To think we should spend less time policing 16/17 year old social media use and more time worrying about young children spending their childhood on iPads?

[Frenchspainiard]

Government has apparently announced a social media curfew on 16 and 17 year olds, I’m unsure how this will be policed but it seems insane to me. They can join the military, they have jobs etc. I personally had a child and moved out at 16.

The real issue from what I see is why do we allow people to buy tablets for young children especially toddlers who then become inactive asocial zombies?

This is an important point that people conveniently forget and will protest until the cows come home that it’s not true. Yet they know all the theme tunes from the programmes in the 80s and 90s, remember all the actors and presenters, reminisce about how good and innocent they all were.

Both me and my brother were very active and sporty but also often sat watching Saturday afternoon things like A Team, Baywatch, Knight Rider etc. Saturday evening there were things we all watched as a family.

You didn't take a telly on the train though did you. Or to a restaurant. You didn't carry a telly around in your hand. When you weren't sat in the living room, you couldn't watch it.

Yes I didn't have a tv in the 70s . Not until 1984 actually when I was 13.I don't have one at home now And my eldest kids only ever watched at their grandmother's in the 90s / 2000s so not all kids were watching tv

It’s massively massively different 😳. Colouring is a mindful relaxing activity that doesn’t fuck permanently with your ability to focus! Do you really not see a difference????

This! It’s not even close to comparable 😩

How does your two year old know that they “need” a screen for mealtimes, in the first place?

Things you watched as a family. Precisely.

I know so many children now, as young as 3, with their own iPads. They have content on demand. It’s not a telly that they watch at home kids tv after school or with their family on a Saturday night. It’s inches from their face and they watch it at home, in a restaurant, in the car, in the doctor’s waiting room, literally everywhere and anywhere. I know pairs of siblings aged 4 and 7 where they have a bloody iPad each. They’re both locked in to something different with headphones on not playing with each other.

In the 90s kids would watch tv but they would also skip watching tv to go out and play. We all played out on the street. For so many children this never happens any more.

It just means that default settings for 16/17 year olds would switch off the main sm platforms between midnight and 6am to try to help with them getting enough sleep for school etc. It's not a law and wouldn't be 'policed'

@Reading2gether idk I'm pretty sure I was sat solo watching Playdays and Funhouse and my parents have absolutely never watched neighbours or home and away which I used to love....or Buffy, charmed, the tribe, shipwrecked. Mum was using that time to get stuff done, or watching her own stuff! Doesn't feel like it was demonised in in the way it is not. Maybe the occasional comment about square eyes 🤪

There's so much pressure to be constantly engaged with your children now (perhaps there was before but I'm only really familiar with now). We are not totally screen free but it's a rarity, more national and sporting events than anything else. My children are bookworms. DS(7) can get into books to the point that school have mentioned it. If he's reading something he really loves he would rather do that all day every day than play with the other kids/speak to the family etc. Gets so huffy when there's no books allowed at meals 🤣On the days he doesn't have a book on the go he's out playing football and all the usual stuff, but he can easily shut the world out for hours the same as you'd see a kid staring at a tablet.

And because of the feeling/comments/culture we've grown used to where you should be 'constantly' engaged with your children DH and I have had chats about whether we should be restricting his reading time....which even mid conversation we said felt batshit. We both love reading and always have, if either of our parents had suggested we read too much we'd have looked at them like they'd grown an extra head. So we've left him be. But the doubt/concerns/niggles are still there.

so he does not act screaming banshee in the middle of costa until we basically abandon every plan and just head home without having done any of the planned activities or errands because he is wound up now.

It would be HOW the kids use it - surely? My kids use it for research (my older one) and my younger ones uses it to copy art/drawing. Its what they use it for rather than just ban everything which is a silly stance - parents should be more aware/involved in this.

In the 90s kids would watch tv but they would also skip watching tv to go out and play. We all played out on the street. For so many children this never happens any more.

I'm pretty sure this stopped happening because people realised how dangerous it was to let underage children roam the streets for hours. It's bizarre how people romanticise "the past" when so many parenting norms were actually dangerous and irresponsible af. It's only pure luck that many kids were never victims to predators or creepy neighbours or traffic accidents.

The other thing I don't recall from the 90s are parents being incredibly judgemental or guilty about their choices. As mentioned earlier, it was totally normal for kids to spend a few hours watching TV during a playdate or sleepover. 90s parents did not give a single shit about what their kids were up to at friends homes, as long as they were out of their hair and they had some peace. I remember that even most birthday parties had "film time" where all the kids would sit in front of the TV watching a film for the last 2 hours. Imagine if someone tried that today!

These days, there's enormous pressure to provide screen-free entertainment for the entire duration of a playdate, which requires extra planning and preparation. Hosting a playdate is like being an unpaid camp supervisor. God forbid the other mum finds out that the kids played a bit of Minecraft on an iPad afterwards. Same for food. 90s childhoods were full of UPF foods. Snacks, chips, chocolate, frozen pizza, microwave meals. Playdates were easy because you just opened a bag of chips and a few juice cartons. Now you need fresh fruits, veg sticks, healthy crackers, and basically need to do an extra supermarket shop before each visit.

It's this tiresome performative parenting that never existed in the 90s or 20s. The idea that one thing is bad (with no nuance or context) and therefore you much avoid it at all costs to your own great inconvenience.

Odd take really, the people who think under 16s shouldn’t be on social media likely also don’t give their toddlers iPads.
its almost as if one led to the other…

I hate this obsession with infantilising 16-17 year olds.
There seems to be zero acknowledgement that independence and resilience is gained incrementally.
No wonder so many struggle to as they enter adulthood.

That doesn’t answer the question. You never needed to show your very young child a tablet. When you go out you talk to your child, engage them in what you’re seeing and doing, you actively parent them. You have proper family meals at home, preferably at a table with cutlery and teach your child how to eat without too many distractions. How do you think people brought their children up for millennia? How do you think the rest of us are doing it now?

As an adult I find screens much more alluring and difficult to detach from than, say, a book. Why would it be different for children?

This has reminded me to get off Mumsnet today because yesterday I wasted a whole day.

OP - YANBU! There is so much creative play that is possible in the real world for young children. Even just observing the world around them from their prams is beneficial for their understanding of the world.

I also think there should be more awareness of parents being on phones around kids - I'm much more guilty of this and I think it's also quite negative for children's development. I'm not saying parents must stare, grinning wildly, into their children's eyes 24/7 - but there's a difference between your child, say, having to wait patiently while you finish a conversation with a good friend over a coffee, and your child watching you stare blankly into a rectangle for longer than you think.

Alright - logging off. Thanks for the reminder :)

at home of course he gets no screen and we always co-watch we don’t just leave him to it. it’s just to prevent him from screaming in public

But this isn’t true. Scientists have found children who use iPads have better visual motor integration than those who never have for example. They’re not always a bad thing, people demonise them like they’re inherently evil. There’s a balance. Some screen time is fine, they shouldn’t be glued to it.

Honestly my younger brother was plonked in front of the TV constantly as a toddler. iPads didn’t exist but if they did he would have had one. He was constantly watching Bob the Builder and Power Rangers videos on a loop.

Younger sibling of a child on my son's sports team, around 3 years old, will spend several hours at a stretch at a tournament in his pushchair, headphones on, screen 6 inches from his face. No interaction at all with parents. Lots of interesting stuff going on around him that he doesn't have a clue about. Guess who is going to have behavioural problems, learning difficulties, adhd, or whatever in a few years time? Its so depressing. The only time you see him playing normally is when other parents take pity on him.

Yeah I grew up in the 00s and even then spent most of my childhood playing out with friends, even in the 00s tv shows were at set times and honestly most were kind of boring compared to playing out. I imagine it was even more boring in the 90s.

I don’t understand why people think watching a bit of Barney the bear or whatever in the 90s is the same as kids today sat doomscrolling iPads from toddler age (sometimes younger). You also couldn’t take the tv with you everywhere you went.
When I walk through the neighbourhood I grew up in it’s soooo quiet now since the rise of iPads.

There are two questions here which is the importance of a parent needing to enjoy a coffee in peace and reset their nervous system (enjoyable) vs. the importance of entertaining a child for another 20mins just for the sake of them not having a screen (not enjoyable). In the bigger picture, those 20mins of watching something probably makes absolutely no difference in the overall development and well-being of a child.

Another hard truth nobody wants to hear is that most people are shit at parenting anyway. Even if they believe they're doing some things right, they will fail in other areas that still fuck up the children. Other factors have a far greater impact on a child's development than screens, such as witnessing parents arguing, not having enough money, growing up in an abusive home, going through parental separation, splitting time between two different homes, being sent to a school that doesn't suit the child's needs (no friends, bad teachers, bullying etc), life upheaval with stepparents and siblings, being the glass child of siblings with SEN etc.

If you ask any adult who had a bad childhood what the worst part of their trauma was, they will almost certainly talk about selfish parents, fights, abuse, neglect, poverty or lack of routine. They will certainly not say "because my mum let me watch Youtube while we waited for our food at a restaurant" as the main cause of their problems.

You couldn't take the TV, but trust me, there were TVs everywhere! In waiting rooms, restaurants, train stations, airports, shops, cafes, hotels etc. Some just played a random TV channel and some had their own programs on loop. Kids would sit and watch the restaurant TV while waiting for their meal...it was barely any different to now.

The tv in the dentist waiting room showing some videos on teeth or showing train times at the station is not comparable to little kids having an iPad five centimetres from their face everywhere they go.
You’ve only got to walk around neighbourhoods that used to have children playing from dawn to dusk just 15-20 years ago are ghost towns now. Ask anyone who works in a school and they’ll tell you how iPad kids behave

Are small kids really spending lots of time looking at tablets?

I think people see the odd child using one on a plane or to keep them quiet in a restaurant and are extrapolating that they’re glued to them all the time.

We have an iPad that we use on planes. When my toddler was at a particular awkward phase, we sometimes used it if attending a meal in a restaurant.

Other than that, it’s not used.

I assume you’d see me on a plane or whatever and assume my child had unlimited access to it, but that just isn’t the case.

Are toddlers sitting ‘doomscrolling’ on iPads?

I assume they’re watching Barney the bear or whatever equivalent on BBC iPlayer or Netflix.

Screen time needs to be managed, but I don’t think many toddlers will be doomscrolling through TikTok videos…