[rojeee]

Our son had no screen time and the odd bit of TV up until 2 years old. On his second birthday my wife thought it would be a nice idea to give him an amazon fire kids (because everyone else had one, though not sure how true that is!). A few things we observed:

1. Whilst there IS good content on there. A lot of it is complete nonsense. cocomelon, paw patrol, baby shark, AI generated rubbish etc. and quite a lot of the games are terrible. Toddlers don't know the difference between what is good and what is bad. You cannot monitor them effectively because amazon provides access to all content by default. He would quite easily get through 20-30 apps/videos in one sitting. That's a lot of different content!

2. Instead of reading, playing with his lego, wooden blocks, trainset or doing puzzles, his goto became the tablet. He wanted it at all meal times, in the car, and before bed. If we didn't give it to him, he had a meltdown. So we ended up giving it to him as we didn't have time to deal with the meltdown. Before the tablet, he didn't really meltdown at all.

3. Whilst he communicates well and talks a lot for a 2 year old. When using the tablet, he would completely zone out... "Would you like to eat supper?" ... tumbleweed. That's not great and aligns with TFA.

4. Not sure if correlated because there are lots of other factors at play but his bedtimes became a nightmare. He wanted the tablet, when before we read books like Mog the Cat or similar. Instead of being content with Daddy singing Jelly on the Plate, he wanted the horrid video on the tablet.

5. We live in a lovely rural area in the UK and he stopped wanting to go outside to instead play with the tablet.

6. Again, not sure if correlated but he became more irritable and restless after using the tablet.

7. He would complain there is nothing to do despite the availabily of toys.

And so... One day we told him the computer was broken. Mummy sent it to the factory to get it repaired. And... It's still being repaired to this day.

The first day was hell but now he's stopped asking for it and he's back to his normal self.

Perhaps we'll introduce it again when he's a bit older.

[matt3D]

Heard a similar story from a friend that had to wean their kids off of a tablet.

I don't want to come across as evangelical about it, but it is the best decision I think we've made as parents.

[oven9342]

Oh yeah. I get downvoted as hell when I admit that I wish my mom had gently smashed my screens with a hammer instead of hiding my cables, which came to show how powerless she was about the device which was harming my school involvement

[whywhywhywhy]

Horrifying but honestly seen the exact same thing happen every time.

Honestly don't understand parents who would swap the facade of "it shuts them up" when in reality you have kids who you can take to dinner and they'd happily just sit there with a coloring book vs the drama about how much charge they have left on their tablet and constantly having to tell them to put it down to eat.

Dunno starts to feel like a false economy where you're trading off acknowledging them elsewhere for a moment for every other interaction being amplified into drama mostly centered around the tablet, how much charge is on the tablet, when the tablet must be put down etc.

[plandis]

I give my child zero screen time except on the plane when we are flying across the country to visit family.

Eating out with my son is difficult because he cannot focus on something for more than a few minutes. I’m sure some kids would be content to sit and color for like 30mins but I don’t think it’s the norm at 2.

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

I know everybody has a suggestion to give and you should listen to nobody, but, if the time comes, give them a nintendo switch with Kirby star allies and yoshi's crafted world (and nothing else). If videogames are something you want to allow, give the hard ones, they either get bored because it's hard or they learn