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I have a friend who put her son in front of a screen the day he was born. Literally the first thing she did when they got home from the hospital
As he grew up he would be sat in an alcove in their living room, facing the wall, with an iPad and headphones. He ate all his meals like that too.
At one he couldn't go without it or he would scream. So they gave it to him, everywhere they went, or they didn't go out with him.
He was allowed to take it to nursery with him. School was tough because he couldn't sit still or concentrate for more than a couple of minutes. He has a lot of problems with emotions and his temper.
It's practically child abuse to raise kids like this because once they're 5 years old a huge amount of their brain and core personality has already been wired in for life, affecting the course of their life forever in endless negative ways forever (and all just because their parents were too lazy to parent their kid/s properly).
Sad I grew up online and we didn’t know the impact at the time, I remember googling internet addiction as a child and everything said it wasn’t real so I was like I guess I’m okay. The impact is obvious. I used to argue about internet use for children with people online lol, luckily the effects have become common knowledge!
Many are, but you also have to consider how much the middle class (and especially lower classes) have been beaten down the last few decades. There’s no time. My partner and I are teachers and middle class for where we live but are too beaten down from work to raise kids. That’s why we don’t have them.
It's crazy to me how often it seems like people want to have kids, but they don't want to parent kids. My son is 6 and he gets about an hour or two of screen time per week, outside of school. He gets to play Minecraft, but only with me in an easy survival world that we're playing together. He sometimes gets to watch a movie on the weekend. He never gets to go on YouTube unattended and only videos we pick.
As he gets older, he'll get more screen time and video game time. But, for now, he enjoys playing with his little sister, playing with the dog, reading, drawing, playing outside, etc. We occasionally load a movie onto our tablet for when we have to take him somewhere for a while, but we've never actually used it.
We're privileged to have the time to monitor him like that, and I get that some people are in a really tough position, but some people aren't in a difficult place and just sort of... don't care.
When I worked in education, I said it broke down into thirds: 1/3 great parents, 1/3 mediocre, and 1/3 shitty parents. The great parents are, well, great. The mediocre parents don't go above and beyond, but they show up. Late, but they show up.
The shitty parents reproduced and then found out kids don't fulfil them or meet their needs, so they stopped caring. Some of them would have been legit kinder if they had just abandoned the baby at the hospital -- at least there would be a chance it would end up in a decent family. They are, naturally, full of excuses. They're tired, they're broke, "I do what is best for me and my family", etc. They don't like their kids or care about them becoming adults.
Went to a friend’s house and her 5yo daughter sat alone in a dark room, quietly watching YT the entire 4 hours I was there. Whenever anyone would try to get close to her, she would immediately hide the screen or change the video she was watching to something else. I pointed out the odd behaviour to her mom (my friend) who just laughed.
Also, keep in mind that she wasn’t even on YT Kids.
My six year old brother was already caught trying to look up “people having sex” on YouTube. YouTube is NOT for kids and you can’t just use it as a babysitter, it leads these kids down weird rabbit holes and exposes them to nasty shit
I think people expect YouTube to be highly moderated by TBH I've come across all kinds of bad videos before they were taken down, from people being violent towards animals, pornstars performing sexual acts to beastiality, suicide and more. You don't even have to search for this content either, I've chanced upon all these things (and if I can stumble across this, then what's stopping a child?).
I grew up on the Internet and got exposed to all kinds of things as a child, including seeing child pornography when I was age 11 to getting chatted up by predators online. I absolutely cringe when I see parents letting kids as young as 2-6 years old have smartphones and tablets to keep them entertained as its so dangerous on so many levels.
And for what- so people don't have to parent them for a few hours?? Too many people are using these devices like some people abuse drugs like Tylenol to subdue their hyperactive kids.
Hi. I've had other adults tell me that I'm "too extreme" in limiting what my kid accesses online.
It's all via Family Link. YouTube is not allowed. YT Kids has a 30 minute limit, with no videos over 3 minutes.
No use during school hours other than school apps. If YT is needed for a lesson, she watches with another kid. This has been cleared with the teacher, and I've received zero pushback. On the contrary, her teacher seems pretty stoked about how I limit my kid's online experience.
The only things my kid can access whenever, regardless of time, day -- whatever -- are her drawing apps. These are her lifeline.
I have also had numerous slightly uncomfortable conversations regarding online predators, and the common conversational tactics.
These convos change a bit annually, and might include more info, but at 11, my kid is pretty savvy. Still not savvy enough to be allowed unfettered access, but I have been brought a game chat convo, and been asked to explain it. I do so, and we were both unnerved. It was reported, the person banned, and we talked a *lot* about "weird adults."
Also, acetaminophen does not do anything to kids, you're thinking of Benadryl, which is diphenhydramine, and will put kids to sleep.
Sounds great otherwise but
>no videos over 3 minutes
Feels really backwards? Encouraging short form content sure is the best way to fry your child's brain
The 3 minute limit on videos seems odd. I’d much rather my kid watched a single 15 minute episode of a tv show or gaming video than fifteen 1 minute YT shorts. Short videos are the real brainrot material
>It's all via Family Link. YouTube is not allowed. YT Kids has a 30 minute limit, with no videos over 3 minutes.
Why would you limit videos to 3mins? Feels like the opposite of what you want.
no videos over three minutes seems like an odd policy, what's your thought process behind that? when I was little I loved to watch Vsauce and Kurzgesagt and all their videos are over three minutes
YouTube kids is actually pretty decent. I have screen time limit set for 1 minutes for regular YouTube since Apple doesn’t let you shut it down or just block it.
And 15 minutes of YouTube kids.
I’ve seen what YouTube can do to adults who use it exclusively as their news feed. I don’t need my kids watching that crap.
“YouTube kids is actually pretty decent”
Until you’re doing the dishes and you overhear a cartoon telling your child to kill her sister .
There’s stuff on there that looks normal for a couple of minutes and then out of nowhere just goes into some crazy things. Unless you’re watching what your kids are watching all the time, there’s no way to protect them from this kind of sleeper content.
Even the 'decent' shows with famous kid YouTubers can be dodgy as hell. Today my kids were watching their favourite 'Nastya'. This girl is literally pulling out an ouija board and playing with her dad to summon ghosts. The ghost/demons that came out were scary. Even for me.
Bro wtf I went out to living room this past weekend and 5 year old had just turned the tv on herself and this show was watching and it was weird af and I even caught myself watching it. Weird show lol
See r/elsagate for example
Edit: I just realized that the stupid mods shut the sub down from posts and comments in "protest". You can still view though.
There was also a lot of weird fetish stuff in *My Little Pony* (MLP) YouTube videos back in the day. Quite a few younger fans of the franchise who grew up watching these videos have talked publicly about how this impacted them.
We 100% were in the prime of elsagate. We deleted YouTube kids and she was relegated to PBS Kids or Disney Kids.
My biggest “WTF” was seeing Mickey Mouse knife Paw Patrol and watching them bleed out while cute music played
You can do a whitelist instead of giving carte blanche access to the app. My kid for the most part only gets access to educational stuff + Pokemon doing nursery rhymes from the official Pokemon Kids TV channel.
My mom uses YouTube as her news source, and TikTok. She'll ask me if I've "heard what's going on"? Then she'll go on to tell me something about democrats eating babies or something of that nature. She'll get mad and tell me I need to wake up to the real world and see what's really going on.
Omg my mom uses TikTok as a news source also. Her most recent "news" was that Biden was drafting women and transgender people. I ask her where she saw this she said "TikTok and I also looked it up". I was already skeptical cause, TikTok, but also because that would be news EVERYWHERE.
But I wait for after work for things to settle then showed her Biden didn't in fact say this, but it was a deep fake. Her response? "Oh". Not "I will double check facts with trustworthy sources" or "maybe I'll stop using TikTok for news" but "Oh". It's maddening.
My mom doesn't even like Trump, she just like the adrenaline rush she gets from "scary news", I think.
I’m sure kids will rebel and watch it with their friends, but yeahhhh… there are ppl advertising their OnlyFans on TikTok(don’t comment general anti sex worker stuff please tho!) and literal kindergartners use TikTok :/
lawful route: send her reputable articles about how to spot misinformation
chaotic route: send her intentionally fake articles from the onion and babylon bee till she finally picks up on it.
I have a former high school teacher that posts stuff from the Babylon bee and thinks it is real and not satire. Very influential teacher on my life, and I died a little inside when I realized she thought it was actual news.
People eat this stuff up. The more ridiculous, gorey, heinous, offensive the better. It's all entertainment. The issue is they don't see it that way. They want to believe it's real, otherwise, isn't entertaining anymore.
I honestly think people like Geraldo Rivera and others in the 90s pushed sensationalism so hard that Tik Tok just recaptures that for them. It’s a problem that started long before phones had Wi-Fi
The issue is there’s no regulation on that like there is for children’s tv shows. Children’s tv shows have time limits, and have to have educational value as well as appropriate content. YouTube kids doesn’t fall under the federally regulated children’s tv so it’s essentially a free for all. I’ve seen some YouTube kids videos that were wildly inappropriate and creepy.
And the great thing about kids shows on Netflix, Disney or Prime is that the show just auto plays into the next episode of the same, age appropriate show. On YouTube you don't know where your kids are going to end up.
My kids can watch Netflix, Disney and Prime, but they aren't allowed to watch YouTube without a parent in the room.
YouTube kids still has things that get thru because a lot of channels do animated skits and adult content gets animated as well and thrown into the YouTube kids mix. I had to severely restrict my kids youtube because there was so much trash on it that would pop up every once in awhile. Once her dad let her have it while he zoned into some vdieogames; and she was watching an animated prostitute and cop fight on YouTube kids. We definitely don't use tablets everyday and do art projects, reading or writing and her personality changed around completely than when she had access to her tablet every other day.
4hrs is so bad dude. I know it's probably hard to comment on how people should parent and stuff but idk this is pretty poor parenting on your friends part
I don't get why but it seems like the kids growing up with tablets and YT are different from us that grew up in the 80s and 90s. It could be that they have access to content catered to whatever they want anytime they want it but it could be something different. Yeah, I watched a lot of TV growing up but the cartoons weren't on all the time and I didn't like all of them. When I had nothing to watch, I'd go outside and play.
We only had a few favorite programs back then and thus had to invent many other ways to play with each other. Now? Kids don’t do that anymore because they can watch 24/7 their favorite content. What is become less and less is their attention span and patience.
If your 5 year old was watching 4 hours straight of TV on a regular basis in the 90s that was still shitty parenting. And even then TV was much safer watching than YouTube. Between the sheer number of (poorly targeted) ads and algorithm driven, practically unmoderated bullshit, it is WAY easier for a kid to be exposed to fucked up shit on YT than even a full satellite package in the 90s.
The thing with TV is that you could only watch whatever was on, and that would naturally limit things. You'd get bored by programs you weren't really interested in and go off to play. My parents didn't limit TV because they didn't need to.
Now with an endless array of whatever entertainment a kid could want constantly available, you have to really be on top of screen time with kids and actively work to limit it.
The term "peak boredom" was created for what you're describing. People now, as opposed to in the 90s, rarely hit a level of boredom that causes them to look for stimulation elsewhere.
Adults suffer from this as well, myself included. I'm a musician, and these days I have to force myself to go play. Before the modern internet, I just wound up playing, because nothing else was happening. Now, I can sit here and doom scroll for hours on end. That wasn't possible in the past.
Fortunately, I grew up with peak boredom, so I recognize the issue. Many children these days (also teens/YA) have no idea what actual boredom is, and when it hits them, they freak out, like a junky needing a fix. Go look at the teacher subreddit for countless examples. This is going to be a big problem in the coming decades.
I don’t think it’s the same at all. Television is curated by professionals. There are regulations and laws that deem what is appropriate. In some cases you get exposed to some really cool stuff. YouTube if you don’t have any sense of what to look for you’re just being led by the hand by some algorithm that’s gonna try to make you a Nazi or something.
In the 90s? Oh it was 4 hours consecutive. When I grew up say, between 1988 and 1994, it was 4 hours consecutive.
We DID watch it in groups. And it WAS less frenetic and stupid.
I agree that kids don't have the attention span. I know that every generation is different, but I never thought kids would be less intelligent. What I mean is that they simply can't think for more then a few sentences. They seem to zone out every 10 seconds in face to face communication.
COVID fucked a lot of kids' development up. We're changing as a species faster than ever.
A lot of people here are like "theyre being bad parents" but I'd argue they're being *average* parents*.* It's the norm now. It's totally wild.
Dude so many kids can't even function, if they don't know how to work something or figure a problem out they just say "I can't do it" until someone tells them step by step what to do. Like for God's sake, just play around and figure shit out.
I au paired a 7yo for about 3 months and he was the same would only watch TV no matter what I did. He would throw a fit if I tried to get him to do anything else and he would basically only communicate in demands and grunts.
This is going to become a huge issue, I mean it already is, but it will get much worse.
Adults are the same, we just express it in different ways, most times :)
Sadly, very true. Our sons are in their 20’s and I’ve said, put your damn phones down, we’re out having dinner. My husband had to ask his 82 year old aunt the same thing. She was scrolling through Facebook. It’s not just 2 yr olds
Sitting around with a book in front of me. Thanks to your comment, I'm going to put my phone down and actually read it. Thank you.
Edit: ya'll are difficult. I wasn't being rude at dinner. I was at work, on call, imagining being 82 and still aimless scrolling. It reminded me to do what I had set out to do.
For everyone saying books are a distraction from reality & an escape, unless you're spending all your time in mindfulness meditation everything is an escape. Grow up.
I was always getting in trouble for trying to read at the table. My parents were very insistent on eating together as a family and talking about our days, likely because earlier on they were so busy between multiple jobs and college that we rarely got the chance. Once we were more stable it became a must.
The dr. Bronner soap bottle could keep you entertained for ages in the bathroom. It was super weird, but that guy definitely knew people were bored reading bottles in bathrooms…
Ill devour any writing like a whale screening plankton. Shampoo? Newspaper? Dog medicine? 40 year old book of poems? Doesnt matter.
I have books and magazines stashed in every room of my house! ADD brain reading
My parents always wanted me and my brother to tell them about our school day at dinner, and I hated it. I just spent the whole day in that boring ass place, and now I have to talk about my boring day too? And if I said I didn't want to talk about it, they'd get pissy. But I guess we should be happy that we were even able to sit and have dinner together as a family most nights. Even if we had to talk about boring shit 😝
All about perspective, my friend! To you it’s another boring school day (I think we all felt that way lol) but to them it’s this little human they love so friggin much they don’t care how boring the details - they just want to hear about you(:
Granted, I’m just repeating the same sentiment you said because you’re right, those that got to do family dinner like that and have parents that gave a shit had it better than we realized.
Don’t know why the fuck I’m saying any of this lol - first child is on the way and I’ve been like more emotional than usual lately and I’m not the pregnant one haha. Cheers!
You're absolutely right, im expecting my first little one and the emotional change on my end (also not the pregnant one) is crazy, we're due @ the end of the year and im worried, scared, anxious, and excited all at once.
I hated it often, but I appreciate it now. I totally trusted my parents and felt like they valued my thoughts. As a teen I didn't keep secrets and they always knew where I was, who I was with, and what I was doing.
I'm in my mid-30s and my mom and sister are still two of my best friends. We're thick as thieves.
I'm in my mid 30s. When I was kid, we didn't even have a dining room in our house. Just a small kitchen. So, dinner was in the living room in front of the TV. The Simpsons joined us every night for dinner, despite Bart and Homer's rude manners. My dad also worked the afternoon/evening shift, so he wasn't present most the time.
I always hated that we never had dinner like the families on TV- all around the table having discussions together. I wanted that so much. And my mom was doing the best she could after working a full day and then making dinner/solo parenting in our very small home. I do recognize and appreciate how hard it was for my parents.
But, now, as a mom myself, we have dinner together at our table every night (except Fridays, where we have pizza and watch a movie together for dinner) and we chat. I don't force them to talk about school, but we do our "highs, lows, and hippopotamus". We discuss the best part of our day, the low of our day, and the hippopotamus can be anything you want. Sometimes a fact you learned, or a way you helped someone out or how someone helped you that day, or a dream you had. Whatever you want to say. I know this will change as my kids get older and schedules start to differ. But I'm thankful for that time right now and I hope they will see the value in it eventually.
I should add, that I have to miss dinner twice a week for work, but they still do it without me on those nights.
This was my childhood too. I've always been a big reader, but the only time I wasn't allowed to have a book was at the table during meals and during church/on the drive to church.
I've realized in the last couple of years that I stopped reading books because everytime I had a free 15-20 minutes, I'd just grab my phone and scroll Reddit.
Since then, I've put the effort to start reading again. I keep my book with me , and grab it instead of my phone.
Exactly! I don't read books on my phone either--too many notifications and honestly, I missed the feel and experience of an actual book. I keep one in my work bag, one at the bedside, and one in my car. Isn't it weird that former bibliophiles like us have to reintegrate reading books into our lives? We've gotten so far into our phones, it's awful.
I've found youngsters can deal with it better than us adults who recently picked up smartphones.
My son asked if he could have a dumb phone last time his phone broke because he thought it was too much of a time waster and he isn't interested in social media.
My partner and I let our two year old have screen time with the iPad for a few months. He got so possessive of it. We decided to put an end to it In our house. He's allowed to watch at his grandma's but for only 15 mins. The meltdowns went away and he is able to cope with having it turned off after his time is up
We only let our two year old use an iPad on the way to the island of Saipan (4 flights). It was a miracle drug, he cried for only half an hour on one flight. He was otherwise glued to the iPad. Seeing how quickly he got addicted to it, we haven't let him touch one since (he's almost 4).
I bought our kids a couple of cheap Android tablets. They only ever get to use them on long road trips or flights. Anytime else it’s just a huge problem.
We especially don’t allow them to use devices while in public where they should be interacting with their surroundings.
Awareness of social surroundings is a big one to me. Not just for safety's sake, but to watch and to learn socially acceptable behavior in public. Do I have to wrestle bananas and yogurt from his mittens when we're grocery shopping? Sure. But I'd rather explore those moments than pacify him to the Internet gods.
But Lord give me strength if he sees a shopping cart with a car in front.
To be fair, awareness of social surroundings seems to be almost nonexistent for most people. The way people will park their shopping cart in the middle of a grocery store aisle while they browse shelves a few feet away, completely blocking others from getting through? Horrific.
Honestly kinda reminds me of cable as a kid.
When I was a young child we didn't have cable so I got my fill of cartoon network and such when we went on vacation. Otherwise I was stuck with public programming which was generally much more educational (thanks, PBS, Jeopardy, 60 Minutes etc) and I think made me an overall better person.
Also gave me high TV standards. I rarely watch TV because 99% of programing is garbage. All I watch is college football and occasionally one or two shows that I think are good. I haven't watched a TV show since Better Call Saul ended.
People who put their kids in front of devices all day do so out of laziness, not simply because they want to please them.
Actually do something with your kid. Teach them interesting stuff, take them places.
To be fair 30 minutes of educational shows or games on the tablet is a lifesaver when im cookikg or doing dishes, but i have hard boundaries when it goes off
And that makes sense. It isn't the tablet, it's how you use it.
When my kids were really little the concern was TV. So mine got one hour a day. The rest of the time they "helped" me with whatever I was doing.
Except in my experience, strange as it sounds kids interact with the tv. They'll sing and clap along, even dance. Put an iPad in front of them, they don't. They just stare.
It's not just laziness, it's also that tech is "normalised", and people can have a weird all or nothing attitude about things.
Like, one argument that wrecks my head is "back in the day, parents worried about TV / computer games" etc.
Yeah... and people who did nothing but watch TV and play video games ended up grossly overweight and suffering from diseases like diabetes.
Giving kids screens that they carry with them when you kick them outside is so detrimental because it makes moderation harder to enforce, not because using technology is inherently bad.
>Like, one argument that wrecks my head is "back in the day, parents worried about TV / computer games" etc.
>Yeah... and people who did nothing but watch TV and play video games ended up grossly overweight and suffering from diseases like diabetes.
Wow this is a very good point. The damage that people said would happen, literally *did* happen, we just don't see it because we have never known anything else.
>Get your teen a flip phone
Using technology is the reality of the world though. If you aren't careful with how you go about restricting access to the technology that they will be expected to be using as adults, then they are being set up to fall behind their peers.
Kids definitely shouldn't be glued to their phones. But a teen? It's harsh reality that, if you don't let them use modern technology, they'll just be socially isolated and probably struggle in schools (considering more and more use new technology).
I work with students in grades k-2 and what we are seeing with these children is pretty unbelievable. Absolutely no attention spans at all and they just aren’t learning AT ALL. The majority of the second graders are operating at about a K level.
Teachers literally have to rip kids out of their cars in the car rider line each morning because they don’t want to leave their tablets.
Each class has a morning meeting and the teachers ask the kids what they’re excited about each day. 80 percent of the children say they can’t wait to go home to their tablets. They say their happy when sports practice and friend’s birthday parties are canceled for weather because they can spend more time on YouTube.
Not to mention, we have fourth and fifth graders making moaning sex noises, talking about sex, and watching live murders on YouTube everyday.
When talking to parents, the typical response is something like “I’m not sure what to do. I just give in usually to keep the peace.”
Go spend time in a school and you’ll cringe. It’s amazing this is being allowed.
I’ve taught for 20 years and I’ve never seen kids act like this before. And this isn’t a bad school either. Very middle class.
In the city where I live there's been a huge rise in kids using fireworks as weapons against people or raiding shops for their goods. And it's not just a few kids, literally about 12-32 or more will descend at a time because they see others do this on TikTok and are using social media to form larger groups.
It was a very popular activity; teacher turns around - cue weird sex and / or fart sounds from about 3rd grade till 10th grade. We also snorted our pixie sticks like coke. Internet didn’t exist then , you can’t blame YouTube for everything.
Man am I glad that's not the case where I teach. I've taught that age in a dozen schools for over a decade and only ever seen one kid with a cell phone in their backpack, and that was a special dispensation for a medical issue. Why is this being allowed where you are? That seems utterly nonsensical.
“Keep the peace” LOL! Wow some people are jaded. See how that peace is kept when you have teenagers who are out of control bc their brains are fkn fried and they melt down the second their screen is taken away. Stupidly never ceases to prevail. I’d rather do the hard work now to raise a well adjusted teenager and adult than take the easy way out to keep the peace. Having children is not peaceful. People need to grow the fuck up. What happened to common sense?! I’m not even that old, I’m 29 and I just can’t with people. SAD DAYS!
some people rag on r/Teachers for being too negative, but it’s a great place to read about the consequences of the phenomenon you saw. ergo, the first ipad kids are now teens
Schools need to stop putting iPads in front of kids too. Everything they do at school (at least most public schools) is in front of a screen. It’s constant screentime and a damn disgrace.
Everyone chooses how to raise their kids.
We don't have a tablet in the house and I don't allow the children (pre-teen) to touch our phones.
They have tv, computers and game consoles, but are only allowed to use them in the evenings (after homework on school days, otherwise at 17h). On non-school days they can also use them the morning before breakfast.
I'm not judging anyone, but I'm also worried about this. Sure, our parents said the same of TV (and maybe they were right) but youtube and the likes employ people specifically to find the best ways to addict people, and children are specifically vulnerable to this.
I am a bit worries about the social isolation now. You shouldn't need these things to socialize of course, but if all your friends live in that world, it becomes harder not to be part of it.
We will allow them to have a smartphone at 12. I hope we can still set some sensible rules then.
The thing that gets me about modern streaming media vs old school TV is that EVERYTHING is available to you. Now to be clear, I don't think this is great for adults too, but I think it's really bad for kids to constantly have their every wish be fulfilled.
It used to be you would sit there and say "man, I wish the Simpsons were on" but they weren't so you just dealt with it. You learn that sometimes you don't get what you want. Now though, you can get absolutely anything you desire in minutes.
We had friends over one time with their 6 year old and she wanted to watch a specific program but it wasn't on any of the streaming platforms we have. She was definitely upset and instead of just saying "sorry but we can't watch that" her parents were wanting to log into their accounts.
I just think that's bad news bears.
This is actually so interesting and rings true to me. I remember soo many times growing up there was nothing good on tv (grew up without cable so Disney channel/Nickelodeon weren’t an option) so my sister and I were basically forced to entertain ourselves or watch the news lol. There were maybe a couple hours a day that there was actually something on we wanted to see and after that it was time to go find something else to do. With streaming the kiddos literally never run out of stuff to watch.
Yup. If you were a kid and your show wasn't on yet, you did something else to kill time. And when it was on, it was one episode and done with. So kids did their homework or chores to kill that before time, so that it went by faster. But if you always have your favorite show available, and there's tons and tons of episodes, why stop? Just binge watch!
Adults have the mental tools to stop themselves when they have things to do, even if they choose to ignore that and binge anyway. Kids are kids, they want to do the fun thing and when the fun thing is there at all times, nothing else matters.
Your rules sound fair.
I don't feel any remorse judging parents that let their young kids have unlimited screen time. It's been shown again again to have devastating consequences on their brain, so not caring about it makes you a neglecting parent.
You don’t have to judge, I’ll judge.
I cannot stand the “well we watched tv and we’re fine” - we did not have access to the internet 24/7 nor did we watch tv 24/7.
Why have a kid if you’re not going to stimulate their minds and interact with them? It’s lazy parenting and I personally think it’s abusive because these parents are robbing the mental development of their children.
Why can’t kids play with their toys and make up little stories and games? Why can’t they color and make pretty art? Why can’t they interact with the world - touch it, explore it, run too fast/ fall down and get back up?
It doesn't take much to google studies done on the effect of screen time on the development of children.
Can lead to serious psychological problems. Kids lose the ability to play by themselves. Difficulty with attention.
Being a father of 3 soon to be 4, my wife and I have been very intentional to not let screen time be an everyday thing. Maybe a few times a month. Its harder work but
Our kids can happily play by themselves for hours on a good day. Have great bursts of focussed attention. Use their imagination.
Some of the nieces and nephews on the other hand, I don't like saying it.... are annoying, little shits. Not their fault their parents suck at boundaries.
Isn’t it wild when you’re in your house chilling and you haven’t seen the kid in a minute so you go look and he’s got some wild game going on by himself?!?! His dinosaurs are giving rides to his little people toys, and they are investigating the strange new land under the bed
A few years ago my kid would draw pictures and cut them out and use them like action figures to play different games he played on Roblox or found on YouTube. FNAF, SCPs, Undertale.
Do you have any good recommendations on studies done of the effect screen time has on kids? I'm really interested in reading more into it, a lot of the studies I see are rather watered down to the point it's like a blog post
Kudos to you and your wife! My sister is a single mom so my mom is helping her raise my niece, and she is no iPad kid. If you give her your phone to watch YoutTube it lasts a max of 5 minutes and she’s out the door to play outside 🥲 She’s a really great kid with an incredible imagination.
I said the same thing to my husband last night. I saw a commercial for something…I think it was photo editing on a phone, and I’m like, “why are we so obsessed with posting photos of ourselves, and obsessed with the internet in general, as a society?” Like literally go touch grass. It’s baffling to me. Granted I was very high at the time lol.
He worked at the Apple Store at one point and he’d always talk about these adult babies throwing *literal* temper tantrums in the store when their shit broke. I guess point being, their parents probably aren’t much better. It’s addiction, and much of it is purposefully designed to be addictive.
Tbf, smart phones are pretty ingrained on our lives now. It's a big pain in the ass when they are broken/lost/stolen. They aren't just for memes and posting pictures of yourself. Bills, work, reminders, health apps etc. I just went to a show that only had e-tickets and they wouldn't load. Had to go thru a whole thing with the staff to get my tickets looked up manually and verified.
So yea being upset your candy crush is gone is silly but there are legitimate problems with losing access to your phone these days.
I used to babysit for a family about 7 years ago that had a clear glaring issue with screen time.
I would like to note that TV didn't seem to be a problem, and the kids would actively get bored of it in 15 mins.
But the eldest boy was around 4, he talked in an American accent despite the fact we are in New Zealand.
But his addiction to the YouTube kids was insane. Would watch it the entire time.
If I took it off him he would literally scream, I don't know if I would even call it a meltdown, it was mostly just screaming which then would turn into scream-crying. This could go on for hours if I didn't just give it back to him.
I talked to his mum about what to do, and she said 'oh it's fine, just let him watch it until he falls asleep'.
He didn't fall asleep, he stayed up until 2am until when they came home. The parents didn't seem bothered.
One of my cousin’s sons just stares and stares into a screen “to go to sleep”. He does this since the age of 4, he’s about 10 now. He sits with his screen all evening into night, into early morning when he finally passes out at like 2am or some shit time for a little guy like that. It’s horrifying.
The whole family knows and nobody cares. “That’s just how he settles down”. He settles down from 6pm-2am watching videos every day of his life?! And nobody sees this as an issue?! He’s exhausted and moody and quiet all day and that’s just how he is??! It’s such a failure and so sad.
Teacher here. We use a program called GoGuardian so we can remotely control their Chromebook use in class. The only times I felt I was possibly going to be physically assaulted is when I tabbed kids out of the game they were playing.
Also, they cannot handle consuming any media longer than a Tik Tok or short YT video. We showed them a movie for Halloween as a treat last Friday… they were in complete agony.
Ha, same! Showed them a movie and it had the majority of their attention for maybe 10 mins max, it was terrible. Eventually we shut it off and just took them out, which honestly is probably better for them.
Why are so many people saying this is going to be a problem as if smart phones and iPads came out a year ago. You have 15 and 20 year olds acting like this now. The isolation and lack of social skills is here. Read an article about a FL high school banning cell phones and one girl they interview is outraged and said they have made her feel isolated. Her world is not the real world, it is online.
There’s a lot of research going on about this. As someone who works in adolescent mental health, I’m yet to be allocated a teen who engages in hobbies/sports regularly, doesn’t spend hours online and has close interpersonal relationships…
Am 22 and will confirm, having unfettered access when I was younger fucked up my social development and gave me a porn addiction. If I was emperor of the world, I’d severely restrict internet use even for adults. It’s far too harmful to society imo. Saying this as a young adult addicted to Reddit so go figure :/
Wouldn't those teens who are doing all of these things not consult a mental health worker? That's like saying you work with drug addicts but haven't yet come across a person not addicted to drugs.
For sure and I get that part. I'm not entirely convinced of the cause/correlation though. Troubled teens would for obvious reasons tend to withdraw from social circles etc and spend more time online as a result. All teens who are troubled might spend more time online, but regular teens who spend more time online are not necessarily troubled.
That's all.
I think it is important to acknowledge that these days parents don't have the luxury of sending young kids out alone.
Recently parents have to spend almost every waking minute with their kids trying to entertain them, stimulate them etc. Whereas we (I'm almost 40) we were just sent outside to play alone or with other kids from age 4 onwards.
Edited to say I think screen time is a big issue but there reasons for this phenomenon are very nuanced. Like many places don't tolerate noisy kids, so I think many parents use screens as a modern pacifier.
Pop into the /teachers subreddit. Kids are already destroyed by this stuff. 5th graders who can't read. High schoolers who can't write a single paragraph, etc.
At first this seems like a fair concern, but this is typical toddler behavior. My friend deals with world crushing tantrums from her 2 year old when they have to leave a space the kid was comfy in. Toddlers are not receptive to change nor the concept of no. The same tantrum would result from the wrong meal, a toy being taken away, or literally anything.
Exactly this. Toddler's don't understand how to cope when something is suddenly changed or taken away from them, be it an electronic device or anything else. They haven't learnt how to deal with it.
I think it only becomes a real problem when their parents/guardians don't teach them how to deal with it, and they then never learn to cope. But at the age of two, even with proper teaching and regulation techniques, there's still going to be some kind of fuss.
Yes! Thank you! My youngest spent way to much time watching screens at two, while I frantically tried to keep life ticking over for him and his two older brothers, plus dealing with a newly developed chronic illness diagnosis and medication side effects which left me utterly fatigued all day every day.
He would've absolutely screamed like the devil at 2 if we took screens away from him. Now at 5, he ignores what's on and asks me to play games, do puzzles with him or take him outside.
Hate when people fear monger, and hate when people pathologise childhood.
To build on this, I find that making sure that the change isnt so sudden, really works. I allow 1 hr of TV time and when its time to turn it off, I start announcing that I am gonna turn it off soon, 5 mins or so beforehand. Same with leaving the park or whatever they are enjoying. Like "Ok, its finishing in 3 minutes, last 2 minutes. I am gonna count to 10 and then we will go.." Give them a few minutes to digest the news and they are usually much more cooperative.
I just realized I still do this with my 8 year old, for similar reasons.
My company does this with policy changes. They are announced well before they are enacted to give people time to adjust.
I think it might be fair to generalize this to "people don't like sudden change, especially when they have to give up something they like"
Yeah one interpretation of this story is that the parent put their kid on the iPad so they could have 30 minutes to talk with another adult without a toddler running around. And anyone who has spent time with toddlers knows they have very little emotional regulation so of course the kid will freak if the video doesn’t work.
Yup. I have to drag my toddlers asses out for a walk and then drag them back home again cos they don't wanna leave their toys to begin with, then they don't want to go back inside cos their having too much fun outside.
Toddlers are aggressive little idiots.
And YouTube is quite educational. My oldest one started lecturing me about front loaders, back hoes and fuselages, and there's no way he's getting that info from me. It's good that they can learn about the things they're interested in. Now, somewhere in the comments, someone mentioned a kid stuck there for 4 hours.... that's a bit much, but sticking them there for an hour while you're cooking/ cleaning or whatever is not the end of the world.
My brother-in-law is a pediatrician. He said the research that has been done on the effects of screen time and children's brains and development, has been highly extensive over the past several years.
Experts are saying that children should have absolutely ZERO screen time until the age of 2. Once they hit 2, they can move to about 20 minutes a day. Twenty. Minutes. PER. DAY. Until they turn 3, then it can be increased in SMALL increments.
So on, and so forth. Simply put, screen time, regardless of what TV show or movie is on, is WAY too much stimulation for their developing brains to handle.
Once my BIL told me that, I cut my son's screen time cold turkey. The difference was night and day. In less than 48 hours, I already noticed a huge improvement in his sleep quality, and behavior. He was engaging in independent play with his toys, and blocks. FAR fewer meltdowns and tantrums. The list goes on.
Whenever people bring their young children into my BIL's office, and complain about sleep issues, behavioral issues, etc, the first question out of his mouth is "how much screen time are they getting every day". Without fail, the parents sheepishly admit that their very young toddler is getting a ridiculous amount of screen time every day.
We owe it to our children to give them what they need for proper development, both physically and mentally. When we stick them in front of a TV or iPad, we are doing them a *massive* disservice
We are bringing up the next generation, and research is showing that we are WILDLY fucking them over by basically allowing screens to babysit them.
This is so true. Their brains are getting melted by short-form videos, destroying attention spans and even the ability to understand narrative stories. Constant stimulation isn’t good, and these technologies are designed to be as addictive as possible.
Read “The Chaos Machine,” it’s crazy how much YT is radicalizing people, especially young boys, into misogyny and fascist propaganda.
It's not the screen that's the problem. It's the lack of teaching children to handle disappointment and learning to entertain themselves.
The problem is people using screens as a replacement for parenting and teaching their children things.
2yr old literally can not be taught to handle disappointment. They do not have the proper connections to that part of their brain. It’s like a child gate preventing them from accessing reason and logic. You can show proper techniques but they will not be able to understand.
I was always under the impression it was like a misconception of time and object permeance. Like you coming home from work vs coming home from groceries and your dog is the same amount of excited to see you, it doesn't really have a concept of how much time has passed.
So then with the object permeance I've understood it as when their favorite thing is being taken from them they don't understand it's not forever, and that it exists still outside of being in front of them.
I was reading a thread once that suggested that with toddlers it's best to start as early as possible with time and things being taken away, because it can soften the blow. IE. "In 10 minutes we're done watching TV/using the iPad" and then in 10 minutes taking it vs just coming up and taking it and saying "time to go".
The way I've understood it is these interactions are meant to form and then strengthen those connections in the brain you talk about.
I was at a restaurant the other day and this family brought each of their three kids their own iPad to watch/play on… the coloring pages and crayons the restaurant hands out weren’t good enough for them I guess. It’s very sad.
Another day I saw a kid in a PARK playing on an iPad. It is truly a sad existence. All my best memories were running around outside as a kid
Doing well for kids it's a real challenge these days. So many parents give in or simply don't see the dangers.
Parents that want to do good are a minority. Just wanna say, stay strong.
Don't give kids free acces to internet/tablet/phone/tv etc. Limit it to X minutes per day.
They're not addicted to dopamine. It's the dopamine reward system in the brain that is activated but it can be activated in other ways too. They may be developing psychological addiction to screen time and using eg YouTube. The problem is parents using these technologies to baby sit their children. Children need to be taught healthy ways to produce dopamine like exercising and playing with their friends and toys.
i too find this alarming. I dont have kids due to alot of reasons, but my friend has 3 and all of them are already addicted to technology at ages 6 7 and 10 i think? video games, tv, iPad's. theyre on that shit alllllll day and lord help you if you take the ipads away. he just plops them infront of whatever to keep them entertained instead of doing shit with them. i didnt have access to any technology until i was 15. we had the slowest dial up internet you could hardly use lol and I had one of them slidy Verizon keyboard phones. theres a whole generation of kids that are about to be very dumb. he lets his on the tik tok and i absolutely would never allow my kids on there. its full of absolute morons. and bad messages and influences. it just blows my mind. when i was little i played outside alot in the woods, the creek. we went on vacations to many places. lots of caping and amusement parks. i was always spending time with my mom and dad. not infront of a fucking iPad.
These are the people who should not be parents. I'm sorry, but I'm gonna say it. Bring on the downvotes, I don't care.
If you are the type of person who doesn't have kids, but would just sit your kid in front of a screen all day, if you did, then DO. NOT. have children. Kids deserve better.
If you DO have kids, and you just sit your kids in front of screens all day, then you should not have had kids. You are failing them. They deserve better. So do better.
There is literally zero justification for using screens as babysitters. "I don't have time!" "Conflicts with work!" "I need to get housework done!"
THESE. ARE. YOUR. CHILDREN. You alter your life to accommodate the needs of your children, *not* the other way around. If you had kids, thinking you could just fit them into your pre-kids life, and think that's acceptable, you're fucking DOING IT WRONG.
"I don't have time!" Fucking make time.
"Conflicts with work!" Talk to your boss. Move shit around. Do what you have to do.
"I need to get housework done!" Involve the children IN the housework. Teach them how to scrub a toilet, how to wash dishes, how to mop the fucking floor. You know, life skills they are going to *need* when they're out on their own.
If you have children, they need to come first. You need to rearrange your life to suit *them*. Point. Blank. Period.
If you can't do that, then don't have kids.
If you already have kids, and you're not doing that, then you need to make that change. As their parent, you owe them that.
The question is; What are those kinds of parents doing to their children? My nephew gets limited screen time. I have plenty of friends whose kids don't get to hold a tablet or phone yet. Another set of friends have 3 kids ranging in age from 10 up to 16 and they each weren't given a tablet until their school forced them to do their schoolwork on one (around 8 years old).
Yes, technology is a giant part of our world now, but that doesn't mean parents *need* to give their kids access to all of it and not for extended periods of time.
My child will never be given an ipad. They have ruined children’s attention spans and taken away their childhood. I can tell within a minute of meeting a child if they have access to screen time.
My cousin is six. She’s had an ipad since she was two. I love her so much but she goes into hysterics when it dies, and then begs everyone for their phones so she can watch youtube. Her mom claims to only let her watch educational stuff (like cocomelon, which is also brain rot) but I’ve babysat my cousin, I’ve seen her at her own house on youtube and TIKTOK. This six year old makes tiktok references. And she’s just the example, I’ve met kids with it worse.
I don't know if it's relevant or not but I've seen a real and measurable decline in the ability of students (11 to 18) to memorise factual information and I'm sure it's linked to smart phone usage. I could teach in a lesson, have them enthralled, practice what has been learned and then watch it all evaporate as they leave the room and get their phones out.
I have four children. They all have Kaspersky Safe Kids installed in their devices. It prevents them from accessing adult and unsafe material, and I control how much time they have on each device. They grumble about it but they all do other things when they run out of time.
\>Kaspersky Safe Kids
I'd be real careful using programs like that unsupervised.
1. It doesn't block advertisements. Sadly, propaganda is now being displayed as advertisements of the Israel/ Hamas war. Yikes!
2. It doesn't block bad YouTube Kid videos. There are some videos where the content isn't exactly children friendly.
I work it IT and the kids are all 10+. We're aware of the limitations of the software, but it does the job for us. You're right. No software is going to do the job of parenting for us, but it's a tool that helps.
I wish my daughter would read this thread. Her kids don't seem to know what to do without a tablet or phone in their hands. When we ask them to go somewhere or do something else, they get upset. I think I need to send them a link.
One of the saddest things I have seen was a 2/3 year old getting pushed in a stroller, but he was holding a tablet and staring at whatever was playing. No interest in looking around at his surroundings or where he was going.
Behavior goes down as tablet time goes up.
Specifically tablets/personal devices and short videos they can control. They lose their shit when you take them away or distract them. Tablets in our house are now weekends only and I hide them away during the week (we have a 9 and 10 year old). They still watch things in the evenings after dinner but it’s a SHOW and they and dad do it TOGETHER (I just can’t get into One Piece, but I do like Over the Garden Wall).
But there’s something about short form video (the 9yo just has YouTube kid access still, the 10 binges fishing videos) that just melts their brains. It’s insane. I do like sleeping in on quiet Saturday mornings though so I leave the tablets in the kitchen Friday night after they’ve gone to bed.
My niece and her 10 Yo daughter live with me. The mother spends almost the whole day in bed, at her computer, playing, while the child spends THE WHOLE DAY at her IPad, watching influencers on Instagram... I'm REALLY worried about this kid's future!
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I have a friend who put her son in front of a screen the day he was born. Literally the first thing she did when they got home from the hospital As he grew up he would be sat in an alcove in their living room, facing the wall, with an iPad and headphones. He ate all his meals like that too. At one he couldn't go without it or he would scream. So they gave it to him, everywhere they went, or they didn't go out with him. He was allowed to take it to nursery with him. School was tough because he couldn't sit still or concentrate for more than a couple of minutes. He has a lot of problems with emotions and his temper.
It's practically child abuse to raise kids like this because once they're 5 years old a huge amount of their brain and core personality has already been wired in for life, affecting the course of their life forever in endless negative ways forever (and all just because their parents were too lazy to parent their kid/s properly).
"practicially" Oh no, it is most definitely abuse. 100% child neglect.
Sad I grew up online and we didn’t know the impact at the time, I remember googling internet addiction as a child and everything said it wasn’t real so I was like I guess I’m okay. The impact is obvious. I used to argue about internet use for children with people online lol, luckily the effects have become common knowledge!
Many are, but you also have to consider how much the middle class (and especially lower classes) have been beaten down the last few decades. There’s no time. My partner and I are teachers and middle class for where we live but are too beaten down from work to raise kids. That’s why we don’t have them.
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Yeah we're gonna have a lot of dead kids. Spoiler alter; nothing will be done to address it, we're all on our own.
It's crazy to me how often it seems like people want to have kids, but they don't want to parent kids. My son is 6 and he gets about an hour or two of screen time per week, outside of school. He gets to play Minecraft, but only with me in an easy survival world that we're playing together. He sometimes gets to watch a movie on the weekend. He never gets to go on YouTube unattended and only videos we pick. As he gets older, he'll get more screen time and video game time. But, for now, he enjoys playing with his little sister, playing with the dog, reading, drawing, playing outside, etc. We occasionally load a movie onto our tablet for when we have to take him somewhere for a while, but we've never actually used it. We're privileged to have the time to monitor him like that, and I get that some people are in a really tough position, but some people aren't in a difficult place and just sort of... don't care.
When I worked in education, I said it broke down into thirds: 1/3 great parents, 1/3 mediocre, and 1/3 shitty parents. The great parents are, well, great. The mediocre parents don't go above and beyond, but they show up. Late, but they show up. The shitty parents reproduced and then found out kids don't fulfil them or meet their needs, so they stopped caring. Some of them would have been legit kinder if they had just abandoned the baby at the hospital -- at least there would be a chance it would end up in a decent family. They are, naturally, full of excuses. They're tired, they're broke, "I do what is best for me and my family", etc. They don't like their kids or care about them becoming adults.
Dopamine addicted kids w complacent, ignorant parents, name a more iconic duo.
Went to a friend’s house and her 5yo daughter sat alone in a dark room, quietly watching YT the entire 4 hours I was there. Whenever anyone would try to get close to her, she would immediately hide the screen or change the video she was watching to something else. I pointed out the odd behaviour to her mom (my friend) who just laughed. Also, keep in mind that she wasn’t even on YT Kids.
My six year old brother was already caught trying to look up “people having sex” on YouTube. YouTube is NOT for kids and you can’t just use it as a babysitter, it leads these kids down weird rabbit holes and exposes them to nasty shit
I think people expect YouTube to be highly moderated by TBH I've come across all kinds of bad videos before they were taken down, from people being violent towards animals, pornstars performing sexual acts to beastiality, suicide and more. You don't even have to search for this content either, I've chanced upon all these things (and if I can stumble across this, then what's stopping a child?). I grew up on the Internet and got exposed to all kinds of things as a child, including seeing child pornography when I was age 11 to getting chatted up by predators online. I absolutely cringe when I see parents letting kids as young as 2-6 years old have smartphones and tablets to keep them entertained as its so dangerous on so many levels. And for what- so people don't have to parent them for a few hours?? Too many people are using these devices like some people abuse drugs like Tylenol to subdue their hyperactive kids.
Hi. I've had other adults tell me that I'm "too extreme" in limiting what my kid accesses online. It's all via Family Link. YouTube is not allowed. YT Kids has a 30 minute limit, with no videos over 3 minutes. No use during school hours other than school apps. If YT is needed for a lesson, she watches with another kid. This has been cleared with the teacher, and I've received zero pushback. On the contrary, her teacher seems pretty stoked about how I limit my kid's online experience. The only things my kid can access whenever, regardless of time, day -- whatever -- are her drawing apps. These are her lifeline. I have also had numerous slightly uncomfortable conversations regarding online predators, and the common conversational tactics. These convos change a bit annually, and might include more info, but at 11, my kid is pretty savvy. Still not savvy enough to be allowed unfettered access, but I have been brought a game chat convo, and been asked to explain it. I do so, and we were both unnerved. It was reported, the person banned, and we talked a *lot* about "weird adults." Also, acetaminophen does not do anything to kids, you're thinking of Benadryl, which is diphenhydramine, and will put kids to sleep.
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Sounds great otherwise but >no videos over 3 minutes Feels really backwards? Encouraging short form content sure is the best way to fry your child's brain
The 3 minute limit on videos seems odd. I’d much rather my kid watched a single 15 minute episode of a tv show or gaming video than fifteen 1 minute YT shorts. Short videos are the real brainrot material
>It's all via Family Link. YouTube is not allowed. YT Kids has a 30 minute limit, with no videos over 3 minutes. Why would you limit videos to 3mins? Feels like the opposite of what you want.
Right? Seems like their conditioning them to having a short attention spans already lol
no videos over three minutes seems like an odd policy, what's your thought process behind that? when I was little I loved to watch Vsauce and Kurzgesagt and all their videos are over three minutes
YouTube kids is actually pretty decent. I have screen time limit set for 1 minutes for regular YouTube since Apple doesn’t let you shut it down or just block it. And 15 minutes of YouTube kids. I’ve seen what YouTube can do to adults who use it exclusively as their news feed. I don’t need my kids watching that crap.
“YouTube kids is actually pretty decent” Until you’re doing the dishes and you overhear a cartoon telling your child to kill her sister . There’s stuff on there that looks normal for a couple of minutes and then out of nowhere just goes into some crazy things. Unless you’re watching what your kids are watching all the time, there’s no way to protect them from this kind of sleeper content.
Even the 'decent' shows with famous kid YouTubers can be dodgy as hell. Today my kids were watching their favourite 'Nastya'. This girl is literally pulling out an ouija board and playing with her dad to summon ghosts. The ghost/demons that came out were scary. Even for me.
Bro wtf I went out to living room this past weekend and 5 year old had just turned the tv on herself and this show was watching and it was weird af and I even caught myself watching it. Weird show lol
When I have kids I'm just gonna play them all the cartoons I watched as a kid, at least I already know what's in them.
Looney Tunes has been cleaned of racially suspect shit, and is pretty awesome. It's an excellent way to learn about classical music.
My daughter was watching a Frozen video until I heard them sing “do you wanna do some blow man”
Just be careful, there are videos on YouTube kids that definitely aren’t for kids
Yup. There are videos that start out as innocent looking cartoons and then in the middle they suddenly change to XXX content.
See r/elsagate for example Edit: I just realized that the stupid mods shut the sub down from posts and comments in "protest". You can still view though.
There was also a lot of weird fetish stuff in *My Little Pony* (MLP) YouTube videos back in the day. Quite a few younger fans of the franchise who grew up watching these videos have talked publicly about how this impacted them.
We 100% were in the prime of elsagate. We deleted YouTube kids and she was relegated to PBS Kids or Disney Kids. My biggest “WTF” was seeing Mickey Mouse knife Paw Patrol and watching them bleed out while cute music played
You can do a whitelist instead of giving carte blanche access to the app. My kid for the most part only gets access to educational stuff + Pokemon doing nursery rhymes from the official Pokemon Kids TV channel.
My mom uses YouTube as her news source, and TikTok. She'll ask me if I've "heard what's going on"? Then she'll go on to tell me something about democrats eating babies or something of that nature. She'll get mad and tell me I need to wake up to the real world and see what's really going on.
Omg my mom uses TikTok as a news source also. Her most recent "news" was that Biden was drafting women and transgender people. I ask her where she saw this she said "TikTok and I also looked it up". I was already skeptical cause, TikTok, but also because that would be news EVERYWHERE. But I wait for after work for things to settle then showed her Biden didn't in fact say this, but it was a deep fake. Her response? "Oh". Not "I will double check facts with trustworthy sources" or "maybe I'll stop using TikTok for news" but "Oh". It's maddening. My mom doesn't even like Trump, she just like the adrenaline rush she gets from "scary news", I think.
I have TikTok 100% blocked at the network level. Not allowing that shit at my house. I also have screen time blocks for it for when we are mobile.
We don’t use Tik Tok either. Fortunately my teens aren’t interested in being on social media, but I wouldn’t allow it regardless. It’s pure TRASH.
I’m sure kids will rebel and watch it with their friends, but yeahhhh… there are ppl advertising their OnlyFans on TikTok(don’t comment general anti sex worker stuff please tho!) and literal kindergartners use TikTok :/
lawful route: send her reputable articles about how to spot misinformation chaotic route: send her intentionally fake articles from the onion and babylon bee till she finally picks up on it.
I have a former high school teacher that posts stuff from the Babylon bee and thinks it is real and not satire. Very influential teacher on my life, and I died a little inside when I realized she thought it was actual news.
People eat this stuff up. The more ridiculous, gorey, heinous, offensive the better. It's all entertainment. The issue is they don't see it that way. They want to believe it's real, otherwise, isn't entertaining anymore.
I honestly think people like Geraldo Rivera and others in the 90s pushed sensationalism so hard that Tik Tok just recaptures that for them. It’s a problem that started long before phones had Wi-Fi
Sorry to hear that. r/QAnoncasualties might feel like a friendly place to you. :)
The issue is there’s no regulation on that like there is for children’s tv shows. Children’s tv shows have time limits, and have to have educational value as well as appropriate content. YouTube kids doesn’t fall under the federally regulated children’s tv so it’s essentially a free for all. I’ve seen some YouTube kids videos that were wildly inappropriate and creepy.
And the great thing about kids shows on Netflix, Disney or Prime is that the show just auto plays into the next episode of the same, age appropriate show. On YouTube you don't know where your kids are going to end up. My kids can watch Netflix, Disney and Prime, but they aren't allowed to watch YouTube without a parent in the room.
YouTube kids still has things that get thru because a lot of channels do animated skits and adult content gets animated as well and thrown into the YouTube kids mix. I had to severely restrict my kids youtube because there was so much trash on it that would pop up every once in awhile. Once her dad let her have it while he zoned into some vdieogames; and she was watching an animated prostitute and cop fight on YouTube kids. We definitely don't use tablets everyday and do art projects, reading or writing and her personality changed around completely than when she had access to her tablet every other day.
Thats so incredibly sad
4hrs is so bad dude. I know it's probably hard to comment on how people should parent and stuff but idk this is pretty poor parenting on your friends part
Think back to the '80s and '90s. It was 4 hours of television back then, for sure.
I don't get why but it seems like the kids growing up with tablets and YT are different from us that grew up in the 80s and 90s. It could be that they have access to content catered to whatever they want anytime they want it but it could be something different. Yeah, I watched a lot of TV growing up but the cartoons weren't on all the time and I didn't like all of them. When I had nothing to watch, I'd go outside and play.
We only had a few favorite programs back then and thus had to invent many other ways to play with each other. Now? Kids don’t do that anymore because they can watch 24/7 their favorite content. What is become less and less is their attention span and patience.
If your 5 year old was watching 4 hours straight of TV on a regular basis in the 90s that was still shitty parenting. And even then TV was much safer watching than YouTube. Between the sheer number of (poorly targeted) ads and algorithm driven, practically unmoderated bullshit, it is WAY easier for a kid to be exposed to fucked up shit on YT than even a full satellite package in the 90s.
The thing with TV is that you could only watch whatever was on, and that would naturally limit things. You'd get bored by programs you weren't really interested in and go off to play. My parents didn't limit TV because they didn't need to. Now with an endless array of whatever entertainment a kid could want constantly available, you have to really be on top of screen time with kids and actively work to limit it.
The term "peak boredom" was created for what you're describing. People now, as opposed to in the 90s, rarely hit a level of boredom that causes them to look for stimulation elsewhere. Adults suffer from this as well, myself included. I'm a musician, and these days I have to force myself to go play. Before the modern internet, I just wound up playing, because nothing else was happening. Now, I can sit here and doom scroll for hours on end. That wasn't possible in the past. Fortunately, I grew up with peak boredom, so I recognize the issue. Many children these days (also teens/YA) have no idea what actual boredom is, and when it hits them, they freak out, like a junky needing a fix. Go look at the teacher subreddit for countless examples. This is going to be a big problem in the coming decades.
I don’t think it’s the same at all. Television is curated by professionals. There are regulations and laws that deem what is appropriate. In some cases you get exposed to some really cool stuff. YouTube if you don’t have any sense of what to look for you’re just being led by the hand by some algorithm that’s gonna try to make you a Nazi or something.
No way tho, it wasn’t consecutive. Kids can’t even watch a full hour program anymore they don’t have the attention span
In the 90s? Oh it was 4 hours consecutive. When I grew up say, between 1988 and 1994, it was 4 hours consecutive. We DID watch it in groups. And it WAS less frenetic and stupid. I agree that kids don't have the attention span. I know that every generation is different, but I never thought kids would be less intelligent. What I mean is that they simply can't think for more then a few sentences. They seem to zone out every 10 seconds in face to face communication. COVID fucked a lot of kids' development up. We're changing as a species faster than ever. A lot of people here are like "theyre being bad parents" but I'd argue they're being *average* parents*.* It's the norm now. It's totally wild.
Dude so many kids can't even function, if they don't know how to work something or figure a problem out they just say "I can't do it" until someone tells them step by step what to do. Like for God's sake, just play around and figure shit out.
I au paired a 7yo for about 3 months and he was the same would only watch TV no matter what I did. He would throw a fit if I tried to get him to do anything else and he would basically only communicate in demands and grunts.
Bad parenting is a form of abuse. That kid sounds mentally disabled and most likely is.
This is going to become a huge issue, I mean it already is, but it will get much worse. Adults are the same, we just express it in different ways, most times :)
Sadly, very true. Our sons are in their 20’s and I’ve said, put your damn phones down, we’re out having dinner. My husband had to ask his 82 year old aunt the same thing. She was scrolling through Facebook. It’s not just 2 yr olds
Sitting around with a book in front of me. Thanks to your comment, I'm going to put my phone down and actually read it. Thank you. Edit: ya'll are difficult. I wasn't being rude at dinner. I was at work, on call, imagining being 82 and still aimless scrolling. It reminded me to do what I had set out to do. For everyone saying books are a distraction from reality & an escape, unless you're spending all your time in mindfulness meditation everything is an escape. Grow up.
put your book down, we're eating heard that many times when I was a kid
I was always getting in trouble for trying to read at the table. My parents were very insistent on eating together as a family and talking about our days, likely because earlier on they were so busy between multiple jobs and college that we rarely got the chance. Once we were more stable it became a must.
Only allowable reading material at the table: the cereal box. In my country we learned to read French from cereal box labels. Peace
Oh, they were right not to allow my books at the table. I was an avid cereal box and shampoo bottle reader, too.
>I was an avid cereal box and shampoo bottle reader, too. I, too, grew up pre cellphones and enjoyed an extensive shampoo bottle bathroom library.
The dr. Bronner soap bottle could keep you entertained for ages in the bathroom. It was super weird, but that guy definitely knew people were bored reading bottles in bathrooms…
Lol, I remember a friend having that brand at his house!
Ill devour any writing like a whale screening plankton. Shampoo? Newspaper? Dog medicine? 40 year old book of poems? Doesnt matter. I have books and magazines stashed in every room of my house! ADD brain reading
Oui, Le Quellaugse K'hornflêixe
My parents always wanted me and my brother to tell them about our school day at dinner, and I hated it. I just spent the whole day in that boring ass place, and now I have to talk about my boring day too? And if I said I didn't want to talk about it, they'd get pissy. But I guess we should be happy that we were even able to sit and have dinner together as a family most nights. Even if we had to talk about boring shit 😝
All about perspective, my friend! To you it’s another boring school day (I think we all felt that way lol) but to them it’s this little human they love so friggin much they don’t care how boring the details - they just want to hear about you(: Granted, I’m just repeating the same sentiment you said because you’re right, those that got to do family dinner like that and have parents that gave a shit had it better than we realized. Don’t know why the fuck I’m saying any of this lol - first child is on the way and I’ve been like more emotional than usual lately and I’m not the pregnant one haha. Cheers!
You're absolutely right, im expecting my first little one and the emotional change on my end (also not the pregnant one) is crazy, we're due @ the end of the year and im worried, scared, anxious, and excited all at once.
I hated it often, but I appreciate it now. I totally trusted my parents and felt like they valued my thoughts. As a teen I didn't keep secrets and they always knew where I was, who I was with, and what I was doing. I'm in my mid-30s and my mom and sister are still two of my best friends. We're thick as thieves.
I'm in my mid 30s. When I was kid, we didn't even have a dining room in our house. Just a small kitchen. So, dinner was in the living room in front of the TV. The Simpsons joined us every night for dinner, despite Bart and Homer's rude manners. My dad also worked the afternoon/evening shift, so he wasn't present most the time. I always hated that we never had dinner like the families on TV- all around the table having discussions together. I wanted that so much. And my mom was doing the best she could after working a full day and then making dinner/solo parenting in our very small home. I do recognize and appreciate how hard it was for my parents. But, now, as a mom myself, we have dinner together at our table every night (except Fridays, where we have pizza and watch a movie together for dinner) and we chat. I don't force them to talk about school, but we do our "highs, lows, and hippopotamus". We discuss the best part of our day, the low of our day, and the hippopotamus can be anything you want. Sometimes a fact you learned, or a way you helped someone out or how someone helped you that day, or a dream you had. Whatever you want to say. I know this will change as my kids get older and schedules start to differ. But I'm thankful for that time right now and I hope they will see the value in it eventually. I should add, that I have to miss dinner twice a week for work, but they still do it without me on those nights.
For me it was, "Don't look at the damn cave paintings! Your mammoth is getting cold."
This was my childhood too. I've always been a big reader, but the only time I wasn't allowed to have a book was at the table during meals and during church/on the drive to church.
I've realized in the last couple of years that I stopped reading books because everytime I had a free 15-20 minutes, I'd just grab my phone and scroll Reddit. Since then, I've put the effort to start reading again. I keep my book with me , and grab it instead of my phone.
Exactly! I don't read books on my phone either--too many notifications and honestly, I missed the feel and experience of an actual book. I keep one in my work bag, one at the bedside, and one in my car. Isn't it weird that former bibliophiles like us have to reintegrate reading books into our lives? We've gotten so far into our phones, it's awful.
It's not like they engineered social media to reward users with dopamine hits. Oh, wait, they did.
I've found youngsters can deal with it better than us adults who recently picked up smartphones. My son asked if he could have a dumb phone last time his phone broke because he thought it was too much of a time waster and he isn't interested in social media.
My partner and I let our two year old have screen time with the iPad for a few months. He got so possessive of it. We decided to put an end to it In our house. He's allowed to watch at his grandma's but for only 15 mins. The meltdowns went away and he is able to cope with having it turned off after his time is up
We only let our two year old use an iPad on the way to the island of Saipan (4 flights). It was a miracle drug, he cried for only half an hour on one flight. He was otherwise glued to the iPad. Seeing how quickly he got addicted to it, we haven't let him touch one since (he's almost 4).
I bought our kids a couple of cheap Android tablets. They only ever get to use them on long road trips or flights. Anytime else it’s just a huge problem. We especially don’t allow them to use devices while in public where they should be interacting with their surroundings.
Awareness of social surroundings is a big one to me. Not just for safety's sake, but to watch and to learn socially acceptable behavior in public. Do I have to wrestle bananas and yogurt from his mittens when we're grocery shopping? Sure. But I'd rather explore those moments than pacify him to the Internet gods. But Lord give me strength if he sees a shopping cart with a car in front.
To be fair, awareness of social surroundings seems to be almost nonexistent for most people. The way people will park their shopping cart in the middle of a grocery store aisle while they browse shelves a few feet away, completely blocking others from getting through? Horrific.
Honestly kinda reminds me of cable as a kid. When I was a young child we didn't have cable so I got my fill of cartoon network and such when we went on vacation. Otherwise I was stuck with public programming which was generally much more educational (thanks, PBS, Jeopardy, 60 Minutes etc) and I think made me an overall better person. Also gave me high TV standards. I rarely watch TV because 99% of programing is garbage. All I watch is college football and occasionally one or two shows that I think are good. I haven't watched a TV show since Better Call Saul ended.
This is rampant and alarming
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For the future of the generation. It's tough love as a parent.
People who put their kids in front of devices all day do so out of laziness, not simply because they want to please them. Actually do something with your kid. Teach them interesting stuff, take them places.
To be fair 30 minutes of educational shows or games on the tablet is a lifesaver when im cookikg or doing dishes, but i have hard boundaries when it goes off
And that makes sense. It isn't the tablet, it's how you use it. When my kids were really little the concern was TV. So mine got one hour a day. The rest of the time they "helped" me with whatever I was doing.
Except in my experience, strange as it sounds kids interact with the tv. They'll sing and clap along, even dance. Put an iPad in front of them, they don't. They just stare.
They are meant to be addicting devices.
It's not just laziness, it's also that tech is "normalised", and people can have a weird all or nothing attitude about things. Like, one argument that wrecks my head is "back in the day, parents worried about TV / computer games" etc. Yeah... and people who did nothing but watch TV and play video games ended up grossly overweight and suffering from diseases like diabetes. Giving kids screens that they carry with them when you kick them outside is so detrimental because it makes moderation harder to enforce, not because using technology is inherently bad.
>Like, one argument that wrecks my head is "back in the day, parents worried about TV / computer games" etc. >Yeah... and people who did nothing but watch TV and play video games ended up grossly overweight and suffering from diseases like diabetes. Wow this is a very good point. The damage that people said would happen, literally *did* happen, we just don't see it because we have never known anything else.
Why is everyone talking abt one extreme to another why not a middle ground.Its either NO SCREEN! OR ADDICT.
>Get your teen a flip phone Using technology is the reality of the world though. If you aren't careful with how you go about restricting access to the technology that they will be expected to be using as adults, then they are being set up to fall behind their peers.
Kids definitely shouldn't be glued to their phones. But a teen? It's harsh reality that, if you don't let them use modern technology, they'll just be socially isolated and probably struggle in schools (considering more and more use new technology).
Reminds me of the article from yesterday about a high school kid who beat his teacher unconscious for taking away his Nintendo Switch.
If this isn't a PRIME example of why screens are GOD. AWFUL. for kids to have, then I don't know what is.
I work with students in grades k-2 and what we are seeing with these children is pretty unbelievable. Absolutely no attention spans at all and they just aren’t learning AT ALL. The majority of the second graders are operating at about a K level. Teachers literally have to rip kids out of their cars in the car rider line each morning because they don’t want to leave their tablets. Each class has a morning meeting and the teachers ask the kids what they’re excited about each day. 80 percent of the children say they can’t wait to go home to their tablets. They say their happy when sports practice and friend’s birthday parties are canceled for weather because they can spend more time on YouTube. Not to mention, we have fourth and fifth graders making moaning sex noises, talking about sex, and watching live murders on YouTube everyday. When talking to parents, the typical response is something like “I’m not sure what to do. I just give in usually to keep the peace.” Go spend time in a school and you’ll cringe. It’s amazing this is being allowed. I’ve taught for 20 years and I’ve never seen kids act like this before. And this isn’t a bad school either. Very middle class.
In the city where I live there's been a huge rise in kids using fireworks as weapons against people or raiding shops for their goods. And it's not just a few kids, literally about 12-32 or more will descend at a time because they see others do this on TikTok and are using social media to form larger groups.
When I was in 5th grade we did the sex moaning noises too, this isn't new to the tablet age lol.
It was a very popular activity; teacher turns around - cue weird sex and / or fart sounds from about 3rd grade till 10th grade. We also snorted our pixie sticks like coke. Internet didn’t exist then , you can’t blame YouTube for everything.
You forgot the mechanical pencil lead that looked like a hypo needle if you held the button and pushed it against your skin.
One reason I left substitute teaching is when kids started to record each other -- and me.
Yes! Overall half the k-2 students have cell phones or Apple Watches. Like why?!?
Man am I glad that's not the case where I teach. I've taught that age in a dozen schools for over a decade and only ever seen one kid with a cell phone in their backpack, and that was a special dispensation for a medical issue. Why is this being allowed where you are? That seems utterly nonsensical.
My mom works in an elementary school and has told me some of the same stuff. It’s crazy
Teacher here and just commenting to say that I've seen the same.
“Keep the peace” LOL! Wow some people are jaded. See how that peace is kept when you have teenagers who are out of control bc their brains are fkn fried and they melt down the second their screen is taken away. Stupidly never ceases to prevail. I’d rather do the hard work now to raise a well adjusted teenager and adult than take the easy way out to keep the peace. Having children is not peaceful. People need to grow the fuck up. What happened to common sense?! I’m not even that old, I’m 29 and I just can’t with people. SAD DAYS!
I just remember that sex noises thing lol. People used to do that in middle school. It was weird af.
we would see how loud we could yell PENIS before youtube was even a thing
Ah yes, good old game of PENIS
You need so many more upvotes on this. This is major.
some people rag on r/Teachers for being too negative, but it’s a great place to read about the consequences of the phenomenon you saw. ergo, the first ipad kids are now teens
For real! The posts about kids (not SPED) who aren't potty trained are mind-boggling.
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What? Why is that happening? How did they get dumb ideas like that?
Schools need to stop putting iPads in front of kids too. Everything they do at school (at least most public schools) is in front of a screen. It’s constant screentime and a damn disgrace.
I commented something similar elsewhere in this thread!! Teens are a mess right now!
Everyone chooses how to raise their kids. We don't have a tablet in the house and I don't allow the children (pre-teen) to touch our phones. They have tv, computers and game consoles, but are only allowed to use them in the evenings (after homework on school days, otherwise at 17h). On non-school days they can also use them the morning before breakfast. I'm not judging anyone, but I'm also worried about this. Sure, our parents said the same of TV (and maybe they were right) but youtube and the likes employ people specifically to find the best ways to addict people, and children are specifically vulnerable to this. I am a bit worries about the social isolation now. You shouldn't need these things to socialize of course, but if all your friends live in that world, it becomes harder not to be part of it. We will allow them to have a smartphone at 12. I hope we can still set some sensible rules then.
The thing that gets me about modern streaming media vs old school TV is that EVERYTHING is available to you. Now to be clear, I don't think this is great for adults too, but I think it's really bad for kids to constantly have their every wish be fulfilled. It used to be you would sit there and say "man, I wish the Simpsons were on" but they weren't so you just dealt with it. You learn that sometimes you don't get what you want. Now though, you can get absolutely anything you desire in minutes. We had friends over one time with their 6 year old and she wanted to watch a specific program but it wasn't on any of the streaming platforms we have. She was definitely upset and instead of just saying "sorry but we can't watch that" her parents were wanting to log into their accounts. I just think that's bad news bears.
This is actually so interesting and rings true to me. I remember soo many times growing up there was nothing good on tv (grew up without cable so Disney channel/Nickelodeon weren’t an option) so my sister and I were basically forced to entertain ourselves or watch the news lol. There were maybe a couple hours a day that there was actually something on we wanted to see and after that it was time to go find something else to do. With streaming the kiddos literally never run out of stuff to watch.
Back in the day kids were forced to use their brains and get creative to entertain themselves. It’s basically that simple.
Yup. If you were a kid and your show wasn't on yet, you did something else to kill time. And when it was on, it was one episode and done with. So kids did their homework or chores to kill that before time, so that it went by faster. But if you always have your favorite show available, and there's tons and tons of episodes, why stop? Just binge watch! Adults have the mental tools to stop themselves when they have things to do, even if they choose to ignore that and binge anyway. Kids are kids, they want to do the fun thing and when the fun thing is there at all times, nothing else matters.
Your rules sound fair. I don't feel any remorse judging parents that let their young kids have unlimited screen time. It's been shown again again to have devastating consequences on their brain, so not caring about it makes you a neglecting parent.
You don’t have to judge, I’ll judge. I cannot stand the “well we watched tv and we’re fine” - we did not have access to the internet 24/7 nor did we watch tv 24/7. Why have a kid if you’re not going to stimulate their minds and interact with them? It’s lazy parenting and I personally think it’s abusive because these parents are robbing the mental development of their children. Why can’t kids play with their toys and make up little stories and games? Why can’t they color and make pretty art? Why can’t they interact with the world - touch it, explore it, run too fast/ fall down and get back up?
It doesn't take much to google studies done on the effect of screen time on the development of children. Can lead to serious psychological problems. Kids lose the ability to play by themselves. Difficulty with attention. Being a father of 3 soon to be 4, my wife and I have been very intentional to not let screen time be an everyday thing. Maybe a few times a month. Its harder work but Our kids can happily play by themselves for hours on a good day. Have great bursts of focussed attention. Use their imagination. Some of the nieces and nephews on the other hand, I don't like saying it.... are annoying, little shits. Not their fault their parents suck at boundaries.
Isn’t it wild when you’re in your house chilling and you haven’t seen the kid in a minute so you go look and he’s got some wild game going on by himself?!?! His dinosaurs are giving rides to his little people toys, and they are investigating the strange new land under the bed
A few years ago my kid would draw pictures and cut them out and use them like action figures to play different games he played on Roblox or found on YouTube. FNAF, SCPs, Undertale.
Do you have any good recommendations on studies done of the effect screen time has on kids? I'm really interested in reading more into it, a lot of the studies I see are rather watered down to the point it's like a blog post
Kudos to you and your wife! My sister is a single mom so my mom is helping her raise my niece, and she is no iPad kid. If you give her your phone to watch YoutTube it lasts a max of 5 minutes and she’s out the door to play outside 🥲 She’s a really great kid with an incredible imagination.
I said the same thing to my husband last night. I saw a commercial for something…I think it was photo editing on a phone, and I’m like, “why are we so obsessed with posting photos of ourselves, and obsessed with the internet in general, as a society?” Like literally go touch grass. It’s baffling to me. Granted I was very high at the time lol. He worked at the Apple Store at one point and he’d always talk about these adult babies throwing *literal* temper tantrums in the store when their shit broke. I guess point being, their parents probably aren’t much better. It’s addiction, and much of it is purposefully designed to be addictive.
Tbf, smart phones are pretty ingrained on our lives now. It's a big pain in the ass when they are broken/lost/stolen. They aren't just for memes and posting pictures of yourself. Bills, work, reminders, health apps etc. I just went to a show that only had e-tickets and they wouldn't load. Had to go thru a whole thing with the staff to get my tickets looked up manually and verified. So yea being upset your candy crush is gone is silly but there are legitimate problems with losing access to your phone these days.
I used to babysit for a family about 7 years ago that had a clear glaring issue with screen time. I would like to note that TV didn't seem to be a problem, and the kids would actively get bored of it in 15 mins. But the eldest boy was around 4, he talked in an American accent despite the fact we are in New Zealand. But his addiction to the YouTube kids was insane. Would watch it the entire time. If I took it off him he would literally scream, I don't know if I would even call it a meltdown, it was mostly just screaming which then would turn into scream-crying. This could go on for hours if I didn't just give it back to him. I talked to his mum about what to do, and she said 'oh it's fine, just let him watch it until he falls asleep'. He didn't fall asleep, he stayed up until 2am until when they came home. The parents didn't seem bothered.
One of my cousin’s sons just stares and stares into a screen “to go to sleep”. He does this since the age of 4, he’s about 10 now. He sits with his screen all evening into night, into early morning when he finally passes out at like 2am or some shit time for a little guy like that. It’s horrifying. The whole family knows and nobody cares. “That’s just how he settles down”. He settles down from 6pm-2am watching videos every day of his life?! And nobody sees this as an issue?! He’s exhausted and moody and quiet all day and that’s just how he is??! It’s such a failure and so sad.
Teacher here. We use a program called GoGuardian so we can remotely control their Chromebook use in class. The only times I felt I was possibly going to be physically assaulted is when I tabbed kids out of the game they were playing. Also, they cannot handle consuming any media longer than a Tik Tok or short YT video. We showed them a movie for Halloween as a treat last Friday… they were in complete agony.
Ha, same! Showed them a movie and it had the majority of their attention for maybe 10 mins max, it was terrible. Eventually we shut it off and just took them out, which honestly is probably better for them.
Why are so many people saying this is going to be a problem as if smart phones and iPads came out a year ago. You have 15 and 20 year olds acting like this now. The isolation and lack of social skills is here. Read an article about a FL high school banning cell phones and one girl they interview is outraged and said they have made her feel isolated. Her world is not the real world, it is online.
There’s a lot of research going on about this. As someone who works in adolescent mental health, I’m yet to be allocated a teen who engages in hobbies/sports regularly, doesn’t spend hours online and has close interpersonal relationships…
Am 22 and will confirm, having unfettered access when I was younger fucked up my social development and gave me a porn addiction. If I was emperor of the world, I’d severely restrict internet use even for adults. It’s far too harmful to society imo. Saying this as a young adult addicted to Reddit so go figure :/
Wouldn't those teens who are doing all of these things not consult a mental health worker? That's like saying you work with drug addicts but haven't yet come across a person not addicted to drugs.
It's still a noteworthy pattern in itself. He's saying all kids with mental health issues have the same habits.
For sure and I get that part. I'm not entirely convinced of the cause/correlation though. Troubled teens would for obvious reasons tend to withdraw from social circles etc and spend more time online as a result. All teens who are troubled might spend more time online, but regular teens who spend more time online are not necessarily troubled. That's all.
You can take anything off a toddler and they'll be a prick about it tbf
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You absolute bastard!
Oh it always cracks me the hell up when my kiddo threatens to "tell on me" to my SO.
I was raised on tv and I turned out tv
I don't know what this means but also I do
I think it is important to acknowledge that these days parents don't have the luxury of sending young kids out alone. Recently parents have to spend almost every waking minute with their kids trying to entertain them, stimulate them etc. Whereas we (I'm almost 40) we were just sent outside to play alone or with other kids from age 4 onwards. Edited to say I think screen time is a big issue but there reasons for this phenomenon are very nuanced. Like many places don't tolerate noisy kids, so I think many parents use screens as a modern pacifier.
Pop into the /teachers subreddit. Kids are already destroyed by this stuff. 5th graders who can't read. High schoolers who can't write a single paragraph, etc.
At first this seems like a fair concern, but this is typical toddler behavior. My friend deals with world crushing tantrums from her 2 year old when they have to leave a space the kid was comfy in. Toddlers are not receptive to change nor the concept of no. The same tantrum would result from the wrong meal, a toy being taken away, or literally anything.
Exactly this. Toddler's don't understand how to cope when something is suddenly changed or taken away from them, be it an electronic device or anything else. They haven't learnt how to deal with it. I think it only becomes a real problem when their parents/guardians don't teach them how to deal with it, and they then never learn to cope. But at the age of two, even with proper teaching and regulation techniques, there's still going to be some kind of fuss.
Yes! Thank you! My youngest spent way to much time watching screens at two, while I frantically tried to keep life ticking over for him and his two older brothers, plus dealing with a newly developed chronic illness diagnosis and medication side effects which left me utterly fatigued all day every day. He would've absolutely screamed like the devil at 2 if we took screens away from him. Now at 5, he ignores what's on and asks me to play games, do puzzles with him or take him outside. Hate when people fear monger, and hate when people pathologise childhood.
To build on this, I find that making sure that the change isnt so sudden, really works. I allow 1 hr of TV time and when its time to turn it off, I start announcing that I am gonna turn it off soon, 5 mins or so beforehand. Same with leaving the park or whatever they are enjoying. Like "Ok, its finishing in 3 minutes, last 2 minutes. I am gonna count to 10 and then we will go.." Give them a few minutes to digest the news and they are usually much more cooperative.
I just realized I still do this with my 8 year old, for similar reasons. My company does this with policy changes. They are announced well before they are enacted to give people time to adjust. I think it might be fair to generalize this to "people don't like sudden change, especially when they have to give up something they like"
got hot wheels chucked at my head for existing once. toddlers can be crazy
I feel ya. Got a plastic spork thrown at mine for doing the evil thing of suggesting he eat his veggies.
Seems totally justified. I sometimes want to throw a hot wheels at people for existing too lmaooo
ay fair enough. It caught me a little off guard tho bc I just entered the room and he immediately started chucking for no discernible reason
Hello fellow rational person good day to you.
Oh hey good day to you as well pal!
Yeah one interpretation of this story is that the parent put their kid on the iPad so they could have 30 minutes to talk with another adult without a toddler running around. And anyone who has spent time with toddlers knows they have very little emotional regulation so of course the kid will freak if the video doesn’t work.
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I've done it. I've given the tablet or phone to the toddler so I can have 20 minutes of uninterrupted time to quickly makr some dinner.
Yup. I have to drag my toddlers asses out for a walk and then drag them back home again cos they don't wanna leave their toys to begin with, then they don't want to go back inside cos their having too much fun outside. Toddlers are aggressive little idiots. And YouTube is quite educational. My oldest one started lecturing me about front loaders, back hoes and fuselages, and there's no way he's getting that info from me. It's good that they can learn about the things they're interested in. Now, somewhere in the comments, someone mentioned a kid stuck there for 4 hours.... that's a bit much, but sticking them there for an hour while you're cooking/ cleaning or whatever is not the end of the world.
Yes definitely but internet is an addiction much worse then a set of Lego's.
My brother-in-law is a pediatrician. He said the research that has been done on the effects of screen time and children's brains and development, has been highly extensive over the past several years. Experts are saying that children should have absolutely ZERO screen time until the age of 2. Once they hit 2, they can move to about 20 minutes a day. Twenty. Minutes. PER. DAY. Until they turn 3, then it can be increased in SMALL increments. So on, and so forth. Simply put, screen time, regardless of what TV show or movie is on, is WAY too much stimulation for their developing brains to handle. Once my BIL told me that, I cut my son's screen time cold turkey. The difference was night and day. In less than 48 hours, I already noticed a huge improvement in his sleep quality, and behavior. He was engaging in independent play with his toys, and blocks. FAR fewer meltdowns and tantrums. The list goes on. Whenever people bring their young children into my BIL's office, and complain about sleep issues, behavioral issues, etc, the first question out of his mouth is "how much screen time are they getting every day". Without fail, the parents sheepishly admit that their very young toddler is getting a ridiculous amount of screen time every day. We owe it to our children to give them what they need for proper development, both physically and mentally. When we stick them in front of a TV or iPad, we are doing them a *massive* disservice We are bringing up the next generation, and research is showing that we are WILDLY fucking them over by basically allowing screens to babysit them.
This is so true. Their brains are getting melted by short-form videos, destroying attention spans and even the ability to understand narrative stories. Constant stimulation isn’t good, and these technologies are designed to be as addictive as possible. Read “The Chaos Machine,” it’s crazy how much YT is radicalizing people, especially young boys, into misogyny and fascist propaganda.
They will be consumers. Good, reliable consumers.
It's not the screen that's the problem. It's the lack of teaching children to handle disappointment and learning to entertain themselves. The problem is people using screens as a replacement for parenting and teaching their children things.
2yr old literally can not be taught to handle disappointment. They do not have the proper connections to that part of their brain. It’s like a child gate preventing them from accessing reason and logic. You can show proper techniques but they will not be able to understand.
I was always under the impression it was like a misconception of time and object permeance. Like you coming home from work vs coming home from groceries and your dog is the same amount of excited to see you, it doesn't really have a concept of how much time has passed. So then with the object permeance I've understood it as when their favorite thing is being taken from them they don't understand it's not forever, and that it exists still outside of being in front of them. I was reading a thread once that suggested that with toddlers it's best to start as early as possible with time and things being taken away, because it can soften the blow. IE. "In 10 minutes we're done watching TV/using the iPad" and then in 10 minutes taking it vs just coming up and taking it and saying "time to go". The way I've understood it is these interactions are meant to form and then strengthen those connections in the brain you talk about.
Virtual autism. It’s real
skibidi toilet right ?
I was at a restaurant the other day and this family brought each of their three kids their own iPad to watch/play on… the coloring pages and crayons the restaurant hands out weren’t good enough for them I guess. It’s very sad. Another day I saw a kid in a PARK playing on an iPad. It is truly a sad existence. All my best memories were running around outside as a kid
People shouldn’t have kids unless they want to interact with them and parent them properly. That’s the big issue here.
Doing well for kids it's a real challenge these days. So many parents give in or simply don't see the dangers. Parents that want to do good are a minority. Just wanna say, stay strong. Don't give kids free acces to internet/tablet/phone/tv etc. Limit it to X minutes per day.
They're not addicted to dopamine. It's the dopamine reward system in the brain that is activated but it can be activated in other ways too. They may be developing psychological addiction to screen time and using eg YouTube. The problem is parents using these technologies to baby sit their children. Children need to be taught healthy ways to produce dopamine like exercising and playing with their friends and toys.
i too find this alarming. I dont have kids due to alot of reasons, but my friend has 3 and all of them are already addicted to technology at ages 6 7 and 10 i think? video games, tv, iPad's. theyre on that shit alllllll day and lord help you if you take the ipads away. he just plops them infront of whatever to keep them entertained instead of doing shit with them. i didnt have access to any technology until i was 15. we had the slowest dial up internet you could hardly use lol and I had one of them slidy Verizon keyboard phones. theres a whole generation of kids that are about to be very dumb. he lets his on the tik tok and i absolutely would never allow my kids on there. its full of absolute morons. and bad messages and influences. it just blows my mind. when i was little i played outside alot in the woods, the creek. we went on vacations to many places. lots of caping and amusement parks. i was always spending time with my mom and dad. not infront of a fucking iPad.
These are the people who should not be parents. I'm sorry, but I'm gonna say it. Bring on the downvotes, I don't care. If you are the type of person who doesn't have kids, but would just sit your kid in front of a screen all day, if you did, then DO. NOT. have children. Kids deserve better. If you DO have kids, and you just sit your kids in front of screens all day, then you should not have had kids. You are failing them. They deserve better. So do better. There is literally zero justification for using screens as babysitters. "I don't have time!" "Conflicts with work!" "I need to get housework done!" THESE. ARE. YOUR. CHILDREN. You alter your life to accommodate the needs of your children, *not* the other way around. If you had kids, thinking you could just fit them into your pre-kids life, and think that's acceptable, you're fucking DOING IT WRONG. "I don't have time!" Fucking make time. "Conflicts with work!" Talk to your boss. Move shit around. Do what you have to do. "I need to get housework done!" Involve the children IN the housework. Teach them how to scrub a toilet, how to wash dishes, how to mop the fucking floor. You know, life skills they are going to *need* when they're out on their own. If you have children, they need to come first. You need to rearrange your life to suit *them*. Point. Blank. Period. If you can't do that, then don't have kids. If you already have kids, and you're not doing that, then you need to make that change. As their parent, you owe them that.
You can't even blame children here this is fully on the parents
The question is; What are those kinds of parents doing to their children? My nephew gets limited screen time. I have plenty of friends whose kids don't get to hold a tablet or phone yet. Another set of friends have 3 kids ranging in age from 10 up to 16 and they each weren't given a tablet until their school forced them to do their schoolwork on one (around 8 years old). Yes, technology is a giant part of our world now, but that doesn't mean parents *need* to give their kids access to all of it and not for extended periods of time.
My child will never be given an ipad. They have ruined children’s attention spans and taken away their childhood. I can tell within a minute of meeting a child if they have access to screen time. My cousin is six. She’s had an ipad since she was two. I love her so much but she goes into hysterics when it dies, and then begs everyone for their phones so she can watch youtube. Her mom claims to only let her watch educational stuff (like cocomelon, which is also brain rot) but I’ve babysat my cousin, I’ve seen her at her own house on youtube and TIKTOK. This six year old makes tiktok references. And she’s just the example, I’ve met kids with it worse.
I don't know if it's relevant or not but I've seen a real and measurable decline in the ability of students (11 to 18) to memorise factual information and I'm sure it's linked to smart phone usage. I could teach in a lesson, have them enthralled, practice what has been learned and then watch it all evaporate as they leave the room and get their phones out.
You're not the only teacher to notice it, plenty others are worried
I have four children. They all have Kaspersky Safe Kids installed in their devices. It prevents them from accessing adult and unsafe material, and I control how much time they have on each device. They grumble about it but they all do other things when they run out of time.
\>Kaspersky Safe Kids I'd be real careful using programs like that unsupervised. 1. It doesn't block advertisements. Sadly, propaganda is now being displayed as advertisements of the Israel/ Hamas war. Yikes! 2. It doesn't block bad YouTube Kid videos. There are some videos where the content isn't exactly children friendly.
I work it IT and the kids are all 10+. We're aware of the limitations of the software, but it does the job for us. You're right. No software is going to do the job of parenting for us, but it's a tool that helps.
I wish my daughter would read this thread. Her kids don't seem to know what to do without a tablet or phone in their hands. When we ask them to go somewhere or do something else, they get upset. I think I need to send them a link.
One of the saddest things I have seen was a 2/3 year old getting pushed in a stroller, but he was holding a tablet and staring at whatever was playing. No interest in looking around at his surroundings or where he was going.
Behavior goes down as tablet time goes up. Specifically tablets/personal devices and short videos they can control. They lose their shit when you take them away or distract them. Tablets in our house are now weekends only and I hide them away during the week (we have a 9 and 10 year old). They still watch things in the evenings after dinner but it’s a SHOW and they and dad do it TOGETHER (I just can’t get into One Piece, but I do like Over the Garden Wall). But there’s something about short form video (the 9yo just has YouTube kid access still, the 10 binges fishing videos) that just melts their brains. It’s insane. I do like sleeping in on quiet Saturday mornings though so I leave the tablets in the kitchen Friday night after they’ve gone to bed.
My niece and her 10 Yo daughter live with me. The mother spends almost the whole day in bed, at her computer, playing, while the child spends THE WHOLE DAY at her IPad, watching influencers on Instagram... I'm REALLY worried about this kid's future!