To think current concerns over screen time is bordering hysteria

[Tiredboymum22]

I think it’s over the top.

If my kids didnt have screens, nothing would get done. I’m mostly solo parenting. Family can’t babysit, husband works late 6 days a week. Childcare costs are through the roof.

I have a 6-year-old with ASD and a very hyperactive toddler. Eldest is obsessed with numbers and Minecraft, uninterested in his little brother a lot of the time. Up at 4.30 am most mornings too. I give my toddler the tablet when I’m trying to cook or tidy up (once he’s done playing with his toys).

I am criticised by older members of my family and told I should let him “help me” cook. Sorry but no.

Now I’m seeing countless articles and comments about the harm of too much screen time, but I think people are missing a lot of nuance.

aibu?

A toddler on a tablet in their buggy? Sad

I once saw on a bus journey a mother with two primary aged children and a child aged 1-2 in a buggy. The two school age children were talking to each other. The child in the buggy had a tablet and no-one spoke to him/her or engaged in any way for the entire journey. And being in the buggy, the child couldn't see anything except people's legs.

Totally agree - but you get slammed for saying this. There is just to much money to be made in both tech and health care to suggest a link....

Children have had TV since the 1950s/60s. Games since what, 1980s? So I eyeroll at that. I don’t think anyone my age had restrictions on these things either and we all turned out just fine.

We had other hobbies, played with toys, and weren’t given screens from infancy. 1990s-2010.

Tablets and phones are a different phenomenon imo and are untested. This is where it starts going wrong. Mine were gifted tablets and after seeing how it went, they’re confiscated now.

I’m diagnosed AuDHD and now medicated. The medication is brilliant - life changing - as long as I don’t use my phone. My phone scrambles my brain as if I’ve taken no medication. I’m using it today because I have flu and I’m just on the sofa with a blanket, but on a normal day I can’t touch it because even if I scroll a bit in the morning it really messes up my concentration for the rest of the day. There’s a lot of evidence about how bad screens are for DCs. DS is 8 and autistic and totally addicted to screens, it’s a constant battle. I wish they didn’t exist.

I agree there weren’t iPads but most families had a tv in the 90s! I did and I wasn’t well off!

It's an epidemic, especially on these brand new, growing brains that absorb everything like the most effective sponges ever created: Basically, instant, unending internet access was unleashed on societies at large without any long-term studies on what that would do to our brains. Now, issues are skyrocketing that never or barely existed before. Social skills have plummeted, and dangerous radicalization is not only easy to tumble into but also fast-tracking dangerous ideologies, and far, FAR too many parents are treating iPads as babysitters/full hobbies/activities rather than occasional tools or entertainment devices. Feel free to look up how predators use Minecraft, by the way.

If you think it's overblown, it's because those of us who genuinely care are trying to get the attention of those who have let their children be taken over by screens but don't want to give up the personal convenience, no matter the current and future cost to their children. I wonder why parents who say "I couldn't parent without this device (that wasn't even around when I was young)!" don't realize that they're basically saying they're not equipped for the hard work of worthwhile parenting and they're admitting a personal failure rather than defending some miracle device. It's depressing, to say the least.

I’m already waiting for the onslaught of abuse for saying it 😅
It messes with fully developed brains, so god knows what it does to brains that are still growing.
The smart phone and tablet are two of the worst things ever invented and we are going to be paying the price for a long, long time.
The irony, of course, is that I’m typing this on my iPad. What I wouldn’t give to have life back to before it all existed.

You typed this on a screen. As did every person preaching in this thread. The hypocrisy is wild.

Even in the last 10 years screen time for children has exploded. I work in early years and almost all the under 5s have their own devices now.

Attention span, patience and concentration skills are minimal (I'm talking about reasonable expectations for each age group), table manners, language skills, general behaviour have all declined significantly in the last 10 years. The amount of undsr 2s who need screens to hold in the car or to fall asleep or to watch whilst eating is horrendous!

I don't think that because you disagree with it, it's 'hysteria'. It's just that some people are more concerned than others. It's important to be clear though. Do you think that generally screens are fine? If so, the fact that you are a single parent with limited support is not relevant. It sounds like actually you accept that excessive screen time is not ideal, but you use it because it's the least-bad option in the situation you're in. That's fine and obviously if the alternative is that you can't cope, or you shout excessively or your kids are destroying the house, clearly screen time is preferable.

Personally I went down a restricted route because I am concerned about the way touchscreens and gaming train the brain to seek dopamine. I don't want that for my kids. I'm happy with them watching normal TV but other screens are just so compelling (by design) it's easier not to have them.

I think the volume has increased on the anti-screen narrative, particularly for kids, because it has just gone so far. It's completely normal now for kids to have their own tablet. For screens to be ubiquitous in schools. For primary-aged children to have smartphones. In my opinion it's positive that society is asking whether these things are actually good and necessary.

I seen a toddler with a massive tablet (didn't even know they came that huge) strapped up inches from her face in a pushchair. Absolutely tragic

So if I was sat drinking my first glass of wine in a month, and I myself drink well below government guidelines, I wouldnt be allowed to say 'drinking 6 crates of beer a week isnt good for you'? Not sure what you mean...

An adult using a screen is very very different to a child's developing brain. Do some research.

Really? Have you actually read any research papers that offer this conclusion?

What’s the betting that most of the ‘research’ carried out focussed on number of hours of screen time and not the disposition of the children themselves.

I strongly suspect that if the research compared outcomes from NT and ND kids, it would reach completely different conclusions for the two groups.

As for using the past to laud superior parenting values, that’s completely laughable.

As an ND person, I was left by school and my parents to just get on with it as they had no understanding of supporting someone different like me and thousands of other ND kids.

Luckily, I gave DS a mini iPad for his 4th birthday and he’s thrived using Tech. He was already a good reader when starting school and used technology during lockdown to teach himself the basics of several languages inc. Russian and Japanese whilst still in primary school.

ND people are usually the ones being bullied rather than the perpetrators. Don’t deprive them of technology just because you can’t parent NT kids adequately.

The harms of screen time are studied and if you read the studies they are fairly nuanced already. You can say you put your own convenience above some level of harm to the child but I don’t understand the point of saying the impact doesn’t exist. It’s measured. It’s like saying climate change is a hoax so that you don’t have to curtail your emissions. Screens even affect the hormones released by the body.
Video games and TV programmes a couple of decades ago are completely different to what they are now, espescially given streaming, and can’t be compared. Being a technology user now requires no skill at all and won’t lead to a career the way it used to.
You would have an argument that you can’t compare NT and ND children in technology use, though.

I may be wrong but I think SM was the reason for the SEN diagnosis spike.
And half i see i dont think they have it, they just want a reason to get away with acting like twits.

Opposite imo.

We've sleepwalked into a situation where in homes across the country young children are being exposed to something that is harmful to them, deprived of things that are beneficial (when you're watching TV you're not moving your body, reading a book, practising holding a pen, socialising with peers), and ending up babysat. It's emotional neglect at high levels.

I find it fascinating you can walk through a restaurant now and 90% of the tables with kids have the children glued to screens, the whole meal. No conversation. No practicing ordering. No learning manners when eating out. Just being mentally anaesthetised to make it through something that should be a treat.

It’s the type of screen time which is the crucial difference. There’s a huge difference between kids watching CBeebies on the family tv, and YouTube brain rot on their own tablet. It’s the swiping to change the short videos that ruins you by giving you small hits of dopamine.

I’m nearly 40, as a child I watched all of the cartoons that terrestrial tv had to offer from early Saturday morning until lunchtime. Then got dressed. I think I turned out ok! Got a decent career, happy family life etc.

My kids are allowed a couple of hours of TV in the evenings if it’s just on the family tv and they don’t constantly change the channel. I think that’s fine. My 4 year old has got into David Attenborough documentaries 😅 he likes learning about the animals

The Anxious Generation is a good book to read about the subject if anyone is interested

We are all adults and our brains have finished developing, though. That’s the same as saying it’s hypocritical to have a gin and tonic if you don’t give one to your toddler.

So you know it's always existed then right?

And we didn't have the situation that we do know where kids are starting school unable to turn a page in a book or put their coats on?

And we didn't have to have parenting groups where people have to be taught how to play with their children or help them to learn how to entertain themselves, wait for things or just regulate themselves because the default is to give them a screen?

Because that's what's happening.

And the screens are different now, to TV.

Rainbow on TV, playschool or chocoblock or Tots TV was a few minutes where a child could be occupied so Mum could put a load of washing on. So long as they were able to watch at the time it was on and weren't asleep or doing something else. At home.

Not 24/7 access to constant content wherever you are so now you get parents using them as a constant source of entertainment and the minute the parent wants to do something or the DC grizzles, is bored or complains, a screen is given.

Everywhere. All the time.

I see Mums on buses on a 10 minute journey handing a toddler in a buggy a screen while Mum scrolls through her 'phone.

One of the big issues on 'screentime' is how many different things it encompasses. I think the questions are what is screen time replacing, for that child, and what is it adding, as we still have the same 24 hours in each day as any other generation.
To pick some extreme examples that are very much not the same

• A 2 year old spending a hours most days watching a tablet screen with you tube autoplay, eyes glazed and zoned out of surroundings
• a 2 year old watching 20 mins of Bluey on a TV they can't control whilst a parent shouts comments about the story while cooking dinner each night
• a 12 year old playing online games in the living room whilst chatting to their real-world mates, for an hour after school
• a 12 year old scrolling tiktok in their bed at midnight and missing out on sleep.

I'm an older mum, so was a younger kid in the 80s. I had a reputation for 'square eyes' - viewing lots of TV wasn't seen as great then either, but it was limited to the 90 mins of live kids TV available between school and dinner time (we didn't have sky, or a video player). If the weather was good and the neighbours were home I really would be out playing in the street with them, and this wasn't neglectful parenting. But I now have major screen time issues of my own and would love to give my child the skills to manage this in a healthy way...

Modern parenting can be intense, with high expectations and little support. Screens can ease this pressure. I agree with this.

It still doesn't follow that concern around screen time is hysteria, just because it is working for you. I mean obviously it's not crack, but there have been numerous studies on this, it isn't just plucked from the air.

You are the "We should improve society somewhat" / "Yet you participate in society! Curious! I am very intelligent." meme come to live, goodness.

It was Covid and lockdown not gaming.

No socialisation at essential ages

totally agree with this and very happy that my youngest is about to turn 16 so we wont be affected