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Toy Story 5 shows 'terror' of children's screen addiction, says Tom Hanks

bbc.com

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Re: Toy Story 5 shows 'terror' of children's screen addiction, says Tom Hanks

#41
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Re: Toy Story 5 shows 'terror' of children's screen addiction, says Tom Hanks

#42
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.

Re: Toy Story 5 shows 'terror' of children's screen addiction, says Tom Hanks

#43
post #8
post #4

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.

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.

Re: Toy Story 5 shows 'terror' of children's screen addiction, says Tom Hanks

#44

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 environm…

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.

Re: Toy Story 5 shows 'terror' of children's screen addiction, says Tom Hanks

#45
post #43
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Toy Story 5 shows 'terror' of children's screen addiction, says Tom Hanks

#47
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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.

Re: Toy Story 5 shows 'terror' of children's screen addiction, says Tom Hanks

#49
post #21
post #2

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 i…

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…

> 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.

Re: Toy Story 5 shows 'terror' of children's screen addiction, says Tom Hanks

#50
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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