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?

I grew up in the 70s and 80s and we were out on the streets after school and in holidays playing with the group of us. Different ages, some times the toddlers would come out but not for long as 10 year olds dont want to play with toddlers.

Its not shit parenting, its normal play, the parents would be cooking or gardening or cleaning cars, coming and going

No one called or would need to call social services

The problem is that everything is now called 'shit parenting' that involves leaving children to create their own play, to have time out and out, to be - gasp - unsupervised for a time.

They watched TV

I'm also a grown adult not a 6yr old.....

If you already have ADHD - I do - then too much exposure to screens which are literally designed for short attention spans makes it much, much worse. Sticking ND kids in front of tablets probably will keep them quiet, but at a huge cost to their potential development.

It’s choice but as others said, there is evidence from extensive research that it can be harmful.
I have an 11 old (ASD) and an 8 year old they don’t have tablets, phones or game systems, they have toys and still know how to play.
my eldest is obsessed with cars and likes to categorise them and my youngest loves to read. I have never introduced them to screens and we spend a lot of time outdoors.
is my house tidy? Not massively I rarely get jobs done but cook from scratch every night and my youngest has always got involved in that. It’s not easy but I have chosen to bring them up like I was when there were no screens.
as I say it’s a choice but working in a school and seeing how children are developing now compared to years ago is a little sad.
I’m not saying that Screen time is wrong but I think the level of screen time can ultimately make a difference to how some children develop.
its about finding the right balance that works for you and your family.

TV isnt 24/7
TV for kids was extremely limited to set times of the day
TV isnt right up at your face
TV isnt scrolled up and down by parents when out and about reducing eye contact with their kids

And believe it or not, it doesnt lead to eye problems. Where as screens do, I was told this by an optician as I didnt actually believe it.

Oh, haha. Clearly did RTFT did I 🫣

This is correct, it just WAS normal back then. I grew up in the 80s and aged about 6 or 7, would go out for ages on my bike on my own or with the neighbourhood kids. It just wasn't a big thing for parents to worry about how their kids were entertaining themselves - we were expected to go and play with toys or climb trees or make dens or whatever and not bother them. That was one of the GOOD things about growing up back then! You could get away with doing loads without your parents ever knowing!

I suppose it depends what they are doing on the screens. My 2 used to play Timetable Rockstars and Duolingo on a smartphone when they were younger. Game like Minecraft use Problem Solving, in-game coding, maths to figure out coordinate, ratios, basic physics (gravity, flow, mechanics)
Circuits (redstone = electrical logic)
Design thinking & engineering.

Geography, History & Creativity
In Creative mode, players can:
Rebuild real cities
Design historical landmarks
Create entire worlds
Great for spatial awareness, research, and imagination.

Communication & Teamwork
Multiplayer teaches:
Cooperation
Planning together
Problem-solving as a team

Minecraft: Education Edition
There’s even a school version with:
Coding lessons
Science labs
History worlds
Classroom tools
Lots of UK schools use it for structured learning.

This.

There are numerous testimonies from people working in these fields that will tell people what they don't want to hear.

It isn't covid, it isn't 'increased awareness of SEN'.

It's complex yes, but screens are a huge. huge part of it.

Anyone suggesting otherwise or comparing it to watching telly in the 80s or having a nintendo in the 90s are not understanding how incomparable the screens today are in comparison to the screens of most of our childhoods.

Giving a 2 yr old a tablet is the height of lazy parenting.

Anecdotal, but my friend is a special needs coordinator in an academy trust in a difficult catchment area in Manchester. The number of children with extreme additional needs has skyrocketed, increasing year on year since COVID - around half the children in the class need additional support, and several are unmanageable in a normal classroom each September. Pre 2020 it was more like 20% needing additional support and fewer than 1 per class who were not going to cope in mainstream school.
Most 4 year olds don't yet have specific diagnoses re ADHD/Autism so it's not an issue of over/under diagnoses - something has caused this change. The Sep 2025 entries were born after Sep 2020 so should be largely unaffected by lockdowns in terms of social skills?

The worst thing was being half way out of the door to play with your mates and being told “take your little sister with you!”

I doubt if your three adult DC were minded by an iPad as toddlers. It's not just what they watch but how young and how long.

I have DC in their 20s.
They were both gamers but didn't have hand held devices until they were about ten. The only screen they had as toddlers was the odd episode of Teletubbies on tv. Around 7/8 they had computer games and a bit later games consoles. They got phones at 11 but they were brick Nokias.
DH worked all his life in tech and we were early adopters of home computers but there was nothing like the devices that people use now.

Screens for young children are robot childminders. They are doing nothing for developing brains, teach them very little and limit attention spans.

I agree, people are overestimating how long tablets - which I do think are the main problem in this conversation, particularly being used by very young children - have been around. First iPad was released in 2010 and it took a little while for them to be widely adopted. So we’re talking the last 15 years for tablet use to have become normalised. I think it’s a really complex issue but it’s not like 2010 was an era where the pressures of full time work etc were particularly different from today.

Little kids + tablets does seem to be a genuine issue so I don’t think it’s scaremongering to point that’s out. People whose kids are now older teens or young adults who have gone to good unis and got good jobs etc won’t have had tablets before they were two, cos they didn’t exist. So that’s not quite the same.

These threads always run the same way. Those of us who have professional experience in the change in children's presentation, needs and abilities over the past 30 decades say the same thing.

People just dont or wont believe it.

My kids born in the 90s watched Tweenies or Teletubbies. So half an hour a day.
When I was a child there was no TV until 5pm (yes I am very old) and then it was Blue Peter or nothing.

I was a single parent with 6 waaay before screens, we had no electric as we were living in a cave but we managed okay and the kids are well adjusting full functioning adults.
Well, not a cave exactly but it was pretty crowded, but as a larger family there was always a play mate or two.
The Madness song 'Our House' could have been written for my family.😆

Yes and if you were off sick from school you'd have to watch the Sullivans if you were well enough to go downstairs

Otherwise it was colouring in and story books.

Matches my anecdotal experience. Modern classrooms are closer to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest than what I understood a classroom to be like.

Well in the 70s /80s we got turfed out in the street for 10 hours a day. I think people would call ss for that now.

I think it's a moral panic - with some underlying justified concern caught up in it.

I was 80s child - I was put in front of TV sometimes and grew up fine.

DC had limited screens and tried to be out and about with them when younger as much as possible. However cooking - they'd be in front of TV or at table colouring or playing. When I was ill - kept getting chest infections - and DH couldn't be off TV was great otherwise couldn't have cope. They watched number jack and later horrible histories and on computers did coding games and maths games.

It's moderation and what they are doing and yes I do think that gets missed or simplied as all screens are bad.

There are increasingly issues with children language s and speach - and behavior and school readiness probably easier to blame screens than other contributing factors.

Which isn't what the OP said, she said in the 90s toddlers would out on the streets with 9 year olds supervising while Mum smoked a fag and only now would that seem bad and result in a call to social services.

Which isn't true. I was a child in the 80s and even then toddlers with primary school kids supervising unless in the families garden or directly outside the house where Mum could see them would be a red flag that would draw comment and concern.

And I was a teenager in the 90s, James Bulger was murdered by children in 1993 which I vividly remember led to an obvious huge change in parents worrying about their children even playing outside their own front gate with other kids of a similar age or even slightly older.

So the idea of 3 year olds supervised by 9 year olds randomly roaming in the streets and that being seen as completely fine by observers, I'm not buying that.

There's going to be a huge divide, I think. There are circles and schools in which being screen-free is very much the norm.

I really notice it in Florida on holiday as we are around a lot of small children and eating out daily. It’s been such a noticeable change over last 5 years or so compared to pre covid. We saw a family with 2 girls colouring in a restaurant once in whole holiday, when mine was younger children in restaurant would be colouring the menu with crayons (every chain gave them), buttering bread and saying they’d like apple juice to server. Now they are just out of it like a little zombie, often parent putting food in mouth. There’s so much to see in the parks bright colours, music yet parents have these attachments on buggies to hold the tablet or phone a few inches from their face.
It’s totally different use of tech compared to only a few years ago and not comparable at all to tv.