Why oh why are people giving their under 12s tablets?

Not really

What? When

Lol, they used to say the same thing about telly and everyone turned out alright.

It is like other conspiracy theorists. The jury is out at the moment. There is not enough evidence available to draw conclusions. I am sure that social media can cause jealousy and unhappiness amongst some people bur the actual technology tools themselves have not yet been shown to harm children.

But there are only 48 hrs in those 2 days 😢

Why oh why is it any of your business

But you don't need to give kids access to everything. If you don't understand tech enough or cannot be bothered to supervise then fair enough. But a phonics game, lego game or ten minutes on times tables rockstars isn't the same as scrolling tik tok or youtube.

I am grateful this wasn’t so much a thing when my kids were young. They are 19 and 21 now and got tablets aged 15.

My 19y old says she has noticed her concentration and focus diminish since she started getting into TikTok aged 17/18. She finds it addictive. The constant scrolling and stimulation. Never mind the emotional content of social media. It has def affected her ability to study and she is a bright girl doing STEM at uni.

I can’t guess what it might be doing to developing younger brains. Hopefully it will all be fine, but I think until we have definitive evidence, surely some caution is wise.

YouTube is the work of the fucking devil though. It’s fine if you are using it for a particular purpose eg how to crochet, how to draw a lion etc. But we banned the mindless watching of videos in the house. Ninjakids. JJ and Mikey etc. Absolute brain rotting shite.

We have them for when travelling or when camping.

We do big journeys (8 hours+) about 3/4 times a year and when camping they can wake up early so rather then wake the campsite at 6.30am they get a tablet for 30mins or so til it's a more acceptable time to make a bit of noise.

DS1 uses them in his school class as well though.

Where are the respected studies? Please be specific

I was ridiculously and naively against screen time when I was a new parent. Then I had an autistic child and discovered how screens can be a valuable tool.

people demonize screens for children, but it is all about how you use them. If parents simply hand over tablets and don’t supervise, I would be concerned. I am incredibly happy we had them in our arsenal.

some examples:
They help some children with regulation. They allowed us to bring our child into social situations and provide respite and relief. Eventually she was able to lose the crutch and get through things like a meal in a restaurant without a tablet and headphones. Without the ability to have small bits of practice interspersed with rest, it would have taken so much longer to get her there.

she also had handwriting fatigue and needed to be able to do her work on computers in order to access the curriculum at her academic level. We had her take a typing course so that she could touch type from a very young age.

@Bigpinksweater You started this thread by stating the evidence is damning but the BBC in depth study found that the evidence is not there. I can believe that social media can affect behaviour but the tablets themselves are not dangerous in their own right.
Please refer to proper research and not just unscientific anecdotal stories. It is scaremongering.

Can you outline how non lazy your parenting dayyid?

Yeah... pull your judgey pants up a little higher.

It's not always lazy parenting... sometimes it is a little down time when things have been really busy.

I think like almost anything else, it's actually down to parents, not devices and toys.

My two have had tablets since they were toddlers. They've had free access from a young age (put away at night), and they have a wide range of interests, Eldest just got excellent grades in his junior certificate and can bend your ear for hours about history and geography, youngest scores very highly on his yearly school testing, and can cook a mean cake and taught himself to crochet last week.

All of which came from the ipads.

Tablets are not TV. They're not slumped there zoned out watching adverts and cartoons - they're researching brioche recipes whilst upside-down on the settee, or watching science videos on the way home from school. They're active participants not couch potatoes.

It will be on its way. In our council my son’s school is near the end of the list so not until march next year.

That's not a good thing.

Tablets are tools. Honestly if the only thing your kid did was stare at paper writing and nothing else it would cause some issue developmentally. That happens to be tools that are easier to seperate, as it's not generally fun even for people who love writing.

A tablet is a great learning tool, and incorporating technology that are basic important elements of the world early is important. You shouldn't be harming this, this should still be happening and you can stop excessive usage on top seperately.

What do you think kids are doing? Yeah 6 hours scrolling tik too is a definite problem, 20 minutes of a David Attenborough documentary, Matilda the movie and a couple of hours of Minecraft and Pokémon is a rough outline of my 7 yr olds screen time this weekend. That's alongside 4 hours at play centres and 6 hours in parks and riding his bike, as well as time spent just playing with his 4 yr old sister. In her case she has had a couple of episodes of Gabby's Dollhouse and listened to music while playing ballet class with her dolls as her screen time. They both also like to use instructional gymnastics videos if stuck indoors in bad weather.

I’ll no doubt get flamed for this, but…
Lazy parenting.
There, I said it.
Probably won’t just get flamed, but also have my comment deleted because people don’t like to feel criticised for their poor/lazy choices.

Every child in the primary school I used to work at was given an iPad. They are used nearly all day every day for most subjects. Exercise books rarely used now.

This is exactly the same as my mum used to say to me about…. Books.

I would read all day, everyday, anything and everything. I was constantly being told to put the book down and talk to people, I had them confiscated, I wasn’t allowed to read more than x hours.

so yeah, I was pretty much a “zombie child staring at books in every social situation instead of talking and playing”.

both my children were behind on their reading in years 1 and 2. They hated biff chip and kipper, I simply couldn’t get them to read. They weren’t interested in the simple books, and weren’t able to read the interesting ones.

a tablet changed everything. Moshi monsters, some other on line games and learning resources and within a year they had caught up with their reading levels completely.

so I don’t always think tablets are a bad thing.

Thought you meant medication lol

I have a 20 yr old niece and 12 ISH years ago she and her peers had portable dvd players.

I'm 42 and had a speak and spell and a major Morgan and a little programmable robot which was the tech of the time.

My cousin's in their 30s were stuck in a playpen and left to scream while mum made dinner or the playpen was shoved Infront of a TV

All those generations from pre school age were sent outside or to their room to play unsupervised and childhood accidents and deaths were hugely common

All this catastrophisibh has been around since the Victorian days when parents were worried about their girls wasting hours reading rubbish romance and adventure novels.

Excessive use of anything isn't great but the main problem with tablet use that I see is the way it replaces other input in families where parents are generally neglectful. There are a lot of hours in the day and when we've been to softplay, baked, ready books, coloured in, been to the park, walked the dog, read books and played boardgames throwing up to a couple of hours playing a video game or watching something age appropriate is not something I'm getting worked up about.