3 ms·

All very sensible points. I would add no TV at home till 16

astrobe_ 2y ago
You just get hooked to radio and get a weird fetish for voices ;-)
talldayo 2y ago
I don't get this. I have very little love for programmed television and news channels these days, but I mostly feel that way because I grew up around them. Reality TV sucks, the news is gruesome, Marvel movies are all the same, HBO just airs different flavors of sex and violence. If you're not exposed to this media and the inherently pulpy context it exists under, you're training your children to treat it as exotic and desirable. You owe it to your next-of-kin to show them the news and global politics in the same way too, lest they fetishize extremism in their late age because they weren't exposed to moderate opinions. On the flip side, I lived in a rural area and my parents would frequently take me to play with kids that had no TV or internet access. Words cannot describe how thick these people can be. One of them was a pair of history buff brothers that weren't allowed to read anything their parents didn't vet - they didn't even know what the Civil War was when I mentioned it. There was a family that lived on a farm, where every time I visited their kids would ask me what weed looks like, what porn was and how alcohol tasted. There were the kids that asked me to recite Newgrounds videos verbatim, explain who "Iron Man" is and even ones that (tragically) didn't know the Mormonism their parents loved was a cult. Rejecting social media is a smart thing to teach anyone, but you have to be extremely careful to not use it as an excuse to shelter them. Sometimes I worry that HN creates a "growth hack" mindset for parents that inhibits them from thinking rationally about how a child develops. It's not a new phenomenon but it seems fear overrides our willingness to empathize with the events of our own childhood. It all feels reminiscent of when people played Mozart for their baby because an unreviewed paper correlated it with higher IQ. Missing the forest for the trees, a bit.
- pkphilip 2y ago
  There is a lot of evidence showing a direct correlation between TV use and decline in reading skills among children https://www.jstor.org/stable/748102 https://www.jstor.org/stable/748102 https://typeset.io/questions/how-does-television-affect-reading-comprehension-3rpaedjspk https://typeset.io/questions/how-does-television-affect-read... I have noticed this among my children as well. We decided very early on that we won't have a TV at home once the children arrived. They have shown far better reading skills than their peers in school who are glued to the screens. Their peers who have mostly avoided TV also show similarly improved reading skills and also a desire for reading.
kelnos 2y ago
While I can understand that some more extreme parents might go for this (I imagine there were some like this even before the internet and smartphones), that seems... well, a bit extreme? Certainly sitting in front of a TV all day is bad for you, but I think policing TV use for a child to ensure it doesn't become a problem is a lot easier than policing smartphone use.

You just get hooked to radio and get a weird fetish for voices ;-)

I don't get this. I have very little love for programmed television and news channels these days, but I mostly feel that way because I grew up around them. Reality TV sucks, the news is gruesome, Marvel movies are all the same, HBO just airs different flavors of sex and violence. If you're not exposed to this media and the inherently pulpy context it exists under, you're training your children to treat it as exotic and desirable. You owe it to your next-of-kin to show them the news and global politics in the same way too, lest they fetishize extremism in their late age because they weren't exposed to moderate opinions. On the flip side, I lived in a rural area and my parents would frequently take me to play with kids that had no TV or internet access. Words cannot describe how thick these people can be. One of them was a pair of history buff brothers that weren't allowed to read anything their parents didn't vet - they didn't even know what the Civil War was when I mentioned it. There was a family that lived on a farm, where every time I visited their kids would ask me what weed looks like, what porn was and how alcohol tasted. There were the kids that asked me to recite Newgrounds videos verbatim, explain who "Iron Man" is and even ones that (tragically) didn't know the Mormonism their parents loved was a cult. Rejecting social media is a smart thing to teach anyone, but you have to be extremely careful to not use it as an excuse to shelter them. Sometimes I worry that HN creates a "growth hack" mindset for parents that inhibits them from thinking rationally about how a child develops. It's not a new phenomenon but it seems fear overrides our willingness to empathize with the events of our own childhood. It all feels reminiscent of when people played Mozart for their baby because an unreviewed paper correlated it with higher IQ. Missing the forest for the trees, a bit.

pkphilip 2y ago
There is a lot of evidence showing a direct correlation between TV use and decline in reading skills among children https://www.jstor.org/stable/748102 https://www.jstor.org/stable/748102 https://typeset.io/questions/how-does-television-affect-reading-comprehension-3rpaedjspk https://typeset.io/questions/how-does-television-affect-read... I have noticed this among my children as well. We decided very early on that we won't have a TV at home once the children arrived. They have shown far better reading skills than their peers in school who are glued to the screens. Their peers who have mostly avoided TV also show similarly improved reading skills and also a desire for reading.

kelnos 2y ago

While I can understand that some more extreme parents might go for this (I imagine there were some like this even before the internet and smartphones), that seems... well, a bit extreme? Certainly sitting in front of a TV all day is bad for you, but I think policing TV use for a child to ensure it doesn't become a problem is a lot easier than policing smartphone use.