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Ask HN: How much screen time do you let your kids have?

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Re: Ask HN: How much screen time do you let your kids have?

#71

Post by Ezodev »

dsr_ wrote: post #46

My kids are older: 11 and 9. Here are the rules: - Tablets can be used for reading at any time - Schoolwork is a valid reason to use devices - Music without videos is not "screen time". - anything else is "screen time". - Screen time does not exist on Monday through Thursday. (This was originally "from school end until all homework is done", but it turns out that their behavior is significantly worse when we allow th…

So, they could use computer only on weekends. How your kid could become, for example, programmer?

Where would you be if you would be treated as that?

Re: Ask HN: How much screen time do you let your kids have?

#72

Post by Ezodev »

Mz wrote: post #44

I never limited "screen time." I only took their stuff away or denied them things for very specific problems. So, they learned to stop behaving in a problematic way. Example: Their dad would take their video games as punishment for something totally unrelated and it bred resentment. I took their video games only if they were fighting about a specific video game and I only took that specific video game and lectured th…

"I just cannot fathom why parents feel some need to be so controlling about this stuff. It just does not compute for me."

Especially on hackernews. We're (mostly?) programmers, right?

Re: Ask HN: How much screen time do you let your kids have?

#73

Post by dragonwriter »

aidenn0 wrote: post #70
DanBC wrote: post #61

There's no such thing as educational tv, although you're right to limit your child to yhe better tv. An hour a day for a four year old is far too much. {EDIT: in my opinon, with no supporting research} You should be limiting it to a couple of hours per week. Someone needs to set up a website that curates lists of good (or at least not awful) apps for children -- a good list is needed because no parent has the time to…

"There's no such thing as educational tv..." I don't see how it's possible to claim this.

Its possible to claim anything.

Sometimes harder to justify the claim, though.

Re: Ask HN: How much screen time do you let your kids have?

#74

Post by [deleted] »

Ezodev wrote: post #72
Mz wrote: post #44

I never limited "screen time." I only took their stuff away or denied them things for very specific problems. So, they learned to stop behaving in a problematic way. Example: Their dad would take their video games as punishment for something totally unrelated and it bred resentment. I took their video games only if they were fighting about a specific video game and I only took that specific video game and lectured th…

"I just cannot fathom why parents feel some need to be so controlling about this stuff. It just does not compute for me." Especially on hackernews. We're (mostly?) programmers, right?

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: How much screen time do you let your kids have?

#75

Post by Yetanfou »

My 10yo daughter got a school-provided tablet. This would have set off an avalanche of time-wasting grooming virtual horses, tending virtual gardens, raising virtual horses and doing $deity-knows-what, were it not for the fact that she is limited to an average of 1 hour of screen time a day. She already had a phone which runs a home-built (Android) distribution with a few tweaks to keep her sane. It runs a variety of free software, does not show any advertising, and has a white-listed time limit on activities.

As the mentioned tablet is made by this site's favourite company and, as such, rather restricted in what can be done with it, I started to create a few tools to get her to use the thing in a more productive (versus the mentioned 'consumptive') way. For now, this is mostly related to reading books [1][2] and other documents from our rather extensive personal collection. I also got her a Raspberry Pi 'just for fun, to see what can be done with it'. We'll probably set it up to control the RGB LED spot she got for her birthday, 'just for fun'. I put this between quotes because I do have a deeper meaning with these experiments: show her that she can use her creativity and imagination to make things happen that did not happen before. Things she made herself, which her friends do not have. That creating something can be more giving than grooming that virtual horse for the umpteenth time...

My other daughter is 3, she goes to daycare ('dagis' in Swedish) for 15 hours per week. At 'dagis' they also have one of those mentioned tablets, when I ask her what she's done that day she'll respond with 'I played on the tablet'. But did you not do anything else? 'No, I only played on the tablet'. This does not seem to be true, as they state children only get about 10 minutes on the thing, but it does make me doubt the wisdom of having these tablets in a daycare centre. The whole idea with sending her there is that she can interact with other children after all...

[1] https://apps.owncloud.com/content/show.php?content=167127 [2] https://apps.owncloud.com/content/show.php?content=168132

Re: Ask HN: How much screen time do you let your kids have?

#76

Post by jimnutt »

We let my (now 7.5 y/o) son start using a tablet when he was about that age. But it wasn't "his", we allowed it mostly in the car (we live in a rural area and it's a long way to anywhere) and limited the games on it. Now, it's a lot easier, with the Kindle Fire tablets, you can set up FreeTime which allows setting time limits for different things and can require stuff like reading books for an hour before you can play games. With regular Android tablets, you can set up a limited user and control what apps are accessible to that user, it doesn't enforce time limits, but simply taking the tablet away from the child works pretty well for that :). He's getting his first real computer this year (an older Dell laptop) with Linux on it, I'm planning on teaching him the bare essentials and letting him figure the rest out himself (and doing some filtering at the router for that MAC address).

Re: Ask HN: How much screen time do you let your kids have?

#78

Post by NateDad »

My oldest is 3.5. We don't have cable. She gets to watch YouTube sometimes when her little sister is taking a nap and we can't get her to stay quiet. Otherwise basically zero screen time. We hope to keep it that way as long as possible. She'll never have a TV in her room. I find that horrible. Video games will appear eventually, and a computer... Not sure yet how to handle it. Don't want her to just sit there all day. She's had a bit of iPad time but not much and we are trying to limit it to only a rate once in a while.

Re: Ask HN: How much screen time do you let your kids have?

#80

Post by scroy »

Ezodev wrote: post #71
dsr_ wrote: post #46

My kids are older: 11 and 9. Here are the rules: - Tablets can be used for reading at any time - Schoolwork is a valid reason to use devices - Music without videos is not "screen time". - anything else is "screen time". - Screen time does not exist on Monday through Thursday. (This was originally "from school end until all homework is done", but it turns out that their behavior is significantly worse when we allow th…

So, they could use computer only on weekends. How your kid could become, for example, programmer? Where would you be if you would be treated as that?

According to their rules, "screen time" is not equivalent to "using computer".

It seems like a reasonable way to limit unproductive, pure-entertainment computer use. A parent with some common sense should be able to identify what is productive.

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