To be saddened by the sight of a dozen kids all zombied out on devices?

[Amibambini]

Was at an event recently, there were about a dozen kids there, and watching them not playing together or running around and acting like kids really bummed me out. They were all just sat individually hunched over their various screens and devices.

Sure, it was raining out and there could have been a better space set up for them, but still, it was quite a depressing sight.

I know the world is changing and screens are a part of it (irony is not lost on me as I tap out this moan on a screen!), but I wonder what kids, and adults, are losing as we replace playing with each other with the solitary, silent staring at devices.

Crap! I have officially turned into my grumpy Dad!

Of course you're using your imagination while on a screen! Just as you're using it when you're reading a book or watching TV.

Or is it just my son who watches 2 minutes of something on TV and then runs around emulating it? Who tells me all about what he's looking at on the screen of my Kindle Fire and how he solved the problem of whatever he's playing?

I'm so tired of "screens are evil, ban all screens!!!!!" I hope you all realize your children are using screens at school all the time. Whether on a computer or a large interactive one at the front of their classroom. So I hope none of them are using them at home as school is waaaay more than 2 hours a day of screen use.

It's the 21st century. Life is lived on a screen.

Some of them could have been reading books on their screend. Thats what mine would have been doing.
Why do people think they replace other forms of play? they are as well as, not instead of.

I'm teaching nursery this year and the children who spend a huge amount of time glued to iPads etc is very evident.

Yes in lack of social skills, but also in motor skills (holding a pen/paint brush/ handling tools/toys). These children spend large amounts of time on iPads 'pretending' to paint, do puzzles, draw etc but lack the skills to do it in real life.

By the time they reach say year 1/2 they have mostly all caught up, but it must have an affect somewhere surely?

Some parents are just lazy twats who just dump a gadget in their kid's hands whilst trying to con themselves s/he is going to grow up to be the next Steve Jobs.

My son's schoolfriend is 6 and is addicted to his iPad/DS etc
He takes it wherever he goes - even the cinema. It has to be prised out of his hands. He is overweight, hates all sports and games and has zero social skills. He has no toys other than computer related stuff.

Are all screen based activities inherently evil?
No of course not. But I find it odd that a child cannot communicate with its peers in RL but can "chat" through X-Box.

I am so glad I was a kid in the pre-computer age and I strictly ration my DS's screen time because he likes to get his hands dirty with gardening, painting etc.

YANBthatU in my opinion OP.

Oh and I forgot to mention speech and language skills! They really are shocking.

And I'm sure it's partly to do with the fact that the way these children are playing, doesn't require them to speak.

No one's saying "screens are evil,ban all screens"! Of course I know that everything is done on computer these days, lessons are taught in front of screens, some games can have an educational content and so on. But it's obvious that if people have their noses in a screen, despite being in a room with other people, then interaction if diminished. And I think the spoon feeding aspect of it is sad too. Games tell kids what to do, so they don't have to think for themselves. And don't get me started on childhood obesity. People do realise don't they, that playing football on an Xbox isn't actually a form of exercise!?

I hate the smugness of the non-screeners.

The sun is out let's play made me grind my teeth...

Mine are playing Minecraft together on iPads right now as I'm on here, they haven't stopped yacking for the last two hours so the lack of interaction thing is tosh. They plan all their buildings or raids or whatever in minute detail, makes me laugh listening to them.

Oh and we go on the odd dog walk to stop them going completely goggle eyed.

Harticus that is sad though, not having any social skills and retreating into a screen world at such an early age is not good clearly.

Ecuador I hate the arrogance of the screen addicts. "It's the 21st century, deal with it" - that sort of attitude. As if there's no alternative but to just accept the inevitability of it with no comment or complaint.

It was a large family event?
It was raining?
There were no other activities / facilities laid on for the children?

Be grateful for the gadgets. You may otherwise have ended up with a group of kids running around the function room, tripping over handbags, scaring granny, shouting, generally being a nuisance as they tried to amuse themselves, pausing only to moan "I'm bored", "X is being mean to me", "Can I have another sausage roll" or variations thereof.

It is of course entirely possible that the OP's group of young people would have politely sat around discussing the state of the world today, in the absence of screens, but somehow I doubt it...

Massive over reaction.

OP - I completely agree with you.

My dd has only a camera, our shared pc and an MP3 player. I won't allow her to have anything other than this. She won't be getting ipads, phones etc until she's old enough to get a part-time job to pay for them herself.

She still watches a few too many cartoons on our pc but plays like I did when I was a child the rest of the time. She runs around, climbs trees, makes lots of crafts, plays games and with her toys. She's 7. I think electronic games are ruining childhoods. It's up to the parents not to buy all these gadgets in the first place.

me and my friends were hunched over computer games in 1981

DC3 is on his Xbox at the moment. I can hear him talking to his school friend who lives 15 miles away from us. They are planning what they are building on Minecraft. They build all sorts together.
DC2 is upstairs skyping her school friend who lives 12 miles away. They are doing a video call to each other and I can hear lots of giggling.
My DC go to schools that are 12 miles away. Their friends are all spread out and many live in villages in the middle of nowhere. Their devices are a cheap way of keeping in touch with their friends

5 years ago my teens would all be up in their bedrooms listening to their cd players. Now they are all in the sitting room, on their gadgets ( as am I) quite a lot, but definitely interacting with us and each other. We play games, send photos, look things up, tweet and chat communally. It also means we do more other stuff together - I can say 'do you fancy coming to... And whereas i would have got a resounding 'no', now I can send them a link to enthuse them. They also come to more family events as they know they know they can escape on their phone! They wouldn't have come at all in the past.
I think there are people who overuse screens, but it's not all bad.

And we are currently fostering a child who speaks no English. Google translate has made his and our lives so much more sociable!

I think teens are different, as they don't play anyway, just chat, so it doesn't really matter what the method of communication is. But it's the under 10s I'm referring to really.

What on earth is this nonsense about children not being able to communicate with their peers, I take it you haven't been inside a school recently?

This is just rubbish scaremongering with added "so and so's child" anecdotes so that people can feel smug/handwringy.

And nobody spots the irony?

We have an iPad and family laptop. They don't have free access to them though as they are only 7,5 and 2. The TV is the biggest amount of screen time in our house.

It is pissing down here but once it stops we are going out to arse about in the woods for a few hours.
DS is currently building a huge Lego thing for show and tell on Monday.
We are going swimming after lunch.
Not a screen in sight.
Oh how smuggedy smug are we?

happybubble, you are indeed in a bubble

Your plan works very well, your dd is only 7! Of course she climbs trees etc...
My dd is nearly 11, screens don't yet feature heavily in her life either.

However, ds is 14. His 14 year old friends all communicate via screens. That is how they arrange meet-ups (where they will communicate face to face), that is how they arrange sporting fixtures (where they will be active and err, communicate face to face) and that is where they play on-line games together (which is really not much difference to playing a board game sat in the same room, you take turns, negotiate, communicate and try to win!)
If you insist on your dd not having any screens until she can pay for them herself then you may find she will resist this idea when she hits secondary school...

Oh, by the way, my 14 year old and his mates still climb trees, run around in the woods, ride bikes, play hockey, take their remote control cars out to race on the abandoned go-kart track... They just happen to ALSO socialise using screens...

The two are not mutually exclusive and can compliment each other well...

Well..

Perhaps most of the kids were all playing together in a virtual world? My DCs are in their late teens and early twenties but still play together online using PCs, tablets or phones. If we go on a long journey they will still get out their Nintendo DS's to play together. They really enjoy it and laugh and laugh.

Minecraft is an example of a fun imaginative game that can be very creative. FIFA and other sporting games are also collaborative. There are lots of other collabrative games - harvest moon, Mass Effect, Left 4 Dead etc.

However, if the kids were all sitting there Facebooking or playing on their own it's not so good.