Well off children & children who attend private school spend alot less time on screens?

[Ewetoo]

www.screenfreeparenting.com/rich-get-smart-poor-get-technology-new-digital-divide-school-choice/

Interesting article & I agree.. Well off parents can spend more time & money on enriching educational after school activities & sports. It's a no brainer... My wealthier friends are all off hiking, camping or biking with the kids who do a host of extracurriculars during the week & also happen to read loads.. My normal circles kids like my own love roblox & Minecraft & don't have the same after school activities & weekends spent chilling...

Why do people who limit screen time automatically pretty much put down those that do allow screen time ? Or think it makes there children better or more intelligent or themselves better parents
Nobody knows anyone else's circumstances and how do all these children do homework without a screen ?
Like I said we had no limits but mine managed their time pretty well , maybe because it wasn't so taboo or such a small timeframe to enjoy something they wanted to do

@ElspethTascioni so your older ones don't have phones ? No ipad or laptop to complete homework on ?

Hate to say it but that shows the difference between inheriting money and earning it.

@Minimalme exactly mine did a fair amount but because they wanted to it was never forced and they knew they could give up whenever ( they never did though so no sat/ sun lie in ) but some I know have there kids doing all sorts but its not always about what the kids want , its want they think is expected and how other parents may portray them
Already on here its without being said , screen time - not such a good parent
Limit or no screen time - extra parenting points

@worriedatthistime Yes as mentioned in my PP a lot of adults (myself included!) struggle with screen addiction and screen time despite the fact tablets and smart phones didn’t even EXIST in our own childhoods.

So clearly, going by the amount of adults who are glued to their phones and have trouble regulating screen time, a screen-free childhood doesn’t seem to have any bearing on how we manage screens as adults.

I sometimes wonder if children manage better in adulthood with more access to screens and learning to regulate it.

@fratellia yes mine are 19 and 17 and spend less time on phones / screens that we do in fairness and we have never limited it

I’m middle class and my kid spent a lot of time in screens. However she was on the track team, the basketball team, and did karate. She spent a lot of time on screens cause she doesn’t make friends easily so screens were her go to in her down time. She turned out just fine and is in a successful career.

My DC have unlimited screen time. They also have unlimited access to crafting things, and reading materials, and outside space, and and and...

They do spend time on their screens but they also spend hours creating things - crafting models out of air drying clay most recently; they independently found and watched a tutorial on what they wanted to make on YouTube then they gave it an excellent go themselves.

They also read. A lot. The elder (9) more than the younger (6) but I think that's because 6 wants to read the same things as her sister and it wears her out. She's trying to read the first Harry Potter at the moment and won't have it that it might be better if she left it for a year or so. 9yo has to be told to turn off her light well after bedtime because she's engrossed in her reading, but that's fine as far as I'm concerned!

I can't get worked up about this, these children have just spent the best part of two years in which everything was via a screen, give them a break. 9yo DD did (and still does) a huge amount of socialising via FaceTime/video calls and she's been speaking to her friends almost every day this holiday. That's social capital even if they're not there in person. Give them lots of opportunities to do different things and they'll find the stuff that interests them.

I do model reading for them, I get my
Kindle out and ignore them unless someone is bleeding. It's effective because I get to read my books and they get to see it and also sort out their own arguments which is a good life skill IMO.

Confusing correlation and causation is an elementary error that is as common among the anti screen time group as among their cousins the homeopaths.

Rich parents can outsource childcare, cleaning and other chores so indeed can spend their time with their kids engaged in activities. Normal parents have to sort the laundry, cook the dinner, answer a work email and use the free childcare calked Peppa Pig to cope. There is absolutely zero high quality evidence that this causes harm.

Of course rich parents also have the time to set up wanky websites called ‘Screen free parenting’ and pander to the anxieties of their fellow yummy mummies and daddies. Frankly do what you like. Whether you hand your 2yo an iPad on demand or ban screens of all sorts until they’re 21, the ultimate outcome will be very little different.

I’m very good at restricting my kids’ screen time.

I wish I was as good at restricting my own…

I’m also a little bit unconvinced about the extent to which you can “instil a love of reading”. I mean sure, you read to them and you talk about it and you model it etc. But like everything else, some will love it and some won’t.

i was an avid reader. My sister is like 15 months younger than me, same upbringing, same stories etc and can’t be arsed with it.

This fits my observations.

When I was tutoring , a lot of the kids I saw who were low income were on screens most of the day apart from school. Not all, but a significant proportion. Middle class kids were on them too but they also did other things a fair bit.

And it did make a difference to their functioning in school. The kids who were on screens all day were really limited in their experiences and things they had to talk about. Not just compared to better off kids, but also compared to poor kids pre-screen, who in the past were often much better than the well off kids at entertaining themselves. it's a real change.

It's nothing to do with wealth, it's all to do with aspirations. People who are forking out for private school are more likely to be on it regarding homework being done properly and engaging in extra curricular activities. It's not to say it doesn't happen in poorer areas but from colleagues I've definitely noticed immediate happiness of the child trumps academics, so more time for screen time etc.

@ilkleymoorbartat
I used to sit on the couch and whip out whatever book I was reading at the time and read if the DCs were watching TV. I took out books for myself when we went to the library.

My DCs went to bed quite late by MN standards and all at the same time, so we had time together in the evenings after dinner. They could watch some pre watershed TV or something on the VCR (so long ago!) or sit with me and read, or do something else quietly likenfinishing up homework, etc. You have to make time for it, I found, and evenings were really the only time available when they were little and not involved in school sports but still dealing with homework and playing outdoors earlier in the afternoon.

They were also allowed to read in bed.

Maybe this true in general but the 3 children I know who go to private school (not siblings, all live separately) are all pretty screen obsessed and spend many hours on them.

I bought lots of books for the DCs via school - you could buy cheap editions of books from an order form that was sent home monthly. On top of that, we had our calendar marked for the biggest event of the year as far as I was concerned, the annual library book sale where hundreds of thousands of books donated by the community and offloaded by the library were sold for between 25cents and $2 each. We spent a lot of time in local second hand bookshops too.

@worriedatthistime
Mine were never restricted from TV. DD1 had a tv in her room from age 12, and a dvd player. They got phones as soon as phones were available. I bought DVDs and before that, video tapes. We watched lots of TV together, and movies too, and chatted about what we were watching. I lost count of the number of times I watched The Lion King 2. Sometimes when I closed my eyes at night the songs kept going in my head.

I think it's a mistake to make big distinctions between what kids watch and what they read, to look down your nose at one and fetishise the other. Everything and every activity that children enjoy is an opportunity for a parent to connect with them, to let them feel that their opinions and feelings matter. It's a short hop from enjoying a movie together to chatting about a book you've both read. You won't transmit your love of books (or anything else important to you) to a child who feels no connection to you or who feels you're only going to engage with them on your own terms, not theirs.

My observation about current strict rules on screens that some parents impose is that restrictions are used as a class marker. They also turn screen time into forbidden fruit.

I'm sure if you took this study to the next level and examined whether 'wealthier parents' are the kind of people who engage in more of these outdoor/healthy/beneficial activities, you'd find a similar correlation.

It's a culture of people thing rather than a privilege thing in most cases.
Of course, there will be exceptions, and I'm likely talking more 'self made' well off than generational wealth.

It’s not wealth, as much as time wealth. With more money, there is more time. Even if you are working long hours at a stressful job, money will give you less stresses elsewhere. If you spending every waking minute worrying and wondering how the hell you are going to feed your family as well as working long hours at a stressful job it’s got to be easier to throw a tablet at a kid than argue with them to find something else to do.

@Apollonia1 my two loved reading, we’re obsessed with books as toddlers. It’s become more of a challenge now they’re getting older!
We’ve got a nice lifestyle, have enough money and I worry about a screen time a lot. We enforce limits. They have after school activities a few times a week, when not on tablets they play, draw, the younger one likes writing stories. At the weekends we go for long walks, go on scooters. I’ve noticed that many of my friends with a large disposable income will spend a lot of money on a day out/food out/gift shop. A walk picking blackberries or a walk into the hills and back doesn’t seem as appealing and I find that a shame, that children are being brought up to get used to these big days out all the time and won’t learn to appreciate more simple pastimes.

I can state from personal experience that this is bollocks. I have one kid in private secondary school and another in state primary. Both spend more time than I would like on devices.

DH and I don’t spend all of our spare time devising ‘enriching’ activities at all.

My kids go to state school

We have after school activities ever day

Running club, trampolining, swimming, drumming lessons and a tutor 2x a week also

Yet my kids still seem to find plenty of time for Minecraft etc..

@surreygirl1987 I was exactly the same, but this is much less common now than when we were kids because in the 80s and 90s there were far fewer things for kids to do other than read!

Nowadays kids don't tend to just become readers without some effort on the part of parents. It does happen, but it's very rare.

I'm an English teacher in a state school. My two teenagers are both still readers, although my 16 year old son much less than his sister, but he's studying for 4 A Levels so has less spare time.

My 9 year old rarely actively chooses to read. At the weekend I sit with him for an hour and we read. I read to him before bed every night. He reads to himself for a bit before going to sleep. This is enough to make him consistently in the top 3 readers in terms of number of words read in his class on Accelerated Reader, which is a bit worrying really, because compared to me as a kid he barely reads at all! This is in quite a nice state school in a relatively leafy area too.

Just a quick derail - mine are 13 and 15 and would love jobs but can't find anything which will take under 16s. There are no paper rounds here. What do yours do? Perhaps there is a route we can take which we've not thought about.