hard to watch very young kids addicted to screens

[fleurneige]

We have several young friends with toddlers, aged between 20 months and 3.5 years- and they all give kids their phone or tablet as soon as they start whining a bit or saying they are bored. Honestly, it is hard to watch how addicted they already are, and having massive tantrums if they don't get phone or tablet when requested.

How do you feel? Thanks for discussion.

@Malarandras
Yes. But there is beginning to be a realization of the harm being done to children instead of a defeatist acceptance that that's it - they are fucked and destined for a life of anxiety and other mental health issues.

Even worse you can get new born prams with tablet holders in the hood for very young babies to watch. My friend was taken aback that my dd never had her own tablet at age 3, getting her one didn't even cross my mind. It's lazy parenting give the phone tablet so they don't have to parent!!

honestly we have resisted ( oldest is just 2 so we may yet crack) but it’s hard and I get why people do it because it’s the path of least resistance in a country that HATES children.

the judgemental stares when your child makes so much as a noise or is anything other than beautifully behaved when out and about is difficult and a phone or tablet stops all that.

i had this today in a cafe at a park with a farmers market and a petting farm! (Ie family friendly)
my Dd is normally great but was having an off morning. Bit fussy bit restless bit moaning but nothing wild.
I actually got a filthy look and a tut from a women in her 60s(?) who was with her own adult child!?!?
🤷🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️

When my nephew was one I saw him trying to swipe a locked phone. I asked my sister how he knew to do that and she said she didn’t know, she’d never given him a phone or tablet.
Screens are so ingrained into our lives that kids pick up that they’re a source of entertainment from such an early age, even down to how we hold and interact with them.

I can definitely understand wanting to use them like a dummy when kids need pacifying. But at some point we usually take a dummy away, whereas screen use just increases with age

I have a 3 year old and he has tv time each day. He doesn't nap so its a bit if downtime for both of us in a manic 12 hours awake!

However we don't have an ipad and only rarely does he watch anything on my phone.

I find children in buggies glued to phones so sad. They should be walking and chatting and enjoying everything around them. The simplest things are such a joy to little kids and they're missing it all.

Of course, there are always exceptions and but in general, parenting is not plonking a kid with a screen.

Children have been watching tv for 50+ years. It’s not a new thing.

I think it's a dangerous experiment for no particular reason aside from convenience (laziness?). There is no reason for a baby or toddler (or child or teen even) to be constantly with their nose in a phone being "entertained" as opposed to interacting with and observing the real world.

Children have been watching tv for 50+ years. It’s not a new thing.

Of course it's not even remotely the same thing and it is being quite obtuse to suggest otherwise.

It is awful. My almost 4 year old probably watches too much tv at home but doesn't have tablets when we're out or look on our phones. It's lazy. He brings a car or other toy to play with and we chat. I see this one lady at our local
Costa every Saturday morning and she just slaps her 2 young kids in front of tablets while she plays on her phone. It's depressing.

When I was a sahm from 2006 after they gave up naps mine watched tv after lunch so I had some headspace. Usually 90 mins max. Agsin after tea hour max. That was it. There were no other screens.

It is a massive issue, but many will dismiss it. I've good friends who are speech and language therapist and a primary teacher and in a significant amount of cases they can identify the children who have excessive screen time straight away.

I really believe the research that will emerge in the next few years will show a host of issues. From ergonomic to social impacts on their development.

It actually makes me sad to see a very young toddler have a phone in their hand in a park while mum is on hers. Yes we all need breaks but really a screen while in a park? With animals, playground and plenty of trees to explore. I think the pressures on parents today has a part to play in the rise of very young children been given screens

I had to give a presentation at work last week on screens and babies/toddlers. The WHO say that children under 2 should have NO screen time whatsoever and preschoolers (2-5), no more than an hour a day.

There is significant, mounting evidence that excessive screen time is linked to poor communication skills and language acquisition, lack of empathy, reduced ability to regulate emotions and feelings, obesity, poor eyesight etc (due to the 2D, not 3D point made above).

Some studies have shown that there is a reduction in academic performance in children who watch too much and especially children who have a TV in their bedroom from a young age.

Of course it is easier to stick a child in front of a screen, but it's not doing them any good at all.

However, a limited amount of high quality, educational programmes, watched WITH a parent/carer and talked about, may be beneficial with preschoolers.

We are all guilty of too much screen use, but setting boundaries and limits early on will pay off later.

But you have absolutely NO clue what their life is like outside of this outing to Costa? Why do you give other people headspace?

you carry on as you were.

I disagree with teens and older kids. In reality activities cost a fortune to join classes and for older kids to go things. I don't think a baby/toddler is comparable to a teen nor older child let's not lump them in the same category.

I don’t know this just sounds judgy - we
monitor carefully but she’s allowed it at 3.5
she’s had the occasional tantrum but if that’s all you see without knowing how much time said kids been on it, no place to comment

I agree we shouldn’t give children screens to placate them every moment. We allow TV and DC both had an Amazon fire thing (given by GPs…) but they use them rarely- flights and things and otherwise they have a 30 min/day timer to go off. But honestly even when home all day and I wouldn’t stop them they rarely use them.
Eldest uses iPads at school for work so she’s very au fair with tech and swiping etc which I don’t see as a bad thing.
The only thing I am 10000% against is YouTube even the kids one. The constant changing or videos and lack of attention that causes and coming across weird content (I have friends who’ve found- in fairness v cute- videos of their kids saying ‘welcome to my YouTube channel’ or unboxing toys they’ve made one their parents phone…)
It’s hard we have two close in age so I sent them off to play and they do for hours. But if I had an only or a big age gap or they didn’t get on so well and we stuff to do I can see why people reach for screens.

I think people judging what they see from a small snapshot of a day out or at a cafe or whatever is absolutely ridiculous. Me and my husband have definitely given a phone to watch a cartoon whilst they become restless waiting for food. Guess what? They barely watch TV any other time.
The fact is, it seems like a lot of folk have grown up kids and are judging away but if they had children now, they'd be doing it too. That's life.

The judgey ones will have done frowned upon things too I guess. Probably smacked their kids into submission...

I thought we didn't use phones much round my kids but my three year old was swiping her finger on a Magnetix tile the other day and when asked said it was her phone. She was actually pretending to talk to someone on it though so I felt not too bad about it!

I generally put my phone away in a different room while I'm with the kids because I think what they see you modelling is probably at least nearly as important as whether you give them a screen.

The only screen time we do is a weekly video call to relatives. Other than that, there's been maybe two or three times I've shown the three year old a video or photo to answer a question they have (e.g. last year there was a car rally up near us and she wanted to know what that was all about so I found a little bit of footage of it online and showed her. But I can genuinely count on the fingers of one hand how often that's happened.)

What I'm dreading to how to manage screen time appropriately once we start, which obviously we'll have to at some point! I've seen so many friends' kids just pester for more and more - to be honest putting that off is why we're still basically doing no screen time with the three year old!

Its not just one or 2 kids anymore. I've been in cafe's where every child practically was engrossed in their phone or tablet. I've seen 2 parents with a toddler in a pram all on devices while sitting eating with little to no engagement with each other. I'm sorry, but that can't be right. Perhaps its judgemental, perhaps its a changing world but the pattern thats emerging is very worrying and thats from someone who works in tech.

This country does not ‘hate children’.

I hate hearing Baby Shark on repeat.

Yes, a hour a day of Watch With Mother is exactly the same as a child watching Minecraft videos on repeat for 8 hours a day.

See? These threads are never judgement free because it’s full of comments against children they don’t know for a snapshot of the day. It’s so cunty yet predictable.

theres no conversation about how society has changed, the pressures on parents that did not exist 30 years ago, the increasing need to be tech savvy to navigate both the world and education, the lack of support now for parents.

It’s “I saw a child with a tablet in a coffee shop - how outrageous!”

NewOrder, your reaction, unfortunately, is not helping with a healthy discussion at all. And could be seen as so 'judjey' of anyone who is concerned. My OP was not about a snapshot on one day, but the use of phone or tablet with very young children, at anytime and anywhere, as an automatic avoidance of any poor behaviour. It is constantly rewarding those very young children for misbehaving, and becomes a vicious circle.

And yes, as an older mum, I can truly see how easily any parent can quickly fall into this vicious circle with screens.

"it's so cunty yet predictable" - as are the responses from people who insist, that despite the increasing evidence that screens are detrimental to very young brains, they will just insult people who point this out, rather than stop and think about what alternatives there are. It is also infuriating to be in a public space and have loud, tinny music emitting from small devices constantly.

It is HARD to parent small children - yes, of course the world has changed, but there are ways to navigate it without constantly plugging your child in to screens/food/pacifiers - electronic or otherwise, and help your child/ren and their development.

Obviously as they get older, then they will need screens and to be tech savvy, but there is mounting evidence that babies and very young children are being damaged by them, that the generation born since 2010 have far worse mental health than their predecessors, and that young people aged 17-30 are far less mentally resilient than previous cohorts of young adults - and the common denominators? Screens/internet/social media.

OP is talking about toddlers using phones while waiting for their mothers chatting to friends over coffee, not 8 hours of minecraft. Listen with mother was I think more than 50 years ago? 50 years ago small children watched button moon, rainbow, Sesame Street, bagpuss, and it was definitely for more than an hour. Another 20 years before that children were disciplined for reading too much. “Always got her head in a book” was NOT a compliment.
It’s possible that there are small children who are neglected in the way OP describes but I would say habituated not addicted to the activity, and I would say it would be rare.
Children arriving at school not toilet trained is far more likely to be the result of increased numbers of disabled children in the population and the introduction of disposable nappies.