As the Father of Three girls ; I propose a screen-age limit. Just like the drinking limit, and I think that certain sites should have a limit of 10 years old.
Only educational sites and videos should be available to anyone under 10.
I KNOW this is a horrendously hard problem to solve - but kids should EARN sceen time by 'playing outside time' or something.
Kids born to cities are fucked. kids born to dense 'no-nature'access' environs are fucked.
But growing up in the forrests of california and being a latch-key kid in the 80s was a godsend to my imagination and thus my IQ.
> Only educational sites and videos should be available to anyone under 10.
I don't think you could enforce this anyway, but it's also a terrible idea.
I can't imagine what my life would have been like if my local library or bookseller felt like you do about the internet and I was trapped reading fiction way below by level.
The solution to the problem isn't censorship and holding inquisitive children back, it's parenting and guiding children safely while they explore their interests and the world they live in.
This assumes that children are “held back” by not having unlimited access to screens. It also equates books with the internet which is absurd.
Social media, and the internet as we know it, have only been a part of children’s lives for about 15 years, less than a single generation. The idea that it is now an indispensable part of their development, and that depriving them of it is going to harm them us utterly ridiculous. As if every generation before now consists of drooling ape-men that could have been what this current generation of apparent Uber-children will become if only they too had access to TikTok and YouTube.
It assumes that children would be "held back" by not being able to access content they are mature enough for until they reach an arbitrary age determined by someone other than the child or the child's parents. Nowhere did I suggest that children should have "unlimited access to screens". In fact I explicitly mentioned that it should be parents who ensure that their children are exposed to things safely.
I have no doubt that the children growing up with access to the internet (including youtube and twitter) had greater opportunity to be better educated, more exposed to art and culture, and to be better prepared for their life as an adult in the world than the children who grew up without the internet. Those things were made much easier by having access to the internet. I say that as someone who grew up without internet access for many years. I know not having access to the internet we have today as a young child placed limitations on what I could have reasonably attained. That doesn't mean we should set every child lose on the internet without any thought to what they're seeing.
Also, the internet is very much like books, but I'd remind you that libraries and even bookstores offer many other forms of media as well.
Nature is the best solution by far. Everything else is a half measure IMO.
The thing that these devices take away from us is time to think, or 'boredom'; we're meant to walk everywhere. The only solution is to restore that, what better environment to do so than a forest?
This is the Chinese approach and this is one of few things where I'm not creeped out by it. Enforced max screen time and content is forcefully educational, fun, age-appropriate.
Nobody likes this but the consequences of not taking action are huge.
Only educational sites and videos should be available to anyone under 10.
I KNOW this is a horrendously hard problem to solve - but kids should EARN sceen time by 'playing outside time' or something.
Kids born to cities are fucked. kids born to dense 'no-nature'access' environs are fucked.
But growing up in the forrests of california and being a latch-key kid in the 80s was a godsend to my imagination and thus my IQ.