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This undifferentiated trend of “screen time” as a catch-all can’t die soon enough. There’s a massive qualitative difference between letting your kid tap on what

• a_bonobo 3y ago
  >My son’s major motivation for learning to read came from watching us play Breath of the Wild and getting tired of not knowing what was going on. My son gets a few dozen minutes of Youtube kids as a treat if he has done well. The in-built timer asks you to solve a simple multiplication problem to add more time: he has gotten remarkably well at doing those even though he hasn't had multiplication at school yet. Now I am pretending that I am not seeing him solve those problems! If anybody here works at Youtube kids: please add division!
  • bombcar 3y ago
    To continue watching baby shark please: solve the Riemann hypothesis
  • sitkack 3y ago
    And/or/xor/nand, popcount and maybe FMA. Division, bah!
  • ido 3y ago
    I've added screen time restrictions to the ipad my kids use (5 and 7, but mostly the 7 year old - the younger one seems to not care much for TV of his own volition). I set it to 10 minutes per day per year of age (so 1h10m per day, as only the 7 year old seems prone to overuse). This is a maximum, but he reaches it most days and then after some grumbling accepts it and does something else. One advantage: when the iPad "decides" it's time out instead of me or my wife, he is somehow a lot more ready to accept it! With both our kids we only started allowing them to watch TV/use screens at around 2 years of age using roughly the above formula.
• Aerroon 3y ago
  Unlimited screen time taught me a foreign language that nobody in my family speaks. As a small child I watched German-dubbed anime on TV and picked up German from it. I know at least a dozen other people my age that had the same experience in my country. I think what you do with the screentime matters a lot. (Unfortunately, knowing German hasn't been all that useful outside of hanging out with people online.)
  • j45 3y ago
    Passive consumption doesn’t engage. Other types of content can be helpful.
    • Aerroon 3y ago
      Watching TV in a language you don't understand isn't entirely passive consumption though. That's how I learned the language and that's how basically everyone learns their native language. They will make sounds and then show what they're doing. Over time you associate the words with activities. I think a critical part is "no subtitles" so that your brain has to do the work to try to figure out what's being said.
      • j45 3y ago
        Agreed. My comment wasn’t disagreeing with you, it’s entirely dependant on the viewers ability to be passive with the comment. Engaging is definitely qualifying as other types of content.
  • barbazoo 3y ago
    I doubt that was at age 1 though. The effects they're describing sounds like they're limit the ability to do what you're describing later on.
    • Aerroon 3y ago
      I don't know the exact age I was. I can tell you that I don't have any memories from before I could understand German. It probably was in the 1-2 (maybe 3) age range though based on what my parents have said.
• dotancohen 3y ago
  Interesting that you introduce to me a new category to my system of classifying "screen time". Previously I had learning, creating, and consuming categories, with only the consuming category really being restricted. But now I see that "recommendation engine" should be a category in itself, distinct from consuming, and outright banned.
  • WanderPanda 3y ago
    *unaligned recommendation engine With the right personal, deliberate tuning aligned recommendation engines would be amazing tools! Edit: Think e.g. Spotify Discover Weekly but for everything and more tuneable
  • rpdillon 3y ago
    I divide consumption into active and passive. Watching a video is passive, but reading a novel is active, for example. But it turns out video consumption can be made even more passive. Sure, a video plays whether you're paying attention or not, but at least you need to select the next video. Recommendation engines make this more passive by suggesting next videos. TikTok goes even further: you don't even need to select anything, just choose when to watch whatever's next. In short, I agree with your taxonomy, but would extend it based on passive versus active consumption.
• grepfru_it 3y ago
  From very very early in their lives I taught my children what advertisements are and why they should avoid them. My youngest one shields her eyes when an advertisement comes on. She knows what a paid promotion is on YouTube and will completely skip that show. She knows that advertisements are forced on her to get certain prizes in her game so she will play the ad then put the iPad down or completely walk away as it plays. We don’t have cable television and I pay premium for most services to avoid ads. I’m hoping they become hyper aware of advertisements as they grow older because they are going to continue being embedded in everything
  • j45 3y ago
    Paying for YouTube premium to cut out ads on all platforms has been nice for the amount of miss Rachel we have allowed. A real challenge is the toy based YouTube videos.
  • elyobo 3y ago
    It was my main motivation for running pihole, killing off more adverts across everything, not just in browser.
  • mdonahoe 3y ago
    I tried to do this, but apparently I didn’t start early enough. Now my six year old daughter trolls me, saying “I love the ads” and refuses to let me press SKIP AD if we are watching a YT video together.
    • Yiin 3y ago
      instead of presenting something as scary, you can try presenting it as lame.
      • red-iron-pine 3y ago
        keep talking about how you love the ads and soon your kids will reject them
  • euroderf 3y ago
• ehnto 3y ago
  Just an anecdote, my little brother also learned to read for and with video games. He got tired of having to ask his mum what was happening.
  • viraptor 3y ago
    My English definitely got kickstarted by Police Quest 1 with the added incentive for fast typing. (I still remember failing to properly and quickly type "use handcuffs" so many times...)
• irjustin 3y ago
  > This undifferentiated trend of “screen time” as a catch-all can’t die soon enough. Sigh, why does it always have to be about you? Why can't blanket statements exist for the greater good of the general public people. I can 100% agree that we should never create laws. It's simple and easy to understand and if individuals choose to do educational things w/ their screens then awesome! But you're the exception and removing the messaging is way more harmful than letting the "blank statement" exist.
  • civilized 3y ago
    I for one think most people can absorb more complex messages than "screen time bad".
    • zanellato19 3y ago
      Pretty much all studied show that "screen time bad" is actually true for babies up to 2 years. Snippets won't change that.
• dotnet00 3y ago
  The way we treat screentime these days feels like a strange continuation of the way it was treated for those of us who were kids in the early 2000s even though the world has changed significantly since then. I remember that back then schools and TV shows were all pushing this idea that all screen time was harmful for kids and to not let them have more than an hour or two a day. It may have made some more sense than nowadays since CRTs were more common back then and seemed to strain the eyes more, but the lack of differentiation between actually productive screen time and plain old replaceable entertainment caused a ton of friction in my family as I was growing up. In comparison, with my currently 5 year old niece and 1 year old nephew (more visible in the niece of course), having access to productive screen time has been pretty impressive for her development, with her having learned the alphabet, developed a decent vocabulary, learned addition enough to even reason about numbers for which she hadn't memorized the answer, and even picking up on some multiplication, all before starting school.
  • j45 3y ago
    With screen time there’s a big difference between consuming vs creating.
  • IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
    Same here. Screen time really should mean un-directed TV time. Directed TV/PC time can turbocharge learning: khan academy, scratch, or math maze (put together by another HNer, thx!) https://gogamewise.com/games/math-maze-2/ https://gogamewise.com/games/math-maze-2/
  • memefrog 3y ago
    Almost every child that uses a screen is just using it to consume. Yes in theory it is simplistic to say "screen time bad", not everything needs to be a super detailed, super nuanced discussion all the time.
    • dotnet00 3y ago
      I think when it comes to things about raising kids, a nuanced discussion is necessary, otherwise we end up with parents who blindly enforce the simplistic idea, thus actually being detrimental to their kids.
• in_cahoots 3y ago
  For babies research has shown that screen time is undifferentiated. Babies learn from watching real humans talk. Not from a screen. And screens mean that caregivers use fewer words as well. For older kids there is a lot of nuance. But in the first 12 months the evidence is pretty clear.
  • dragonwriter 3y ago
    > For babies research has shown that screen time is undifferentiated. The research is largely undifferentiated, and overwhelmingly (maybe even entirely, for good ethical reasons) is observational studies that, even if they were able to distinguish between a differentiated relationship and an undifferentiated one would be unable to distinguish between, in <1 year olds, screen time causing developmental delays and conditions which cause developmental delays also causing behavioral differences which lead parents who respond to how things affect their children's behavior to be less likely to curtail screen time.
    • class4behavior 3y ago
      Whether research is generally undifferentiated, as you claim, is not the same as specific research that proves that screen time is undifferentiated. In other words, are you saying there are no such evidence as parent asserted?
      • dragonwriter 3y ago
        > Whether research is generally undifferentiated, as you claim, is not the same as specific research that proves that screen time is undifferentiated. They are directly opposed: you have to have differentiation in the research to distinguish between a differentiated and undifferentiated effect. > In other words, are you saying there are no such evidence as parent asserted? I am stating a basis for my skepticism that there is sufficient basis for what he claims the research clearly shows, in that AFAICT the research is weak on both whether there is a differentiated association and not of the type that would be able to make strong statements about the causality of any association, differentiated by type of screen time or not, that it discovered.
• whats_a_quasar 3y ago
  It's not obvious to me that video games would be better than watching videos. That's different research question, and unless there's already research establishing a difference it seems reasonable to clump them all together. In your examples you're also heavily involved in all his video gaming. I don't know that that's true of every kid playing games.
  • d357r0y3r 3y ago
    Playing games, including video games, often involves reading, imagination, creativity, problem solving, and other active tasks. Passive video consumption certainly involves less of all those things. Obviously, there is a lot of variance here, and Candy Crush or whatever 3 years are playing these days probably doesn't have as much benefit as some story driven game with important text dialogue and battle mechanics. But even playing Candy Crush is probably better than watching Candy Crush.
    • parineum 3y ago
      I think you're underselling the strategy involved in a match 3 game. Anything that involves extrapolation of future states aren't of the board is pretty complex, at least mentally.
• jaxomlotus 3y ago
  I predict future social media will be required to come with Recommendation Algorithm warnings in a similar way that cigarettes now need cancer warnings.
• barbazoo 3y ago
  At age 1 though?
• xyzzy_plugh 3y ago
  It's undifferentiated because for 1yo and under it is measurably undifferentiated. I recommend you read TFA. This is an appropriate use of a catch-all. I was a bit confused reading your comment because I struggled to imagine a 1yo engaging in a meaningful way to BotW or Oregon Trail, let alone learning to read. Obviously Idiocracy levels or qualities of screentime are demonic to practically any age group, but I don't really think what you present is controversial. If anything, not letting older kids consume at least some media seems pretty weird to the populus. But for literal babies? My alarms go off.