
Kids Not Hurt by Screentime - bokieie
https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/kids-not-hurt-by-screentime/
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asokoloski
This research simply says that the children of the age group studied are not
hurt by screen time in one particular aspect -- mental health. To draw the
conclusion that we should stop worrying about screen time because a single
study failed to find an effect in this specific case is a bit of a leap.

I think there's a massive difference between screen time between the ages of
10 and 14, and screen time under the age of 5, when a child's brain is
developing very rapidly. And what I worry about most is consequences like ADHD
and decreased attention span.

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Ari_Ugwu
I have no plans on trusting my child with a phone/tablet for a _very_ long
time. I mean, the basic income model for _all_ major online companies is to
increase engagement no matter what. No thanks.

What I do wish is for the pubic perception of 'screentime' to not include
_everything_. This morning my almost 3 year daughter and I watched 30 minutes
of Daniel Tiger, 5 minutes of planes landing, and 10 minutes of ballet
performances. All highly engaging with questions flowing from her about every
aspect. It's not like I sat her in a corner to play some skinner box slot
machine for an hour _or_ some brain dead flashy cartoon.

If the question is whether it's a good idea to let your kids sit in front of a
slot machine that collects the data they input _and_ the words the say to
friends in an effort to further manipulate them then I could have saved you a
study. :D

~~~
dngray
> _What I do wish is for the pubic perception of 'screentime' to not include
> _everything_._

This! My parents would let me have extra time if I was doing something other
than mucking about playing games or social media nonsense.

Usually a parent would ask me what I did and if I was learning programming or
something like that they would leave me to explore.

I think one of the main problems is that too many parents are just putting a
screen in front of a child as a virtual babysitter because they don't want to
be bothered.

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Ancalagon
As much as I want to agree with the conclusions of this study, I have a hard
time believing them. Anecdotally I do feel like social media has weakened a
lot of social relationships (although they do persist longer than they would
have in the past, so maybe thats a plus). I feel like these relationships have
weakened because people have started using their online relations as
substitute for their in-person ones. In addition to that, I actually feel more
anxious/depressed when I spend more than an hour or so on social media, mainly
because of FOMO. There have been multiple times in the last few years where I
was sure I was addicted to social media and would get anxiety because of it.
During these periods I've had to turn my devices off and leave them at home
for extended periods of time to "reset" myself.

Again, all anecdotal, and likely this study was very thorough, these are just
my own experiences.

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ryanthedev
Funny, this has been the same argument since books were first published.

If your child went to the library every day would you have the same view
point?

All I'm trying to convey is most of these issues are over hyped, on both
sides.

Everything is good in moderation, if you abuse something, you will get
diminishing returns.

You drink too much water you die.

~~~
Ancalagon
That's fair, but the article pointed out that some (most) of the kids were on
their devices 5-7 hours a day. That doesn't seem like moderation to me, and I
really doubt screen time has the same benefits as reading.

