iPads for kids - what age?

[JustAMum90]

DC is 5 and will be starting primary school in August. They have mentioned tablets a few times and how it’s “weird” that all their friends have tablets and they don’t. I’ve always just brushed it off with the old “every family has different rules” and it’s been brought up for a few days then not mentioned again for weeks or months.

DH thinks we should be buying one for DC this summer ahead of starting school as he doesn’t want them being left out and he believes that DC will be at a disadvantage when tables/computers are introduced at school as other kids will be confident using them and DC won’t.

I just don’t think a tablet is necessary at this age at all! 🫠 am I being ridiculous? I was hoping we wouldn’t be entertaining the idea of anything like that for years yet 😳🤣

I have an iPad and we have a few problem solving games on it that DC and I occasionally sit and play together (maybe 15/20 mins 2x a week at most - and sometimes none at all for weeks on end) and sometimes DC will ask about something and I’ll get the iPad out and we’ll research it together.

We have no other kids in the family and all our friends have kids younger than ours so I have nobody to ask 🫠🤣

If your DC have iPads - what age did you introduce then?
And is there an age where they actually become useful for school etc?

When my kids were growing up in the 2000s, you will criticized for using the TV as a babysitter. Well I had no choice! I was a single mum with no help working FT. Toddlers up at 5am, and life was very much about making it through the day!

However, they were not JUST watching TV all day. They were very physically, mentally and socially active. TV was their relaxing time.

Now in their 20s, both in excellent career, happy selves, and neither of them have a TV and spend very little time on social media.

I suppose tablets are not that different. Used as a mean to relax, ok. Used for hours because parents are too lazy to parent so the only stimulation kids get during the day is on a tablet...very bad.

My DC shared an iPad from when they were born and have always had access to it, they also had unlimited access to the TV. They rarely used it and spent a majority of their time playing with each other until about 10 and 13.

Nooooo hold out as long as you can. Mine were 8 before they had iPads and still have very strict limits on how long they use them for.

Using yours together is the perfect solution for now.

They are so instinctive you don’t need to learn how to use them so he won’t be at a disadvantage at all

Wait and see for school - some are more iPad driven than others. Ours introduced TT Rockstars which is a time tables app in Year 4 but you didn’t have to use it if you didn’t want to.

My two (13&14) have never had their own tablets. We have a family tablet that is used for homework/music practice/digital art etc. They’ve never been bothered about having one of their own, I think because we never started with giving them screens. We had a bit of pushback at around age 8 because their friends had them, but we got through that fairly swiftly. We also have a laptop for them to use, so for homework, often one is on the tablet, one on the laptop, but we’re lucky that a good 80% is still paper based.

I would say hold off for as long as you can. DH and I both work in education and we see first hand the damage that screen time has done and behaviour is vastly different to even that of ten years ago. A lot of the children behave like little addicts having withdrawals, it’s awful.