If this is true, next generation will be really interesting.

Every parent I have to talked to, says that Youtube and smartphones are the best thing for kids. Whatever we do, their kids are on the phones; restaurants, homes, car rides. And these are really young kids, some as young as 1 year old.

If their phone dies or there is network issue, these kids start to cry if it takes too long to fix the issue. I assumed this is normal for kids to demand constant entertainment or distraction. Now makes me wonder if this is other way around, and we are spoiling the kids by letting them watch TV/Youtube when they are too young.

Or if these parents give their kids phones only when with other adults.

As a new dad, all these things worry me. On one hand, I don't know if I can manage raising a child without smartphone. Why restrict something if there is no strong evidence against it (is there?). On other hand, why set a child for ADHD and other social issues just so that I can be lazy.

There is so much conflicting advice everywhere. I am reading "The New Father: A Dad's Guide to the First Year". EDIT: It does have a section on screen time and why AAP doesn't recommend any screen time for babies under 2 years old. Basically, same reasons as parent mentioned: cognitive control, but also motor skills are not developing as babies don't play with physical objects as much.

So, my 2-year-old daughter is naturally high energy and short attention span, like most 2 year olds I assume.

Now, I have never ever placed a phone in front of her during dinner. Occasionally I have had to employ "here comes the airplane" which is what my parents did, following their parents' "here comes the choo choo train", which I assume followed something like "here comes the horse and buggy" or the like.

I also have a friend with a daughter one year older. He tells me that he puts the phone in front of his kid during every dinner time because "it's the only way she will eat", and furthermore he has to pause the show so that she will chew, and then unpause the show as a reward for chewing and who knows what else.

I can tell you, my kid can eat her own food with no assistance and no complaints about half the time, and I think that's pretty good for age two.

In short, I think our parents had a decent idea of how to raise kids and we throw that out in exchange for new technology at our peril.

Research is still really early but signs are showing an impact. Here's a leading early childhood development pediatrician https://youtu.be/BoT7qH_uVNo

It's not just their executive function. It's their sense of time.

In much video, a cut[1] happens every three seconds (I don't know if this is true for specifically children's video). This tunes their sense of time - if you don't like what you're looking at, in three seconds it will be completely different. That's not what life was like when I grew up; it's not what life was like for any generation before mine. It seems to me that there has to be some effects from this...

[1] A "cut" in video is an instantaneous change of viewpoint (so called because, back in the film days, the only way you could get it was by physically cutting and splicing the film).

Watching older movies and television shows today I'm struck by how much longer shots are and how there are so many fewer cuts. I'm sure that, to some extent, pacing in movies was dictated by the practicality of technology. Modern-day non-linear editing and digital production allows for more frequent cuts at a much lower expense. I wonder, however, to what extent there is a feedback loop occurring between audiences and directors that drives shorter shots and more cuts.

Here's a leading early childhood development pediatrician commenting on this exact point https://youtu.be/BoT7qH_uVNo

In this context, I should note that my "3 seconds" number was from the 1970s. Does anybody have a more up-to-date number?

WIRED did an article in 2014 that pegs the number at 2.5 seconds. Amusingly, the professor cited in the article has the last name of "Cutting", which makes the article a little jarring to read to me (since I keep seeing the verb "cutting" and thinking about "cutting together" a movie).

>> That's not what life was like when I grew up; it's not what life was like for any generation before mine.

Sure it was. I am in my mid-30s and that describes every single anime or cartoon I watched.

In addition to what Alex3917 said: I grew up 20 years before you. That's not what life was like for me growing up. For the generation before mine, well, they were growing up in the 1940s and 50s. Not many kids in the 50s were watching tons of video before the age of 2.

> I am in my mid-30s and that describes every single anime or cartoon I watched.

Not relevant unless your parents were showing you that before age 2.

I had always heard that it had to do more with the development of their eyesight. Young children need visual stimulus across a range of distances to reduce the risk of vision problems when they are older. It may by BS. I don't really know.

That might be true, but (iirc) it’s not the AAP’s stated reason for their recommendation.

As shown by which experimental studies? Or perhaps good epidemiology at least?

Decent epidemiology for the harms combined with other studies showing no benefit from screen time.

Anecdotal, but this smells like BS theory.

I grew up with nothing but a fuzzy PBS affiliate in very rural America in the 80s. Spent my time reading, building circuits and outdoors exploring. Get diagnosed with ADHD because I didn't want to do homework.

Both my kids got quite of bit of baby einstein and super simple songs in before they were two, and both are now a few years older, doing basic arithmetic, drawing shapes, and would build with LEGO or train tracks all day if we didn't have them go outside.

ADHD is one of those "We have no quantitative/causative insight as to what the deal is, so let's call a bunch of stuff ADHD, and fling theories at the wall to keep funding coming in."

Perhaps there are a lot of kids where the on-rails cultural approach we have is beneath their skills. I found public school to be a huge joke and waste of time. Dropped out high school as soon as I could, and am 40, near having enough saved to retire on $150k/yr (the only upside to the startup world; easy money).

I think the reality is we have no idea, but need to be convinced we do, and so we just case. It explains all the other historical delusions we built societies around in the past, but have since realized to be nonsense.

Eventually, future humanity will look back on today and laugh at the notions kicked about on HN and elsewhere as naive. But we sure believe.