[Pimpus]

It's hard to generalize too much about screen time. It is almost universally bad, especially for kids, and should be kept to a minimum. Gadgets nowadays provide an unlimited stream of stimulation, novelty, and dopamine hits. No child can resist that, which is why the "lesser evils" like education apps are still "gamified" to have any chance of keeping a kid's attention. The result is that kids from an early age are growing up addicted to dopamine and the internet. It's not much different from fat kids already being addicted to junk food from an early age, it's just not as visible -- and both situations will be very difficult to change during the individual's life.

Really, you just have to spend some time with the current generation of children to see how disastrous technology has been. Their brain chemistry depends on constant outside stimulation, and anything else is boring.

Also, if you think you can effectively police what your kids do and see on the internet, you are sorely mistaken.

[intothemild]

Whilst I agree it's hard to generalise and one shouldn't.

Now I'm a father of a 3 year old, I'm seeing differences in screen time with other parents/kids.

There's two kinds of parents, ones that pay attention to what their kids are doing, and those who don't.

We're almost all children of Boomers, who was raised with unfettered access to Television. Our boomer parents allowed some of us unfettered access to the early internet, video games, and television. Some of us were told to get outside and play. I certainly remember that some of my friends had restrictions on Games/TV/Etc, and some friends had no restrictions.

Most if not all of the fear mongering about Screen Time is coming from Boomers, not Gen X/Y.

That said.. I can easily separate the two parent's when it comes to screen time by telling them how bad letting their kids watch Youtube unmonitored is. The parents who monitor what their kids do will agree with me, the parents who don't monitor will disagree with me "Ohh its fine whatever".

The OP is right, the problem isn't Screen Time... it's content.

We have a rule in our house, no screen unless it's important, and if it should be shared.. So if my wife gets a text, and we're all playing, she tells us "Oh i got a text message from this person, I'm going to read it and reply". It involves everyone.

If my daughter is doing something, we do it with her. All her apps are educational and I've run them through my parents who are teachers with over 30+ years experience.

The problem is content, not screens.

Reality is those kids are going to grow up in a future where screens are always around. We'd like to think we're teaching them that screens are OK, as long as you include others in what you're doing.. So that my daughter doesn't become anti-social.

[Sendotsh]

Couldn't have said it better myself. We have a strict list of apps and games that are allowed, but they basically get unfettered access to those ones. Nothing with ads or microtransactions, no mindless games, no YouTube at all unless we scraped a specific channel with youtube-dl to filter the crap. They have plenty of stuff to choose from and never get bored. Most the time they'd rather go play outside in the cubby or with the Lego anyway.

[jwatt]

I'd love to see the list of apps your teacher parents approved. :)

[snikeris]

> It is almost universally bad, especially for kids, and should be kept to a minimum.

Were you aware of this recent study[1] that seemed to draw a different conclusion?

> The authors’ overall calculations did find a statistically significant negative association between technology use and well-being: more screen time is associated with lower well-being in the young people surveyed. But the effects are so small — explaining at most 0.4% of the variation in well-being — as to be of little practical value.

> In fact, regularly eating potatoes was almost as negatively associated with well-being as was technology use, and the negative association between wearing glasses and well-being was greater.

I would think that something "almost universally bad" would present itself as more statistically significant in terms of well-being.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00137-6

[dagw]

It is almost universally bad, especially for kids, and should be kept to a minimum.

Had I heeded that advice as a kid I almost certainly wouldn't have this very comfortable job and career I currently have. That being said I agree that not all screen time is created equal and it is important that screen time is guided and monitored. Also there is nothing that precludes screen time from also being a parent-child bonding activity.