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..

@Hungrycaterpillarsmummy its not one or the other though; tablets or playing up/being smacked. Kids need to learn to sit at the dinner table without being stimulated by some secondary input. It starts as soon as they’re weaned.

My 2 year old has learnt to sit at the table, because she’s never been given the alternative of a screen. Fair enough, she’s wriggly and we end up taking it in turns with her on our laps but I know that once she’s the same age as my eldest in only a couple of years she’ll be able to sit and even join in with the conversation at the table. I didn’t have to discipline her strictly to get to that point? She learnt because she was socialised.

Kids need to learn social skills and manners and they’re not going to learn anything with a screen in front of their face.

@Grandmasswagbag I think if people got a good macro view of the situation they would realise. Kids nowadays have no attention span. I don’t want be elderly in the world with the adults these kids are going to become, it honestly scares me!

@KarenOH

Just to add that the screen debate has been done to fucking DEATH and it’s boring.

Well maybe it needs to be discussed more often as clearly it's affecting children under 12 - I would say those kids around 14 upwards had parents who didn't use their phones as often when they were little. It's alarming that so many people don't see the correlation between children being unable to speak properly & sit still in school or at a dinner table & the use of tablets & phones by adults as well as small children.

I'm not anti screens at all. But it's starting to become apparent that there are issues associated with it all.

And I'd love to know the correlation between all these modern diagnoses and parents reliance on using technology. It's like the chicken and the egg.

@Hungrycaterpillarsmummy

Oh give it a rest. Would you prefer kids playing up at the dinner table in a restaurant or eating quietly as they watch a cartoon or play a game?

I'd rather see children talking, laughing and maybe messing around a bit than sitting in silence glued to a screen.

There is a middle ground. They could be sitting & having a laugh. They don't have to be either silent or being a nightmare running around.

I noticed exactly the same when on holiday last year but it wasn't just British families, it was replicated in many other nationalities too.

People will say it is just a snapshot of the day, we don't know what they have been doing all day etc etc but when a child sits down at a table and instantly turns on a screen, it is pretty obvious. Likewise for the babies/toddlers that have been wheeled into the restaurant in their buggies with the screen already on. Parents who fall back on it as a last resort switch them later on when they start to struggle, usually after the food. Funnily enough, the resort we stayed at last year had a soft play area within the restaurant - my children were some of very few who made use of it.

The positive is we quickly made friends with a couple of like minded families as the children socialised with the few that were not sat in front of a screen and we have all stayed in touch!

Our children are not perfect and will naturally fidget at the table when we go out of a meal but they are learning important social skills. Now they are older, we tend to take a pack of cards if out for a longer meal, previously used to be a stack of crayons and art supplies. The difference between this and a screen is we don't have any resistance putting it away to eat the meal and they always look up from an activity to speak

YANBU and to be honest we don’t see this discussed enough. The impact of tablet use on kids at work (primary school) is very obvious and quite shocking.

Its not one or the other. You will not see my children engaging in either option at a restaurant and it is not because we instil fear in them

Well let's keep doing it until schools across the UK ban phones in primary and secondary schools and the government takes the action it was told to earlier this year by the parliamentary committee by banning phones for children under 14 or 16.

This country is a fucking mess. How can anyone with a brain seriously think that giving children a smartphone read - actually a computer is healthy or good for them esp for any length of time at all.

It's not. Just read or listen to Jonathan Haidt and every other child specialist or psychologist globally.

Parents and schools have a lot to answer for.

www.linkedin.com/posts/jonathan-haidt-2a594666_thefournorms-thefutureofeverything-theanxiousgeneration-activity-7200260884013756416-DFnM?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

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Screen time: impacts on education and wellbeing – Report Summary

This is a House of Commons Committee report, with recommendations to government.

publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5804/cmselect/cmeduc/118/summary.html#

A little taster:

79% of children had encountered violent pornography before the age of 18

81% of girls, aged 7–21 have experienced some form of threatening or upsetting behaviour online

Children can also experience sexual abuse when using screens, and sexual crimes committed against children online has risen by 400% since 2013.

Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggests that one in five children (19%) aged 10–15 experienced at least one type of bullying behaviour online, and out of them, around three-quarters (72%) said they experienced at least some of it at school or during school time.

Screen time can also have physical impacts through sedentary lifestyle and digital eye strain.

strong evidence that smartphones and computers disrupt pupils’ learning both at home and in the classroom, as it can take up to 20 minutes for pupils to refocus on what they were learning after engaging in a non-academic activity such as browsing the internet or noticing a notification on their phone.

Recent research suggests that children who were exposed to longer than two hours a day of recreational screen time on smart phones and playing video games had worse working memory, processing speed, attention levels, language skills and executive function compared with those who did not. Screen time can also be damaging to a child’s sleep pattern.

www.hubermanlab.com/episode/dr-jonathan-haidt-how-smartphones-social-media-impact-mental-health-the-realistic-solutions

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Well let's keep doing it until schools across the UK ban phones in primary and secondary schools and the government takes the action it was told to earlier this year by the parliamentary committee by banning phones for children under 14 or 16.

Agree - but the real issue is the screens getting shoved in kids’ faces from near enough birth. The first 3 years are absolutely crucial in brain development and that is exactly when these kids are not having enough stories read to them, general chit chat, gross and fine motor play, nursery rhymes, etc.

They come to school and the impact is already very obvious. I’ve had numerous 5 year olds at work tell me that they don’t like stories, they like their ipads. How we change this epidemic of giving babies and toddlers tablets - I don’t know.

Screen time probably isn’t responsible for the amount of self righteous and smarmy posts though. Wonder what causes that?

Teaching background, including headship. I work now across a range of schools.

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That’s beyond fucking offensive and lazy.

For those of us that work with kids - sadness.

Maybe because it’s unrealistic?

devices are here to stay, so we are better off encouraging how to moderate usage and make more media that’s appropriate for young children to use.

but it’s never that argument, it’s missing a snapshot of a total strangers day and running to social media to bitch about it.

I have just written a letter to my daughters secondary school on this topic. We are one of the few families who have not yet given our child a smartphone but she is the outlier.

The pressure to cave is horrendous but I am totally against children using screens and owning their own phones until 14, ideally 16.

If anyone here wants to join the smartphone free childhood campaign please go to this website. We are putting pressure on schools to act. I'm also happy to share my template letter to anyone who wants to send it to a primary or secondary school head teacher.

Action starts at home but it's hard to take action when you feel like you're the only one.

www.smartphonefreechildhood.co.uk

Some ideas!

From being tiny we created an expectation. Children stayed in the pushchair, with a favourite toy, a mirror, a musical toy, whatever engaged them. This continued as they got older, transferring from the pushchair to chair.

We prepared the little ones for bed and walked around with them in their pushchair, timing our meal for them falling asleep.

Sometimes we ate in ‘shifts’, asking the restaurant to hold one dish until the second adult had finished their meal and was able to engage with our children, making sure that they still had a toy, some chat and the expectation that they stayed on their seat/in the pushchair.

Make more media that's appropriate for young kids? What about the grim content that children can access, the algorithm that points them to body shaming sites and the addictive design of screens.

Who you gonna call? Zuckerberg or some other big tech ceo? They're in it for the money.

Interesting too that Spain France Netherlands Denmark Italy have alp banned smartphones in school.

The UK lags as per usual.

Why pressure on schools? It's the parents that need to act and not buy their children smartphones in the first place!

My dd eats with a tablet and headphones every day, she’s 11. She is autistic and it helps her regulate and block out the noise of others eating. Holidays are really hard for her, so I let her do whatever she needs. I give no fucks what others think, I’m well past caring if others judge my parenting of her.

Quite often she doesn’t look at the screen but is listening to help with the sensory overload.

There is evidence that screen time is helpful for neurodivergent people to regulate.

And @KarenOH - But it isn't is it.

This is about children and the damage being done to them. Perhaps done to death, but worth it!