6 ms·
What is screen time doing to children?
- solalf 3y agohttps://archive.is/WCFYg https://archive.is/WCFYg
- bell-cot 3y agoLots of bad stuff. But Capitalism, our one-and-only True God, is making sure that it's all for the Greater Profit - so we shouldn't worry about it. Or even think about it - to do so would both inefficient, and non-revenue-generating. Meanwhile, back at the coalface - could the "Protect children from screens!" crusaders spare a thought or few for the non-0.01% parents, whose kids need healthy alternative to screen time? The great & unwashed 99.99% can't just order their 24/7 nannies to keep the kids busy without screens, or their security staff to drive the tykes to the park and supervise their play there.
- djtango 3y agoThere was a brief period where it was fairly attainable to have a family supported by a single parent which meant one parent had the time, energy and head space to do those kinds of things for the children and also attend to other family affairs.
- treyd 3y agoAnd this brief period happened right after the government was heavily involved in managing the economy, bypassing normal market conventions, and building huge amounts of infrastructure to support the war effort.
- datascienced 3y ago1950s?
- bell-cot 3y agoI was thinking of the far, far longer time when it was okay - in most places - to let your kids freely roam the neighborhood to play. Or to walk to & home from school by themselves. Or to send 'em half a mile to a grocery store, because "I'd like to make some cookies, dear, but we're low on flour...". (No comment on how often I bought such stories from my mom:)
- constantcrying 3y agoBlaming random things on "capitalism" is neither helpful nor interesting. No, this isn't the fault of capitalism. Any social system would suffer from young people too invested in an online world. The class division doesn't even make senses, previously "anti-capitalist" we're protesting about poorer children having less access to information technology, now that capitalism has largely fixed this and nearly everyone has access to a phone, the "anti-capitalist" complain that only the rich can afford not to give their kids phones. This is literal nonsense. Capitalism isn't preventing kids from spending time outside, it even sells them what they need to do so.
- licebmi__at__ 3y agoIt’s hard to imagine a scenario of young people getting pushed a skinner machine without any real pushback. But in this case, it’s possible because advertising companies can pay top bucks to the brightest minds to make their platforms as much addictive as possible, and criticism is deflected by a combination of appeal to personal responsibility, and the ideology that political collective action is bad and profit seeking is good. I guess we can find an alternative scenario, yet is hard to argue that it isn’t capitalist ideology what brought us here this time.
- constantcrying 3y agoSince this phenomenon is taking place at basically every part of the globe either capitalism is so all consuming that escape is not possible or it is a universal human phenomenon. Again, the same people blaming capitalism for too much phone use have in the past blamed capitalism for disadvantaging the poor by gatekeeping access to technology. The whole critique is incoherent and unhelpful. Instead of trying to find actual solutions the blame is put on a vague concept. So vague that is can cause anything, too much phones, too little phones and anything else you can imagine. It is just a very lazy thought process. The truth is that markets will always exist and that humans will always seek pleasure in unheayways, phones are just one instance, but so are drugs, online gambling, prostitution, etc. If you blame capitalism you can't solve anything, because the change required to change anything would be so great as to guarantee it will never happen.
- wizzwizz4 3y agoSnark aside, your point is valid. If a parent has time to take their child to the local park regularly (i.e., at the same phase of a periodic cycle, e.g. from 13:00 to 14:00 on Wednesdays), that can act as a Schelling point for other parents in the area. In places that are not large cities and do not have stroads, it can be safe for children to play outside in groups, largely unsupervised. However, I don't think this will be common again (per capita) for at least another 50 years: even just cars are getting more dangerous for children.
- theothermelissa 3y agoAgreed. A lot of convos about kids playing outside point to human dangers -- predators, bullying, kidnapping -- as the "reason" many parents don't let their kids play outside unsupervised, but imo the actual deciding factor is usually traffic. It seems like a neighborhood design problem to me, at least in the newish suburbs I'm most familiar with. By optimizing for easy-to-drive neighborhoods with large driveways, more of the available space is dedicated specifically to car traffic, leaving less for open or common space. Fenced yards are fun to play in IF you already have playmates -- but without a common place to meet new kids, that can be much more challenging.
- ghusto 3y agoConsider how my family was able to handle it, growing up on a council estate (kind of like a ghetto, in America) in the 80s. Sure there was probably more T.V. than was healthy, but there was as much quality time as possible. Nowadays we say negligent parenting (yes, I believe putting your kid in front of a screen all day is negligent) is acceptable, and move on. Stop blaming circumstance. I know there are alternatives, because here I am.
- micromacrofoot 3y agoI suspect technology is a contributing factor, but much of this is coming from distracted and stressed parents. We need more data.
- constantcrying 3y agoI agree. The parents, who also are constantly on their phones are the bigger problem here. Social alienation is always universal. I remember when I was young, without a phone, I didn't have anything to do but either play alone or play with friends. So if we wanted social interaction we had to meet up after school and tell our parents we were coming in the afternoon. Only later video games came in and we spent our evenings playing those.
- xg15 3y agoAfter 50 years and two generations growing up with computers, we need more data? When exactly would you have enough data to make a conclusion?
- micromacrofoot 3y agoit’s not all the same… phones and social media algorithms are dramatically different, and existing is different from structured studies with reproducible outcomes
- gsich 3y agoSmartphones are worse. Passive devices, no haptic feedback. Last one is especially bad for <5y olds.
- raincole 3y agoIf only single income families are able to support themselves...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ctrw 3y agoI'm old enough to have gone through this about the internet and literate enough to have read about every other time this happened back to the invention of writing which was meant to turn us all into imbeciles according to Socrates. Leave the kids alone. They will figure it out.
- 082349872349872 3y ago> As middle-aged folk identify the problems with the social networks they grew up with, youngsters may already be moving on. One of my proudest parenting moments was discovering that a child had independently realised that their online presences ought to be multiple and not trivially correlated.
- 31337Logic 3y agoA better, prouder moment, for all involved, would be not that the child arrived at this marvelous conclusion "independently", for that outcome (by your admission) is quite rare. Else, it would not be remarkable enough for you to comment. Instead, we want to arm our children with the tools so that they arrive at that same conclusion repeatedly and predictably. Better yet, we would all do better if we simply eliminate such harmful algorithms and creepy practices entirely.
- 082349872349872 3y agoWhen I was a child, print media was a thing and so MAD magazine armed me with the tools for surviving in the world. What's the current equivalent?
- 31337Logic 2y agoThank you. Same here. ;-)
- 29athrowaway 3y agoWrong. The Internet today is not the same as the one you grew up in. If what you seek is virtue, you will find virtue. If what you seek is vice, you will find vice. If what you wanted is learning you could find everything you wanted to learn. But if you have problems the Internet can make them much worse. And the Internet of today is much less forgiving. There is no real anonimity now.
- tarruda 3y ago> Daisy Greenwell and Clare Fernyhough set up a WhatsApp group to discuss how to stave off their young children’s demands for smartphones IMHO "children's demands" is the problem to solve, as children should not be demanding anything. My 9 yo asked me a few times why he doesn't have a phone and I said he will have one after he receives his first salary and buys the phone himself.
- micromacrofoot 3y agoChildren demand things all the time, but yes it's silly to always cater to their whims. This is increasingly difficult when most other parents do, I've seen 5 year olds with their own phones. It's quite difficult to continue saying no as they age and this kind of thing becomes socially alienating. For my generation it's like "the kid without a tv at home" — the impact wasn't as large then as it is now, but there was a swath of popular culture that they couldn't participate in with their peers. Now with a lot of socialization moving to social media, what does it mean when we don't let our children participate? I'm more on the "no phone" side of things, but it's hard to navigate.
- tarruda 3y ago> It's quite difficult to continue saying no as they age and this kind of thing becomes socially alienating Being a parent is not supposed to be easy. Just be strong and keep in mind that this will be the best for them.
- micromacrofoot 2y agodon’t tell other people what to do
- episteme 3y agoThat doesn't really answer this question though, you buy all kinds of other things for him. If you think it's unhealthy for children to have phones, is there a reason not to say that to him?
- kkfx 3y agoI'm curious if anyone have tried to differentiate screen time, meaning the effect of using social/games on mobile vs using a desktop to study, a classic one, not a modern one... Because generic screentime sound like the effect of walking around, observing just people walking in a good spring climate in nature vs some who only walk around in a battle zone, with mines and casual attacks here and there and heavy pollution. Differentiate the screen alone by the content shown on it, it's a little bit a thing.