[robbrown451]

Actual objects don't teach this sort of thing. They may well teach other things.

I encourage you to parent your own children. HN users are typically adults and can make their own decisions on whether some screen time for their kids is ok, and what sort of screen time. Doing a logic puzzle is not, in my opinion, the same as going from video to video of squeaky voiced ladies with brightly colored nails opening toy eggs on YouTube.

Is it ok if my daughter videochats with relatives? Or is that screen time and therefore bad?

Is it ok is she draws with crayons? Crayons and paper may be "actual objects", but the images she creates are no more "actual" than the pixels on a screen.

The world is a lot more complex and subtle than just dividing things into "screen time" and "real world".

[comboy]

The world is complex. And that's why division between screen time and real world at this age makes sense. You let many more brain areas develop when you can touch stuff, move it around with many more degrees of freedom, you have way more complex visual stuff to analyse at different focal lengths and so on. It's quite well documented.

But of course, do parent your own children. You are the optimisation function. You may value abstract thinking higher than spatial imagination dexterity etc.

[robbrown451]

"You may value abstract thinking higher than spatial imagination dexterity etc."

I don't think they are mutually exclusive. I mean, here's typical examples of my kid taking in some screen time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z492IPHZTUY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khU5A6Y1dk4

[comboy]

Haha, fair enough.

[eitland]

Just finished watching a film about Magnus Carlsen and how early he started and one of my key takeaways was that getting extremely good in chess actually helped him do well in other aspects of life as well.

Then of course his family doesn't seem to be pushing him, rather than supporting him, and if they had been pushing him hard into this it could possibly had a totally different outcome.

[avip]

Have you seen the documentary about all the other kids who've started chess very early?

[eitland]

No, is there one?

[ghostbrainalpha]

I'm not sure if the comment you responded to was a sarcastic joke or a reference to this documentary.

Chess Kids: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZK0vtFkm7mE

[jonny_eh]

> getting extremely good in her s gqme actually helped

huh?

[RandomBacon]

My guess at a correction: 'good in her game'

[eitland]

Should of course be "good in his game".

I have rewritten it. I'll leave it to you to figure out my opinion of autocorrect ;-)