9 ms·

I was a kid 30 years ago. I may have wanted to watch TV all the time, but it was self-limiting back then. Much of the time the stuff on TV wasn't anything a kid

by dave78 3y ago

I was a kid 30 years ago. I may have wanted to watch TV all the time, but it was self-limiting back then. Much of the time the stuff on TV wasn't anything a kid would want to watch. There were only certain times of the day that you could find someone you wanted. Screens today provide a bottomless pit of content for kids. At a parent, yes I have to limit my kids time or they'd just do it 24/7. People talk about letting their kids figure out how to moderate themselves, but either I'm doing that wrong or (perhaps more likely) that just doesn't work the same for every kid.

NegativeLatency 3y ago
I feel like it's also hard money wise as a kid, I remember wanting a milling machine and tools/materials to build a boat that was just too absurdly expensive at the time. Also just being limited by cars and stuff, would've loved to be able to go surfing but it's a hard sell to convince your parents to drive 6+ hours round trip for something like that.
- prawn 3y ago
  That's another challenge for parents. Books are expensive and take up space. Lego and various other toys are also expensive, take up space, and children constantly need reminders to pack it up. Arts and craft quickly dominate spaces and lead to disputes over which child made all the mess. Contrast with reading on an app like Libby (free, no bookshelves), playing Minecraft (cheap, no pack-up), or digital art/puzzles. Digital equivalents are pushed in every workspace. Scrawling unnecessarily on paper would be frowned on as wasteful in the average office. Sending a paper letter instead of an email is rare. I'm not arguing that there aren't advantages of physical books, board games, and literal painting, but doing things the "right way" is clearly more expensive, less space efficient, and uses up more time packing up. It all influences parenting decisions.
  - kortilla 3y ago
    Books aren’t expensive if you teach them about the library
    - willywanker 3y ago
      Assuming there's one within walking distance for the kid.
      - Freedom2 3y ago
        Why wouldn't there be one within walking distance, or even driving distance (assuming most people would want to drive their kids to nourishing activities)?
        speeder 3y ago
        You must live in a wealthy place. In my experience in most places libraries are not common. They use lots of space and money, that usually is needed for more important things like building sewers in neighborhoods that have none.
        Freedom2 3y ago
        I live in the US, in the Midwest. However it seems that the average distance to a library across the country is around 2-5 miles. While probably too far to walk for the average American, it's certainly not too far as to be unreachable.
    - prawn 3y ago
      That's fair, but if you have a library card and the Libby app, you can queue and borrow e-books for free and without leaving the house or remembering returns. My kids borrow from their school library but also read on Libby a reasonable amount. I use the Books app. My wife reads on Libby as much as she reads physical books. If we go away for a week, it's easier to pack an old phone or Kindle than a stack of books when the older kids can get through 2-3 novels a day.
  - saiya-jin 3y ago
    > That's another challenge for parents. Books are expensive and take up space. Lego and various other toys are also expensive, take up space, and children constantly need reminders to pack it up. Arts and craft quickly dominate spaces and lead to disputes over which child made all the mess. Contrast with reading on an app like Libby (free, no bookshelves), playing Minecraft (cheap, no pack-up), or digital art/puzzles. No, at least no for most folks in western world. If you make your life hard on purpose living far away from civilization for whatever reason then yes you created your own challenges, but that's on you and you dragged rest of your family into it. We have tons of libraries around, what kind of developed society would ignore such an important place? We also have 'ludotheques' which are literally for kids and also have various rental toys. And we live in small village, surrounded by other small villages. Complaining books take space... thats just sad, not commenting on that one. Lego / Duplo are amazing (we bought 2 full sack of potatoes worth of original used duplos for like 50 or 100 bucks, with massive train setup), kids love it, but if you list as an issue that kids actually have to clean up after themselves, it becomes pretty obvious problem lies elsewhere (rest of your comment says so too). Parenting is hard, moreso these days, but its also massively due to the fact many parents simply don't do good parenting, they can't suffer even a bit for their kids because they are oh-so deep in their comfort zones or feeling important or whatever. Rather few teach discipline which is one of the most important skills for their future life success regardless of their path, and it shows pretty much immediately. But folks without discipline themselves probably can't teach one. More often than not they are glued to screens even in front of their kids. I am literally naming various shitshows and their direct causes we see around us across few countries and societies. What kind of hobbies and passions do kids have? How did you invest yourself into developing those passions? What kind of role model are you for them? Thats completely parent responsibility, schools will never supplant that and its not their purpose (the fact that good teachers often end up as huge parental figure in their pupil's lives just shows what they have at home, have a friend a teacher on private school for very rich and influential people in Geneva, Switzerland and stories he tells me about 6-7 years old who like him much much more than their own dad with 7 lamborghinis...). And so on. But if parent's mode is career and money first or general me-first and kids leave my precious free time alone then its always the same sad story at the end.
    - 3y ago
ransom1538 3y ago
Yeah. 1980s. Try watching reruns of love boat for 1 hour with interruptions of dandruff shampoo commercials. Give it a shot as an adult, then imagine being 10. You will tear your eyes out. Sure, flip one of 10 channels to Golden Girls, you will try to hang yourself. Books? lol. Your school hands you the the book Jane Eyre. As a 12 year old boy, you might not relate to 19th century English countryside drama. Kids back then had fucking nothing. They went outside. Youtube is a god damn game changer - I wouldn't go out either.
- switchbak 3y ago
  Absolutely. And the video games of the era were so hard and/or frustrating that you couldn't really play them all day. We've really mastered the art of creating compelling and addictive time sucks, and our kids are paying the price for it. Ok we're all paying a price for it, but kids the worst.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > Absolutely. And the video games of the era were so hard and/or frustrating that you couldn't really play them all day. You really could and while its lost somewhere now I had the Pitfall Harry Explorer's Club patch I earned by doing just that.
- hn8305823 3y ago
  > Kids back then had fucking nothing. Yep, Gen X is the last generation to have played with literal rocks and sticks.
  - varjag 3y ago
    Hey we had knives too! Dunno if anyone still played mumblety-peg in the West by then but behind the curtain pocket knife games were super popular.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > > I was a kid 30 years ago. > Yeah. 1980s. As someone who actually group up in the 1980s, I am sad to report that 30 years ago was the 1990s. > Books? lol. Your school hands you the the book Jane Eyre. Both bookstores and free public libraries with books more interesting to most kids of the time than Jane Eyre were, in fact, things in the 1980s and 1990s. As were gaming consoles, home computers, handheld electronic games, > Kids back then had fucking nothing. Nah, kids often had lots of stuff in the home. But they also had a culture which supported parents allowing children unsupervised in the neighborhood at much early ages then is considered acceptable today, which meant that more of them were allowed to go out beyond the home more often than is the case today.
midasuni 3y ago
I was a kids 30 years ago (1993), tv had stuff I could watch from getting home from school through to 11pm.
- dave78 3y ago
  Not sure where you grew up or if you had cable. My family did not. 5-7pm was news on every channel ( all 4 that we received), and most nights after 8pm were adult dramas that kids under 10 wouldn't generally want to watch. Weekends only had good stuff on in the morning on Saturday and then on Sunday night, depending on what age you're thinking of.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    After school cartoons and Saturday morning cartoons were a life send when I was an 80s kid. PBS had some interesting programming that could appeal to kids on Friday nights (Blakes 7, Doctor Whoever). Even cable was a wash back then, you got bored of Nickelodeon quickly and there was no cartoon channel yet.
    - Projectiboga 3y ago
      Dr Whoever, LOL. Great pun!
    - dave78 3y ago
      Not to mention all the commercials, which if nothing else the commercial break was sometimes enough to dislodge us and get us to think about doing something else. Now with streaming, kids can just go from one show to the next without any interruptions. On those occasions when we let them watch more than they should I'm sometimes amazed that they even remember to go to the bathroom. Good grief the devices today are addicting.
TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
Don’t beat yourself up: kids don’t master self-control until adulthood. It’s natural and normal for self-control to be challenging.
- dave78 3y ago
  Thanks, though I'm not sure I have a lot of hope. Even most adults (myself included) can't seem to exercise enough self control over all the screens in our lives.
- nitwit005 3y ago
  No, a lot of people just never master self control.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
nostrademons 3y ago
30 years ago my afternoon consisted of getting home at 2:30, watching The Disney Afternoon until about 5:00, then watching Square One, Reading Rainbow, and ideally 3-2-1 Contact (though it conflicted with The Mcneil-Lehrer News Hour that my mom always wanted to watch). Then it'd be on to The Cosby Show or Star Trek or some other sitcom. I think I averaged between 3.5-5 hours of TV per day. No cable. I basically don't want TV anymore, and my kids are limited to 3 hours of screentime per day, which they basically only get on weekends. (They get maybe an hour during the weekday, but that's because their school/daycare/aftercare days are much longer than mine were as a kid). I do set limits for them, but both of them (preschool-age) are able to turn off the tablets on their own if faced with the choice of doing it themselves or having mommy & daddy do it.
IreeneeThomas 3y ago
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by dave78 3y ago

NegativeLatency 3y ago

I feel like it's also hard money wise as a kid, I remember wanting a milling machine and tools/materials to build a boat that was just too absurdly expensive at the time. Also just being limited by cars and stuff, would've loved to be able to go surfing but it's a hard sell to convince your parents to drive 6+ hours round trip for something like that.

prawn 3y ago
That's another challenge for parents. Books are expensive and take up space. Lego and various other toys are also expensive, take up space, and children constantly need reminders to pack it up. Arts and craft quickly dominate spaces and lead to disputes over which child made all the mess. Contrast with reading on an app like Libby (free, no bookshelves), playing Minecraft (cheap, no pack-up), or digital art/puzzles. Digital equivalents are pushed in every workspace. Scrawling unnecessarily on paper would be frowned on as wasteful in the average office. Sending a paper letter instead of an email is rare. I'm not arguing that there aren't advantages of physical books, board games, and literal painting, but doing things the "right way" is clearly more expensive, less space efficient, and uses up more time packing up. It all influences parenting decisions.
- kortilla 3y ago
  Books aren’t expensive if you teach them about the library
  - willywanker 3y ago
    Assuming there's one within walking distance for the kid.
    - Freedom2 3y ago
      Why wouldn't there be one within walking distance, or even driving distance (assuming most people would want to drive their kids to nourishing activities)?
      - speeder 3y ago
        You must live in a wealthy place. In my experience in most places libraries are not common. They use lots of space and money, that usually is needed for more important things like building sewers in neighborhoods that have none.
        Freedom2 3y ago
        I live in the US, in the Midwest. However it seems that the average distance to a library across the country is around 2-5 miles. While probably too far to walk for the average American, it's certainly not too far as to be unreachable.
  - prawn 3y ago
    That's fair, but if you have a library card and the Libby app, you can queue and borrow e-books for free and without leaving the house or remembering returns. My kids borrow from their school library but also read on Libby a reasonable amount. I use the Books app. My wife reads on Libby as much as she reads physical books. If we go away for a week, it's easier to pack an old phone or Kindle than a stack of books when the older kids can get through 2-3 novels a day.
- saiya-jin 3y ago
  > That's another challenge for parents. Books are expensive and take up space. Lego and various other toys are also expensive, take up space, and children constantly need reminders to pack it up. Arts and craft quickly dominate spaces and lead to disputes over which child made all the mess. Contrast with reading on an app like Libby (free, no bookshelves), playing Minecraft (cheap, no pack-up), or digital art/puzzles. No, at least no for most folks in western world. If you make your life hard on purpose living far away from civilization for whatever reason then yes you created your own challenges, but that's on you and you dragged rest of your family into it. We have tons of libraries around, what kind of developed society would ignore such an important place? We also have 'ludotheques' which are literally for kids and also have various rental toys. And we live in small village, surrounded by other small villages. Complaining books take space... thats just sad, not commenting on that one. Lego / Duplo are amazing (we bought 2 full sack of potatoes worth of original used duplos for like 50 or 100 bucks, with massive train setup), kids love it, but if you list as an issue that kids actually have to clean up after themselves, it becomes pretty obvious problem lies elsewhere (rest of your comment says so too). Parenting is hard, moreso these days, but its also massively due to the fact many parents simply don't do good parenting, they can't suffer even a bit for their kids because they are oh-so deep in their comfort zones or feeling important or whatever. Rather few teach discipline which is one of the most important skills for their future life success regardless of their path, and it shows pretty much immediately. But folks without discipline themselves probably can't teach one. More often than not they are glued to screens even in front of their kids. I am literally naming various shitshows and their direct causes we see around us across few countries and societies. What kind of hobbies and passions do kids have? How did you invest yourself into developing those passions? What kind of role model are you for them? Thats completely parent responsibility, schools will never supplant that and its not their purpose (the fact that good teachers often end up as huge parental figure in their pupil's lives just shows what they have at home, have a friend a teacher on private school for very rich and influential people in Geneva, Switzerland and stories he tells me about 6-7 years old who like him much much more than their own dad with 7 lamborghinis...). And so on. But if parent's mode is career and money first or general me-first and kids leave my precious free time alone then its always the same sad story at the end.
  - 3y ago

ransom1538 3y ago

Yeah. 1980s. Try watching reruns of love boat for 1 hour with interruptions of dandruff shampoo commercials. Give it a shot as an adult, then imagine being 10. You will tear your eyes out. Sure, flip one of 10 channels to Golden Girls, you will try to hang yourself. Books? lol. Your school hands you the the book Jane Eyre. As a 12 year old boy, you might not relate to 19th century English countryside drama. Kids back then had fucking nothing. They went outside. Youtube is a god damn game changer - I wouldn't go out either.

switchbak 3y ago
Absolutely. And the video games of the era were so hard and/or frustrating that you couldn't really play them all day. We've really mastered the art of creating compelling and addictive time sucks, and our kids are paying the price for it. Ok we're all paying a price for it, but kids the worst.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > Absolutely. And the video games of the era were so hard and/or frustrating that you couldn't really play them all day. You really could and while its lost somewhere now I had the Pitfall Harry Explorer's Club patch I earned by doing just that.
hn8305823 3y ago
> Kids back then had fucking nothing. Yep, Gen X is the last generation to have played with literal rocks and sticks.
- varjag 3y ago
  Hey we had knives too! Dunno if anyone still played mumblety-peg in the West by then but behind the curtain pocket knife games were super popular.
dragonwriter 3y ago
> > I was a kid 30 years ago. > Yeah. 1980s. As someone who actually group up in the 1980s, I am sad to report that 30 years ago was the 1990s. > Books? lol. Your school hands you the the book Jane Eyre. Both bookstores and free public libraries with books more interesting to most kids of the time than Jane Eyre were, in fact, things in the 1980s and 1990s. As were gaming consoles, home computers, handheld electronic games, > Kids back then had fucking nothing. Nah, kids often had lots of stuff in the home. But they also had a culture which supported parents allowing children unsupervised in the neighborhood at much early ages then is considered acceptable today, which meant that more of them were allowed to go out beyond the home more often than is the case today.

midasuni 3y ago

I was a kids 30 years ago (1993), tv had stuff I could watch from getting home from school through to 11pm.

dave78 3y ago
Not sure where you grew up or if you had cable. My family did not. 5-7pm was news on every channel ( all 4 that we received), and most nights after 8pm were adult dramas that kids under 10 wouldn't generally want to watch. Weekends only had good stuff on in the morning on Saturday and then on Sunday night, depending on what age you're thinking of.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  After school cartoons and Saturday morning cartoons were a life send when I was an 80s kid. PBS had some interesting programming that could appeal to kids on Friday nights (Blakes 7, Doctor Whoever). Even cable was a wash back then, you got bored of Nickelodeon quickly and there was no cartoon channel yet.
  - Projectiboga 3y ago
    Dr Whoever, LOL. Great pun!
  - dave78 3y ago
    Not to mention all the commercials, which if nothing else the commercial break was sometimes enough to dislodge us and get us to think about doing something else. Now with streaming, kids can just go from one show to the next without any interruptions. On those occasions when we let them watch more than they should I'm sometimes amazed that they even remember to go to the bathroom. Good grief the devices today are addicting.

TedDoesntTalk 3y ago

Don’t beat yourself up: kids don’t master self-control until adulthood. It’s natural and normal for self-control to be challenging.

dave78 3y ago
Thanks, though I'm not sure I have a lot of hope. Even most adults (myself included) can't seem to exercise enough self control over all the screens in our lives.
nitwit005 3y ago
No, a lot of people just never master self control.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

nostrademons 3y ago

30 years ago my afternoon consisted of getting home at 2:30, watching The Disney Afternoon until about 5:00, then watching Square One, Reading Rainbow, and ideally 3-2-1 Contact (though it conflicted with The Mcneil-Lehrer News Hour that my mom always wanted to watch). Then it'd be on to The Cosby Show or Star Trek or some other sitcom. I think I averaged between 3.5-5 hours of TV per day. No cable. I basically don't want TV anymore, and my kids are limited to 3 hours of screentime per day, which they basically only get on weekends. (They get maybe an hour during the weekday, but that's because their school/daycare/aftercare days are much longer than mine were as a kid). I do set limits for them, but both of them (preschool-age) are able to turn off the tablets on their own if faced with the choice of doing it themselves or having mommy & daddy do it.

IreeneeThomas 3y ago

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