To think to much fuss is made about 'screen time' and that most people must be underestimating their use of it

[lecce]

Surely most dc are going to have jobs that are largely screen-based and being familiar with technology from a young age is not going to stand in their way and can only be beneficial.

And it must depend on what they are doing on said screens - Wii is interactive, can be played with others and involves movement (I am totally out of breath after the Let it go dance sequence). How bad can it be? Ds2 would be on it all day if we let him, but he has learnt several of the dance routines and can perform them without the music - it's a skill, no? I am a bit of a technophobe myself so learning with my dc really and have little knowledge of the other stuff that's out there, but I'm sure it all develops skills of some sort or another.

Is my ds1 spending hours hitting a ball against a wall really so much more worthy than the other boy doing his dance routines just because the latter involves a screen? I know as parents we need to encourage our dc to have a range of interests - mine do 2-3 activities each and we do outings quite often, as well as boardgames, reading, craft for ds2, musical instrument learning for ds1 etc. Is it really so bad if most of their 'free non-parental involvement time' is spent on screens?

I seem to remember a fair few hand-wringing reports over the years about children watching 3 hours of tv a day, but if they are up for 12 hours and doing other stuff the rest of the time, is that really so much?

What do others, honestly, do?

Best thing I heard which helps me manage screen time is think about what the DC aren't doing instead of the screen time. So based on that I use it when the alternative is having a meltdown/getting in the way while I'm cooking it's OK, but when the alternative is free play/being outside/reading it's not OK.

I do think attention span is a big part of the problem though, I see this in myself as well: the other day I read a real actual paper for the first time in ages, and was struck with how much more info I retained than when I read the news online. I try my best to limit DCs time (and mine) to 2 hours a day, and do find on the days it goes much above that it's as if they lose the ability to entertain themselves in any other way, whereas on the days we go screen free (I try a couple of days a week) it's interesting to see how much happier DC is to play alone and creatively. Screens for us do become a bad habit when used too much

I'm fascinated by the idea that 4/10 houses have no books in them. I've not been in one... surely there's bookstart books/a few charity books/ books for xmas even if not the 100s others have.

Same, anewme, I find it hard to believe.

Supporting what BackforGood wrote - I'm an Early Years SLT and I often meet children who have no idea how to use simple functional toys and are using only a handful of single words at age 2ish. All of them have extensive screen time at home. Parents are rarely worried about their child's lack of skills because the child can use the iPad and TV independently. Its extremely worrying

I saw the 4/10 headline in the papers - the underlying stats were

"nearly 4 in 10 children, under the age of 8, in London do not own a book" (a child had taken an Argos catalogue in when asked to bring a book of theirs from home, prompting a raft of surveys)

"3 in 10 households with children age 8 to 16, in London, own less than 10 books".

We rely heavily on the library, and the kindle and have no space for loads of books in modern housing - and my kids (under the age of 8) would probably not think they "owned" books in their room - depends how the question was put- "own" is a very "grown up" concept, "have" is easier to understand.