[selcuka]

Our kids are not allowed to have their own phones, but they can use our phones for a limited amount of time every day, to communicate with their friends (under our supervision). There are middle grounds, it is not a all-or-none decision.

[saiya-jin]

Friend's family have all Android phones and he told me directly in the OS there is an easy way to limit online time, I guess they have some parental account setup. Just allow them 30 mins now, or 20 minutes after some homework/chores are done etc. By default its off, as it should be.

TBH this tackles some of the worst attention traps for kids, but I consider screen time in general for kids as huge waste of time and their life, it doesn't matter how big screen is. Of course there is educational purpose, but it may not be easy keeping the device purely to that.

Life is about completely different things, if kids won't learn that early, they will face many struggles later. They can waste their life in front of their screens once they reach adulthood as much as they like, lets not mess them up even beforehand.

[AlanSE]

I strongly agree with almost everything I've read here, but I agree less-so that screen size doesn't matter.

We don't build computers to be used socially. I've seen... demos? Someone makes a table with touch input recognizing the entire space and installs an app that encourages collaborative investigation. This is a far cry from an app. If I were to go through a list of all tech developments in the last 10 years, I can't imagine more than 2 or 3 that did something to improve IO-level collaboration. We have LOTS of collaboration software, but none of it is on the human-interface level. You start with everyone having their own device.

Big screens are good IMO. The bigger the better, take the entire wall. One room should have 1 screen. It should be so big and unignorable that people stop taking the personal screen they carry in their pocket.

I know all the shows that my other family members watch. I don't love 'em, but I can have a conversation about a character (and we do!). On the other hand, I have no accurate sense what TikToks they watch. Yet, those TikTocks have been dramatically more impactful of people's views on various subjects from politics, to cleaning, to finance, to mental health. But there's no opportunity to say "hey, that's false".

[germinalphrase]

What level of supervision do you employ?

[selcuka]

They are only allowed to use Messenger Kids, which doesn't require them to create Facebook profiles (I have to have one, though). They can't delete their messages once sent, and we can also view their conversations on another parent's phone while they are chatting.

They can technically install another app and add random people as contacts, but it would be very hard to do that without our knowledge.

[germinalphrase]

My kids are young. I don’t look forward to navigating these choices around media.

[cpursley]

This is a great idea!