4 ms·

Two-thirds of babies watch screens – some for eight hours a day

48 points by oj2828 5mo ago

Mashimo 5mo ago
> A report finds a third of newborns use devices for more than three hours, despite government advice that under-twos have no screen time at all Disgusting :( That said, I can't read the article, paywalled. Anyone have a working link?
- bcjdjsndon 5mo ago
  What's going to happen to those poor babies do you think?
  - mothballed 5mo ago
    The public doesn't even have the capacity to support all the babies that are outright abused. A lot of researchers will get more notches on their precious CV but let's be real, if anyone gave a shit about random babies then screen time is so far down the list that they're never going to get there under any rational prioritization of who needs assistance.
  - finghin 5mo ago
    They’ll be sold software to correct the damage.
  - intended 5mo ago
    Gen Z is the first generation to score lower on standardized tests than previous generations. > https://fortune.com/2026/02/21/laptops-tablets-schools-gen-z-less-cognitively-capable-parents-first-time-cellphone-bans-standardized-test-scores/ https://fortune.com/2026/02/21/laptops-tablets-schools-gen-z...
    - schnitzelstoat 5mo ago
      I mean that probably has more to do with basically shutting schools down for a year or more tbh.
- armchairhacker 5mo ago
  https://archive.ph/qHUFg https://archive.ph/qHUFg
bcjdjsndon 5mo ago
TBF content is generally better than it was 15 years ago even for babies. I don't blame em...
- Mordisquitos 5mo ago
  The quality of the content is not the issue here.
- hgoel 5mo ago
  It's better at holding their attention, but is it actually better? My impression was that a lot of the content was effectively "attention slop", bright colors and noises, often with very little sense to them, or just variations of the same rhymes a 90's baby would've been raised on. A lot of it seemed to cross over from just being stimulating to being overstimulating.
  - bcjdjsndon 5mo ago
    > It's better at holding their attention, but is it actually better? As Weller said, that's entertainment. Saying something's slop is like saying it's trash, ie something you don't like.
    - hgoel 5mo ago
      I'd like to believe that people have a bit more in mind for children's entertainment than just overstimulating their developing visual and auditory cortices for 8 hours a day.
      - bcjdjsndon 5mo ago
        > overstimulating pure speculation, and dare I say, hysteria
    - actionfromafar 5mo ago
      Yeah? Then heroin is also ice cream.
littlecranky67 5mo ago
I once in a supermarket saw a probably 2-year old sitting in a stroller, holding a smartphone watching Youtube. When the ads came up, the little fella confidently pressed the "skip ad" button. I was perplexed and stunned, how can a child that can't even walk yet have the practice to know how to skip the ads. I don't even want to know the screentime that kid has.
- doubled112 5mo ago
  Maybe this is evidence that the urge to skip ads is innate.
  - mothballed 5mo ago
    It is the first thing most any kid learns on a tablet.
    - giwook 5mo ago
      Anything to keep the dopamine flowing.
  - ForHackernews 5mo ago
    Parrot skips ads https://www.youtube.com/shorts/MLoJ_t36Png https://www.youtube.com/shorts/MLoJ_t36Png
- schnitzelstoat 5mo ago
  A 2-year old should be able to walk unless they are pretty severely developmentally delayed.
  - x187463 5mo ago
    My dude, go grocery shopping with a 2-year-old and see if you want them walking around. They'll be peeling a sticker off the floor for two minutes, then grabbing everything off the shelf. It's perfectly normal to cart the kid around so you can actually make progress through the aisles. They can reasonably follow you around between 3-4.
donatj 5mo ago
My wife stays home with our kids. My daughter ends up watching a fair bit of television while my wife does chores and the like. We're entirely curating what she's watching and I'm just not that concerned. If anything, she's learning things that I would not thought to teach her at her age. About 6 months ago she had an assessment through the school district for early education and at 2 years of age was able to identify about half the letters of the the alphabet. My wife and I watching this happen were genuinely surprised because neither of us had even considered trying to teach the alphabet to a 2-year old. We did not teach her this, educational content taught her this. I don't really worry. I watched TV basically my entire childhood growing up in the '80s, in the height of stranger danger where I largely was not allowed to go outside. It was a lot worse than this. I watched game shows, Hogans Heroes, Night Court. She's watching Ms. Rachel, Meekah, and Sesame Street. I think the kids will be all right as long as you're involved. We're not hand our kid a tablet and saying "Go nuts". We're watching TV in the living room as a family.
- schnitzelstoat 5mo ago
  Yeah, I use Ms Rachel with my son when I need to cut his nails or if I am alone with him and I need to take a shower or something. He goes to swimming classes and he learned to clap in the "If You're Happy and you know it" song even though the song is different in his classes, I was confused as to how he learned that you usually clap in the song but I presume he learned it from Ms Rachel. It's useful English language exposure for him too as we live in a non-English speaking country and my partner doesn't speak English either so without TV I am his only exposure to English. I wouldn't let him watch it for 8 hours, but I presume that's the typical newspaper sensationalising.
  - bombcar 5mo ago
    It's amusing to watch kids pick up Australian slang from Bluey.
- toasty228 5mo ago
  > I watched game shows, Hogans Heroes, Night Court. She's watching Ms. Rachel, Meekah, and Sesame Street. At 2 years old? There are babies under a year who watch youtube brainrot shat out by obscure indian animation farms multiple hours a day, I'm not sure it has the same impact as watching Stargate when you're eight. My niece is 9 months, she never watched anything on a phone yet as soon as someone in her line of sight gets a phone out she's mesmerized, it's scary to witness
zthrowaway 5mo ago
I have two boys. 2 and 5. We’ve never done screens, instead we do books and focused attention from each parent and we are looked at like crazy people when we tell people that. But our kids are miles ahead of their cohorts in attention span, respectfulness, behavior, socializing, etc. It’s actually alarming. I really worry about them being outcasts just by being raised like we all were.
- teensydata 5mo ago
  Same with us. Our 24 month can count to 20 and knows all the letters without watching TV. When he is at a party and a tv is on in the distance he stares like a zombie at it. It's depressing at how TV changes him and I have to transfer his focus away.
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
  - close04 5mo ago
    > Our 24 month can count to 20 and knows all the letters without watching TV. I have a very qualified pediatric occupational therapist friend and when I was sort of bragging about how many "cool things" my toddler can do I was immediately told that they are nice party tricks but don't say much about the development of the child, predict future performance or intelligence, and definitely aren't what I should be focusing on as a parent. The child didn't just naturally learn to do those tricks. Our games focused a lot on this because I thought "it builds brain and skills", always be ahead of all other kids. In reality only I benefited from this because I could drop it in random conversation and then have pride flow out my ears. And the kid kept repeating the now easy tricks looking for the reward, staying inside the comfort zone. I was told to simply guide our interactions with a method called "serve and return"[0]. It's a much more powerful tool that makes any and every interaction an opportunity for development, not just individual tasks practiced to perfection and repeated for rewards. You guide but also let yourself be guided so your child gets to feel comfortable opening all kinds of doors rather than you even unwittingly pushing them through the same one again and again. [0] https://developingchild.harvard.edu/key-concept/serve-and-return/ https://developingchild.harvard.edu/key-concept/serve-and-re...
nfRfqX5n 5mo ago
we avoid it very well with our kids but sometimes I am worried it won't make a difference in the long run and we are just doing hard mode for no reason. kids are pretty adaptable. will be interesting to see in 10-15 years.
helle253 5mo ago
One thing I'm really glad we've been doing with our eldest (3) is Saturday morning cartoons We only let her watch occasionally during the week, but saturday morning, she gets to sit in front of the TV for a few hours and watch cartoons that she gets to pick (from an approved list) It's always SO heartwarming how excited she gets when she realizes its Saturday morning.

48 points by oj2828 5mo ago

> A report finds a third of newborns use devices for more than three hours, despite government advice that under-twos have no screen time at all Disgusting :( That said, I can't read the article, paywalled. Anyone have a working link?

bcjdjsndon 5mo ago
What's going to happen to those poor babies do you think?
- mothballed 5mo ago
  The public doesn't even have the capacity to support all the babies that are outright abused. A lot of researchers will get more notches on their precious CV but let's be real, if anyone gave a shit about random babies then screen time is so far down the list that they're never going to get there under any rational prioritization of who needs assistance.
- finghin 5mo ago
  They’ll be sold software to correct the damage.
- intended 5mo ago
  Gen Z is the first generation to score lower on standardized tests than previous generations. > https://fortune.com/2026/02/21/laptops-tablets-schools-gen-z-less-cognitively-capable-parents-first-time-cellphone-bans-standardized-test-scores/ https://fortune.com/2026/02/21/laptops-tablets-schools-gen-z...
  - schnitzelstoat 5mo ago
    I mean that probably has more to do with basically shutting schools down for a year or more tbh.
armchairhacker 5mo ago
https://archive.ph/qHUFg https://archive.ph/qHUFg

bcjdjsndon 5mo ago

TBF content is generally better than it was 15 years ago even for babies. I don't blame em...

Mordisquitos 5mo ago
The quality of the content is not the issue here.
hgoel 5mo ago
It's better at holding their attention, but is it actually better? My impression was that a lot of the content was effectively "attention slop", bright colors and noises, often with very little sense to them, or just variations of the same rhymes a 90's baby would've been raised on. A lot of it seemed to cross over from just being stimulating to being overstimulating.
- bcjdjsndon 5mo ago
  > It's better at holding their attention, but is it actually better? As Weller said, that's entertainment. Saying something's slop is like saying it's trash, ie something you don't like.
  - hgoel 5mo ago
    I'd like to believe that people have a bit more in mind for children's entertainment than just overstimulating their developing visual and auditory cortices for 8 hours a day.
    - bcjdjsndon 5mo ago
      > overstimulating pure speculation, and dare I say, hysteria
  - actionfromafar 5mo ago
    Yeah? Then heroin is also ice cream.

littlecranky67 5mo ago

I once in a supermarket saw a probably 2-year old sitting in a stroller, holding a smartphone watching Youtube. When the ads came up, the little fella confidently pressed the "skip ad" button. I was perplexed and stunned, how can a child that can't even walk yet have the practice to know how to skip the ads. I don't even want to know the screentime that kid has.

doubled112 5mo ago
Maybe this is evidence that the urge to skip ads is innate.
- mothballed 5mo ago
  It is the first thing most any kid learns on a tablet.
  - giwook 5mo ago
    Anything to keep the dopamine flowing.
- ForHackernews 5mo ago
  Parrot skips ads https://www.youtube.com/shorts/MLoJ_t36Png https://www.youtube.com/shorts/MLoJ_t36Png
schnitzelstoat 5mo ago
A 2-year old should be able to walk unless they are pretty severely developmentally delayed.
- x187463 5mo ago
  My dude, go grocery shopping with a 2-year-old and see if you want them walking around. They'll be peeling a sticker off the floor for two minutes, then grabbing everything off the shelf. It's perfectly normal to cart the kid around so you can actually make progress through the aisles. They can reasonably follow you around between 3-4.

donatj 5mo ago

My wife stays home with our kids. My daughter ends up watching a fair bit of television while my wife does chores and the like. We're entirely curating what she's watching and I'm just not that concerned. If anything, she's learning things that I would not thought to teach her at her age. About 6 months ago she had an assessment through the school district for early education and at 2 years of age was able to identify about half the letters of the the alphabet. My wife and I watching this happen were genuinely surprised because neither of us had even considered trying to teach the alphabet to a 2-year old. We did not teach her this, educational content taught her this. I don't really worry. I watched TV basically my entire childhood growing up in the '80s, in the height of stranger danger where I largely was not allowed to go outside. It was a lot worse than this. I watched game shows, Hogans Heroes, Night Court. She's watching Ms. Rachel, Meekah, and Sesame Street. I think the kids will be all right as long as you're involved. We're not hand our kid a tablet and saying "Go nuts". We're watching TV in the living room as a family.

schnitzelstoat 5mo ago
Yeah, I use Ms Rachel with my son when I need to cut his nails or if I am alone with him and I need to take a shower or something. He goes to swimming classes and he learned to clap in the "If You're Happy and you know it" song even though the song is different in his classes, I was confused as to how he learned that you usually clap in the song but I presume he learned it from Ms Rachel. It's useful English language exposure for him too as we live in a non-English speaking country and my partner doesn't speak English either so without TV I am his only exposure to English. I wouldn't let him watch it for 8 hours, but I presume that's the typical newspaper sensationalising.
- bombcar 5mo ago
  It's amusing to watch kids pick up Australian slang from Bluey.
toasty228 5mo ago
> I watched game shows, Hogans Heroes, Night Court. She's watching Ms. Rachel, Meekah, and Sesame Street. At 2 years old? There are babies under a year who watch youtube brainrot shat out by obscure indian animation farms multiple hours a day, I'm not sure it has the same impact as watching Stargate when you're eight. My niece is 9 months, she never watched anything on a phone yet as soon as someone in her line of sight gets a phone out she's mesmerized, it's scary to witness

zthrowaway 5mo ago

I have two boys. 2 and 5. We’ve never done screens, instead we do books and focused attention from each parent and we are looked at like crazy people when we tell people that. But our kids are miles ahead of their cohorts in attention span, respectfulness, behavior, socializing, etc. It’s actually alarming. I really worry about them being outcasts just by being raised like we all were.

teensydata 5mo ago
Same with us. Our 24 month can count to 20 and knows all the letters without watching TV. When he is at a party and a tv is on in the distance he stares like a zombie at it. It's depressing at how TV changes him and I have to transfer his focus away.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- close04 5mo ago
  > Our 24 month can count to 20 and knows all the letters without watching TV. I have a very qualified pediatric occupational therapist friend and when I was sort of bragging about how many "cool things" my toddler can do I was immediately told that they are nice party tricks but don't say much about the development of the child, predict future performance or intelligence, and definitely aren't what I should be focusing on as a parent. The child didn't just naturally learn to do those tricks. Our games focused a lot on this because I thought "it builds brain and skills", always be ahead of all other kids. In reality only I benefited from this because I could drop it in random conversation and then have pride flow out my ears. And the kid kept repeating the now easy tricks looking for the reward, staying inside the comfort zone. I was told to simply guide our interactions with a method called "serve and return"[0]. It's a much more powerful tool that makes any and every interaction an opportunity for development, not just individual tasks practiced to perfection and repeated for rewards. You guide but also let yourself be guided so your child gets to feel comfortable opening all kinds of doors rather than you even unwittingly pushing them through the same one again and again. [0] https://developingchild.harvard.edu/key-concept/serve-and-return/ https://developingchild.harvard.edu/key-concept/serve-and-re...

nfRfqX5n 5mo ago

we avoid it very well with our kids but sometimes I am worried it won't make a difference in the long run and we are just doing hard mode for no reason. kids are pretty adaptable. will be interesting to see in 10-15 years.

helle253 5mo ago

One thing I'm really glad we've been doing with our eldest (3) is Saturday morning cartoons We only let her watch occasionally during the week, but saturday morning, she gets to sit in front of the TV for a few hours and watch cartoons that she gets to pick (from an approved list) It's always SO heartwarming how excited she gets when she realizes its Saturday morning.