I don’t understand why the extremes some families have had to implement to curb poor behavior is now some kind of “consensus”. The hell there is consensus.
The truth is, we are afraid of everything these days.
People don’t send our kids to play outside, someone might hurt or abduct them (or another parent might Parent Patty us)
People don’t spend time with their kids because they’re so busy at work (but they hire nanny’s with zero screen contracts to feel good about this)
To me, kids should learn to use screens early and often, and get good at understanding how they can exploit opportunity and personal advancement with them (and also how to manage time wasters).
Kids lacking social cues - is it really screens? Or are kids becoming nerdier and turning more to screens because of it?
We live in an era where comic book movies rule the box office and being a nerd is celebrated. It’s this strange double standard of how juvenile our adult pop culture has become, and yet we are flummoxed and finger pointing as to why our kids are regressing socially?
Active parenting is needed, and it’s tricky to outsource that or blame the glowing rectangle. This article is about a bunch of rich SV parents that outsource their parenting to nannies and have no good framework on how to teach moderation, so they're banning the devices outright. That seems like a niche situation.
Screens are wonderful, powerful tools - the bicycle for the mind, as Jobs would say. The world is also a bigger place than screens. Active parenting is needed to ensure moderation.
Extreme measures may need to be taken in some cases, but the fear is so overblown it reminds me of the things my parents took away from me for my own good: my Slayer and Judas Priest albums, my D&D sets, and also my computer and/or modem for months at a time. Sometimes for the sake of discipline these actions make sense, but more often they’re a reflection of popular fears.