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

Do none of you take your children to the pictures? That’s a screen!

I think only the youngest was under 5 when we started doing the cinerma- did kids screening and as we don't drive it was an hour plus walk along country cycle paths and last bit across a housing estate to nearest cinerma - then either grab some food at retail park or have a picinic on way back.

Though they may have been younger doing 20 minutes 4 D screens at aquarium we had a season ticket to - that was 45 minute walk - train - walk to place - round exhibts - then mid way 20 minutes screen time with cut down film and water and moving chairs and glasses - then rest of exhibit - then walk round city then home via train and walk back via parks.

I think that's different to a phone screen and game everytime even looks like relatives child might be fed up.

They saw more TV - but we limited extent when we could and were very particular what they watched.

I agree, I expressed it badly.

Ok. I agree. I just expressed that post badly.

I think quite a few of us are saying not all screens are the same experience.

I'd say math apps my kids used - youngest was under 5 and for a set time a day - are/were better than mindless games and youtube kids and unlimted access realtive kid gets.

There's a lot of nuance missed when "screens" are cited as an issue.

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But why put the TV on before school / work ?

Also, we used more than one childminder, for a combination of reason, but none of them routinely had the TV on - it was an occasional thing.

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

My experience is frowned upon for running around, getting in the way, but not frowned upon for playing games / interacting with their parents / carers. Have you not heard of books or colouring, or sticker books, or games like peek a boo or I Spy (depending on stage) , or seeing who is the first to see a .... , or seeing who can find X,Y,orZ, or Nursery Rhymes, or taking small toys with you ?

But why put the TV on before school / work ?

We always have ours on in the morning, we are up for hours before nursery/work due to DD waking early. Sometimes children's TV, sometimes just your usual breakfast TV fodder.

@LittleSpeckleFrog what time does DD wake up, how old?

If DS woke up early he stayed in his bed or his room, until it was a reasonable time to get up

😂😂😂😂. You haven’t got a clue. My children grew up in the same era as you. I bought a 2 bedroom flat in the 80’s that cost over 60k. Note this was in the North, not the expensive south. The average house price in the 90’s was 55-79k. Houses for 15k must have been somewhere very undesirable. Average mortgage rate in the 90’s was 15% so lots of parents both worked full time because they had to. I did. I didn’t retire at 60. I don’t get my state pension until I’m 67. I help out with childcare for my grandchildren. Life is no more complicated today than it was years ago.

Exactly! Same here for my almost 6 year old. Screens are lazy parenting.

She wakes up around 6, she's 3. She is in our bedroom so we go through to living room together and the TV will be on in the background.

A parent is in charge with children that young, and need to manage parenting. So, it is that simple.

I live on what appears to me to be a fairly typical 20th century council estate and there are I think six parks within a 15-minute walk; the idea that loads of kids are growing up in this country without any access to outside space seems to me unlikely.

I think it is easy with this topic to become a bit black and white: screen time is damaging vs unlimited screen time is a reality of modern life.

Like most things, I think the reality is somewhere in between.

I think both the extent and the type of screen time is very relevant. The time limits are suggested averages, as I understand it. That means if your child has several days without screen time at all, then has a day of feeling poorly, or the weather is awful or mum has a work deadline etc, they could be on a screen several hours spread over that day. So long as that then reverts to being none or one as a rule. It doesn't mean that a few days of having the flu and watching dvds will damage them for life. There is a time and a place.

I also think the content is very relevant. When ours were under 5 - and even a bit older to be honest - I always selected very gentle, slow-paced things for them, with a calm narrator and lots of educational content. I liked Maisy, Percy the Park-keeper, Postman Pat, Kipper, that kind of thing, where everything they were seeing was carefully explained and there was no shrieking or fast-paced, frenetic action. A little bit older and I think Charlie and Lola was quite good, and some of the Roald Dahl movies like BFG and there were lots of quite good documentary type things like that dog and lady who flew in a plane to investigate things like toothpaste factories or how oranges grow - I always forget what is is called.

It is interesting as the BBC article today alluded to this, showing how watching adrenalin-inducing content while in a passive state is arguably an area of concern.

I also think it helps if you still interact with them. I used to put on a dvd during ironing as I hated them running round with a hot iron in use, but every so often I would look up, try to see what was happening and say something goofy like "Oh look: the dog seems to like chewing on that bone! Would you like chewing on a bone? " or "The orange trees look pretty with all those oranges don't they. I LOVE juicy oranges." You feel a bit stupid, but I think it makes it more interactive. They are only little: they don't care if you sound ridiculous.

It is leaving them for hours and hours with no interaction and no careful selection of content that is the problem. Screens can, I think be used usefully and even educationally.

Lucky you. I would say you are in the minority.

Mine are 19 and 20, so slightly older than what I consider to be the Prime Guinea Pig phase, and whilst we were mindful of screen time we weren't as strict as some parents I know.

I don't think the knock-on effect is necessarily about older teens being stuck on their phones the whole time - in fact I think that is not the case for a lot of them (mine are certainly not nose-deep in their phones either), but I DO believe that there are out negative outcomes - which I would apply to both my DC:

• Shorter attention span - inability to just 'be'.
• Resistance to communicating by phone or face to face - much prefer to hide behind text
• Reduced critical thinking - why consider or wonder when you can just google
• Inability to enjoy slower, more measured activities - games on phones are all lights/noise/speed
• Consumption of Brain Rot Material. Mindless scrolling instead of more mind and body-rich ways to relax

And on it goes...

Screens are addictive and they do things to our brains that are undeniable and the negative outcomes are not necessarily screen-addiction

Oh it was Auntie Mabel and Pippin that was quite good: "Come Outside!"

Also I really struggle to understand how screens help in the morning. We are always rushing and the last thing I want is a screen zombie to prod into gear.

@LittleSpeckleFrog does DD not have her own room? If tv is on in the background does it actually have to be on?

A lot of houses were around £15,000in the 90s, not in shit areas. That’s why boomers have been so damn lucky with house prices rising so dramatically over the past 30 years….quids in.

Why have you latched on to that one thing anyway? Bit strange considering I said a whole lot more 🫠

And other people have refuted other bits, such as the claims that usually one parent didn’t work or that they had a big family network around them. Take it from the people who were actually there - what you said is not correct.

Exactly. I’m laughing at some of the supposed examples of what parenting was like in the 2000s.!

No they weren’t.

Which bits have been refuted? House prices? You can’t refute that because it’s common knowledge that houses were extremely cheaper in the 90s and 00s, and 100% mortgages did exist. But you can always go and do a little research if you’ve forgotten.

And I was there for the whole of the 90s and 00s 🤣

Let me guess, you’re a ‘it was so much harder for us back then’ boomer who will literally refuses to accept things are more difficult now.

boomers… the generation of gas lighters 🙄

Were they bollocks.

We bought our first house in 1994 for £40k. That was a 2 bedroom terrace in South Wales.

I bought my first house in 90s. Typical small starter home. Not in a v.expensive area, was £50k. Had sleepless nights about the interest rate if it increased any more. Did sell it for more in 00s. But I am not a boomer. Most boomers surely would be buying houses in earlier decades

Here come the boomers to tell us what things were really like in an era we were alive in and to tell us how to parent 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Did everyone forget that the point of this post was to talk about screen time?

why are the 60+ here anyway? You don’t have kids who are under 5 and if you’re a grandparent do yourself a favour and let your kids parent their own children.