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Two-thirds of babies watch screens – some for eight hours a day

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Re: Two-thirds of babies watch screens – some for eight hours a day

#41

Post by sarchertech »

II2II wrote: post #38
donatj wrote: post #9

My wife stays home with our kids. My daughter ends up watching a fair bit of television while my wife does chores and the like. We're entirely curating what she's watching and I'm just not that concerned. If anything, she's learning things that I would not thought to teach her at her age. About 6 months ago she had an assessment through the school district for early education and at 2 years of age was able to identif…

> We're entirely curating what she's watching and I'm just not that concerned. That is likely the key element, along with being the reason why the guidance suggests no screen time before the age of 2. Some parents know what their child needs, some parents don't know how to navigate the mess of children's content, some parents would use it to justify using the screen as a babysitter. It is nearly impossible to offer g…

No the no screen time before 2 has nothing to do with content. Read my reply to the GP comment.

Re: Two-thirds of babies watch screens – some for eight hours a day

#42

Post by close04 »

mothballed wrote: post #17
x187463 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dude, go grocery shopping with a 2-year-old and see if you want them walking around. They'll be peeling a sticker off the floor for two minutes, then grabbing everything off the shelf. It's perfectly normal to cart the kid around so you can actually make progress through the aisles. They can reasonably follow you around between 3-4.

They just leave them outside in the stroller in someplace like Sweden. It's hilarious how on HN the nordic countries are idolized and leaving strollers outside while the kid stares at the street man smoking fentanyl out of a piece of aluminum foil indicates you are a glorious liberated member of intelligentsia but by god if you put a tablet on to get a moment of peace while you take a shower then you are a hideous su…

In most countries it's illegal to leave any child unattended in a way that puts them at risk which is a vague definition. But if something were to happen to the child while unsupervised any vagueness collapses into negligence. A baby will sleep in the pram, but for a toddler to be abandoned alone strapped in the pram is capital punishment.

Re: Two-thirds of babies watch screens – some for eight hours a day

#43

Post by watwut »

mothballed wrote: post #17
x187463 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dude, go grocery shopping with a 2-year-old and see if you want them walking around. They'll be peeling a sticker off the floor for two minutes, then grabbing everything off the shelf. It's perfectly normal to cart the kid around so you can actually make progress through the aisles. They can reasonably follow you around between 3-4.

They just leave them outside in the stroller in someplace like Sweden. It's hilarious how on HN the nordic countries are idolized and leaving strollers outside while the kid stares at the street man smoking fentanyl out of a piece of aluminum foil indicates you are a glorious liberated member of intelligentsia but by god if you put a tablet on to get a moment of peace while you take a shower then you are a hideous su…

Babies. They leave there babies. They do not leave there two years old already fully capable to toddle away and still dumb enough to walk into anything.

Also, not every city has the same massive drug addiction homelessness problem as yours.

Re: Two-thirds of babies watch screens – some for eight hours a day

#44

Post by kakacik »

donatj wrote: post #31
toasty228 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I watched game shows, Hogans Heroes, Night Court. She's watching Ms. Rachel, Meekah, and Sesame Street. At 2 years old? There are babies under a year who watch youtube brainrot shat out by obscure indian animation farms multiple hours a day, I'm not sure it has the same impact as watching Stargate when you're eight. My niece is 9 months, she never watched anything on a phone yet as soon as someone in her line of si…

> At 2 Yes, I absolutely did. I was home with my dad, gated into the living room while he did things around the house. There is only so much to do.

You have no idea what potential of you was lost there, and we don't even know what your life looks like so can't judge any of that. But stating 'I spent most of my childhood in front of TV so all is fine' is... I guess you don't have strong affinity towards nature, adventure, sports, wildish traveling for example?

You do you (and your kids), but as a parent of small kids myself we do TV max maybe 30 mins weekly on average, older cartoons (age 4 and 6). There is little gained and a lot lost in screens, but you need to be aware of things being lost in the first place lol. Screens form addictions, active screens even moreso - why do this to your own children? Why not just let them roam the streets all day then, they will gather much more experience that way. Don't tell me it can be harmful to them - screens are too yet seemingly very few care.

Its much harder spending quality with them of course - this is the main reason why most parents slack off. Actively engaging with them, leading them by example, coming up with novel ways to play with them, that's not how our generation was raised up. Its not easy for me, for some reason easier for my wife, but we are trying our best. If anything in life is wroth pursuing will all vigor, this is it and not some empty white collar careers or even worse money status (this comes from senior dev in a bank and a doctor couple).

In my view, there are only few paths towards happy balanced adult individual that knows what they want in life and go for it, and this is the most sure way even though there are never any guarantees.

Re: Two-thirds of babies watch screens – some for eight hours a day

#45

Post by mothballed »

u_fucking_dork wrote: post #37
zthrowaway wrote: post #26

I have two boys. 2 and 5. We’ve never done screens, instead we do books and focused attention from each parent and we are looked at like crazy people when we tell people that. But our kids are miles ahead of their cohorts in attention span, respectfulness, behavior, socializing, etc. It’s actually alarming. I really worry about them being outcasts just by being raised like we all were.

> I really worry about them being outcasts just by being raised like we all were. Seeing all the kids my kids play with, the ones who seem to turn out the most well rounded aren’t the ones without screen time but the ones without helicopter parents. You’d be surprised how many of these kids have never been outside of their parents line of sight, even at middle school age.

My kid's school won't even release the child off the bus without a parent present. I let my kid walk on my own property and it wasn't 30 seconds before a Karen drove up to interrogate them about why they are "alone." It's gotten pretty crazy. Any asshole who wants veto powers on your parenting can punish you for weeks, and the geniuses who wrote the reporting laws make it illegal for you to even find out who your accuser is. Enforcers of the state are often happy to indulge their psychopathy, yes probably nothing will happen (though occasionally does), but in the process they scare the shit out of the child and the process is the punishment.

The USA badly needs a mass rewrite of negligence law, and the end of anonymous CPS complaints, before we can reasonably expect the helicopter insanity to end.

Re: Two-thirds of babies watch screens – some for eight hours a day

#46

Post by ForHackernews »

doubled112 wrote: post #10
littlecranky67 wrote: post #6

I once in a supermarket saw a probably 2-year old sitting in a stroller, holding a smartphone watching Youtube. When the ads came up, the little fella confidently pressed the "skip ad" button. I was perplexed and stunned, how can a child that can't even walk yet have the practice to know how to skip the ads. I don't even want to know the screentime that kid has.

Maybe this is evidence that the urge to skip ads is innate.

Parrot skips ads https://www.youtube.com/shorts/MLoJ_t36Png

Re: Two-thirds of babies watch screens – some for eight hours a day

#47

Post by intended »

bcjdjsndon wrote: post #4
Mashimo wrote: post #2

> A report finds a third of newborns use devices for more than three hours, despite government advice that under-twos have no screen time at all Disgusting :( That said, I can't read the article, paywalled. Anyone have a working link?

What's going to happen to those poor babies do you think?

Gen Z is the first generation to score lower on standardized tests than previous generations.

> https://fortune.com/2026/02/21/laptops-tablets-schools-gen-z...

Re: Two-thirds of babies watch screens – some for eight hours a day

#48

Post by close04 »

teensydata wrote: post #34
zthrowaway wrote: post #26

I have two boys. 2 and 5. We’ve never done screens, instead we do books and focused attention from each parent and we are looked at like crazy people when we tell people that. But our kids are miles ahead of their cohorts in attention span, respectfulness, behavior, socializing, etc. It’s actually alarming. I really worry about them being outcasts just by being raised like we all were.

Same with us. Our 24 month can count to 20 and knows all the letters without watching TV. When he is at a party and a tv is on in the distance he stares like a zombie at it. It's depressing at how TV changes him and I have to transfer his focus away.

> Our 24 month can count to 20 and knows all the letters without watching TV.

I have a very qualified pediatric occupational therapist friend and when I was sort of bragging about how many "cool things" my toddler can do I was immediately told that they are nice party tricks but don't say much about the development of the child, predict future performance or intelligence, and definitely aren't what I should be focusing on as a parent.

The child didn't just naturally learn to do those tricks. Our games focused a lot on this because I thought "it builds brain and skills", always be ahead of all other kids. In reality only I benefited from this because I could drop it in random conversation and then have pride flow out my ears. And the kid kept repeating the now easy tricks looking for the reward, staying inside the comfort zone.

I was told to simply guide our interactions with a method called "serve and return"[0]. It's a much more powerful tool that makes any and every interaction an opportunity for development, not just individual tasks practiced to perfection and repeated for rewards. You guide but also let yourself be guided so your child gets to feel comfortable opening all kinds of doors rather than you even unwittingly pushing them through the same one again and again.

[0] https://developingchild.harvard.edu/key-concept/serve-and-re...

Re: Two-thirds of babies watch screens – some for eight hours a day

#49

Post by [deleted] »

teensydata wrote: post #34
zthrowaway wrote: post #26

I have two boys. 2 and 5. We’ve never done screens, instead we do books and focused attention from each parent and we are looked at like crazy people when we tell people that. But our kids are miles ahead of their cohorts in attention span, respectfulness, behavior, socializing, etc. It’s actually alarming. I really worry about them being outcasts just by being raised like we all were.

Same with us. Our 24 month can count to 20 and knows all the letters without watching TV. When he is at a party and a tv is on in the distance he stares like a zombie at it. It's depressing at how TV changes him and I have to transfer his focus away.

[deleted]

Re: Two-thirds of babies watch screens – some for eight hours a day

#50

Post by teensydata »

close04 wrote: post #48
teensydata wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with us. Our 24 month can count to 20 and knows all the letters without watching TV. When he is at a party and a tv is on in the distance he stares like a zombie at it. It's depressing at how TV changes him and I have to transfer his focus away.

> Our 24 month can count to 20 and knows all the letters without watching TV. I have a very qualified pediatric occupational therapist friend and when I was sort of bragging about how many "cool things" my toddler can do I was immediately told that they are nice party tricks but don't say much about the development of the child, predict future performance or intelligence, and definitely aren't what I should be focusi…

Thanks for the comment! I remember watching videos about this when he was younger. We actually didn't teach him numbers or the alphabet--he would point to signs on walks and say a letter then we would add another letter or two at the same time. So he just gradually learned them.

But I also am very much in the camp of "it doesn't matter what he knows right now. Kids advance in different ways at different times and it mostly just levels out" All you can do is amazed at how fast they grow and try to help them out as much as you can.

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