> "She actually looked at a motion picture and went, 'I get it! He's going to be the villain and they're going to do this'," he recalled.
Is there something teachable in making a kid sit through the thing even though they instantly understood front to back?
I get it if your goal is learning. Doing the questions in the math book makes the lesson stick. But - when it comes to entertainment - why put a kid through the frustration?
Funnily enough, even with such emphasis on children, the problem is touching adults as well. And that's completely ignored. Movies in recent years have changed dramatically in subtle ways to work with impatient audience.
A silver lining to this is new parents are very aware of the dangers of screen time. In my little community, I haven't seen parents of kids under the age of 3 give their kid any type of screen especially when they're out. It's a real generational divide, since I used to see kids with tablets in restaurants everywhere back 5 or 6 years ago. The new thing is screen free electronics, like a device kids can stick cards in and it repeats words in English or Spanish.
The awareness is nice, but the friction is still there. So much energy goes into discussions about screen use, it's a real drain on the relation with my kids I feel.
It's important to be clear and set boundaries, but there is always that one friend where they go to and just watch YT shorts until deep in the night falling asleep like a zombie. Moreover, my kid is often the only one with a locked phone (gets 2 hr a day which is also the time he is on the bus). I think it is already insanely much. But he still wants to plays Minecraft as soon as he comes home, this is also quite obsessively (he's in a lot of SMPs). Again it's nice he has a passion but too bad it's for a screen. My daughter in contrast can just play in the garden for hours.
Of course he's not allowed most of the time, but the pressure is always on.
> Of course he's not allowed most of the time, but the pressure is always on.
Definitely. We have similar, although have never given the kids portable screen devices (well, they had a tablet in the house and it was still too much, so we took it away). There are our phones, which they can rarely use and only for specific tasks like "play music on the speaker" or "do fantasy football", and there's a game console with a PIN, and there's a TV with a PIN. So everything requires us to do something, and uninstall games is on the table as a severe consequence. The only autonomous device is a Yoto, which is a card-based story playing device.
It's not perfect, but they definitely want screens less than they used to.
I recognize this too. There must be a correlation between the parents' level of education and the screen time the children have. Would be an interesting study.
I‘d wager that the correlation is with how exhausting the parent‘s job is. Screens are excellent for keeping children occupied, keeping them happy in healthier ways requires a lot of energy. After working a hard job, running a household and worrying about whether you run out of money before the next paycheck I can imagine that many parents just don’t have the mental resources.
> Screens are excellent for keeping children occupied, keeping them happy in healthier ways requires a lot of energy.
It could also be that the parent wants to be on their screen at the same time, or wants to be on Instagram later into the night. There will be some correlation with work, but I doubt that explains most of it.
From a parents perspective, I feel you are incorrect.
Almost every other parent I speak to are well aware of how detrimental screen time is to their kids, and yet often still use devices when they're too tired for much else.
I don't know what you think unemployment looks like, but for most people it's incredibly stressful and not a time when you can just sit on your ass and watch TV all day. The benefits, if you manage to secure them - are barely enough to get by.
Someone who is unemployed, especially if they’re poor, doesn’t suddenly have a lot of free time and headspace. On the contrary, they just got more stressed and pay even less attention since now they have yet another urgent issue weighting on their mind.
We got my daughter a Yoto and it's a great device. She sticks a card in and it plays music or an audiobook. There's a "screen" but it's a low resolution pixel grid that shows pixel art of the current track.
I see small children in strollers (prams?) with devices in front of them every day on public transport, sometimes as little as a few months old. Breaks my heart.
Not to mention that basically everybody around them disappears into screens on trains/buses. It’s emotional abandonment. We are not here any more.
When I make eye contact, the children light up. But the parents often don’t seem to like random strangers to make contact with their child like that. That I have to avoid or break up contact that the child themselves obviously enjoys, while their caretakers disappear into screens, then breaks my heart a second time.
We have over 100 years of developmental psychology research to know that this is bad. Worse than bad.
I'm not a parent, but I have siblings. Screen addiction is a failure of parenting above all else, so is drug abuse and other kind of issues that are rooted in addiction, barring mental illness and bad luck of course.
EDIT: Of course parenting is very difficult, and I don't believe that any of it is easy. I wouldn't blame parents for bad parenting, I would blame a system that creates parents that have no time or energy left to spare.
I don't know what the solution is, but it probably doesn't help when kids are uneducated, being failed by a system that is supposed to educate them, that maybe the parents trust SHOULD educate them. Ultimately those kids grow up to have kids. Aaaand that's the plot of Idiocracy.
I’ve noticed a lot of fear mongering with screens and kids. So called “experts” have taken a few correlational studies and concluded that screen time is the devil. Instagram is full of these podcast clips of experts warning parents of the terrible effects of screen time. However, if you actually read any of these papers, they make it quite clear that is impossible to fully separate screen effects from family environment, and effect sizes are often modest.
Giving your 2 year old an iPad with YouTube everyday for 2 hours is obviously going to be bad for them. That’s a terrible extreme. But 20 minutes of Bluey here and there throughout the week is not gonna mess anybody up.
So while I’m glad people are more aware of the negative effects of screen time, I also hate how extreme it has become. Parents, specially new parents are so susceptible to this kind of fear mongering.
But here is the thing: lots of parents (or people in general) are not able to use common sense and they need to be told absolute statements, because they will break them anyway, just like speed limits. So if you told them "absolutely 0 screen time" they will give them anyway some here and there screen time - which is fine. If the "expert" writing books, speaking on podcast or showing up in reels tells you "ah it's fine, here and there is fine, just use common sense" you will have an army of parents thinking that 2 hours YT for a toddler is "here and there" because "hey, it's not 6 hours a day like my neighbor!"
Lots of kids aren't spending 2 hours a day on a tablet/phone, they spend every waking minute on a tablet/phone. When you see someone walking and scrolling on their phone, you can already tell that they do not turn it off, ever.
I don't think screen free kids won't miss anything by not watching Bluey for 20 mins, OTOH not so great parents will keep pushing those 20 mins further and further with worse and worse content, so I guess it's just easier to say any screen time is bad since the border between reasonable/good screen time and bad screen time is very small.
Even worse is what the screen is showing...Every new animation on youtube appear to involve some toilet reference, like if I look up dinosaur cartoons, most of the hits will be showing farting dinosaurs or potty training dinosaurs with animated shit (literally). Disgusting...
WTAF?
Thankfully there is also a wealth of 90s and older cartoons to be had if you care enough to search for them...
Don’t give kids YouTube access. More curated platforms like Netflix or Amazon Prime at least filter out the worst dreck.
I find German public tv (I live in Germany) actually has relatively high quality programming for kids. I rather have my kids watch TV than streaming (when they’re allowed screen time), we bought a TV after almost 20 years of not having one.
> I find German public tv (I live in Germany) actually has relatively high quality programming for kids.
Die Sendung mit der Maus! I haven't watched it much, but as an Australian trying to learn German, I remember finding it a useful show. That, and I appreciate it being referenced in the Eisbrecher industrial metal song "This Is Deutsch".
Can you name something worthy from German public TV? Imho it’s too political with greenwashing and other shit I don’t want at home. We had a discussion at home for whole week after Checker Tobi complaining about deforestation in Brazil. Germans want to know it better for the whole world while their home country is not performing well at all. The quality is good, but the content should be curated better.
KiKA is the program for children, it only runs (at least as far as I recall) during hours which kids should be awake anyway, and ends in the evening with some silly programming.
Germany is very political, and very "green" in its programming, everywhere. People have an acute awareness of the impact their actions have on the planet, and the ability to vote and cause change.
This might be quite foreign to foreigners (lol) especially from countries where voting makes no actual difference, but since we have so many political parties, so much choice, and your various elections actually make a meaningful difference, its good for kids to get involved and be aware early on.
If your kids' show talks about deforestation in Brazil, I don't see the issue with that. You can give your kids a balanced viewpoint by discussing other arguments, and teach them that way. It's not a bad thing to teach kids that things said on TV might not always tell the full story, and this seems like a harmless way to do that.
Only without intervention does TV indoctrinate. With intervention, such as discussions at dinner about current political topics, at least in families that aren't extreme/radical, discussions should yield pretty reasonable, varied results.
I find the opposite to be true. It’s easier to curate YouTube than it is to vet Prime or Netflix because YouTube’s algorithm keeps recommendations pretty tight to what is currently being watched. If you seed it with benign enough content, it’s hard for your kid to get to the good stuff without effort that they may not know to apply.
A devil with a giant bare ass flinging pork butts and taters with a catapult to an anthromorphised cow and a chicken, whose parents are only pairs of legs.
> "She actually looked at a motion picture and went, 'I get it! He's going to be the villain and they're going to do this'," he recalled.
Is there something teachable in making a kid sit through the thing even though they instantly understood front to back?
I get it if your goal is learning. Doing the questions in the math book makes the lesson stick. But - when it comes to entertainment - why put a kid through the frustration?
Funnily enough, even with such emphasis on children, the problem is touching adults as well. And that's completely ignored. Movies in recent years have changed dramatically in subtle ways to work with impatient audience.
Disney, here to save kids from screens.
Reminds me of when I saw a bunch of tshirts with the word "PUNK" written on them displayed in a window in a mall.
Che Guevaras Image used to be the most widely sold T-shirt print (or maybe still is?)
Or how the Ramones sold more t-shirts than albums.
Why would I extend the creative energy to figure out how to look punk when I can get the shirt for just $49.99
I remember when Pixar created a virtual skinner box.
A silver lining to this is new parents are very aware of the dangers of screen time. In my little community, I haven't seen parents of kids under the age of 3 give their kid any type of screen especially when they're out. It's a real generational divide, since I used to see kids with tablets in restaurants everywhere back 5 or 6 years ago. The new thing is screen free electronics, like a device kids can stick cards in and it repeats words in English or Spanish.
The awareness is nice, but the friction is still there. So much energy goes into discussions about screen use, it's a real drain on the relation with my kids I feel.
It's important to be clear and set boundaries, but there is always that one friend where they go to and just watch YT shorts until deep in the night falling asleep like a zombie. Moreover, my kid is often the only one with a locked phone (gets 2 hr a day which is also the time he is on the bus). I think it is already insanely much. But he still wants to plays Minecraft as soon as he comes home, this is also quite obsessively (he's in a lot of SMPs). Again it's nice he has a passion but too bad it's for a screen. My daughter in contrast can just play in the garden for hours.
Of course he's not allowed most of the time, but the pressure is always on.
> Of course he's not allowed most of the time, but the pressure is always on.
Definitely. We have similar, although have never given the kids portable screen devices (well, they had a tablet in the house and it was still too much, so we took it away). There are our phones, which they can rarely use and only for specific tasks like "play music on the speaker" or "do fantasy football", and there's a game console with a PIN, and there's a TV with a PIN. So everything requires us to do something, and uninstall games is on the table as a severe consequence. The only autonomous device is a Yoto, which is a card-based story playing device.
It's not perfect, but they definitely want screens less than they used to.
I think it’s a class divided too- (financially) poor parents give their kids their phone but richer/more educated parents don’t.
I recognize this too. There must be a correlation between the parents' level of education and the screen time the children have. Would be an interesting study.
I‘d wager that the correlation is with how exhausting the parent‘s job is. Screens are excellent for keeping children occupied, keeping them happy in healthier ways requires a lot of energy. After working a hard job, running a household and worrying about whether you run out of money before the next paycheck I can imagine that many parents just don’t have the mental resources.
> Screens are excellent for keeping children occupied, keeping them happy in healthier ways requires a lot of energy.
It could also be that the parent wants to be on their screen at the same time, or wants to be on Instagram later into the night. There will be some correlation with work, but I doubt that explains most of it.
If that was true you would see unemployed parents being best at keeping their children from the screens. It is awareness, i am pretty sure about this.
From a parents perspective, I feel you are incorrect.
Almost every other parent I speak to are well aware of how detrimental screen time is to their kids, and yet often still use devices when they're too tired for much else.
This is consistent with the very old topic of television as babysitter
I don't know what you think unemployment looks like, but for most people it's incredibly stressful and not a time when you can just sit on your ass and watch TV all day. The benefits, if you manage to secure them - are barely enough to get by.
Someone who is unemployed, especially if they’re poor, doesn’t suddenly have a lot of free time and headspace. On the contrary, they just got more stressed and pay even less attention since now they have yet another urgent issue weighting on their mind.
We got my daughter a Yoto and it's a great device. She sticks a card in and it plays music or an audiobook. There's a "screen" but it's a low resolution pixel grid that shows pixel art of the current track.
3 years old is very, very young as a "no-phone barrier".
I see small children in strollers (prams?) with devices in front of them every day on public transport, sometimes as little as a few months old. Breaks my heart.
Not to mention that basically everybody around them disappears into screens on trains/buses. It’s emotional abandonment. We are not here any more.
When I make eye contact, the children light up. But the parents often don’t seem to like random strangers to make contact with their child like that. That I have to avoid or break up contact that the child themselves obviously enjoys, while their caretakers disappear into screens, then breaks my heart a second time.
We have over 100 years of developmental psychology research to know that this is bad. Worse than bad.
Typing this on public transport.
I'm not a parent, but I have siblings. Screen addiction is a failure of parenting above all else, so is drug abuse and other kind of issues that are rooted in addiction, barring mental illness and bad luck of course.
EDIT: Of course parenting is very difficult, and I don't believe that any of it is easy. I wouldn't blame parents for bad parenting, I would blame a system that creates parents that have no time or energy left to spare.
I don't know what the solution is, but it probably doesn't help when kids are uneducated, being failed by a system that is supposed to educate them, that maybe the parents trust SHOULD educate them. Ultimately those kids grow up to have kids. Aaaand that's the plot of Idiocracy.
Whoever thinks Disney/Hollywood cares even a little bit about children is delusional.
Obligatory link to Ricky Gervais roast at the Golden Globes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgson2Q3nog
I’ve noticed a lot of fear mongering with screens and kids. So called “experts” have taken a few correlational studies and concluded that screen time is the devil. Instagram is full of these podcast clips of experts warning parents of the terrible effects of screen time. However, if you actually read any of these papers, they make it quite clear that is impossible to fully separate screen effects from family environment, and effect sizes are often modest.
Giving your 2 year old an iPad with YouTube everyday for 2 hours is obviously going to be bad for them. That’s a terrible extreme. But 20 minutes of Bluey here and there throughout the week is not gonna mess anybody up.
So while I’m glad people are more aware of the negative effects of screen time, I also hate how extreme it has become. Parents, specially new parents are so susceptible to this kind of fear mongering.
Obviously, it is common sense.
But here is the thing: lots of parents (or people in general) are not able to use common sense and they need to be told absolute statements, because they will break them anyway, just like speed limits. So if you told them "absolutely 0 screen time" they will give them anyway some here and there screen time - which is fine. If the "expert" writing books, speaking on podcast or showing up in reels tells you "ah it's fine, here and there is fine, just use common sense" you will have an army of parents thinking that 2 hours YT for a toddler is "here and there" because "hey, it's not 6 hours a day like my neighbor!"
I don't think when people say "terror of screen time" they mean 20 minutes of Bluey here and there.
20 minutes of screen time daily is extreme parenting effort. That’s olympic level. I would say the new normal is 20 minutes after each meal.
Yeah I think even 2 hours is an underestimate these days.
According to a few viral Instagram posts it is.
2 hours? you don't know how bad it is out there my friend.
Lots of kids aren't spending 2 hours a day on a tablet/phone, they spend every waking minute on a tablet/phone. When you see someone walking and scrolling on their phone, you can already tell that they do not turn it off, ever.
Screen Time isn't the Devil - but it represents the hellish front-line in the algorithmically driven war for your attention.
better be safe than sorry
I don't think screen free kids won't miss anything by not watching Bluey for 20 mins, OTOH not so great parents will keep pushing those 20 mins further and further with worse and worse content, so I guess it's just easier to say any screen time is bad since the border between reasonable/good screen time and bad screen time is very small.
Even worse is what the screen is showing...Every new animation on youtube appear to involve some toilet reference, like if I look up dinosaur cartoons, most of the hits will be showing farting dinosaurs or potty training dinosaurs with animated shit (literally). Disgusting...
WTAF?
Thankfully there is also a wealth of 90s and older cartoons to be had if you care enough to search for them...
Don’t give kids YouTube access. More curated platforms like Netflix or Amazon Prime at least filter out the worst dreck.
I find German public tv (I live in Germany) actually has relatively high quality programming for kids. I rather have my kids watch TV than streaming (when they’re allowed screen time), we bought a TV after almost 20 years of not having one.
> I find German public tv (I live in Germany) actually has relatively high quality programming for kids.
Die Sendung mit der Maus! I haven't watched it much, but as an Australian trying to learn German, I remember finding it a useful show. That, and I appreciate it being referenced in the Eisbrecher industrial metal song "This Is Deutsch".
Can you name something worthy from German public TV? Imho it’s too political with greenwashing and other shit I don’t want at home. We had a discussion at home for whole week after Checker Tobi complaining about deforestation in Brazil. Germans want to know it better for the whole world while their home country is not performing well at all. The quality is good, but the content should be curated better.
KiKA is the program for children, it only runs (at least as far as I recall) during hours which kids should be awake anyway, and ends in the evening with some silly programming.
Germany is very political, and very "green" in its programming, everywhere. People have an acute awareness of the impact their actions have on the planet, and the ability to vote and cause change.
This might be quite foreign to foreigners (lol) especially from countries where voting makes no actual difference, but since we have so many political parties, so much choice, and your various elections actually make a meaningful difference, its good for kids to get involved and be aware early on.
If your kids' show talks about deforestation in Brazil, I don't see the issue with that. You can give your kids a balanced viewpoint by discussing other arguments, and teach them that way. It's not a bad thing to teach kids that things said on TV might not always tell the full story, and this seems like a harmless way to do that.
Only without intervention does TV indoctrinate. With intervention, such as discussions at dinner about current political topics, at least in families that aren't extreme/radical, discussions should yield pretty reasonable, varied results.
I find the opposite to be true. It’s easier to curate YouTube than it is to vet Prime or Netflix because YouTube’s algorithm keeps recommendations pretty tight to what is currently being watched. If you seed it with benign enough content, it’s hard for your kid to get to the good stuff without effort that they may not know to apply.
Maybe screen time should be limited to such a degree that a parent picks what to watch, not a recommendation engine.
So called "potty humour" aka "poop," has never been funny. What they want is for us to see excrement and giggle. That’s the rule, that’s the goal now.
From the broadcaster that brought Bluey to life (ABC Australian Kids TV) comes the answer ..
Pull Your Pants Up Mr Butt - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8X_cR0RbSk
For my son poop is literally the funniest thing ever and he never watched YouTube.
Who is "they"? Rabelais? Mozart? Alas many of us humans DO find poop to be funny, forgive us fallen shit stained beings.
I'm more of a comedic vomiting guy myself, e.g. "The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs"
I mean, really, what’s funnier than a monkey flinging poop?
A devil with a giant bare ass flinging pork butts and taters with a catapult to an anthromorphised cow and a chicken, whose parents are only pairs of legs.
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