Parents who allow 0 screen time

[thesurreymum]

I recently took my 4 year old for a play date with someone new who we recently met. The mum said that they have zero screen time, no tablets, games consoles and the TV was password protected. Their eldest child is 8. After about 1 hour of playing nicely with toys/outside my DS was pestering me to watch YouTube on my phone. I was quite embarrassed by this. I genuinely thought that my DC have a good balance between screen time and playing/doing activities. I am however noticing that they are preferring electronic devices even more. Out of curiosity I am just wondering how many people actually have zero screen time for their DC particularly if they are of primary school age?

Abusive? Catch yourself on 🤣

2 kids - 6 and 2.5. The 2.5 year old has hardly ever watched anything. The 6 year old has no screen time during the week but is allowed 1.5 hours on Saturday and on Sunday. They don’t have a tablet and don’t watch anything on our phone. They have never watched live tv. Our 6 year old chooses programmes on CBeebies or Netflix. They both play really well independently including in their room, have lots of toys which they play with, love reading, etc.

Abusive. Fuck off. Abusive is being battered, threatened, smacked, kicked, sworn at, belittled, spat at, locked up, starved, raped. It's not being not allowed on a screen. What a ridiculously hideous comment to make and completely undermines what actual abuse is.

I agree to a large extent with this.

Not zero but limited and definitely careful of what they are watching too.

Mine watches TV in the evening and at weekends but we've started to say it can't just be for them so very limited amount of TV shows for them (and even then most of the time it's CBeebies/CBBC) and then a documentary or cooking show, etc. that we can all watch and it can sort of stay on in the background if others are watching.

Mine has a kindle that we didn't buy and it was getting ridiculous with behaviour. I noticed the Kindle and Netflix (on the TV) were causing loads of issues. We use the Kindle for car journeys but eldest doesn't ask for it otherwise. They've become much more focused on play and tasks that there are days the TV isn't even on after school. They've not asked to watch anything at anyone's house or in a restaurant but it was going that way.

I do worry that they might be a bit out of the loop with the popular culture on YouTube at some point because they're all talking about YouTubers now and Roblox and it goes straight over their head.

What @Somanycats said. The only family I know like this are very 'unusual'. The DS has recently been diagnosed with autism and I suspect the mother is autistic too, hence the OTT attitudes to tech.

Also agree with *WimpoleHat. There's a wide variety of material available. You don't have to let your children be bottom feeders.

I tried this with mine having done a lot of research on the evil effects of screens and we lasted 4 years and I regretted it. I found my child would go on play dates and be glued like an addict to the host family's TV being on- he literally wouldn't look away. I've since gradually introduced it at home to normalise it and DC are adjusting to there being life out there in the big, wide world!

Each to their own.

we Have none at the table that’s about it.

mine are all so active with sports I could t care less they disappear for a few hours on screens when they get some spare time.

Do it your way and don’t worry how others do it x

DD 3.5 isn't allowed on tablets or phones, except for video calls to family.

She is allowed TV for about 15-25 minutes on some mornings after getting dressed and having breakfast - she allowed whilst I make her packed lunch, she's cool with turning it off, even if that happened to be half way through an episode of Charlie and the numbers or Bluey or postman pat.

No tablets because she became really aggressive when it was time to turn it off. Like she tried to hit me. She has NEVER tried to hit me with any thing else. So now she thinks phones are for phone calls,. video calls and taking photos. Tablets are for older children or for nursery with an adult.

What you agree that most children only have screen time in common? Nothing else?

I think zero screen time would be neglectful parenting. IME when people say they do no 'screen time,' they rarely mean it. My older brother used to tell us that his children had no screen time ... except for the times when they watched Netflix on their parents' laptops or watched a film as a family. Obviously, that was screen time, but it was done in a way that felt controlled and regulated.

If a parent genuinely does not allow a child any access to digital media, then that's as damaging and lazy as not allowing them to read books.

Mine are older primary and have their own iPads, although they're not allowed to be on them all the time. I think they'd feel very left out and not have a clue what their friends were talking about half the time if not allowed any screens.
Also some of their homework is online and they do enjoy some other more educational stuff such as coding.

I think zero screen time is too extreme to be honest. Like it or not, screens are a huge part of life. Not just socially, chatting about TV, games etc but also they're literally used in primary school now. So rather than a totally unrealistic "screens are evil" why not just treat them as part of life, watch telly and talk about what's on, let them use a tablet but with safety measures and clear boundaries etc?

I don’t know anyone who has 0 screen time, most of my friends limit it to about 0.5-1 hour a day (our DC are 4), circumstances depending.

Personally I think it’s YouTube that’s the problem rather than screens in general. YouTube turned my DC into a monster, even though it was the same amount of screen time as watching CBeebies, youtube was more addictive and harder l to turn off IME. If you’re worried, OP, I’d cut out YouTube as a starting point and you might find your DS less interested in screens in general. But I honestly don’t think there’s any harm in half an hour of an educational show aimed at children. Like everything it’s about balance!

My children aged 8 and 5 have one hour of tv per day ( taking turns to pick the programme) and access to a tablet only to complete homework on apps set by school. Seems to be an ok balance so far.

I think it is very interesting that the big tech founders (Jobs, Gates etc) didn't allow their children to have access to 'screens' etc until they were older children.

Total bans are unfair, so is turning off a programme in the middle because of some arbitrary time limit has been reached - most grown ups would object to that too.

We have screen time limits on all our devices (incl adults) and no devices in bedrooms at night or at the dinner table. It's always been a firm rule so no one questions it - even at 13 & 16 - unlike some if their (often sleep deprived) friends.

I think some binging of things you are interested is normal - my sister recorded over my Duran Duran video on 80's because I was annoying her with watching it repeatedly. DD1 wore out several Tellytubbies VHS tapes. But binging should be on wet days or downtime after a long day. Not on playdates or over dinner.

On the other hand, 6 hour car journeys are greatly relieved by tablets pre-loaded with TV or films (if they don't get car sick).

Not zero, but limited.
Some exposure at nursery with the class's iPad that gets used for educational purposes.
Regular (maybe once a week) video calls with grandparents. DC also 'speaks' with them on the phone most days, so knows that smartphones are used for phonecalls but doesn't actually use the phone other than to show it to me as a way of saying "phone nana please".
2-3 times per week, we'll either watch an episode of a cartoon, or a nursery rhymes video together, which maybe takes 10 minutes each time and is done as a shared activity.

Definitely no screen time on play dates or during meals or nappy changes.

I think some controlled exposure to technology from a fairly young age is important for children becoming familiar with it and comfortable using it, but not just passive staring at a screen. There are so many other things we and our children can be doing.

Most children have shared experiences of watching certain shows, movies, etc.

They probably have other experiences in common too - jumping in puddles, playing in parks, learning to swim, participation in scouts or guides, maybe reading certain series of books, etc.

But by about age 10/11, their horizons tend to expand to the wider world, and not having exposure to media will result in a feeling of exclusion from a club. I'm not saying other children will necessarily exclude them; I'm saying they will feel they're missing something.

When a child's home home life and the life of her peers are so far apart, there is a risk of damage to the relationship with the child's parents. The parents run the risk of coming across to their children as people from a different culture, even people brought up in another country. There are limits to the extent that parents should be counter cultural, imo.

I brought up my children in the US, where I moved in my 20s. If I had kept them from watching TV, the only cultural exposure they would have had in their own native country would have been their experiences of school and participation in sports. They would have enjoyed books, certainly, but they would still have missed a significant amount of American humour and wouldn't have the cultural capital that makes small talk possible - a soft skill you need in life, both in your career and among friends. It's how you connect with your peers and colleagues.

Fwiw, they learned the song 'Alice the Camel' from watching Barney. I hadn't heard it before, so they would never have heard it from me. One of my DDs told me her high school swim team used to sing songs from Barney and Sesame Street on the bus to and from meets. In ironic teen fashion of course...

If I had never watched any American TV as a child in Ireland, I would have been quite adrift in many social situations. I wouldn't have understood the many references to old TV shows that pepper speech, the same way that people who don't read much don't get quotes from the KJV or Shakespeare or P.G. Wodehouse, or people who haven't watched Fawlty Towers or Monty Python would miss many a famous line in conversation.

I would not want a child to feel they were a stranger in their own land.

I don't let mine watch phones or go on devices at all (mainly for their eyes, near devices seem to be particularly bad for developing myopia) but I don't mind them watching TV! Obviously not all day long though

😳

TV only in this family… no personal devices, no phone/iPad time.

I don't know why people act surprised about this sort of comment. I am not sure no screen time is necessarily abusive, but it is a real issue. I grew up with parents who made a great virtue of this sort of negligent parenting, and it definitely does have an impact.

If you really can't manage to supervise a young child using a digital device for a few minutes, or prepare an older child to use a digital device sensibly for longer, then there is a problem.

Is this a deliberate decision? If you were able to, would you want to help your child learn, or do you feel they're too young yet?