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?

Meh, I can't get worked up about this.

I remember my gran going batshit when my mum let me have a TV in my bedroom when I was 13. She said it would 'rot my brain.' Shockingly it didn't. I used to watch The Sky At Night, Doctor Who, World In Action, Tomorrows World, How, and nature and science documentaries. (As well as some kids programmes and Top Of The Pops!!!)

What do you think children and teens are doing on these tablets @Bigpinksweater ???

I thought that too for a minute! 😆

My 5 year old has never used a tablet. His Yr1 teacher said they used to use a maths app but had decided to stop that from this year - decision has widespread support amongst parents, there's really no need for young children to use them.

DD has maths homework on an app, she uses an old one DH had and it’s not hers, it’s just the thing she does the maths on a few times a week for ten or so minutes. It’s got the maths app and Spotify and she’ll someone’s use that to listen to stories when she’s in the bath. She’d never seen a tablet until she started school and won’t use it for anything else for many years. Homework on a tablet (which I do resent and always have) doesn’t have to be a gateway to anything else.

My nephew is 15. When he was a baby he had an iPad and his parents shoved it in front of him at every opportunity. He could say iPad before he could say anything else! My DC are older and didn’t have an (shared family) iPad for long journeys until they were in their mid teens!

That's not happening though. Children still play, with each other and alone, and engage with people/parents/family, as well as 'going on a tablet.' No child is on their tablet every waking hour!

.

How else would you suggest we expose our children to their second language that nobody else in our vicinity speaks except their dad?

My kids secondary school have moved all homework into paper booklets - so at least kids have to copy the answers from AI to complete it! My kids do have tablets and have used them for some fun / interesting projects and a lot of rubbish... they are still nice kids.

Mine are grown up now but as someone who has worked in education for over 20 years, there is no way I would give my child a tablet until at least 10 years of age and then it would be very heavily monitored.

"Under 12s"?

It's very different for a 9 or 10 year old using a tablet for schoolwork apps and research to a 2 or 3 year old just staring at cartoons on youtube. Tablets are used frequently at school for older primary kids for all kinds of work, including coding and maths games.

If they don't get familiar with them, I think they're at a bit of a disadvantage when going into secondary.

Because her brother had high needs Autism/ADHD so severe he needs to be in a specialist school on 1:1 care all day but apparently when he comes home on an evening no one really cares how I manage that. Yes we have social service/all of the support services involved they just do not have funding and even when he got a care package and offered well over the odds pay wise we still couldn’t get anyone to work it.

so whilst I’m 1:1 ing her brother around the house trying to avoid him literally unaliving himself … because he does like to try… she’s on her tablet.

I wish I could be giving her my attention and I hate that this is what it’s come to. I wouldn’t have even used a tablet otherwise but no, please continue guilt tripping me 😬

I knew there would be one groovy poster who draws parallel with ancient tech that didn’t have the same feedback loop, endless feeds and capabilities that screens do now..

I have a 20 yr old niece and 12 ISH years ago she and her peers had portable dvd players.

I'm 42 and had a speak and spell and a major Morgan and a little programmable robot which was the tech of the time.

My cousin's in their 30s were stuck in a playpen and left to scream while mum made dinner or the playpen was shoved Infront of a TV

All those generations from pre school age were sent outside or to their room to play unsupervised and childhood accidents and deaths were hugely common

All this catastrophisibh has been around since the Victorian days when parents were worried about their girls wasting hours reading rubbish romance and adventure novels.

Excessive use of anything isn't great but the main problem with tablet use that I see is the way it replaces other input in families where parents are generally neglectful. There are a lot of hours in the day and when we've been to softplay, baked, ready books, coloured in, been to the park, walked the dog, read books and played boardgames throwing up to a couple of hours playing a video game or watching something age appropriate is not something I'm getting worked up about.

Thought you meant medication lol

This is exactly the same as my mum used to say to me about…. Books.

I would read all day, everyday, anything and everything. I was constantly being told to put the book down and talk to people, I had them confiscated, I wasn’t allowed to read more than x hours.

so yeah, I was pretty much a “zombie child staring at books in every social situation instead of talking and playing”.

both my children were behind on their reading in years 1 and 2. They hated biff chip and kipper, I simply couldn’t get them to read. They weren’t interested in the simple books, and weren’t able to read the interesting ones.

a tablet changed everything. Moshi monsters, some other on line games and learning resources and within a year they had caught up with their reading levels completely.

so I don’t always think tablets are a bad thing.

Every child in the primary school I used to work at was given an iPad. They are used nearly all day every day for most subjects. Exercise books rarely used now.

There’s other respected studies that it is there. And given these children are not yet adults, there is no long term evidence.

I’ll no doubt get flamed for this, but…
Lazy parenting.
There, I said it.
Probably won’t just get flamed, but also have my comment deleted because people don’t like to feel criticised for their poor/lazy choices.

What do you think kids are doing? Yeah 6 hours scrolling tik too is a definite problem, 20 minutes of a David Attenborough documentary, Matilda the movie and a couple of hours of Minecraft and Pokémon is a rough outline of my 7 yr olds screen time this weekend. That's alongside 4 hours at play centres and 6 hours in parks and riding his bike, as well as time spent just playing with his 4 yr old sister. In her case she has had a couple of episodes of Gabby's Dollhouse and listened to music while playing ballet class with her dolls as her screen time. They both also like to use instructional gymnastics videos if stuck indoors in bad weather.

That's not a good thing.

Tablets are tools. Honestly if the only thing your kid did was stare at paper writing and nothing else it would cause some issue developmentally. That happens to be tools that are easier to seperate, as it's not generally fun even for people who love writing.

A tablet is a great learning tool, and incorporating technology that are basic important elements of the world early is important. You shouldn't be harming this, this should still be happening and you can stop excessive usage on top seperately.

It will be on its way. In our council my son’s school is near the end of the list so not until march next year.

I think like almost anything else, it's actually down to parents, not devices and toys.

My two have had tablets since they were toddlers. They've had free access from a young age (put away at night), and they have a wide range of interests, Eldest just got excellent grades in his junior certificate and can bend your ear for hours about history and geography, youngest scores very highly on his yearly school testing, and can cook a mean cake and taught himself to crochet last week.

All of which came from the ipads.

Tablets are not TV. They're not slumped there zoned out watching adverts and cartoons - they're researching brioche recipes whilst upside-down on the settee, or watching science videos on the way home from school. They're active participants not couch potatoes.

Yeah... pull your judgey pants up a little higher.

It's not always lazy parenting... sometimes it is a little down time when things have been really busy.

Can you outline how non lazy your parenting dayyid?

@Bigpinksweater You started this thread by stating the evidence is damning but the BBC in depth study found that the evidence is not there. I can believe that social media can affect behaviour but the tablets themselves are not dangerous in their own right.
Please refer to proper research and not just unscientific anecdotal stories. It is scaremongering.