Why oh why are people giving their under 12s tablets?

[Bigpinksweater]

The evidence regarding the effects of tablets on developing brains is damning. They are absolutely not necessary and barely existed 15 years ago. We are seeing huge rises in behavioural and developmental issues while steadfastly ignoring the fact screen time and in particular tablets can contribute to virtually all of them.

Why oh why are people still handing their toddlers and primary school children tablets?

It definitely does! It's an extremely loose term and totally misleading especially if you've no understanding of maths or statistics which seems to be the case for pp

Ok this thread has really upset me.

My DC is 7 and has been asking why they don't have a tablet since they started school two years ago.

I like to think we weigh issues up carefully. For example they are no longer allowed watch any YouTube videos after attending a talk in the school. They cried uncontrollably for one night but then accepted it. For a brief period last year DC and their dad were playing on the Xbox for a rationed amount of time. However it was glaringly obvious that it was having a very negative impact on them; sobbing in bed at night unable to calm down. So that has been removed and again, after one day it was fine.

But we have decided they can have a tablet from FC and we are going to put a 30 mins per day timer on it. We are also going to allow it be used for reading.

Do the studies show that there are no positives to any use?

The chances of your child being harmed by half an hour of tablet use per the course of a day in a balanced living family is zero. Unless they spend that time watching porn or talking to strangers in a chatroom.

Like I said to another PP, “at a certain point of their schooling “ also carries a lot of weight and it’s not quantified or specified.

Let’s say you have a class with 3 kids with diabetes, one with epilepsy , one with epi pen , 2 with autism, one with ADHD , a couple with speech delay (that they overcame in time) , one in care(SEMH) , two who had traumatic events that resulted in anxiety and/or panic attacks either long or short term and you’d possibly get to half the class at some point or another. The level of support /intervention/ care plans will be different and sometimes very minimal , but they’d all fall under ALN .

Absolutely, and the thing is ds is normally very similar to your dd. Usually if we're going to an appointment he picks one toy to bring and with occupy himself/play quietly with me while he waits and is very good in those situations, but on that occasion we'd waited over an hour to be seen, only to be told he then needed drops in his eyes and then we needed to wait another 40 minutes before being taken again so by that point he was really done. Even very content, easy pleased children have their limits and I think that's the bit people often don't remember when they see a child on a tablet or phone - it's only a small snapshot of that parents day. I've always prioritised meal times together as a social thing so we don't do screens while eating, but I remember coming back from holiday just the two of us, me having been on the go from 1am on 2 hrs sleep, got back home at 9am and took ds for breakfast before I started the 2 hr drive home and I was totally wrecked. He'd done so well the whole way and we'd avoided screens the entire time while travelling for the week up to that point including in the airports and on planes but I really needed my head showered for a few minutes before I was ready for a long drive home so he got to watch a bit of TV on my phone while he ate his breakfast. And I remember thinking about what other people would have thought about me as a mother with him on it and the assumptions they'd make about me and how ridiculous it was because that was so out of the norm for us. I don't think anyone has any business judging another parent for screen time unless they've the full context of the usage.

It does , because needing extra support , means needing extra support regardless of the cause , how long for or what form it takes.

But that PP has a bee in her bonnet, particularly about ADHD it seems .

I took the kids to watersyones last world book day, my son chose a dogman colouring book as well as his free book and my daughter a little pack of duggee mini books. Then we went to Starbucks and got cake and milk and they sat colouring and reading and I sent my husband a photo titled 'me and my screefree kids' 😂 because same reason! Absolute snapshot and normally we wouldn't get both sitting quietly (that was a year ago, actually now it's much more common as he's discovered colouring and drawing)

Which just shows the brewing stigma around adhd diagnosis which is so detrimental to kids and adults with that diagnosis. I always think it's a very convenient nd diagnosis to be dismissive of because often the associated behaviours are quite frustrating to others particularly when people affected reach puberty or teen years. It's just so much easier to be dismissive/ stereotype/ label them little shits with bad parents than to practice empathy isn't it.

😆 Its also funny that schools effectively went back to 'slates' in the form of white or wipe boards what 100 years later?

People like to prioritise their own desire for peace and quiet, and their desire to go to places which aren't entirely suitable for children to sit quietly.

Tablets and phones are incredibly damaging. We know this, and have known for long enough for people to adjust their approach to using them.

Do they?

Are they?

Do we?

Those seem like somewhat nonsense statements

Our prep school works exclusively across tablets, most subjects require them, excluding art, PE, music and drama. Showbie records their progress and homework, so you can’t really be a non-conformist, how will the school monitor your child? Let’s face it, they are really monitoring us monitoring the child (and how well we oversee). Screens can convey good and bad information, it’s the adults who set permissions and access. I agree toddlers clutching phones is the norm, but then I have no idea how well that mum is coping/how much sleep everyone had the previous evening/how far they are travelling- all are factors.

Same. 😀

I think harping about what we did in the 70s/80s/90s/ pick pre tablet decade is a bit pointless.

We aren't living in that time now. Yes, I grew up in a different time when we didn't have all that, but kids today aren't living in that world. The technology is there. We aren't going to suddenly see it disappear.

People can sit and do the smug, 'oh, well, MY child doesn't use any of that' like the parents of my generation used to smugly announce little Josephine didn't know what a TV was.

But the fact is, this is their world. It's more than a TV, it's a tool that, no, many might not need at the dinner table, but all are likely to need more as their lives progress down this current technological path.

We really should be more concerned about our children being prepared for a job market that existed 20 years ago, not the one that will exist when they leave school.

Who here would have said, 'I'm not buying a computer for my child' 20 years ago for anything other than financial reasons?

I know you'll say, 'it's different', but it really isn't. Your children need to be using the tools that will have the most prominence in their lives as they grow up. We can't pretend all this will go away.

Usage doesn't have to be irresponsible. You are still the parent, not the machine. You don't have to leave them sat in front of it until their brain rots, but you DO need to recognise the importance of this stuff in modern lives.

I wish it wasn't so, but wishing doesn't change it, and trying to take their child out of the sphere of references for their era is not the answer.

ROFL - no, both walking before 1 (eldest because he wanted to press the buttons on my computer, youngest because he wanted what his elder brother had), - they all have their special interests (eldest couldn't be bothered talking until he was 2 and a half for example - he makes up for it now). Youngest didn't bother with reading until he was about 6 (because he got his older brother to do it for him). Eldest took to reading much earlier, but nothing crazy.

They had ipads from toddler-hood, with reasonable restriction ie. kids youtube, no adverts, in the same room as me generally (what with the being toddlers) so I'd tell them to put something else on if I didn't like what I heard. They watched anything from Thomas the Tank engine videos to Disney Collector to shapes and ABCs songs. Interests changed as they grew. Youngest prefers craft, cooking, Clash of Clans and Pokemon game videos, eldest history, science and Hearts of Iron play-throughs. All entirely self-lead and only restricted in that there's no ipads over night or if I ask them to put them away (eg at dinner)

The WW1 politics wasn't until he was 14. Youngest isn't interested in that at all. He prefers having Chat create poems about farts, or 'would you rather' and 'who would win in a fight' conversations.

In any case, nothing wrong with tablets in my experience. It's about the parenting, not the devices.

And I say this because my eldest is the same age as ipads are - born the year they were released, so he's had access to one his entire life. And i'm techie, we have basically any tech we want in the house.

He purposefully leaves his phone at home, and has no social media at 15, switches everything off and goes to bed at 10, up again at 6, polite, doing well at school. Youngest is cheekier, but that's just him - it's all in good humour - he has no issues at school, plugs in his devices and goes to bed every night with no fuss, despite basically having an ipad next to him all the hours he's not at school.

The devices or lack of devices isn't the issue. It's the parenting.

You don't have roads where you live?

That's still an exceptionally high figure. And the fact that everything from bed wetting, to ADHD, to profound physical disability is included in that umbrella explains why. The category does just become meaningless when mostly quite normal childhood developmental concerns such as bed wetting, and treatment managed health conditions like diabetes, are placed alongside a child being disabled from birth and needing, say, a wheelchair. These things are distinct. Categories have to have utility and the SEN one doesn't anymore, which is detrimental to those children with the greatest need

Lots of things that schools do are damaging so Im not sure that is a good barometer. They can be useful for certain things, the general gist of this is about young children and the way the brain develops.

Because it's a made up 'category' for the purposes of that article. It's not a real thing you do get that right? The actual statistics for children who are on the sen register is around 10-12% which is 3-4 in any 30 child class, which is both in keeping with what I see in our local school AND what I recall from being school in the 90s of my class of 30 there were 2 girls who couldn't read by end of p6 who later were diagnosed with dyslexia, a hugely badly behaved boy who it turns out when he had his own children they all have a genetic condition himself included, a set of twins born prematurely who had learning difficulties and my best friend who was deaf and had hearing aids with a massive battery pack and that's the ones I remember.

Your statistics are flawed because you can't seem to understand that article is playing with numbers to make a nonsense point. And to do so and access shocking statistics it has to use 20 yr old statistics. 20 yrs ago being the timeframe everyone seems to claim we'd no tablets and no one had any learning difficulties

Also type 1 diabetes is a very serious condition, just because we have treatments nowadays do you have any idea what it takes to manage? On diagnosis there's a 2 week hospital stay for most as they get their insulin dosage sorted out. Their libre device can alarm multiple times a night with hypoglycaemia. And during the school day they can alarm and the child need to be taken by the school nurse to access glucose or an insulin injection. It's probably one for he hardest childhood conditions to manage. Certainly up there with my son's seizures.

The category in that article isn't SEN either, it's kids who needed support. Entirely different to children accessing SEND support in 2025. Your outrage is based on fairytale and clouds and lack of understanding of, well anything, medical understanding, childhood development, what SEN actually means, what specific conditions mean for children. You're spout ableist dog whistles.

You also never said if you let your 4 and 6 yr olds play outside unsupervised by riverbeds as you suggested I should with my disabled 7 yr old? Could you elaborate on that for me?

They do yes, mostly with their older sibling. They know where and how far they are allowed to go, and I tell them when they need to be back by. As they get older, where and how far increases naturally. They also know what to do in an emergency (find a nice lady, ideally with children, to help) and they know our address and phone number. My eldest gets the bus into town alone to meet friends. We live in a safe and rural area where this is possible, and so I fully appreciate that this may not be everyone's experience. But I do think parents should try to facilitate this kind of thing where they can, as it builds so much resilience, problem solving, independence, all that good stuff. This could be things like letting children run on ahead when out walking for example. If we go out as a family, me and DH often sit at a Cafe and the children will just run off and do their own thing. The worst that's happened is a sprained ankle or cut. We are usually out for the entire morning in the hols, unless it's absolutely torrential.

They look out for each other, as I did for my siblings. There were a lot of us growing up and at 5 years old I was often babysitting for my younger siblings while my Mum got on with things. Perhaps it's my background and growing up that way, but it really saddens me that there's so much less playing out and being outdoors than there used to be. These devices are such a terrible replacement. You literally see families out at restaurants and the parents, rather than involving their kids in conversations and talking, are happy to shove an iPad in the kids face. It's just sad

As someone raised in the 90s eldest of 6 siblings I can tell you I see your oracticea as actually neglectful. Letting a 4 yr old play unsupervised and expecting a 10 yr old to supervise them is not acceptable. If something happens to your youngest your eldest has that to live with. As I say my kids spend hours outside every day but WITH us. Parks, woods, dog walks, family bike rides. They have almost constant interaction with a parent. You sending yours out of the door with a wave at 4 is actually lazy and neglectful.

You're sat at a cafe and your 4 yr old is running off to where exactly?