
Ask HN: How much screen time do you let your kids have? - japhyr
I&#x27;m asking this question on HN because I feel like many people here probably supervise their kids&#x27; screen time a little differently than the average parent. So I&#x27;ve read the general recommendations about screen time, but I&#x27;d like a little perspective from HNers with young children.<p>My son will be 4 in March. We don&#x27;t have a tv, so the only screen time he&#x27;s had is about an hour a day of watching a few children&#x27;s shows through Amazon or Hulu. It&#x27;s been mostly good, because the shows are educational and we talk to him daily about what he&#x27;s seeing. It&#x27;s really interesting to here what conclusions he draws from some of these shows, and it&#x27;s amazing what he picks up from shows like Wild Kratts.<p>We recently got an ipad mini for travel. It was great while traveling; he starting using some apps about the human body, one that let him build robots and guide them through a maze, etc. But now that we&#x27;re done traveling for a bit, he keeps wanting to use the ipad. I want him to continue gaining exposure to devices like an ipad, but I also don&#x27;t want him to have excessive screen time. He complains loudly for about a minute when we tell him we&#x27;re finished with the ipad, but then quickly finds something interesting to do in the house.<p>What do HN parents of kids around this age do? At what age did you start setting specific time limits for screen time? At what age did you start your kids on projects specifically related to programming? (I have no need to push programming, but I certainly want to expose him to the concepts. He&#x27;s already pretending to program the computer he watches videos on, and physical objects that he pretends are robots.)
======
mkempe
My daughter is 5. We've done several things:

1\. Blocked youtube on all iOS devices. This has been the most significant,
positive action. She was rabid and unhappy whenever she used youtube, even for
20 minutes. The mental unbalance would sometimes last for hours.

2\. NO live TV (no ads), unless we're watching a special event, e.g. a tennis
tournament or other major cultural happenings (usually via BBC/VPN). The TV
screen is hooked to a Mac mini, with XBMC and an account for the parents and
another one for our daughter.

3\. Weekly budget. She has a few cards which she can use in a given week
(refill each Monday morning): 3 for documentaries (mostly nature, 45-60'
each), and 1 for a weekend movie (animated or musical). Initially she had 2
documentary-cards, which we increased when she turned 4, and we added the
movie card when she turned 5. She's much happier and specific about what she
wants to watch with her own budget control. She has made a fake mickey mouse
club card (she had discovered it through youtube), but we've never honored it.
She also made a joker card to enable herself to watch anything she wants as
many times as she wants; never accepted that one either... I highly recommend
all the BBC Natural World shows.

4\. Purchased a few iOS apps for her enjoyment: first animal pictures and
sounds; next Doodle; and in the last couple of years several Montessori apps.
She loves them all, and usually after an initial obsessive [edit: 1 hour over
a] day or two with a new app she'll only return to the iPad for much shorter,
infrequent sessions (maybe twice a week). I buy a new app maybe once every 2-3
months. I've turned on restrictions in all devices, to prevent in-app
purchases and installing+deleting apps; if a (rare) free app keeps popping up
advertisement when she's using it we delete it and explain to her it was
broken.

Last year she inherited my old, sim-less iPhone 4 which she can use as an iPod
to listen to audiobooks and her favorite music. She loves that, especially
Roald Dahl stories. I've only recently installed on it one of the apps I had
purchased (via the iOS/iCloud family feature). And this week she discovered
Siri ("the computer speaks to me!") by accident.

hth

~~~
mkempe
A couple of other things I've done with her: when she was 2 I'd sometimes ask
her what pictures she wanted to look at (usually an animal) then I'd show her
the results of Google Image search on a tablet or laptop. The color filter was
fun, especially for starfish.

Now she also knows about Wikipedia and will ask every other week whether we
can look something up on the iPad, e.g. why do camels have humps; we end up
learning a lot of other things. She's not yet able to comfortably read at the
level of Wikipedia, maybe next year.

I can see in her eyes she doesn't quite grok it when I say this access to
images and explanations did not exist when I was a child. I loved the
depictions of The Diamond Age. Wish we were closer to it by now.

~~~
avinashv
> She's not yet able to comfortably read at the level of Wikipedia

May I recommend [http://simple.wikipedia.org](http://simple.wikipedia.org)?
It's obviously not nearly as expansive as the standard English version, but
it's a great option for EFL adults or younger kids.

------
pzxc
Something about this topic disturbs me. I would always have loved computers no
matter what, but if my parents had restricted my screen time during my
obsessive periods I don't think I would be half the programmer I am today.

~~~
squeaky-clean
My parents were like this. They hated video games, and to them the only thing
a computer was capable of was video games. They would heavily limit "screen
time" or ban it outright, regardless of what I was doing. I would need to
spend time doing activities they approved of to earn more "screen time."

Writing code?

"Stop playing video games and go outside."

Toying with Linux?

"Stop playing video games and go outside."

Playing World of Warcraft?

"Stop playing video games and go outside."

When I was able to get "screen time" I usually spent more of it playing video
games instead of being productive, because that time was so limited.

I would regularly "hang out" on a forum dedicated to amateur story-writers
sharing and critiquing each other. I wrote my stories in a notebook, with a
few drafts and rewrites, then when I sat down at our computer and the
"computer timer" began, I would race to type it up and submit the story, then
print out a few other members stories to read during the week, and race to
type out reviews for the stories I had printed last time. Then hopefully I had
enough time to run a dungeon with friends, or play some Counter Strike.

So I was able to work on my writing offline, but I don't believe that did me
any favors. Having access to a spellchecker and Wikipedia while I wrote would
have been amazing, instead of a dictionary and no reference materials.

I could be programming, and have to stop and spend a certain amount of time
outside. Some days I would spend the time outside just sitting and thinking
about my program, working out solutions, I quickly learned that typing is the
least essential part of programming. But without Google or documentation, it
was hard. I only had one "Teach yourself C++" book, which was not a reference
book.

It just wasn't fun, programming at home. Having to stop after two hours, the
looks of disapproval as my parents walked by (as if I were doing drugs right
in front of them), and being interrupted frequently while working. When I was
on the computer, my parents were more likely to assign me pointless chores
("The dog's water bowl is half-empty, fill it up, please") while the "computer
timer" was still ticking.

I started a programming club at my high school, and would stay late most days
just teaching myself to code, because I didn't want to go home. I remember I
would download the source to games I enjoyed, print out about a hundred pages
of code and study it. If I was reading code on a screen, I was ruining my
life. But if I was reading it on paper, everything was okay.

Of course, I was no saint. I was sucked into World of Warcraft, as were all my
friends. I know I have an addictive personality, but it doesn't just apply to
negative things. I'm just as "addicted" to programming. I was just as
"addicted" to reading and writing science fiction. I don't write anymore, and
music took its place. It always finds an outlet anyways, I spent all of my
money on comic books and trading card games because those somehow made my
parents happier than when I was programming. I wish I had learned better self-
control when I was younger instead of learning how to grind through hours of
other activities, just to get back to grinding in the game.

The restrictions also made me seem much worse. When a dungeon takes two hours
to run, and you only have two hours to use the computer, you get frantic. You
call your friends and let them know "I can be on from 3 to 5 Saturday. Be on
then, and please don't be late." You're be anxious while the computer starts,
while the game loaded. The whole time, this egg-timer above the desk was
ticking down. I would be furious when I was kicked off minutes before reaching
the final boss. My parents thought video games just made people behave like
that. It was even worse when we wiped (when everyone dies), because then I
knew it was impossible to complete in time. Thankfully my friends were nice
people, and put up with it. Many other people would have just found a new
healer.

Sorry, this thread made me want to rant. Please don't restrict mediums.
Restrict activities.

~~~
japhyr
Have your parents come around at all on this, or do they think you're getting
paid to do things they don't approve of now?

 _Please don 't restrict mediums. Restrict activities._

That's a great way of putting it.

~~~
squeaky-clean
They are still pretty disappointed with my current job, but I'm doing very
well and they're happy that I'm successful, even if they don't understand how
or why. I left college to work, so there's always that spiel of "You really
should quit your job and go back to college" at family gatherings. But
recently they've been saying that less and less.

------
teddyh
“ _What other tools for creativity and learning do you arbitrarily limit? Do
you have a hard rule on “paper time”?_ ”¹

① [http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2014/06/30/quantification](http://penny-
arcade.com/comic/2014/06/30/quantification)

Edit: Related blog posts:

[http://penny-arcade.com/news/post/2014/06/30/quantification](http://penny-
arcade.com/news/post/2014/06/30/quantification)

[http://penny-arcade.com/news/post/2014/06/30/screen-time](http://penny-
arcade.com/news/post/2014/06/30/screen-time)

~~~
chez17
The problem is that TV and computers can be used for far more than 'creativity
and learning' and, in my experience with kids, the majority of use is
mindless. Kids get hooked on games.

~~~
mhurron
And they also tend to read shitty fiction, if they read at all. So again, do
you also limit 'paper time'?

~~~
jamesaguilar
Difference is, reading of all kinds has positive effects on outcomes, whereas
screen time has the opposite.

~~~
glomph
Do you have evidence of that? That is pretty much exactly what is in question.

~~~
jamesaguilar
This article contains a variety of citations about screen time[1]. And here's
some stuff about the benefits of reading[2], from the reading-to angle.
There's tons of stuff like this if you care to look in to it in more detail.

Nothing in here is definitive. I am not saying that negative effects of screen
time are proven beyond the shadow of a doubt. Personally, what I care about is
what's most likely to be true, so I can act on that for the sake of my son. I
think it is more likely than not that >2 hours of screen time per day is a
negative factor. I think it is more likely than not that reading is a positive
factor. I'm not going to wait for something to be 99.99% proven before I act
on the information.

[1][http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2014/08/28/343735856/kids-and-
sc...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2014/08/28/343735856/kids-and-screen-time-
what-does-the-research-say)

[2][http://www.parents.com/fun/entertainment/books/the-brainy-
be...](http://www.parents.com/fun/entertainment/books/the-brainy-benefits-of-
bedtime-stories/)

------
dshenoy00
I'm a mom to an 8 yr old and a 4 yr old. My initial challenge was similar -
managing screen time, but I was also concerned about the content of some of
the videos. Enabling safe search was not adequate.

To solve this problem for myself, I built an HTML5 Youtube player app which
allows parents to set daily time quotas and flag inappropriate videos. I've
replaced YouTube with this app on our iPad. The kids don't exceed the quotas
that I've set often, but its useful to have a history of how much they've been
watching and what they've been watching. I did flag some music videos that
were inappropriate. The kids seem to like the fact that they have their own
profiles.

The app is still work in progress, but if you are interested , take a look at
[http://www.olipie.com/](http://www.olipie.com/). Any feedback or suggestions
are most welcome.

~~~
Mz
You might also consider submitting it to "Show HN":
[https://news.ycombinator.com/show](https://news.ycombinator.com/show)

Welcome aboard!

Mz, first lady of hn (or at least it appears that way to me -- someone feel
free to prove me wrong)

~~~
dshenoy00
Thank you!! Will do that...

~~~
Mz
Make sure you read the guidelines and all that.

Best of luck.

------
jmccree
So the generation that grew up with free love and drugs did everything to
prevent their children from experiencing the same, and the generation that
grew up with free tech does the same with tech. The cycle continues.

~~~
jamesaguilar
My parents and most of my friends' parents limited our screen time when we
were kids in the 90s. I wouldn't say we grew up with "free tech" in the sense
that you seem to believe we did.

------
petercooper
No limits so far; my eldest is 5. My parents didn't limit my TV watching or
computer use as a kid. It never did me any harm, although my kids, like me,
seem not to get addicted to things and naturally shift between different
activity types often (indeed, to my wife's annoyance, it is more difficult to
get them - or me! - to pay attention to an entire movie without opportunities
to multitask ;-))

But would I get strict if my kids did want to watch TV or an iPad for hours to
the detriment of their health or wanting to do other stuff? Yes.

------
Mz
I never limited "screen time." I only took their stuff away or denied them
things for very specific problems. So, they learned to stop behaving in a
problematic way.

Example: Their dad would take their video games as punishment for something
totally unrelated and it bred resentment. I took their video games only if
they were fighting about a specific video game and I only took that specific
video game and lectured them that they were doing it wrong, games were for
having fun and if they were fighting with a loved one over a stupid game, they
were totally missing the point. They learned to negotiate and cooperate and
not fight.

I also sometimes took their controllers during the day because we homeschooled
and "10 minute" breaks would turn into hours of video games and they got
nothing done. So, for a time, I locked up the controllers during the day. They
were given them back not at any specific time (like 3pm) but once they were
done with their school work for the day. So working harder got rewarded.

If there was a problem in specific, I addressed that specific problem. But I
never arbitrarily limited anything like "screen time." I have zero
understanding of what the point of that is. To my mind, unless you
specifically think it harms them developmentally (for example, creating
eyesight issues), I just cannot fathom why parents feel some need to be so
controlling about this stuff. It just does not compute for me.

They are now 25 and 27 and they are wonderful human beings, imo. I am
perfectly happy with the results of my parenting efforts.

~~~
Ezodev
"I just cannot fathom why parents feel some need to be so controlling about
this stuff. It just does not compute for me."

Especially on hackernews. We're (mostly?) programmers, right?

~~~
carleeto
Personally, it's about teaching a child to actively seek out information vs
passively consuming it. I love programming because it is interactive and I
learn continuously. I want to teach my kids the joy of learning by doing.
Hence the limitation on passive forms or consumption, like the television and
the emphasis on activities like story telling, Lego and drawing.

~~~
Mz
FWIW, I found the very best method to help kids learn to actively do things
was letting them do the things they chose to do instead of mom imposing on
them her will and deciding for them. But that seems to be an enormously
difficult concept to convey to other adults who seem to have no real
understanding that the most important ingredient here is personal agency, even
if they are only 2 years old and just want to do things that seem rather silly
to adults.

------
sergiotapia
Two children, 5 and 3. No limits on screen time whatsoever, they watch TV, or
Netflix on PS4, or play mario on the Wii U, or play snakes and ladders, etc.

If I ever see them go 'full retard' with the screen usage I would step in, but
they have never really gotten that far. They always find time to play between
them: play fights, bowling with their toy pins, playing with the dog, etc.

I don't really believe in that type of parenting where you control each and
every second of the day for your kid. I wasn't raised that way. Let kids be
kids.

------
carleeto
My daughter is 5. She had zero screen time till she was 2. After that, it was
a case by case basis. 5 minutes a day when she was 3 - which is one peppa pig
episode. The only computer time she was allowed were for drawing using paint
or Photoshop. At 4, on special occasions, she got to ask for a few YouTube
videos - usually Dora, peppa pig, or something educational. She was also
allowed to ask to watch the news, which she did sometimes. Her allowed TV time
went up to 20 minutes a day, but she didn't know that- for her, it was either
2 peppa pig episodes or one yo gabba gabba. However, we did not make a big
deal of increasing her screen time. We made a big deal about the fact that
because she is 4, she now gets two bedtime stories. At 5, her screen time has
not increased. But, if she is a really good girl, she can ask for 3 bedtime b
stories. How's it working? Well, she isn't bothered about TV that much, she
loves books and she knows ads are really about getting you to spend money. So
I think she's on the right track.

I try my best to answer all her questions and encourage her to ask more. When
I don't know the answer, she and I do the research together.

I think the approach is working really well and we're going to do the same
with our one year old too.

~~~
ceejayoz
Peppa Pig is awesome (check out Ben and Holly's Little Kingdom, by the same
team).

Whatever you do, don't ever permit Caillou. A couple episodes of it and our
kids were mimicking bad behaviours - "hrmph" to any requests, whining
constantly, etc. We banned it and everything went back to normal.
[http://www.sbnation.com/2014/3/26/5549908/arian-foster-
caill...](http://www.sbnation.com/2014/3/26/5549908/arian-foster-caillou-is-
awful)

~~~
carleeto
Thanks. Will check out Little kingdom. Whatever she watches, I make sure I
watch first.

------
hitchhiker999
Our kid is two, so not really relevant. He watches peppa pig / masha / noddy
for about 30 mins a day when we're feeding him.

As an adult who started on computers at 6, I think we're overstating the
problem. He's more interested in mud / trains / walking in the park than the
iPad. It's not novel to them, not as it was to use in the 70s/80s.

------
DanBC
There's no such thing as educational tv, although you're right to limit your
child to yhe better tv.

An hour a day for a four year old is far too much. {EDIT: in my opinon, with
no supporting research} You should be limiting it to a couple of hours per
week.

Someone needs to set up a website that curates lists of good (or at least not
awful) apps for children -- a good list is needed because no parent has the
time to wade through the awful awful app stores.

Children do pick stuff up really easily, so you're probably going around
introducing programming concepts the right way. Getting yourself up to speed
on the introductory programming languages might be useful so you can answer
the "hey dad, what do I do now?"

We do things too early in England - a child born on 31st August would be at
school full time now, doing synthetic phonics ("first, fast, only" is the
buzzphrase for synthetic phonics here) and learning to write. (It's the full
days at school I'm objecting to, not learning to read and write).

~~~
aidenn0
"There's no such thing as educational tv..."

I don't see how it's possible to claim this.

~~~
dragonwriter
Its possible to _claim_ anything.

Sometimes harder to _justify_ the claim, though.

~~~
aidenn0
Actually I honestly can't imagine what sort of level of ignorance or
intellectual dishonesty could result in that statement.

------
dsr_
My kids are older: 11 and 9. Here are the rules:

\- Tablets can be used for reading at any time

\- Schoolwork is a valid reason to use devices

\- Music without videos is not "screen time".

\- anything else is "screen time".

\- Screen time does not exist on Monday through Thursday. (This was originally
"from school end until all homework is done", but it turns out that their
behavior is significantly worse when we allow that.)

\- Screen time is never available after dinner, unless a parent is actively
involved. (Drastically improves their ability to go to bed on time.)

\- On weekends, one day is as much screen time as you want until dinner time.
The other day may or may not have some screen time depending on behavior. If
you find something better to do, you can't claim a refund.

There hasn't been a live TV feed in our house since before they were born;
commercials are fascinating to them. I frequently have to tell them to put
down a book while they do something else, because otherwise they will try to
perform the task one-handed while reading.

~~~
Ezodev
So, they could use computer only on weekends. How your kid could become, for
example, programmer?

Where would you be if you would be treated as that?

~~~
scroy
According to their rules, "screen time" is not equivalent to "using computer".

It seems like a reasonable way to limit unproductive, pure-entertainment
computer use. A parent with some common sense should be able to identify what
is productive.

~~~
dsr_
Yup. If they want to program, that's different from watching other people play
Minecraft on Youtube.

I also expect these rules to change along with the kids, not remain static. If
we're successful, then by 16 or so I expect that the rules will be down to
"Don't wake up sleeping people."

~~~
jmccree
Ok, I'm glad you clarified that. It looked above as if programming would count
as screen time. My parents never limited my computer access since we got a 286
when I was two, but I also never had youtube as a temptation. At age 11 I was
spending every night working on my website, hanging out on freenode, and
playing TFC. As long as my grades were good, my parents didn't impose any time
limits or even bed time. I was expected to manage that myself.

I often wonder if those of us who first experienced computers in the 90s (And
remember DOS->Win 3.1->95->98->XP) are the last generation for who a computer
was a fascinating thing to learn, as now things seem to be moving to
computers/tablets/smart phones merely being consumption and social sharing
devices. There were several of us that learned HTML in elementary school for
our angelfire pages. I can't understand the fascination people have now at
watching other people play games on youtube/whatever that other site is. Oh
well, C'est la vie.

------
vgrocha
Let me share the unusual approach my father applied.

When I turned 8, the deal was to read the chapter of a book (real book, like
Jules Verne, Arthur Clarke, etc..) and write it's synopsis. Dad would than
read it and correct the grammatical mistakes. If all was well and done, I was
allowed 2h of screen time.

Never seen another dad with such an odd methodology

~~~
crystalclaw
If I ever have kids, this sounds like a good idea. If my parents had limited
screen time, this is how I would have wanted it to be limited.

------
GuiA
Only tangentially related, but I thought it was relevant enough to post here:
Andy Baio wrote a post about how he's introducing his son to videogames.

[https://medium.com/message/playing-with-my-
son-e5226ff0a7c3](https://medium.com/message/playing-with-my-son-e5226ff0a7c3)

------
benologist
I would like to add one other small question for a soon to be 3 year old, how
to encourage books over tech?

~~~
iLoch
Do you really think there is an advantage to books over tech? I tend to think
most people are attached to books for nostalgic reasons.

~~~
walterbell
How many pixels of resolution and what latency of screen refresh does your
imagination offer? That's what stories offer - a personalized virtual reality
with higher resolution than all current tech. Books are a delivery mechanism
for stories. Poems offer even more - the brain fills in the blanks.

~~~
cma
Books and poetry? Seems constricting, why not just put your kids in a float
tank and let them have free run of their imaginations without the
constrictions of words and thoughts of other people. How else will they free
themselves of societies biases, man? ಠ_ಠ

Your approach seems almost like saying never take a kid on a trip to the grand
canyon or show them a picture or video of it, when you can read them a poem or
stage an interpretive dance about the grand canyon instead.

~~~
walterbell
The comparison was books vs. tech, not books vs. reality.

~~~
cma
Banning is a poor substitute for discretion.

------
mcphage
I don't mind my daughter using a tablet—but I'd much rather her using
interactive apps rather than watching videos. Her iPad gets put in airplane
mode sometimes so YouTube doesn't work. But as long as it's active rather than
passive, I don't mind. (Not that she uses it constantly, though—there's plenty
of other things she likes to do as well).

------
jimnutt
We let my (now 7.5 y/o) son start using a tablet when he was about that age.
But it wasn't "his", we allowed it mostly in the car (we live in a rural area
and it's a long way to anywhere) and limited the games on it. Now, it's a lot
easier, with the Kindle Fire tablets, you can set up FreeTime which allows
setting time limits for different things and can require stuff like reading
books for an hour before you can play games. With regular Android tablets, you
can set up a limited user and control what apps are accessible to that user,
it doesn't enforce time limits, but simply taking the tablet away from the
child works pretty well for that :). He's getting his first real computer this
year (an older Dell laptop) with Linux on it, I'm planning on teaching him the
bare essentials and letting him figure the rest out himself (and doing some
filtering at the router for that MAC address).

------
akbar501
The first thing I do is to be specific about the types of screen time:

1\. Active and positive, such as educational, creative: example: math apps,
spelling apps, etc.

2\. Passive but positive: example: watching professional figure skaters so my
daughter can understand how good one can get in an area/field

3\. Passive and mindless: example: movies

4\. Net negatives: example: broadcast TV with advertisements

Net negatives

\- Our daughters have nearly zero exposure to net negatives.

Passive and mindless

\- Movies, iPad games, etc. are limited. In terms of time, probably 1 or fewer
movies per week (so max 90 minutes per week).

Passive but positive

\- These are unlimited b/c it helps the girls understand what's possible.

\- In terms of time, it's very adhoc. My daughters will watch when they want
inspiration.

\- My older daughter tends to watch things like piano, ice skating, skate
boarding, and other activities that she's into.

\- Both girls are allowed to sit with my wife and I when we're watching
technology training videos. You'd be amazed at how much our 7 year old knows
about big data tech like Hive.

Active and positive

\- Unlimited, but the girls tend to self regulate. IMO, self regulation is a
skill and I'd rather they learn it early in life.

\- I've observed interesting learning patterns when the kids are allowed to
really focus on a topic until they master it.

Lastly, the biggest thing I do is integrate digital experiences with
experiential / real-world learning. For example, each spring my daughters and
I do a thing we call Flower Walk. Basically, we walk around the neighborhood,
they smell and take pictures of flowers, then they look information about each
flower up on their iPad's.

------
wanghq
Love YouTube but hate the comments/suggestions/ratings so made
[http://www.kidsfriend.ly/](http://www.kidsfriend.ly/). Unfortunately the ads
can't be removed and are annoying. This is not a perfect solution but solves
the problem at some extent.

------
ceejayoz
We treat the interactive stuff - Angry Birds, puzzles, drawing - as we would
their physical equivalents. I don't see an enormous difference between a
puzzle on the iPad and a cardboard puzzle. We limit non-interactive things
(surfing YouTube) as we would television time.

~~~
oldbuzzard
The problem is that some "interactive stuff", like Farmville and Candy Crush
and to some degree Angry Birds, is more similar to a Skinner Box than any true
interactive environment. Books and puzzle are much less likely to push those
buttons.

Also I think there is a worthwhile kinesthetic element on puzzles that is lost
online. That could vary from learning to precisely line up puzzle pieces to
other things. For instance my younger DS enjoys both the ipad and physical
versions of Rush Hour/RHjr. Honestly, setting up the board in physical version
is more of a sequencing challenge than solving the puzzles... I know... that
makes no sense... however I've seen it again and again. The physical version
teachs a superset of the sequencing, planning, and visual skills of the app.

------
NateDad
My oldest is 3.5. We don't have cable. She gets to watch YouTube sometimes
when her little sister is taking a nap and we can't get her to stay quiet.
Otherwise basically zero screen time. We hope to keep it that way as long as
possible. She'll never have a TV in her room. I find that horrible. Video
games will appear eventually, and a computer... Not sure yet how to handle it.
Don't want her to just sit there all day. She's had a bit of iPad time but not
much and we are trying to limit it to only a rate once in a while.

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Yetanfou
My 10yo daughter got a school-provided tablet. This would have set off an
avalanche of time-wasting grooming virtual horses, tending virtual gardens,
raising virtual horses and doing $deity-knows-what, were it not for the fact
that she is limited to an average of 1 hour of screen time a day. She already
had a phone which runs a home-built (Android) distribution with a few tweaks
to keep her sane. It runs a variety of free software, does not show any
advertising, and has a white-listed time limit on activities.

As the mentioned tablet is made by this site's favourite company and, as such,
rather restricted in what can be done with it, I started to create a few tools
to get her to use the thing in a more productive (versus the mentioned
'consumptive') way. For now, this is mostly related to reading books [1][2]
and other documents from our rather extensive personal collection. I also got
her a Raspberry Pi 'just for fun, to see what can be done with it'. We'll
probably set it up to control the RGB LED spot she got for her birthday, 'just
for fun'. I put this between quotes because I do have a deeper meaning with
these experiments: show her that she can use her creativity and imagination to
make things happen that did not happen before. Things she made herself, which
her friends do not have. That creating something can be more giving than
grooming that virtual horse for the umpteenth time...

My other daughter is 3, she goes to daycare ('dagis' in Swedish) for 15 hours
per week. At 'dagis' they also have one of those mentioned tablets, when I ask
her what she's done that day she'll respond with 'I played on the tablet'. But
did you not do anything else? 'No, I only played on the tablet'. This does not
seem to be true, as they state children only get about 10 minutes on the
thing, but it does make me doubt the wisdom of having these tablets in a
daycare centre. The whole idea with sending her there is that she can interact
with other children after all...

[1]
[https://apps.owncloud.com/content/show.php?content=167127](https://apps.owncloud.com/content/show.php?content=167127)
[2]
[https://apps.owncloud.com/content/show.php?content=168132](https://apps.owncloud.com/content/show.php?content=168132)

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mrnil
One idea I picked up somewhere: Give kids screen credit, for example 10 coins
per week, each worth 30 minutes of screen time. This allows them to freely
manage it (e.g. a little bit every day vs. a long Minecraft session on the
weekend), while it's a clear rule and limit at the same time.

