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by saiya-jin 1305 days ago
> should be regulated in some way, at least up until a certain age.

Its called proper parenting. As a father of little 2 miracles, I can clearly see how easily they get addicted to basically everything-screen, and many more things like junk food. And its 1-way road.

The hard part is going into full relentless battle with your own children who will use various psychological tricks, just like adult addicts, to get their kicks. Almost nothing is off the table. So you often end up with verbal contracts like you are buying next twitter to have some rule of sanity, but kids tend to ignore it anyway.

We personally are +- not there yet, so its relatively easy to manage 1 and 3 year olds for screens. But we see lost battles all around us, kids small and big glued to phones, tablets, tvs, just that parents can have some time off. Not everybody fails, but we see success mostly with parents that simply dont have tv at home and use (rarely) phones more like old nokias (with attached camera) rather than smart phones. You can't expect kids to respect prohobition when parents are clearly ignoring it.

Proper parenting these days is hard, I guess also due to higher bar for parenting success than just 'kids are alive when entering adulthood'.
1 comments
leetbulb 1305 days ago
Totally agree. I cannot imagine how difficult it is for modern parents to manage this issue. By "regulated" I did mean 90% parenting, but it's also a larger, systemic societal issue that needs to be at least considered, quickly, before the current generation(s) who realize it no longer have influence and the issue solidifies as normal in our culture.

On the other hand, it's probably just the, albeit sad, natural order.

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saiya-jin 1305 days ago
Maybe the trick is to clearly label these addictions across whole society as harmful, the lower the age the more intense/deep/long lasting harm and act accordingly. When we managed it rather quickly globally on proper narcotics this should be achievable.

I've met parents who were saying 'we have digital kids' when their kids were acting like heroin addicts on withdrawal just to play on phone another 30 mins, and they were saying this as something normal. I get it why, admitting you are raising hard addicts and it was you who failed to prevent that must be outright unacceptable for many. People have this innermost desire to feel good about their actions and decisions and this would be properly undefendable if hard truths were told.

But it comes back to parents too - spending more time with kids instead of chasing career and money kids have 0 interest in (which is smart!), more meaningfully, be an example in ie activities, sports and hobbies. In an age when obesity jumps through the roof, people are seriously messed up after 2 years of covid lockdowns and all news are about doom and gloom. Tough.

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leetbulb 1305 days ago
> I've met parents who were saying 'we have digital kids'

Never heard this. Very interesting.

To your point, I agree. I am curious if there's been an official term coined for this... is it actually "digital kid?" I am curious if there will end up being a stigma applied to whatever it is as a sort of natural course-correction, or if it becomes the "norm." Humans love labels and their connotation.

PS: Hats off to you and the other parents in this thread with similar understanding.

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