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Original poster

To be increasingly horrified and alarmed at how much time little ones are spending plugged in?

95 replies

Somethingwicked · 12/03/2013 20:10

My intelligent and good old friends joined us for sunday lunch in a quiet pub the other day and 'appeased' their toddler throughout with very loud youtube clips of bob the builder on youtube. I was dumbstruck.
Whenever there is any waiting or hanging around to be done, the toddlers all around are glued to an iphone or ipad.

Are people sleepwalking into all this, or deliberately doing it just to make life easier? Or am I just a total luddite and idiot not to be training mine up in ipaddery for the digital future?

OP posts:
HollyBerryBush · 12/03/2013 20:12

No different to 15 years ago with a gameboy color or 30 years ago and a walkman, or 50 years ago and transistor

Original poster
Somethingwicked · 12/03/2013 20:15

But they were the domain of teenagers more or less weren't they? Not one/two year olds.....

I admit I had technophobe parents and hence my walkman was the only gadget I ever had, so of course I am going to be breeding up technophobe children in all likelihood, may be more of a problem in their future than it has for me... I don't know.

OP posts:
Beamae · 12/03/2013 20:15

I sometimes do this. I also spend a lot of time reading to them, playing games, going to singing/dancing/rhyme time so whatever. It's fine to buy yourself a bit of time for your own sanity.

IvorHughJangova · 12/03/2013 20:15

I don't do it, I wouldn't have a clue how and also, my lovely colleague discovered today that she'd run up an £80 bill on top of her usual one for letting her toddler watch Thomas the Tank Engine on YouTube a few times Shock

But - I wouldn't judge anyone for doing their best to ensure their toddler was calm and well behaved during lunch with an old, good friend. I expect she just wanted to enjoy the time with you rather than chasing a mini-beast about in a quiet pub while s/he attempts to put everything they can find in their eyes/mouth/ears/nose. It doesn't mean she 'plugs' them in at every opportunity and being 'horrified' and 'alarmed' at kids watching telly seems a tad ridiculous.

littlebitofthislittlebitofthat · 12/03/2013 20:19

i can remeber hiding inside a book whenever an adult talked to me... now my DD does it with the DSI.

VonHerrBurton · 12/03/2013 20:21

I wouldn't let ds play with anything like that in a restaurant. Personally I would rather we didn't eat out as a family if we couldn't find eachother interesting enough to keep ourselves entertained for a couple of hours.

My sisters ds had asd and it would be impossible for them to do anything like eat out at the moment without the help of YouTube and Peppa Pig. So there are different circumstances sometimes.

ipads etc are here to stay though and even if you choose not to buy in, they will continue to be everywhere!

SashaSashays · 12/03/2013 20:21

But why on earth are you horrified and alarmed?

orangeandlemons · 12/03/2013 20:22

I sniff Luddism here. Technology moves on, we live in a digital age.

Personally I have never ought in to the fearmongering about tv/computer games etc.Ds had a ps from 5 and a game boy from 6. He is a fully rounded normal person and at university......

fairylightsinthesnow · 12/03/2013 20:22

sorry, but I think yes you are a little luddite to be "horrified". My DS (3.5) can't / won't do normal jigsaws but he can do them on my kindle fire. He will be growing up into a world where most things are a touch screen and he will be far more adept at it then I am /will be. As he gets older he'll get the dexterity to do normal ones but if he doesn't enjoy them, fine. As with everything, moderation is key but he has learnt so much from the programmes he watches and the games he plays, including persistence and patience. We haven't yet taken it to restaurants as we try to involve them in what is going on, but I can imagine there will come a time when we will if its going to be a long meal, he is going to be bored. No-one would raise an eyebrow if he read a book, so why would it be different if he is playing or even reading on a screen?

kinkyfuckery · 12/03/2013 20:22

Oh noes, couple keep child quiet with tv show for an hour or two! Shock

WhatsTheBuzz · 12/03/2013 20:23

beats being whinged at because your toddler's making a racket.

PoppyWearer · 12/03/2013 20:28

I forgot to bring a book or a toy with me to DS's last doctor's appointment and the GP was running late, so we sat and waited for 20 minutes.

On my phone I have a couple of apps that are basically electronic versions of his favourite peekaboo books, so why not use them to keep the peace? (It worked brilliantly, BTW.)

Or if you forget crayons and paper, there are drawing/colouring apps.

Our parents would have done it if the technology had existed...

aldiwhore · 12/03/2013 20:30

Everything in moderation.

In all honesty I don't see toddlers all around doing it.

Obviously you can have too much of a good thing, but most parents I know with these tools limit the time their children spend on them.

Original poster
Somethingwicked · 12/03/2013 20:32

Why am I horrified and alarmed? Good question (I admit to being a Luddite, with its pros and cons I know). I guess because of all this debate about teenagers (who were born just after the internet) beginning to lose basic social skills, the art of conversation, the ability to be bored, to write, to read at length, to concentrate etc. (and that all being part of the digital revolution). And I can feel myself losing those skills a bit too with the internet just around the corner at any moment (such as this one).

So if all this rapid decline of our social instincts can occur to people whose childhoods were analogue (30 plus) and low level digital (early days of phones/internet) what horrifies and alarms me is my projected vision of the generation ahead that has never known anything other than a millisecond of boredom followed by the instant gratification of a shiny, glowing, all knowing screen.

I know my 'projected vision' is probably just the same as a prudish Victorian thirty something looking at the mollycolled industrialised generation beneath them with incomprehension, but the scale of the change feels to me like it is all happening very very quickly.

OP posts:
VonHerrBurton · 12/03/2013 20:35

By the way, op, why did you make the point that your friend was 'intelligent'? Do you think intellectual people wouldn't furnish their child with an electronic device to play with?

Original poster
Somethingwicked · 12/03/2013 20:35

And the tv in the pub thing- that is just one little illustration, and it wasn't the watching of tv that dumbstruck me, but the incredible noise pollution that all around were gawping at and wondering whether to complain about but didn't have the balls (and nor did I). My children aren't tv free at all, it's more just the social instinct that seemed to be overriden by the lure of the panacea of the iphone...

OP posts:
orangeandlemons · 12/03/2013 20:36

But I think that is bollocks about teenagers and the Internet. I teach teenagers, hundreds of them, they are all relatively normal nice people, and they all do lots of stuff like drama, football, d of e, going out, having fun, and they read too.

My ds is one of those teenagers and a self confessed games nerd. He's ALWAYS reading. People adapt to things.

PrettyKitty1986 · 12/03/2013 20:38

We went to Disneyland Paris last week. We were there for 5 days and every time we were queuing for rides my 5 and 2 year olds had an I phone each (mine and df's) playing games.
It was better than them standing for 30 minutes at a time and getting bored. Every evening when we ate in various restaurants they had crayons and a colouring book.
However you dress it up, both giving them the I phone and the crayons was ultimately to shut them up make mine and df's life easier. I don't feel guilty for either.

HotPinkWeaselWearingLederhosen · 12/03/2013 20:38

Excellent thread op. I had completely forgotten to put dd on charge. Her batteries ran out.

MajaBiene · 12/03/2013 20:39

I love that we can keep 2 year old DS quiet for half an hour or so in the pub so we can read the papers in peace Grin I always keep the volume low though.

Ditto long journeys. The ipad is a godsend.

stargirl1701 · 12/03/2013 20:39

I agree with you. Screens are unsuitable for the under 2s. Was it the AAP study that confirmed it?

Original poster
Somethingwicked · 12/03/2013 20:39

I guess emotionally intelligent, sufficiently so that I was very surprised that she was so unaware of her environment. That's just manners and etiquette though, perhaps the phone was neither here nor there in that illustration. My hesitations (to use a less inflammatory term) about technology are more general really.

OP posts:
fanoftheinvisibleman · 12/03/2013 20:39

I think horrified and alarmed is a little ridiculous.

A snapshot of an hour this week could easily show my ds glued to his tablet or ds. A different hour would show him playing with the dog, running around in the snow, baking, colouring, playing with toys or (as he is now) reading. All of these have occured in the past few days.

ElliesWellies · 12/03/2013 20:40

We entertain DS (aged 2) on the train like this. It stops him running around the carriage shouting. We also read books and look at things out of the window, but as a last resort, Daddy's iPhone comes out.

Doesn't mean that he uses it all day every day - stop being so judgmental.

FeistyLass · 12/03/2013 20:42

I think the change is happening very quickly but you are projecting your own experiences. Children growing up today probably don't have the same sense of wonder and awe around technology that we do (assuming that you remember a time when few people had personal computers and no-one had mobile phones!). For the younger generation, technology is just another tool.
Ds will play electronic games but he'll also sit happily with a jigsaw and a board game. He doesn't seem to see one as more attractive than the other. It's just that, for your friends, the ipads are more portable.