[iraldir]

As always with that sort of conversation, I don't think "screen" is a valid category of interaction. Drawing on photoshop, watching a documentary on whales, playing bejeweled or using TikTok are very different activities that impact the brain differently.

My daughter is still young (2.5 years old), but I know that I'll let her play video games when she wants as long as it's as part of other activities in the day and that the games are ones that develop either her logic, creativity or motor skills.

Similarly, watching a quality show like bluey, or watching a full movie end to finish like Totoro in Japanese are watching activities I support, whereas watching some crap cartoon made to sell toys is not.

[tgv]

I think we can safely assume toddlers don't use photoshop, and don't play bejeweled. I also can't quite imagine them watching a nature documentary.

Video games won't develop motor skills, unless you find some tough games which require very fast hand-eye coordination at the child's level. Even then it's going to be very limited in comparison to e.g. drawing, throwing and catching a ball or playing a musical instrument. Creativity from video games is something I find even harder to believe. Logic is about the only thing that games manage to convey, but at that age, logic is weird. Toddlers can't reason well, and can't explain themselves.

A tablet or a phone is like candy to children. Be careful.

[iraldir]

My 2 years 5 month old toddler uses Adobe fresco on my wacom tablet every now and then, she knows how to switch colours and draw, I erase the page every now and then for her.

She also watches every now and then "C'est pas sorcier", a french documentary series for kids that's pretty advanced (go into details of biology etc.), on all sorts of topics (nature, science, food etc.). That's also a good way for her to experience some French as we live in the UK and her only source of French are talking to me, or to her grandmother on the phone.

Just to be clear she does plenty of other activities, we cook together (she has a children's chef knife and uses it to cut things like tofu, carrots etc.), she draws on paper, she sings and dance, goes to the swimming pool weekly etc.

As for video game, that's more for later as she does not have yet the skills for that but at a glance

- Logic : Puzzle games, things like incredible machines, but also management game like sim-city. - Creativity : Any sandbox game, the sims, minecraft, drawing game, sculpting game, animal crossing etc. - Motor skills: Platformers, fighting games...

Essentially any game that requires a lot of effort for little reward, as opposed to games that makes you touch something shiny and shower you in visual and auditive feedback.

[mrock]

Similar bilingual parent here.

"C'est pas socier" and "Numberblocks" are excellent.

[op00to]

Numberblocks gave my kid impressive numerical literacy at a super young age.

[yowzadave]

The thing that bothers me about game interactions is that they are designed to provide quick and easy positive feedback loops, unlike most real-world skills. E.g., learning the piano requires a lot of difficult persistence with uncertain feedback along the way--it's an entirely different experience than playing a video game, and I worry that conditioning our brains with games makes it harder for us to develop the patience and resilience that are required to develop those kinds of skills.

[nostrademons]

Oftentimes the way to learn complex real-life skills is to break them up into smaller interactions that you can gamify to get that immediate dopamine high of a successful intermediate result. This is a large portion of my job as an engineering manager - breaking up complex strategic goals into an MVP launch + follow-ons, ensuring that projects are scaled appropriately to the skill level of the people doing them, and rewarding folks with bonuses and promotions for successful milestones on the path to that strategic objective.

[sdwr]

I just read an interview with an esports pro transitioning to a normal job, he said the exact same thing. That the game environment is very "coddled" - you are always on a track, getting pulled towards the next milestone. Real life is more open-ended and less instantly gratifying.

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

Multiplayer games are extremely different from single player games though. Multiplayer games are on purpose made to keep you hooked, to keep your spending up.

Single player games have one off purchases (unless you are playing trash games), so the requirement is to just have an enjoyable experience.

For some weird reason we couple all of this under "screen time" and "videogames" encompasses both multiplayer and singleplayer, which is heavily different.

[azemetre]

Do you happen to have the article? Sounds interesting. I was very invested in the sc2 esports scene in 2010 during college.

[sdwr]

Yeah, sorry for the late reply.

It was this article with ptitdrogo

https://www.christian-staedter.com/guest-newsletter-theo-pti...

[azemetre]

Thanks! This person was literally right when I stopped watching (shortly before legacy of the void was released).

I'm kinda curious what happened to the earlier pros, like Idra, Huk, etc. I suppose time to do some detective work. :D

[8note]

People without that patience and resilience aren't gonna learn the piano anyways. People with that patience will put it into their video games to learn speed runs or be competitive

[lupusreal]

Of course kids watch nature documentaries. Kids love animals.

> Creativity from video games is something I find even harder to believe. Logic is about the only thing that games manage to convey,

Kids playing Minecraft probably aren't building computers.

[sigmoid10]

It depends on the game, but certain kinds of games have been shown in a number of studies to improve a wide array of abilities - from daily hand-eye coordination tasks [1] over decision making [2] all the way to problem solving [3]. The only question is if you want your kid to play COD or Starcraft, but the benefits are there and if your kid is not interested in learning an instrument, it's way better to have them play these types of games rather than some low mental effort smartphone attention sink.

[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/095679761665030...

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187705092...

[3] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235367249_More_Than...

[tgv]

Eye-hand coordination, sure.

But you've got a motley set of studies. The first study says "After they played a driving or first-person-shooter video game for 5 or 10 hr, their visuomotor control improved significantly. In contrast, non–action gamers showed no such improvement after they played a nonaction video game" (emphasis mine). Not toddler's games.

The 2nd article is not only about FPS, but it is very low quality and relies on self report without a control group.

The third article finds a correlation between strategic video games and self-reported problem solving skills and self-reported academic performance, while showing a negative influence from FPS on problem solving.

So I'd say: nothing has been proven, certainly not about toddler's games.

[loandbehold]

Most of the studies showing negative effects of screen time are also low quality and rely on self reporting.

[moi2388]

Yeah take that with a massive grain of salt. Most social studies can’t be reproduced. (As in, at least 2/3rds can’t be reproduced, and the remaining 1/3rd often only on the same specific cohort)

During my studies my team tried to replicate some studies showing improved test scores after playing games like Tetris; we tried it on several schools and found literally no effect whatsoever.

[Jensson]

So why do you believe that screen time is bad for kids if studies can't be replicated? If you were consistent you would say this for that as well, just scrutinizing one side means you aren't really scrutinizing, you are just confirming your own biases.

[moi2388]

Who said I believe that? I surely don’t. I had a lot of screen time as a kid and it taught me a lot, for one I wouldn’t be able to speak English without it.

I personally do believe screen time ought to be limited to some extent, but that’s only because I believe being outside is healthy, not because screen time itself is bad.

[tgv]

I didn't want to go into that, but social sciences is indeed bad at proving things. At best they find a correlation, but a causal relation is very hard to determine. And that's aside from the bad methodology.

[finfrastrcuture]

Parenting is so tough to discuss. Nothing is ever a best (or even 'right') answer. I agree with this take, with a "yes, and" -

I worry about apps / video games for children also stunting imagination. Yes, in a game like Minecraft you can build anything out of blocks, or with Photoshop draw anything. However, the entire 'universe of outcomes' is inherently bound to the mind(s) of the developers, compared with a bored kid who's possibilities are limited only by their own imagination. Children are therefore pressed to stretch and practice creativity. Its not a perfect analogy, but I'm reminded of the theme in the Matrix movies of bounded outcomes.

I personally think creativity through raw boredom - rather than directed distraction (especially through digital devices)- is essential to mental development.

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

I don't disagree on the second part, but i highly doubt the author of minecraft envisioned that somebody would recreate a computer inside the game. From any point of view, that's an incredible exercise in creativity.

Also, having boundaries and getting bored is great for creativity

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

Really? Give super mario to a toddler watch as they get frustrated, cry and smash the controller with a huge tantrum.

And I'm not sure what videogames you play, but hand eye coordination needs to be really high. something that's also overlooked is the level of reflexes they develop. In new super mario bros U, initially I would need to say "now jump" with roughly a 6 seconds anticipation before the actual jumo, now my toddler can jump properly in the first few levels.

Give it toa 5 years old and they are nowehere close to being able to do what he can do, so he must have developed something.

Of course you give them hard games, it's the same reason why you give them veggies and not candies. You give healthy videogames, not the garbage that goes on tablet and phones.

Oh and regarding creativity, my children played videogames, then got bored. With mum, they built a super mario level using duplo blocks and proceeded to play using the action figures we have.

Something strongly overlooked, is the level of focus required to play hard videogames, so something they develop is, indeed, focus.

And decision making! There is so much to decide in a videogame, often rapidly.

All of this happens in the same room as me, to be clear (still working), so I can see when they get bored and it's time for a change. Also they don't have access to the games, so they have a single videogame at a time with one change per day, which a great natural way to enforce focusing and getting bored if playing excessively

[D13Fd]

Video games can definitely have a lot of benefits over television. My son, who is the third of five, has played an online competitive FPS game since he was four years old. It’s had a number of benefits, including motivating him to learn to read at a much earlier age than his siblings. He wanted to learn to read so badly to play his video game that he can now legitimately just sit and read a book that he has never seen before, before he has even reached kindergarten.

[polishdude20]

Wow that's impressive. I only learned to read in the first grade.

[mordae]

I feel that the previous generation of MLP with Twilight Sparkle was actually pretty good. Despite being made by a company who wanted to sell toys.

Most cringe episodes are the first and last two of the season, but the slice of life in the middle are more often than not golden.

But yeah, creating a curated library and not leaving it to chance would probably be a good idea.

[iraldir]

Yeah for sure, MLP friendship is magic is there in the list of high quality show. It's unavoidable that toys are sold on popular francises, I just don't want show that are obviously just 20 minutes long advertisements with little substance.

[bmacho]

There are not many cartoons made to sell toys that I know of. There is MLP, and .. Star Wars maybe?

And MLP is indeed a quite good show, fans ranging from Miley Cyrus to Gabe Newell.

Also I don't know how is it considered bad if characters are lovable (MLP has 50+ different, but lovable characters by design), or that if objects around her (clothes, mugs, toys, other merch) make her feel good?

[red-iron-pine]

For a good 20-30 years most if not all kids shows were planned with toys in mind.

Some, like Transformers, were essentially toys that were given shows.

Even Sesame Street, a PBS (public broadcast) show, still has significant toy tie-ins -- anyone remember the Tickle Me Elmo crazy years ago? My 2 year old has a big-ass plush Cookie Monster.

[ben_w]

Famously, Transformers. Was Yu-Gi-Oh in this category? I only know that show from the "Abridged" parody dub[0]. Pokémon?

[0] https://www.youtube.com/@LittleKuribohChannel

[bawolff]

GI joe? Various barbie cartoons? Transformers? There are a ton of such cartoons, at least in the 80s and 90s.

[bequanna]

Some screen time is ok, but this can be a slippery slope.

Screen time for your child might buy you some free time, but is not a replacement for real interaction.

In 20, 30, 40 years I guarantee you will give anything to be able to go back and spend more time with your young child.

Children are not distractions from important work, they ARE the important work.