AIBU that reducing under 5s screen time is way more complicated than just issuing guidelines?

[Lovelygreenpen]

This guidance is welcome. We need to know facts and risks to make informed choices. But choices often aren’t made entirely freely. Think about healthy eating and exercise guidance and how complicated these can be to follow due to costs and time.

How would following this under 1 hour rule change your daily routine?
Most parents need to work all the hours with COLC and decades of rising housing costs. working life also often expands to expect parents to be in contact from home outside of paid work hours.
How are busy parents supposed to manage? How are solo working parents specifically supposed to manage? Any family with more than one child?
And what about the screens used in childcare settings?
What are the responsibilities of the makers of the crazy overstimulating content for babies and kids?

We know women often have to do more domestic labour than men, even where they live with a male partner. Also, that the makers of the content aimed at kids specifically employ addictive techniques.

So how is this pressured wider environment going to change to make this recommendation more realistic?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1d936n7445o

It may be complicated but you make it sound like it’s parents undivided attention or screens when there is a massive gulf in between! Tablets shouldn’t be to go to for young children - toys should be!

Parents managed before screens were invented

I noticed when mine were younger than their behaviour was much more affected by loud shouty YouTube videos like Blippy rather than something calm and quiet like In The Night Garden.

I think it's a mistake to blame the number of minutes of children's developmental issues. It's the quality of the programming more than the length of time, so I agree more needs to be done to regulate kids shows on YouTube.

No, it’s not that difficult, but parents need to be prepared to teach their children how to entertain themselves. I’ve worked with children for 25 years and most children will easily be kept busy for a period of time if given the tools to do so. Before everyone had phones and tablets children would keep themselves busy - a tray of playdough with a couple of tools and some plastic plates and cutters will keep an under five occupied for 30 mins+. The problem is people have become used to the easy option - whack a screen on and let a child zone out.

My DS is nearly 5 and has never held a tablet in his life.

it really isn’t difficult to bring them up like that. The issue questions such as these raise is really more about how to stop an addiction that the parents have already facilitated.

Advice should focus on prevention rather than cure.

It's a recommendation, it's not law. Whether people implement it or not is up to them. If they don't, they can deal with the consequences.

Exactly, it’s not essential that kids have screens at all, it shouldn’t be seen as something that’s the first thing people go to to entertain kids.

DDIL and DS2 both work. DGS (2) had zero screen time before his second birthday. He’s now allowed to watch an adaptation of a Julia Donaldson book on the iplayer, on the TV, very occasionally. He can play by himself, he loves books so will sit for ages looking at them and he loves to help his parents.

It’s not a choice between shoving a child in front of screen or nothing.

There’s an awful lot of kids having too much screen time. Take the number of babies and children using screens in buggies- being out and about should be the sensory change in scenery that small kids enjoy rather than being engrossed on a phone and miss stuff going on around them. There was a woman in a colourful unicorn onesie collecting for charity at the supermarket yesterday which should have attracted these kids’ attentions and interest but the ones on phones had no clue.

Just from the range of replies already I feel like this is even more a complex issue.

Parents are under a lot of pressure so they need breaks from their kids
Lots of families don’t have gardens or live near parks
Kids in public areas like buses, trains or NHS waiting rooms are always frowned on for making any noise or being active. I see their parents hand their phones over on low volume to help their kids sit still and be quiet, for the sake of other people’s reactions.

I think we have a more complicated social issue about our society in the UK not being very supportive of parenting. So following this guidance is going to be hard unless you have quite a lot of social support and money.

Childcare settings shouldn’t be using screens - and hopefully this guidance prompts a rethink when they are.
No parent needs to buy a product if they think it is over stimulating.
I have sympathy with using TV in the evenings so you can be available on email. I do it. But it doesn’t need to be for hours on end.

I’ll also add that for some children with SEND, screens are a means to self regulate. After eg a long day in childcare which can be very loud and overstimulating they do need to get home and zone out.

But that's exactly the problem. Take a book or a notepad. Talk to them. I take my children to cafes, restaurants, waiting rooms for appointments all the time and it's just not an issue because I've trained them to sit nicely, just like my class at school sit nicely. Children don't magically do these things but they absolutely can. My husband and I both work long hours and we manage. You just don't introduce any screens apart from a bit of TV at home now and again.

It’s not complex, just don’t give screens to little kids for hours on end. I don’t see what’s difficult about that. The first iPhone came out in 2007 (I think!) did parents not have any pressure before that? Of course they did.

I didn’t have a smartphone or tablet when the DDs were little so this wasn’t even a question. I’d sit them in their high chairs with a few toys while I was cooking. Then when they were older they played in another room. Not saying it was always sunshine and roses, there were tantrums etc. sometimes!

To add, they can also do 5+ hour car journeys without screens.

Both my parents worked, we watch a bit of TV but not hours. My DC had no screens before 2 and limited to less than an hour a day until recently and they are late teens. We work full time and we have 4 of them. 2 of them ND.
They learnt to entertain themselves with toys and books as millions of children have forever.

They really can! Mine did many long journeys to France and Italy by car with no screens. It was no problem other than the usual "are we there yets?"

So following this guidance is going to be hard unless you have quite a lot of social support and money.

That's ridiculous. It's only going to be hard for those who don't want to bother implementing alternatives.

There are plenty of other ways to keep a small child occupied, but the screen is the default for many parents / carers as it requires no input from an adult.

My SEN children self regulate in many ways and screens actually mean they often don't learn other ways.

This.

We shouldn't need to set guidelines but when we have people who think that it's impossible to survive without them, you can kind of see why the government feels like they need to do something.

Same here. They watch bits of CBeebies, but that’s it. It’s not actually that hard. However what I am noticing now my oldest is 6, is that she doesn’t know about thinks like K-Pop Demon Hunters etc that the rest of the girls in her class watch. It’s hard but I’m staying firm

Of course we can "manage", in the way that we managed before screens even existed. It is harder, though.

Both parents and children need to rebuild our tolerance for boredom and discomfort. We've been labouring under the illusion that everyone needs to be happy all the time, that no one should ever get annoyed or grumpy, but it's important that people realise that calm and quiet isn't necessarily healthier.

It's really not that complex. Just actively parent your children without using screens.

It’s not that difficult. A child will not ask for screens if you don’t introduce screens to them - just don’t turn the TV on during the day, don’t give them a tablet or your phone and they’ll find things to occupy themselves.

Mine never had screens in the buggy, in restaurants, in the car etc and they were entertained by books. They were not especially quiet children, one with autism, but it worked as they never expected screen time.

Loads of kids easily have more than an hour eg TV screen at breakfast while getting dressed + teatime telly being on at the childminder for the older kids+ evening telly while parents do cooking or jobs, even if it’s a gentle kids tv show with a definite end, like the ‘In the Night Garden’ before bed?

It’s not only about parents who give a mobile device in the hand of the child showing hours of endless back to back YouTube content.

This would also rule out under 5s being shown any feature length kids movies. I’m all for reducing screen time and increasing family interaction time, but I worry it’s just more pressure on parents who are overstretched already.