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

thetimes.com

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

#61

Post by lotsofpulp »

sarchertech wrote: post #40
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…

My 2.5 year old and my 4 year old both get their fair share of TV. But there’s a reason the AAP recommends no screen time before 2. There’s a lot of data that show that babies and toddlers don’t learn language skills from TV for some reason. And it inhibits learning because instead of doing what they’d normally do which is watch and listen to adults and older kids speaking they are glued to the screen.

I have always been suspect of AAP recommendations due to their stance on male genital mutilation. Their risk tolerances are clearly subject to political whims, although I guess I can't expect any better from a human organization.

>And it inhibits learning because instead of doing what they’d normally do which is watch and listen to adults and older kids speaking they are glued to the screen.

For example, is the AAP incorporating the fact that many babies today have greatly reduced access to another adult or older kids to watch and listen to? What if (some) "screen time" is better than the minimum from a tired mom and dad for them?

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

#62

Post by rich_sasha »

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.

My kiddos have had low but positive screen time and knew the alphabet quite a bit earlier.

My personal impression is that while there's deffo stuff kids shouldn't watch, the thing that matters is what the kids do apart from TV. If it's nothing, or insufficient, it will be terrible. If as well as screens kids get plenty of high quality attention, the outcome will be good.

You could argue, and I'd struggle to disagree, that less screen time is always good. But there's tradeoffs in this optimisation. Parental attention and energy are also finite - unless you're super rich, have 3 nannies, a chef and not working. At some level, giving the poor overworked parent a break by sticking the child in front of a screen for a bit might mean the parent has more energy to do something worthwhile with the kiddos afterwards.

There's a nice statistical experiment in it no doubt - child outcome as function of screen time, high quality time and "fend for yourself" time, controlled by how much energy the parents have - will the coefficient on screen time be negative? Merely zero? Maybe even positive, just smaller than the other ones?

But good luck getting the data, never mind randomisation.

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

#63

Post by b0rtb0rt »

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…

IMO tablets/touchscreens are specifically what’s bad

my kids watch lots of movies/tv shows on the family tv and play console games, usually they get bored after an hour or 2 and then do something creative or play with toys, they’re all excelling in school

the few times they have had access to tablets it is like crack to them, they will just not put it down

whenever i take them out shopping or to a restaurant we are the only family that doesn’t have all the kids with headphones and tablets . i’ve seen some disturbing shit, kids on a nature walk with tablets and headphones, kids watching tiktok on their phones while on the lazy river at the waterpark. somehow i am able to take 3 kids to the supermarket by myself without screens but then i see parents with 1 kid still needing to babysit them with a tablet

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

#64

Post by beAbU »

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.

The other day, while waiting for my kebab at the kebab shop, a kid that was also there got a lollipop from the lady at the till. She went to show her mum, and asked for her to take a picture of it for some reason.

She held the lollipop out in front of her, with her open palm behind the lolly to create a bigger focus target for the camera. This is a common trick for content creators who showcase small items (like make-up products) on camera, to avoid autofocus issues.

She was maybe 4. I was pretty dismayed when I saw that, to be honest.

I have a 4 month old, and at the moment the only screen time she's allowed is video calls with the grandparents, who are in a different country. Neither me or the wife are even allowed to operate our phones while the baby can see the screen, let alone watch tv! She turns into an instant zombie, even if I am just reading HN.

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

#65

Post by card_zero »

cyjackx wrote: post #51
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.

We found pretty good results with a sort of inoculation strategy, lots of slow boring TV, sometimes she even tells us to turn it off because it distracts the parents too much LOL

It "turns you into zombies", that is, you like it, and others in the room feel left out.

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

#66

Post by helle253 »

One thing I'm really glad we've been doing with our eldest (3) is Saturday morning cartoons

We only let her watch occasionally during the week, but saturday morning, she gets to sit in front of the TV for a few hours and watch cartoons that she gets to pick (from an approved list)

It's always SO heartwarming how excited she gets when she realizes its Saturday morning.

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

#67

Post by u_fucking_dork »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #59
mothballed wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 acc…

> the geniuses who wrote the reporting laws make it illegal for you to even find out who your accuser is. > and the end of anonymous CPS complaints If someone reported you to CPS and you found out who, what would you do with that information?

Exercise my right to face my accuser. Sue them of course, this is America.

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

#68

Post by Markoff »

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.

most of the kids learn to walk around age 1, by the age 2 they should be already speaking

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

#69

Post by tsoukase »

jbjbjbjb wrote: post #15
schnitzelstoat wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 2-year old should be able to walk unless they are pretty severely developmentally delayed.

sitting in a stroller doesn’t mean the kid can’t walk

Cmon. Let's not always be so pendantic. If we may, a 2yo doesn't fully walk, like eg a 5yo. And a 5yo doesn't walk like a 12yo.

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

#70

Post by sarchertech »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #61
sarchertech wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My 2.5 year old and my 4 year old both get their fair share of TV. But there’s a reason the AAP recommends no screen time before 2. There’s a lot of data that show that babies and toddlers don’t learn language skills from TV for some reason. And it inhibits learning because instead of doing what they’d normally do which is watch and listen to adults and older kids speaking they are glued to the screen.

I have always been suspect of AAP recommendations due to their stance on male genital mutilation. Their risk tolerances are clearly subject to political whims, although I guess I can't expect any better from a human organization. >And it inhibits learning because instead of doing what they’d normally do which is watch and listen to adults and older kids speaking they are glued to the screen. For example, is the AAP i…

I’m not going to get into debate on the ethicality of infant circumcision, but there are zero counties that have outlawed it, so there isn’t a jurisdiction on earth that considers it genital mutilation.

As far as their risk tolerances go, ignoring ethical considerations their stance is that the medical benefits slightly outweigh the risks. The view of most European medical associations is that the risks slightly outweigh the benefits.

Neither position is very far from the other in terms of risk analysis.

> For example, is the AAP incorporating the fact that many babies today have greatly reduced access to another adult or older kids to watch and listen to? What if (some) "screen time" is better than the minimum from a tired mom and dad for them?

Do you have kids? Babies require constant adult supervision, so there should never be a time when they don’t have access to an adult.

TV under 2 is detrimental to language development. Is it possible that a parking a baby in front of a TV all day is better than parking a baby in front of a gray wall with no stimuli or interaction and letting them scream? Sure. But no one has that data, or ever will. And no medical agency anywhere in the world is going to issue advice like that.

Smoking is probably protective against Parkinson’s disease but no one is going to add a disclaimer to their PSAs to tell you that. That’s not how public health agencies work.

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