AIBU or is screen time ruining our kids?

[newbienel]

I just got back from a holiday in Mallorca with my family and I cannot comprehend what I saw when I was there. So many kids being pushed around in their buggy with big screens in front of their faces- iPads or phones, it was so shocking. Little kids trailing behind their parents watching something on an iPhone.

I was especially shocked about was the amount of screens being used by parents at the restaurants. Every night I saw families plonking their kids (some as young as 10 or 11 months old) in front of screens at the table, not paying any attention to them, or talking to them much. I also have to say it was mostly Uk families I saw doing this, not so many German families or Dutch.

What are we doing to this next generation? AIBU to think this is just getting out of hand and our kids will be addicted and not well adjusted? I can understand some screen time is ok, especially when parents need a break, but it just seemed out of hand..

I think we’ve got to be so careful we don’t say ‘just today because I’m tired’ or ‘just this once’ because before you know it, it has become the norm.
one friend said she gives her primary children the tablet whenever they eat out or they’re a nightmare. Erm, however are they going to learn without parents putting the effort in to teach them to sit nicely and (shock, horror) for them to be bored!!

I agree OP. I'm not against the odd episode of something on CBeebies for my baby while I have a breather, but what I really cannot abide is seeing babies and kids on screens rather than interacting with the real world. Was in the supermarket the other day and saw a woman with a tiny tot in the trolley with the toddler just watching endless YouTube videos. She even asked her mum a question and her mum ignored her! Such a missed learning opportunity to learn about the supermarket, different foods, see different people etc.

I think it’s looking for alternatives. If you are alternating between swimming and tablet what about something else as well?

Not unreasonable at all.
Mine aren’t allowed it. Ever. And they know how to behave, both at home and in public. We actually TALK to them in restaurants (shock horror).

I have a climber and a runner and when we were also on holiday in Mallorca if either of us actually wanted to finish eating (and even then we had to rush our food down as toddler finishes much faster than us) we had to try and distract him with a tablet when he was finished. Half the time even that didn't work. If you have any other ideas I'd love to hear them. We are on holiday too and want to be able to rest

Yanbu

That rock and roll is the devil's music and will ruin the young 'uns!!!!

Wait... wrong decade

Maybe they finish faster than you because they know they get the tablet at the end of the meal. Jeez is it any wonder the generation is fked if the parents first thought to distract the child is to throw it a screen. Try good old conversation.

It's the opposite of mindfulness really isn't it ? Can't be good for us - hate seeing toddlers in prams looking at a screen. Why not look at the world ffs??!!
Also hate seeing babies desperately trying to make eye contact with mum (or dad)and not getting coz parent gawping at phone. It literally breaks my heart.:(

Last summer it was a lovely hot day and we went to our local lido. There's a plash pad for toddlers and I watched several toddlers who were sitting in the buggy with a dummy in and iPad in front of them for the whole time they were there. Children are literally missing out on life whilst glued to screens. I think we'll look back at this as abusive one day, hopefully when the world has come to some sense.

You are seeing a snapshot of a family on holiday - you have no idea how much time the parents spend talking and interacting with their children normally or how much they've done this during the day.

So true.

Adding -
children who don't know how to turn a page on a book - I've seen five year olds try to slide their finger over the book page to try and move on to the next

additional maths learning required particularly around using objects to develop mathematical concepts

Children who have no logic especially around working through completing something like a jigsaw

Very little learning attributes ( try, fail and try again, problem solving, attention, perseverance etc)

I don’t think you can judge from a simple snapshot of a moment. I’m quite anti screens but if I had an overtired toddler on holiday and they had finished their food, I would happily give them my phone so I could finish my meal without dealing with a public meltdown.

Generally, I think some kids are completely addicted to screens. And I worry about my own children as they get older in particular and it becomes harder to control. They are missing out on the real world.

As several pp have said - it is different to previous technology as it is very portable and over used to keep children quiet in public spaces. It's also very stimulating in a way books and older TV shows aren't. A lot of it is absolute drivel too ( skibidi toilet etc)

It's an experiment we won't find out the impact on until much later.

@HandaFae Are you a teacher? That is just so sad about the book thing.

It's almost all absolute drivel. Youtube is just mind numbing dross as are all the silly games. Parents will justify it any way they can but its abhorrent and becomes a crutch they have to rely on once they start. If a child cant sit for 10 minutes while you finish a meal its a bad job.

You could try some of the things we did pre-screens.. little toys or books ( keep something aside in your bag for novelty value), order him an ice cream in a bowl to plough through or take turns to hold him while you eat. If all fails, one of you takes him out for a walk and then swap over. Maybe you won’t eat all your meal
in peace but it’s a short stage. We ate out frequently with baby and toddler twins and they got used to sitting at table for the duration.

An alarming amount of 'addicted to screens' behaviour - short attention span, lack of concentration etc can present as the symptoms of ADHD which must make diagnosis/ management really difficult.

There used to be a village. Neighbours, grandparents, auntie living round the corner. It used to be ok to push your kids out the door to play and most jobs were regular hours without overtime and often one parent of young children was at home. Everything was less busy, airports were less fraught, there were less people trying to get everywhere and do everything and people were more tolerant of young children and their noise.

Now there's none of that. Parents live in a world where they're expected to work the whole time and be parent of the year, and they can no longer push the kids out the door but have to entertain them the whole time, but they have twenty billion emails to read and five documents to comment on, and money's tight this month because food prices are through the roof, the cost of nursery is increasing and they had to take unpaid leave because little Amelia had a snotty nose and the nursery wouldn't take her.

And what parents learnt during Covid is that no one really gives a damn about them and their kids. They might bleat on about how it's so sad that parents had to stick their preschoolers in front of Cbeebies for 8 hours a day to pay the rent and how the next generation of kids are screwed, but when the chips were down, no one fucking cared enough to actually make things work for families. Parents were essentially told to split themselves in three - simultaneously be teacher, parent and wage earner. That was the suggested solution. People thought this was ok.

Many parents have now twigged that there is no village, no one really cares, and they're surrounded by sanctimonious, judgy moaners. So they'll do what works for them and, yes it might not always be what's 100% best for the kids, but if the parents manage to eat their dinner in peace, stay sane and maintain some kind of zen, as opposite to snapping completely and locking themselves in a dark cupboard, then that's probably in the kids' interests overall.

Kids who are used to no screens at the table don't suddenly need them because they're on holiday.
I think it's a massive problem..
Many kids don't have the focus to do anything for long without a screen. That includes watching a film.

What's going to happen when this generation enters the workforce

Maybe aI will have taken over and there are barely any jobs? Maybe our lives will be played out plugged into the meta verse and this generation is skilled up for this?

This post deserves more emphasis. Mindfulness is all about being in the moment i believe.

Parents are cultivating children who cannot simply sit and do nothing, even for 5 minutes. These screens are no more than visual dummies.

Toddlers etc should be able to sit and just be in the moment. If in a restaurant, observe something, look at the world, out the window, watch the waiter, look at the decor, take it all in. Talk to them about it, talk about the food, have a bloody laugh!! Toddlers love a joke, be silly, tell a story. Is this rocket science?! Interact with them instead of giving them an ipad and letting them watch mind numbing tripe. You have to despair at some modern parenting.

Yanbu it's awful. I took my 5 year old son to the barbers the other week. There were 2 other boys in there who just watched a phone the entire time they were in there (one having his hair cut and one waiting for his brother). Meanwhile my son was taking in his surroundings, learning how to chat with the lady doing his hair, all sorts of important learning that the other boys missed out on to make life easy for the mum.

Lots of toddlers on the school run now watching phones in the buggy. Bad for their eyes, they need to be practising their long term vision while out and about.

I used to teach and trust me you can sadly spot the 'heavy use of screen' kids very easily. Their attention and focus skills, language skills and fine motor are often very poor.

I have never once used screens while out and about with my 2. In a restaurant we chat, colour, go for a walk, anything. Absolutely crucial learning and development imo.

It's very sad.

I agree, OP. I think the way our generation parents with screens right now will be looked back upon in a similar way to how people now see things like smoking around children or administering harsh corporal punishment. I.e. “This was bad for us, but our parents didn’t really know enough at the time to see it as an issue.”

I'm absolutely not picking at you or judging at all, I just want to pick up on what you said about there being no difference between the two.

I won't preach about pencil grips etc but there must be a difference we can all acknowledge between the difference between old fashioned books and pencils and tablets because we all know which one we would give kids if we needed 1 hour to do something urgent.

My gripe is 100% not aimed at you, btw, I'm just making the point that the devices themselves are addictive And problematic in a way that books and non tech isn't because it doesn't hold their attention in the same way.

yeah I’ve no patience with parents who don’t want to parent because they just need a break tbh. I would have loved on many occasions to give my children an iPad and had a meal where my husband and I could discuss things that interested us but we didn’t because we are parents now and we prioritise what’s best for our kids. This means that now we have children who are still very young but who will sit in a restaurant and talk to us over dinner and are a pleasure to take out but it’s taken a lot of hard work to get to this point. A lot of people don’t want to do the work