I might agree with them. I'm not saying we should be all out working potato fields, but knowing how to grow your own food is valuable knowledge. Likewise, knowing how to live in the wild, at least for a few days is a basic skill that I believe everyone should know, as it could save your life even today if something goes wrong while you are out hiking/camping.
Who said I believe that? I surely don’t. I had a lot of screen time as a kid and it taught me a lot, for one I wouldn’t be able to speak English without it.
I personally do believe screen time ought to be limited to some extent, but that’s only because I believe being outside is healthy, not because screen time itself is bad.
The problem is that parents are using screen time as a nanny, and are training their kids to rely on them as such.
IMO, kids need to be taught self-control and have the ability to entertain themselves before screens are introduced.
Toddler age is definitely too early, I am in the opinion that as little as necessary until it starts to be required in school.
My 2nd grader knows that screens are useful and has seen limited use, wikipedia, video calls, but he is always accompanied by me. And he has no reliance on them.
That argument has always been there. Growing up my parents and most of my friends parents never let their kids just go 24/7 playing games and watching tv. We all go forced outside and had limits on exposure. Nowadays, it's just acceptable to sit your toddler down on an ipad all day long and let them do whatever they want.
>I Have been researching a lot recently and I am struggling to find clear guidelines on how to approach screen time with children.
dont fix what's not broken. If they have lots of screentime but are watching educational stuff like alphablock/numberblocks. why would you do anything about it?
>But the screen time advice seems to conflict this approach somewhat. I often see sources advocating for a hard limit of screen time, which seems counterproductive in the context of how we approach teaching our children on managing gratification and self control.
There's lots of bad advice on the internet. Much of which is malicious. Dont trust everything you read on the internet.
>I am keen to believe that providing viable alternatives and setting an example by our own non-screen quality family time should steer the child in the right direction.
You want to be playing catch/kick/ball with your kid. Go for that bikeride with them. Take them fishing. Do some painting with them. But if it's -30c outside and a foot of snow, they are watching educational tv. My butt is not doing snow stuff lol.
I have a 3.5 years old boy and we grant him some 30-35 minutes of TV plus a handful of minutes of videos played on the mobile every day. He sometimes demand more time but we never gave in and he seems to be fine with that.
TBH I prefer that amount to be zero, but unfortunately his grandfather opened the door for him a year ago. I will for sure not increase his TV time until he is well into primary school, when we won't have much control anyway. The school will show plenty of videos and his friends' parents probably won't be as against screen time as we do. But definitely he is not to own a mobile or pad until he has to -- most likely from middle school.
Both of us follow a sedant life style. We prefer to stay at home. I plan to change this and introduce hiking and camping into our life. Naturally one does not watch TV while hiking or camping, so I'll increase the reading time. This also may lead to star gazing and fossil collecting. My wife is particularly not interested in outdoor activities so it's probably going to be just me and him -- well till I know how to setup a tent at least.
Did the people in this thread even read the article? It suggests that the effect of eating potatoes or wearing glasses on childhood well-being is greater than the effect of screen time.
"screen time" is so general though. What were they doing on the screens?
Sure, I know plenty of parents who stick their kids on YouTube with no monitoring, who end up watching Jake Paul for hours.
But I also know plenty of parents whose kids spend their screen time drawing in paint apps, playing with redstone creations in Minecraft, and generally doing stuff that I (as a parent of 2 who aren't quite that age yet) would LOVE my kids to be doing.
I'm sure the former is more common than the latter, but I wish articles like this weren't so "screen time is BAD" and would differentiate and encourage parents to instead push their kids towards educational-but-entertaining screentime.
If I hadn't spent my entire childhood on screens learning to code in BASIC and playing in Paint, I wouldn't have had my career, which has now let me support my family and give them a comfortable life (whereas I grew up in poverty).
Why is nobody talking about the fact that kids mis a lot of real-life playing outside in the dirt, and sitting behind a screen... on average 6 hours a day.
Perhaps because it's the easy way, just blame some chemical instead of taking action. If you move to a friendly neighbourhood and have some rules about screentime kids play outside, I know from experience with my own kids.
I'm no expert, but I suspect a strong correlation in autism development and 'hours spend in front of a screen instead of playing outside with peers'.
I don't limit the time my kids can use screens at all. When I was a kid I watched TV or played video games for about 12 hours a day at weekends and as much as I could at other times. It didn't do me any harm. In fact the obsession with computers probably helped me with my career.
I don't allow social media though, as that is undeniably toxic. Also attention span reducing tiktok is not allowed. They watch a lot of YouTube, and we watch stuff together sometimes. It is basically the TV of their generation and although some of the stuff they watch is mindless, some of it is informative and helps them develop useful skills.
I absolutely understand what you are saying... but if you let kids do what they want to do they'll sit around and play video games 16 hours a day. In times past, they'd likely be out working the farm. What do they do now? Consume media.
I don't disagree with you, but your personal anecdote is irrelevant and worthless. She's the most advanced. So the 95% of kids are doing worse than she is. Do you have data on how much screen time the other kids are getting, and how it is affecting them?
You can't go from complaining about lack of research and then using your single data point, incorrectly.
Anyway, the article may not say it but there is research in the field, and it concludes that screen time is harmful at young ages. I don't believe any research has followed kids for say 20 years (and i mean, we haven't had tiny addictive screens and apps that long anyway) to see if they "recover" or catch up or even surpass their peers when they get older.
Lastly, if you literally only allow her to use the screen once/week for a couple of hours, you are not near the realm where they are finding screens to be harmful. I'm sure you've been out at literally any restaurant and half the toddlers are glued to the screen, as a first resort.
Even if the adults are not able to restrict themselves, they are still responsible for the well being of the children who don't know better, at least until they are past the point of reducing cognitive, critical thinking and reading comprehension. A four year old doesn't know better.
Effects of Excessive Screen Time on Neurodevelopment, Learning, Memory, Mental Health, and Neurodegeneration: a Scoping Review
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11469-019-00182-2Evidence suggests that chronic sensory stimulation via excessive exposure to screen time may affect brain development in negative ways. Excessive smartphone use may increase the risk of cognitive, behavioral, and emotional disorders in adolescents and young adults that also has the potential to increase the risk of early onset dementia in late adulthood.
https://healthmatters.nyp.org/what-does-too-much-screen-time...Early data from a landmark National Institutes of Health (NIH) study that began in 2018 indicates that children who spent more than two hours a day on screen-time activities scored lower on language and thinking tests, and some children with more than seven hours a day of screen time experienced thinning of the brain’s cortex, the area of the brain related to critical thinking and reasoning.
Sure, they won't call it 'brain damage' - just reduced cognitive reasoning and critical thinking.
Here's what I think, but every parent needs to decide for themselves: like it or not, the Internet is an integral part to socializing today. Not allowing your children to socialize this way will hinder their social development, especially when you have no control over them in 0-18 years from now. They need to be able to learn about how to behave on the 'net from a young age, with good supervision and guidance. Sometimes it's good to prevent a child from doing something harmful, and perhaps limiting their screen time in certain ways is necessary, however an extreme version of what you say (15 minutes) is definitely going to hobble their social lives at some point.
I'm not an expert either, but my understanding from listening to the experts is exactly the opposite of yours. That toddlers are just soaking up information, including behaviors and how to communicate, and if there is ever a time to not sit them in front of TV, it is those years.
That being said, everything needs a balance and has its place. TV as an occasional helper won't be the end of the world. We didn't give our kids much TV, but when we did, it was Pingu.
Controversial opinion, but I don't think kids ages 2 to 4 should be having screen time, let alone an activity that is better presented with real objects.
You're going to get a lot of skewed results here, because a lot of parents aren't going to feel comfortable telling the truth: that almost all parents allow a reasonable amount of screen time to their kids, even if they know it's not the healthiest thing for them.
Personally, we have a four year old and an almost-two year old, and they're watching a Leapfrog show on the TV as we speak. We limit their access to screens, but realistically there are times when they're really useful.
“screen time” is such a nonsense phrase. Sure make sure your kid gets physical exercise but to primarily define and rate the value of an experience a child is having primarily based on whether it is on a screen or not is hilariously myopic especially among people that supposedly claim to have a progressive view of technology.
The question is WHAT is the child doing on that screen? Are they blobbing out or are they playing a video game that stimulates and challenges their brain (a strategy game, even action games) or socializing with friends in a video game learning how to conflict manage and operate as an effective social group? (minecraft is full of this).
I mean we ruined the world for kids, I can’t blame them for looking to virtual worlds to transcend the hellhole we left them even a little bit. Sure, the kids should just “go outside” and play in the… development full of huge pickups that aren’t even designed to able to see children (they kind of look custom designed to run over children actually), with no public spaces to explore and play in, no sidewalks leading from the development to anywhere else and endless strip malls, parking lots and cars as far as the eye can see…
Their brain is going to be healthier engaging with good video games than that landscape.
But that is all just my own personal opinion, not something we need to argue about. However, the idea that toddlers should not have that much screen time is an official recommendation: https://www.cnn.com/2016/10/21/health/screen-time-media-rule...
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