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We recently had some behavior issues with our kids - they didn't want to do activities outside the house, they hated reading, they hated anything that required
by zhivota 4mo ago
We recently had some behavior issues with our kids - they didn't want to do activities outside the house, they hated reading, they hated anything that required even the slightest discomfort or effort.
We decided to cut device usage way down - they get 1 hour in the morning to play whatever games they want on computer, tablet, console. Then they get 1 hour before bed to watch TV. The rest of the day, no devices. We are homeschooled so this is a LOT of free time.
After a few weeks, they're now: blasting through books daily (to the point where they forgot their own TV time, which used to be sacred), playing board games with us more frequently, asking to do things outside like learning to ride bikes (which they've previously shied away from), writing their own comic books and board games on paper, and overall just being creative through the day and entertaining themselves.
It's such a huge difference. It is the devices. It's 100% the devices.
- s5300 4mo ago[dead]
- JimsonYang 4mo agoIt is the phones fault and it affects more than kids. You see too many parents and grandparents buried on the phones. At least with boomers the tech adoption isnt as high We should recognize its not a generational issue but something that affects us all-young and old
- seanmcdirmid 4mo agoYes. The hardest part about telling my kid to get off his device is setting a good example by getting off mine.
- Frieren 4mo ago> It is the phones fault and it affects more than kids. It is the business model. There is an incentive to make games addictive. Like arcade games the goal is to keep kids as much time on the machine as possible. But now the arcade is in your pocket 24/7. Even worse, there is an incentive even to just open the app as it is an opportunity to show you an Ad. Notifications, and periodical rewards make sure that there is a constant need to interact with the phone. Unregulated markets will always end up in scams and addiction. Because both are the fastest and more reliable way of getting money.
- svelle 4mo ago> There is an incentive to make games addictive. It's not just games though, it's pretty much every digital service now. Virtually every website has infinite scrolling and algorithms that tailor the feed directly to what "appeals" to the user now. It's all just drip-feeding dopamine to the user base so they stay engaged for the longest possible time.
- jrflo 4mo agoIt's not even just kids, this is true for all people to be honest. Not saying we should go back to an agrarian society but maybe unrestricted access to dopamine slot machines isn't a good idea for your brain.
- madaxe_again 4mo agoI had a really effective inoculation against the Skinner box 20+ years ago, when I became addicted to an MMO. It took my life utterly turning to shit and barely escaping being kicked out of university for me to wake up. Since, I’ve always been aware of and wary of the possibility of this kind of dopamine cycling. I see it in others. My wife discovered YouTube shorts a year or so ago, and now she’ll lose entire days to watching 20 second clips of reality TV. Thing is, with a grown ass adult you can’t limit their screen time. You have to let them dig to the bottom of the pit all by themselves, and only when they ask for help to get out of it can you help - otherwise nothing is learned. It’s honestly not at all dissimilar to friends who I’ve seen fuck their existences up with drugs. They’ve had to hit rock bottom before they quit - or they died. Can’t think of anyone who just went “actually, today I won’t have any heroin”.
- gonzo41 4mo agoThis is why i have an xbox and not a gaming pc. Can't have a crack dealer in the house.
- 21asdffdsa12 4mo agohttps://www.alibaba.com/signal-jammer-suppliers.html https://www.alibaba.com/signal-jammer-suppliers.html Yes, yes you can..
- kakacik 4mo agoKids do what parents do, and what parents allow them to do. Allowing X hours daily gaming/screens is already bad parenting (depending on age but we talk about kids here), like it or not ask psychologists. At the end its just same genes & upbringing from the same genes (or failure to do so and ie nanny picks up). Everything else is just an empty blah. Every single time there is unruly kid, I look at parental behaviors and its pretty obvious. Reverse is also true - every properly caring involved parent has much better behaving kid(s) around.
- ivell 4mo agoThere are kids with autism and ADHD that you may have not considered.
- blks 4mo agoIt’s devices but also parents. If parents don’t read books everyday, kids won’t either.
- bcjdjsndon 4mo agoWhy can't you read from a screen instead? Why do all the benefits of reading seemingly disappear when read from a display screen?
- blahaj 4mo agoMost screens have distractions just one tap away. Personally I also like the physics of a book a lot more for reading. Every book is a physically different object. You physically turn the page. You can physically see how far you are in the book. It's just all much less abstract and tangible.
- bcjdjsndon 4mo ago> Most screens have distractions just one tap away. What? I guess you mean the mobile and tablet world... And even then I'm pretty sure that's bullshit, there is surely a pdf viewer without adverts
- tartoran 4mo agoIt’s a different experience but E-readers come close. Screens’ UIs are too interactive for a proper lecture.
- buellerbueller 4mo agoevery screen, even the majority of e-readers, now has advertising, which is designed to distract and incept.
- bcjdjsndon 4mo ago.... So ban magazines yeah? They contain adverts, and in fact most local newspapers are FULL of ads because they can't sustain themselves otherwise.
- beezlewax 4mo agoYou may have noticed the same behavioural issues amongst your adult friends or at times in yourself. I know I have. Anytime I give up doom scrolling for a week or two I feel instantly less anxious about the world and everything going on around me. Social media is a plague and will likely be looked on by the psychiatric/medical professional as extremely harmful in years to come. Something akin to smoking.
- bcjdjsndon 4mo ago> Social media is a plague and will likely be looked on by the psychiatric/medical professional as extremely harmful in years to come. Not only will it not, autism will not last more than 25 years in it's current form. I bet money on both of those
- ayatollah 4mo agoThanks for your input, I find this take intriguing. Could you elaborate on the link you see between social media and Autism?
- bcjdjsndon 4mo agoNo link, they're just two social semi-hysterias
- jackp96 4mo agoAbsolutely. I was homeschooled growing up, and my parents were fairly strict about screentime. We read anything we could get our hands on, and I feel like I'm a happier, healthier adult today because of it. While I'm now on my phone too much, and I don't read fiction as much as I used to, I'm grateful for those foundations. The friction and discomfort that come from reading/exercising/learning/growing is so important, and I hope we can find a healthier balance for the next generation.
- bcjdjsndon 4mo agoYou're on a screen right now. I like how all these parents decrying the evils of screentime dont think they should get off it themselves. I watched Harvey price, a fairly famous autistic person in the UK edit his own video on an iPad, adding sounds etc. I think that's fantastic self directed learning and it came from, shock horror, a screen. I think this anti-screen sentiment is hysteria, plain and simple.
- bcjdjsndon 4mo ago> asking to do things outside like learning to ride bikes They sound deprived, why haven't you got them a bike if you're complaining about screen time? > It's such a huge difference. It is the devices. It's 100% the devices. You sound like you're convincing yourself here.
- kuerbel 4mo agoIt depends on what they are doing on the device, 100%. When I was a kid I got a GameBoy, one of those old red ones, played tetris or Mario Land for an hour and after that it was boring and I did something else. Got an N64 which was already way more engaging, but even then after an hour or two I was done. It just got worse the more sophisticated games became. And now we have infinite videos and content, infinite scrolling and such. How is a child supposed to withstand this onslaught? I only managed this by uninstalling YouTube and all apps with shorts.
- originalvichy 4mo agoThis sort of analysis can help find a healthy level of gaming or computer use. I spent hours reading Microsoft’s offline encyclopedia on the family PC, and playing games like Age of Empires which taught me history on the side. Take control of what your kids play, and you can help them find more beneficial uses of electronics which is not an endless loop of bite sized low quality entertainment! :)
- thatguy0900 4mo agoI think at the minumim you should be avoiding any games studios that hire behavioral psychologists and optimize for addiction loops. So most every triple A game is immediately out
- bawolff 4mo agoI think the internet is the real problem. Infinite choices, and sites designed specificly to keep you hooked. I feel like addictivity falls a lot when you are stuck with just offline things.
- cobertos 4mo agoI think so too. The restrictions of offline software means it has less ability to nag you or pull you in a specific direction. The software you have at any given time is what you've got. Same sort of theme I've being going for in my personal intranet. It's calmer offline.
- blahaj 4mo agoI don't know how old your kids are and if they play video games with friends, so maybe they're too young for this to begin with. Do you give them some kind of additional time budget that they can manage themselves over a longer period? There are things that you can do on a screen that just take more time than one hour at once, especially when you're playing with friends (or even learning something by programming etc.).
- jhedwards 4mo agoJust for some perspective, my kids get about 1 hour of screen time a day, and a lot of my friends are shocked at how much they watch. I'm glad you made this change and saw the positive effect, especially to the extent that they started choosing other activities over screen time, but I can't image how much they were watching before you "cut down" to 2 hours a day, and how you could have felt that that was OK for children?
- ido 4mo agoThey didn't write how old the kids were, there's a big difference between a 3 year old and a 12 year old.
- Ntrails 4mo ago> It is the devices. It's 100% the devices. That anyone is pretending otherwise is mind boggling to me.
- losvedir 4mo agoHow old are the kids? Honestly two hours of screens and devices seems like a lot to me, so I'm surprised that's where you cut down to. How much were they using them before? But my kids are young, so it's probably different if you're talking about like teens or something.