[hightechlowlife]

Scientific research quite strongly links excessive screen time to psychological problems in children. You can be spared from science, if you'd like, but it does no good to ignore real problems just because you want to stick your head in the sand.

Edit: And for the bogeyman's sake, if you'd like the "proof", that's what Google is for. This isn't some fringe view. It's about the same as asking me for proof that smoking is damaging.

[avalaunch]

The problem is that virtually all of the screen time studies don't apply to tablet usage as they were studying the effects of passive screen time such as watching tv. People have a tendency to group the two together as "screen time" but actively playing educational apps on a tablet is very different than passively watching tv. In time we should have a better idea what the effects are but right now tablets are still too new for any comprehensive studies to have been completed.

[0xcde4c3db]

I've looked at Google and PubMed and was not impressed by what I found. Most "screen time" studies are primarily or exclusively TV-watching studies, and in many cases are in turn using that as a proxy for sedentary behavior in general rather than actually examining media consumption patterns. In short, they don't demonstrate that all screen time is equivalent, they just define the variable that way. That can be entirely justifiable from a study design standpoint, but also limits what the results can tell us.

The main source for recommending limitations on overall screen time for young children seems to be a set of recommendations published by the American Academy of Pediatrics [1], but they don't actually cite any research (or their citations are too well-hidden for me). The AAP recently published a release stating that new recommendations are coming soon and suggesting that the old guidelines are unnecessarily rigid and unrealistic, even to the point of explicitly stating that "The public needs to know that the Academy’s advice is science-driven, not based merely on the precautionary principle.". The top bullet point is "media is just another environment". This newer document generally advocates a nuanced approach that takes the nature of the content or activity as well as the social context of media consumption (e.g. whether parents are actively watching with the child) into account [2].

[1]: https://www.aap.org/en-us/advocacy-and-policy/aap-health-ini...

[2]: http://www.aappublications.org/content/36/10/54.full

[joepvd]

Correlation != causation. Is screen time per se that would create some issues with kids, or is it the lack of real communication between parent and kid?

I love to sit down and actively watch (i.e. point, name, discuss) a show with my 3 y/o son. When not excessive, I feel this is good for both of us.

[mathgeek]

> When not excessive, I feel this is good for both of us.

While I also agree that it doesn't feel wrong to experience something on a screen as a family, we should always be wary of "it feels good/right" as a reason for believing that something isn't bad for you in the long run. That's a slippery slope that has led to plenty of negative trends recently. It's far too easy for people to latch onto things that are good in moderation and let those things slip into over-saturation.

[ashark]

Unfortunately, screen time for young kids is more addictive for parents than cigarettes have ever been to anyone, and look how hard it was (is) to get people to cut that out.