[boh]

A parent doing their own "research" can quickly dispute these claims. A popular term in the parent community is "screen kid" to describe those kids who come for a play-date but literally don't know what to do when there isn't a screen in their hand. Screen kids tend be more neurotic, distractible, emotional and totally addicted to screen time. It's a little bit of a hot topic since the parents who rely more on screen-time to manage their children tend to disagree.

[GPerson]

From this reading, it’s possible the causality is reversed here. If I’m desperate because I’ve got a neurotic and emotional kid, I might be more likely to hook them up to an iPad.

[galdosdi]

Of course. Yet it's also a great way to ensure a small neurotic problem becomes a bigger and bigger one, and does not get a chance to heal and improve while it's still small and the child is still young and more plastic.

[mrkeen]

That's just a re-assertion of cause and effect.

TFA: A doesn't cause B.

1: I see A and B together.

2: It may be that B causes A.

3: That doesn't matter, because A causes B.

[bunderbunder]

100 years ago people were making similar arguments about kids reading books, and then somewhere between then and now the culture shifted and we decided we actually want kids reading more, not less.

I agree with parent poster, we've got to be very careful about correlation and causation here. The screen kids I know, yes they definitely do seem to have poorer mental health, but there also tends to be a lot more questionable stuff than just the kid's own screen time happening in their homes. Notably, their parents are often so completely keyed into their own priorities (which may or may not be Wordle) that the kids don't really have anything else to do, anyway. So another decent hypothesis is that the kids just aren't getting as much good social interaction, period, and that's what's really affecting their social-emotional development. If that's true, then that might imply that the screen is more of a coping mechanism on the kid's part (and therefore might even be beneficial given the context) than a primary cause of the problem.

[galdosdi]

I think that's right, and this isn't that different from "TV latchkey kids" from the 80s. The difference is a phone in your pocket is even more addictive than a TV in the living room, and the algorithmic apps serve more addictive content than the 5 over the air broadcast channels on TV did.

[vidarh]

So popular that as a parent I've never heard the term in my life, and that a Google search finds few uses of the term...

Sounds like a little local bubble to me.

[boh]

If it's not a thing on the internet it doesn't exist.

Regardless if the term is popular in your area, the concept in general has been a thing since the invention of the IPad.

I'll admit protecting kids from the internet is kind of a minority opinion. Most parents I've known don't control screen time at all.

[vidarh]

The concept may have been a thing, but I was baffled by the notion it was a popular term and hot topic "in the parent community". If it was you'd expect there to be a lot of articles and discussion.

[kjkjadksj]

The more popular term where you will find a lot more hits on google is “iPad kid”

[vidarh]

Marginally more Google results, still lots of irrelevant resulats (of the kind "make your iPad kid-friendly etc), but not exactly many, and first time I've heard that term too.

It seems to be very new, and one article claiming it was coined on Tik Tok, which would explain why nobody I talk to uses it, though.

[dragonwriter]

> A popular term in the parent community is "screen kid" to describe those kids who come for a play-date but literally don't know what to do when there isn't a screen in their hand. Screen kids tend be more neurotic, distractible, emotional and totally addicted to screen time

There's evidence that from a very young age, kids with ASD are more attracted to screens and tend to stay longer on them; because this starts earlier than the age at which ASD is diagnosed, its often been spun (especially in the popular press) as screens contributing to ASD, but there is a lots of reason to believe that the connection is more the other way around.

[bentt]

I am not part of this parent community you speak of, and I'm definitely a parent.

It's complicated. Some kids gravitate to screens, for reasons good and bad. Some parents are more permissive with screen time, but permissiveness over quantity of screen time is different than enforcement of quality of screen time.

When you talk in extremes it's not helpful.