school ). I do allow myself some guilty pleasures, but I treat those similarly to the way I treat ice cream or sake. It is something of holiday from reason. edit: HN is probably a giant exception to that. It seems I spend a lot of time here. Maybe I can rationalize it as 'HN is not guilty pleasure? I get to argue with people over stuff I normally would not?' I guess my main point is that the main responsibility lies with the parents and it kinda sucks, because at least 'in my days' my parents didn't have giant corporations working on keeping my kids glued to their device. All I had to deal with is arcade addiction.. and that.. my parents solved ( with me crying all the way ).
ryandrake 4y ago
Our current “screen time” scare feels a lot like the Dungeons And Dragons scare of the ‘80s. People saw others spending lots of time playing something they don’t like. They felt some superstitious feeling that those people shouldn’t be doing that thing. But couldn’t point to any real causal negative effect it’s having. So they tried to vaguely link it to Satanism and the Occult to convince people it was bad. We see the same sort of hysteria play out today with “online” and “screen time.” The article presents factual findings and does not get anywhere near passing judgment. That’s for the comments section.
skeeter2020 4y ago
>> Yet the kids themselves never learn how to set their own limits or navigate free time. How exactly is a kid raised from birth with screens in front of them supposed to learn or even recognize this? >> Can we stop screentime shaming people? You are welcome to do so, but I'm free to shame and view negatively all sorts of behaviours. I don't need to accept this any more than you need to accept something you view as a bad habit or worse.
throwaway22032 4y ago
The entire purpose of the screen time is to improve real world interactions, as in your recipe example. If it turns out that you just spend 80% of your free time online, you've lost. Your life is not better, it is in fact worse.
thenerdhead 4y ago
We continue to have a moral panic about screentime. There is no debating that it has continued to get worse and not better. The same kids who were addicted to WoW(or other games) or learning to code in their spare time are doing the same thing today, just longer. Involved parents are not just helicopter parents. An involved parent might have gone through a similar generational experience where they were ignored by their parents and put in front of the radio, television, computer, etc and want to break the generational cycle with their kids. Because substituting healthy activities for screentime is a good way to model independent behavior and bring balance to your life. It doesn't mean you cannot use screens, but rather that you use them in moderation. The difference of opinion changes when you become a parent too. You start to reflect on your childhood and things you wish were different while trying your best to bring more real experiences to your kids instead of them trying to explore the world virtually.

xyzzy_plugh 4y ago

> with the kids themselves never learning how to set their own limits or prepare for independence as actual adults To some extent this is not how parenting works. This is like giving heroin to an addict and letting them learn to set their own limits unattended. In practice, supervising addiction helps control it. Kids need some kind of supervision. It's much harder to get a kid to reduce screentime if they're used to unlimited screentime.

sillysaurusx 4y ago
I had complete and total freedom over my internet usage as a kid. I watched plenty of dark stuff, had sexual interactions, and made close friends. I turned out fine. It’s hard to see the moderates in any given situation, almost by definition. That includes moderate outcomes. Comparing the internet to heroin isn’t a moderate take. Having freedom when I was a kid directly prepared me for the rest of my life.
- ouid 4y ago
  20k comment karma since 2019 seems like a lot of time on HN to me.
  - sillysaurusx 4y ago
    More like 100k since 2008. This is my tenth account or so. That’s the point; unless you’re saying that everyone with high karma is mentally unsound (which may or may not be a fair argument), being constantly online doesn’t seem to have much negative impact on most people.
    - throwaway290 4y ago
      Anecdotally I can almost get behind spending extreme amounts of time on HN/online in general being linked to worsening of mental health in some people (like me). I have periods of months of obsessive HN activity (feeling anxiety about missing a day) and during the same time all sorts of other problems and bad habits surface, from obsessive social media checking to completely unrelated stuff. Having one now. But even for people like me I wouldn't say being online causes those problems, more likely some third factor makes them be super online and also shows up as other issues, though it may be a feedback loop (removing the option of being constantly online could do good for me)
      - sillysaurusx 4y ago
        I’ve felt similarly in the past. Ironically, what helped me was to focus on Twitter. Specifically producing quality tweets. I was able to build an audience at my own pace, and it led to quite a lot of opportunities. So in the same way one particular place isn’t always good to be, one solution is to spend time in a variety of spaces. I like irc/twitter/HN/tiktok, though I still lurk Reddit occasionally.
        HollowEyes 4y ago
        People do tend to hang out in particular haunts. Like specific forums. Probably once they have established some social connections/invested time. I haven't got WhatsApp, and the thought of it brings me out in hives. Would be difficult to step back from the web. SMS once had a huge draw, and that was an incredible time sink with less immediacy.
      - 4y ago
- HollowEyes 4y ago
  I love heroin, but like the Internet it's slightly moreish.
- BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
  I would caution against thinking that your successful outcome with unrestricted internet access as a kid justifies a laissez-faire attitude towards children accessing the Internet. I think some people have a better ability to self regulate than others, and you are likely one of those people. Additionally, your online experience didn’t have “the algorithm”. There really does seem to be something addicting about modern short form content and it seems quite different from the content found on the early Web.

tropicalbeach 4y ago

No because screens are terrible for your mental health. Most kids will sit there 24 hours a day if no one teaches them self control. Screens destroy relationships, health, and most of your existence if you have no self control which 90% of people don't.

softwaredoug 4y ago
"screens are terrible for your mental health" You have to use a lot of screentime for an effect to be shown. And the studies are always showing correlations, not causations. As an example, if you're a poorer family, with no time to spend 1-1 with your kids because you work 3 jobs. Are screens the root cause? Or is poverty the root cause?
- njarboe 4y ago
  If the US didn't have overtime rules and required health care for full time jobs, people could work just a single job if they needed to work more hours to make ends meet. They would save a lot of time on commuting especially since many poor people use much slower public transportation to get to their jobs. They would also probably have more reliable schedules. Having a society that people only need to work 40hr/wk might be a good idea (hell, why not the 4 hour work week while we are at it) but the current system encouraging that seems to have failed.

enlyth 4y ago

Yeah I don't understand what am I supposed to do the rest of my time. Stare at the TV all evening like my parents do? Read a book? I already do that on the train, and it's also staring at something while sitting down. Cooking/exercise/chores? I already do that, and still have hours of time left over. Stare at the wall maybe? If there's one thing I hate, is other people preaching to you about how you should spend your time.

throw_away1525 4y ago
Ideally you would produce something instead of consuming it. Maybe music, woodworking, painting, writing, etc... Easier said than done, after having that insight years ago it has been on my to-do list permanently and yet here I am on the screen... After producing for 8 hours at work it is pretty hard to muster up the energy to produce things for myself in the evenings.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  > Ideally you would produce something instead of consuming it. Why? I'm already "producing" a big part of my day. This "always be producing" mentality is more harmful than making time to relax, enjoy yourself in non-productive ways.
  - throw_away1525 4y ago
    You're right, there's a place for both active leisure and passive leisure. The problem I have is that our jobs rob us of the energy we need for active leisure, so we just end up doing passive leisure 100% of the time which I think is way out of balance.
    - andsoitis 4y ago
      > The problem I have is that our jobs rob us of the energy we need for active leisure, so we just end up doing passive leisure 100% of the time which I think is way out of balance. I don't know what the ratio is between active and passive leisure. Nor do I know for sure that people generally have more leisure time now than ever before, but I do suspect that is the case. But I do know that there are many companies that one might consider to be in the "active leisure industry" and that are profitable.

Eumenes 4y ago

Nope, if I'm hanging out with friends/family and they are glued to their phone, I shame them ... if some idiot bumps into me while walking or almost walks into moving traffic cause of their screen, you shame them. It's anti social behavior

kelseyfrog 4y ago

> Yet the kids themselves never learn how to set their own limits. Some do, some don't. My 2nd grader is happy to self regulate. My 4th grader will however spend 12-14 hours/day online and as the screentime accrues, become more likely to annoy, torment, and eventually act violently in response to perceived transgressions. We're otherwise a no tv, no videogame console, no tablets house. Not because we've decided not to have these things, but because a half-a-day binge has resulted in a kiddo rage-destroying the device at some point and not having the broken device any longer is a natural consequence to that behaviour. So no, I dont think all kiddos can typically learn to self regulate. The existence of some kiddos self regulating is not evidence that all of them can or that even the ones who can't are somehow "broken." Screens are a new tech and we're still learning the cultural-social technologies to interact with them healthily.

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
Thank you for making this point. Not all kids are created equal. They all have varying traits, tendencies and idiosyncrasies. It is sheer madness to try to put 'one size fits all' form to it. You might be able to offer some guidance or even best practices, but even those have to be actually tested against the kid to see how they respond. Anecdotally, my siblings and me were very different and responded differently to praise and punishment. FWIW, I do think there is something damaging about screen time especially if it is just passive consumption ( brain is a muscle; if it unused, it will grow weak ) so I am personally trying to limit it. I already spend so much time with it at work ( and until recently, at school ). I do allow myself some guilty pleasures, but I treat those similarly to the way I treat ice cream or sake. It is something of holiday from reason. edit: HN is probably a giant exception to that. It seems I spend a lot of time here. Maybe I can rationalize it as 'HN is not guilty pleasure? I get to argue with people over stuff I normally would not?' I guess my main point is that the main responsibility lies with the parents and it kinda sucks, because at least 'in my days' my parents didn't have giant corporations working on keeping my kids glued to their device. All I had to deal with is arcade addiction.. and that.. my parents solved ( with me crying all the way ).

ryandrake 4y ago

Our current “screen time” scare feels a lot like the Dungeons And Dragons scare of the ‘80s. People saw others spending lots of time playing something they don’t like. They felt some superstitious feeling that those people shouldn’t be doing that thing. But couldn’t point to any real causal negative effect it’s having. So they tried to vaguely link it to Satanism and the Occult to convince people it was bad. We see the same sort of hysteria play out today with “online” and “screen time.” The article presents factual findings and does not get anywhere near passing judgment. That’s for the comments section.

skeeter2020 4y ago

>> Yet the kids themselves never learn how to set their own limits or navigate free time. How exactly is a kid raised from birth with screens in front of them supposed to learn or even recognize this? >> Can we stop screentime shaming people? You are welcome to do so, but I'm free to shame and view negatively all sorts of behaviours. I don't need to accept this any more than you need to accept something you view as a bad habit or worse.

throwaway22032 4y ago

The entire purpose of the screen time is to improve real world interactions, as in your recipe example. If it turns out that you just spend 80% of your free time online, you've lost. Your life is not better, it is in fact worse.

thenerdhead 4y ago

We continue to have a moral panic about screentime. There is no debating that it has continued to get worse and not better. The same kids who were addicted to WoW(or other games) or learning to code in their spare time are doing the same thing today, just longer. Involved parents are not just helicopter parents. An involved parent might have gone through a similar generational experience where they were ignored by their parents and put in front of the radio, television, computer, etc and want to break the generational cycle with their kids. Because substituting healthy activities for screentime is a good way to model independent behavior and bring balance to your life. It doesn't mean you cannot use screens, but rather that you use them in moderation. The difference of opinion changes when you become a parent too. You start to reflect on your childhood and things you wish were different while trying your best to bring more real experiences to your kids instead of them trying to explore the world virtually.