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 am referring to younger children who do not have their own device / free access to the internet. Where there is still parental control.

teenagers using the internet is a concern but a separate issue.

Why? What’s changing?

I agree it's shite lazy parenting.

But think back (if you're old enough!) to when parents gave their children fags. Then people and gov woke up to the health impacts smoking had and people's attitudes changed as gov stepped in to reduce the power of big tobacco.

The same is starting to happen with the movement created by Daisy and Claire giving parents more power to influence schools. And scientists and psychologists like Haidt and others publishing research over the last 30 years. It can't be ignored anymore.

2024 is a watershed moment- long way to go but attitudes are turning.

@Sagarmatha Clearly there are loads of Karens out there and you can see how we're swimming against the tide. Plus shit chains like McDonalds and Hungry Horse are putting screens and interactive screens in their restaurants to lure kids in and provide respite for parents. The horse has bolted I fear.
Any parent with half a brain should see the damage it does.

Ultimately we'll all have to answer to our children later on in life for how we parented them. I plan to tell mine that I'm sorry they grew up with the attention span of a particularly dim-witted gnat but at least they never mastered the art of self-congratulation at the dinner table.

If we cared about the damage being done to children by modern life, we'd parent them within an entirely different societal structure.

Obsessing about screen time is an example of failing to see the wood for the trees.

There has definitely been a huge increase in this over the last few years. My DCs are tweens now, but when they were little it wasn't very common to use tech at meal times or when eating out - we used to take sticker books, books, small toys, a card game etc.. Now, it seems like it's the norm to just shove the kids, even very small babies, in front of a screen as soon as you sit down - or when walking round the supermarket.

My biggest concern with this is how little the children are being talked to - restaurants and shopping trips are perfect times to talk and develop language skills. There was a recent BBC article about how there are so many kids now starting school with speech delays - you cannot tell me that these two are not linked... it's really worrying.

I know it's 'wrong to judge' but I do hope that it might become at least a bit less 'the norm' to prop a phone in front of your toddler's face. (also, what happened to the advice about no screens/TV before the age of 2?! That was definitely pushed by health visitors / professionals when my kids were small, not all the long ago!)

I also find screen time incredibly worrying. In my daughter's primary school there are iPads in every year group with years 5 and 6 having one iPad per child. They do nearly all textbook work on it - taking screen shots of the page and annotating it, as well as using it instead of post it's, for research, to create ppts etc. On top of this they have games such as Minecraft. Does anyone know of there are studies showing that iPad use in general has a negative impact on children or is research limited to social media and fast paced games?

Do you ever open a newspaper? Every single one over the last 6 months is reporting on this topic.

Every single UK news outlet is in favour of a ban on smartphones for children under 14.

Many, many schools are taking action and banning smartphones at school.

Many parents- like me- are not buying their 11 or 1w Yr old kids a smartphone just because everyone else has one because we are joined up in local communities via SFC.

So in short - a lot.

@Iwanttoraceacrosstheworld my son is in year 1 and has to play on a maths app on my phone several times a week as part of his homework. It's crazy!

Why is that crazy?

did you write this message to mumsnet with pen and paper?

Never even had homework in primary schools till the 90s, or was it 00's?! But that another story.

Its ridiculous now expecting KS1 to do stuff on tablets or laptops at home and likely all cos its easier for teachers to manage. Kids shouldnt be told to do homework on tech before theyve learned to write with a bloody pen!

@karenoh what do you mean what's changing? Do you live in the world? Read the news?

I don't think we talk about our/our kids screen addictions enough and tbh I think for this generation of kids the horse has bolted really hasn't it? God it's depressing.

@Billyandharry i cant figure out if your posting is satire or not!

DS only has screens when we are eating out. He watches it until his food arrives and then it goes away. It's hard for him otherwise being autistic and non verbal, he gets wound up waiting so we use a screen.
Although my 6 year old nephew was shocked as to why DS didn't have his own iPad. I said because he's 4. DN looked confused, possibly because he' uses screens a lot (both parents work from home but long hours).
Screens have their place IMO but are used too much and there's no reason at all for a young baby to be stuck Infront of one.

@treestump erm....no it's really not! Something that i find heart breaking actually.

@Billyandharry you sound old school like myself. Seismic shifts as i mentioned earlier in todays younger generation. Did that much really change from say the 50s to the 00's in terms of kids entertainment. In rural places like im from kids used to play outside, on bikes, with balls, play in the woods, build things, pelt the local bus with snowballs every winter! We'd amuse ourselves and parents were laid back about where we were. In the 80s and 90s home computers and video games took off but you'd still see kids playing in the streets till the early 2000s then it gradually declined. It all coincided with faster and faster internet, smartphones and ipads/tablets. You buy kids lego now and they discard the paper instructions then switch their Ipad on to watch/read the instructions there. Its madness. There's literally no escape. Did you read that PP saying a 5 year old was trying to right swipe on a paper book. I think that demonstrates why its too late now and the horse has bolted. Rant over.

I’ve completely rethought our tech use at home and seen real benefits in terms of emotional regulation on both of my girls ages six and 4, but particularly the younger one. She was born at the start of covid and for our family it was extremely difficult, relationship breakdown along with new baby who was very unwell a lot of the time, career being wiped out and being completely isolated from friends and family as I live in a different part of the uk to where most of my friends and family are. Anyway, screen time went way up and my youngest had a lot from a young age. Recently I said only ipad at weekends with a timer, and we switched to just dvds for a while for tv. It’s like night and day - they rarely ask for the iPad and have been playing so much more. What really clinched it for me is that I teach a stringed instrument to groups of primary school kids. I can instantly tell who has a lot of screen time (usually then confirmed by their answer to what did you do over the weekend?) because they have an inability to concentrate for more than a few seconds at a time. As a consequence I have groups I started at the same time where one group is flying through all the notes and about to start graded exams, and another group the same year group who are still struggling to remember which hand the put on the strings and which one holds the bow. I’ve been teaching my own kids needle crafts and they love it and I can see their concentration ability developing as they do it

You are not being unreasonable and I don’t use screens with mine in public as a rule (they get enough Tv at home ashamedly!)

However, when I went out for a meal recently the waiter kept saying how well behaved the baby was with the tablet at another table and then pointedly looking at my kids who were just engaging with the meal and making a bit of noise -no noisier than the adults. It was very rude and I felt judged for not using a screen to placate my children!

@MaMisled could have been me! I took my 3 year old out for the day. We don't have an ipad and he's never used my phone. We took an hour over lunch, with a view, talking about everything we could see. I feel lucky I was an 80s/90s kid as it feels totally normal to me so almost by accident, my child is having a 90s style childhood - lots of outdoor time, a bit of TV each day but no other screen time. And absolutely none at mealtimes.

Lots of children strapped into pushchairs, dummy in, screen on. Really sad to see.

I know there are always exceptions but generally, a lot of parents don't have to use screens like they do.

Also, on a cheerier note, I live on a new build estate with lots of playparks. They're always busy, lovely to see.

My child didn't even have a laptop until year 2 when we had to get one for Covid lockdown and home schooling. At ten he's just got his first game console. I was worried about him having it, but he can play for a bit and put down and move onto Lego and other bits. He can sit on planes and look out the window, sit in a car for a seven hour trip and be entertained by the motorway and chatting.
I've had to made a conscious effort and it's been hard work.
It's also very noticeable for much more advanced he is compared to his peers.

Bravo @TwixOwl you have proven that it can be done.😀

Probably because it’s a big issue at the moment.

When DD started reception the teacher told us how we could help at home by doing the online activities she set for them. I said we couldn’t, she said ‘it’s easy you just download the app to your tablet’. I said that’s the point, we don’t have a tablet. She was absolutely agog. We read to DD, we play board and card games, we talk a lot, we take her to museums and the library. I don’t think I need to be doing any more for a 5 year old at home in terms of education.