I'm conflicted on this topic myself. On the one hand - I use "screens" a lot during my day. I use my phone, laptop, and desktop for many hours every day. Why should I prevent my children from...
Exemplary
I'm conflicted on this topic myself.
On the one hand - I use "screens" a lot during my day. I use my phone, laptop, and desktop for many hours every day. Why should I prevent my children from following a similar pattern that I do and to what end? If I kept them from phones or tablets until they were... 16? Wouldn't they just immediately start using them a lot then? Again, I didn't have a smartphone as a child (as they did not exist) and when I got mine I fairly quickly started using a LOT. Wouldn't it be better to prepare children for the world they will likely inhabit - which will likely include a lot of screen time, rather than the world that I feel like my parents lived in when they were children?
It also seems to me that a big problem with screen usage is just how you look when you're using the screen. I'm struck sometimes when I see my coworkers wandering about the halls eyes glued to a phone, or sometimes standing a urinal and using the phone, or wherever. They certainly look like zombies or addicts trapped by their device. But - when I'm using my screen, the experience is very different. I'm reading an article, or a book, I'm watching something interesting on YouTube, I'm communicating with someone, I'm writing a response, I'm getting the answer to a question, etc. I may look like a zombie but internally there is a lot actively going on.
On the other hand, these devices are new and we don't know how human children will develop if they use them a lot. I have a lot of the same worries that everyone else does - will this stunt their social growth? Will this help or hurt them intellectually? Will it make it so they can't enjoy going outside?
I am conflicted, but I think the right answer is a compromise and to adapt to circumstances on the ground. Make sure the children get time to play outdoors, and to socialize with friends, and do your best to make sure that they spend their time with worthwhile activities when using their screens and not just watching weird videos on YouTube.
For me it comes down to that there no such thing called to little screen time but there's certainly something called you should get out some more. I'm working actively to minimize screen time in...
For me it comes down to that there no such thing called to little screen time but there's certainly something called you should get out some more. I'm working actively to minimize screen time in our home and I know it starts with me. Small steps like not pull out your phone every time you have to wait for a few seconds and just learn to not do nothing for a few minutes. Or small things like not having your phone on you all the time and I've turned of almost all notifications. It's hard and fucking scary that the phone is so ingrained in our behavior and I would do anything to prepare my kids for a future where this is the norm. I want them to be able to put it down and see and be able to deal with the flaws before they're just as sucked in as the rest of us.
Seems to be a small series that the NYT published today. There are also these other two related articles: Silicon Valley Nannies Are Phone Police for Kids The Digital Gap Between Rich and Poor...
Seems to be a small series that the NYT published today. There are also these other two related articles:
This is a topic that's been coming up fairly often recently. It was a bit of an aside to the overall topic, but I thought it was interesting that this Is Alexa Dangerous? article mentioned that some people have found that the voice assistants are a good way to be able to get some information or music from the internet without having to turn on a screen:
After my daughter-in-law posted on Instagram an adorable video of her 2-year-old son trying to get Alexa to play “You’re Welcome,” from the Moana soundtrack, I wrote to ask why she and my stepson had bought an Echo, given that they’re fairly strict about what they let their son play with. “Before we got Alexa, the only way to play music was on our computers, and when [he] sees a computer screen, he thinks it’s time to watch TV,” my daughter-in-law emailed back. “It’s great to have a way to listen to music or the radio that doesn’t involve opening up a computer screen.” She’s not the first parent to have had that thought. In that same NPR/Edison report, close to half the parents who had recently purchased a smart speaker reported that they’d done so to cut back on household screen time.
I guess she's right, I wonder how people ever listened to music, or to...the radio, without opening a computer screen. I don't think that substituting the screen for another spyware data-mining...
“It’s great to have a way to listen to music or the radio that doesn’t involve opening up a computer screen.”
I guess she's right, I wonder how people ever listened to music, or to...the radio, without opening a computer screen.
I don't think that substituting the screen for another spyware data-mining device is a good idea, but taking away screens from the kids is a good thing. I wish my parents had done it more to me, it would have been nice. Even today I can see that it's a problem in my life. my mood improves dramatically when I go outside and go a day or two without plugging in, so to speak.
Name your privacy intrusion preference. Google has you covered. So does Amazon. Siri not so much, but she can do speech to text good enough for my purposes.
Name your privacy intrusion preference. Google has you covered. So does Amazon. Siri not so much, but she can do speech to text good enough for my purposes.
This reminds me of an anecdote told to me by a teacher friend recently: a five-year-old in her classroom picked up a book and swiped at the cover over and over, attempting to turn it on. He had...
This reminds me of an anecdote told to me by a teacher friend recently: a five-year-old in her classroom picked up a book and swiped at the cover over and over, attempting to turn it on. He had never seen a book before, only book-sized screens.
I cannot fathom what these technologies are doing to kids. The thought of an entire generation raised on screens is horrifying, and I shudder to think about what it's gonna look like when they grow up. I know first-hand the difficulties of managing screen addiction and I have the privilege of having formed the vast amount of my neural circuitry pre-internet.
I'm conflicted on this topic myself.
On the one hand - I use "screens" a lot during my day. I use my phone, laptop, and desktop for many hours every day. Why should I prevent my children from following a similar pattern that I do and to what end? If I kept them from phones or tablets until they were... 16? Wouldn't they just immediately start using them a lot then? Again, I didn't have a smartphone as a child (as they did not exist) and when I got mine I fairly quickly started using a LOT. Wouldn't it be better to prepare children for the world they will likely inhabit - which will likely include a lot of screen time, rather than the world that I feel like my parents lived in when they were children?
It also seems to me that a big problem with screen usage is just how you look when you're using the screen. I'm struck sometimes when I see my coworkers wandering about the halls eyes glued to a phone, or sometimes standing a urinal and using the phone, or wherever. They certainly look like zombies or addicts trapped by their device. But - when I'm using my screen, the experience is very different. I'm reading an article, or a book, I'm watching something interesting on YouTube, I'm communicating with someone, I'm writing a response, I'm getting the answer to a question, etc. I may look like a zombie but internally there is a lot actively going on.
On the other hand, these devices are new and we don't know how human children will develop if they use them a lot. I have a lot of the same worries that everyone else does - will this stunt their social growth? Will this help or hurt them intellectually? Will it make it so they can't enjoy going outside?
I am conflicted, but I think the right answer is a compromise and to adapt to circumstances on the ground. Make sure the children get time to play outdoors, and to socialize with friends, and do your best to make sure that they spend their time with worthwhile activities when using their screens and not just watching weird videos on YouTube.
For me it comes down to that there no such thing called to little screen time but there's certainly something called you should get out some more. I'm working actively to minimize screen time in our home and I know it starts with me. Small steps like not pull out your phone every time you have to wait for a few seconds and just learn to not do nothing for a few minutes. Or small things like not having your phone on you all the time and I've turned of almost all notifications. It's hard and fucking scary that the phone is so ingrained in our behavior and I would do anything to prepare my kids for a future where this is the norm. I want them to be able to put it down and see and be able to deal with the flaws before they're just as sucked in as the rest of us.
Seems to be a small series that the NYT published today. There are also these other two related articles:
This is a topic that's been coming up fairly often recently. It was a bit of an aside to the overall topic, but I thought it was interesting that this Is Alexa Dangerous? article mentioned that some people have found that the voice assistants are a good way to be able to get some information or music from the internet without having to turn on a screen:
I guess she's right, I wonder how people ever listened to music, or to...the radio, without opening a computer screen.
I don't think that substituting the screen for another spyware data-mining device is a good idea, but taking away screens from the kids is a good thing. I wish my parents had done it more to me, it would have been nice. Even today I can see that it's a problem in my life. my mood improves dramatically when I go outside and go a day or two without plugging in, so to speak.
Name your privacy intrusion preference. Google has you covered. So does Amazon. Siri not so much, but she can do speech to text good enough for my purposes.
This reminds me of an anecdote told to me by a teacher friend recently: a five-year-old in her classroom picked up a book and swiped at the cover over and over, attempting to turn it on. He had never seen a book before, only book-sized screens.
I cannot fathom what these technologies are doing to kids. The thought of an entire generation raised on screens is horrifying, and I shudder to think about what it's gonna look like when they grow up. I know first-hand the difficulties of managing screen addiction and I have the privilege of having formed the vast amount of my neural circuitry pre-internet.