I think the best you can do is point at the scientific evidence that screen time is bad for kids, and if they won’t accept that there’s not much you can do outside of your own kids.

My sister has a 10 year old son and has absolutely no interest in even talking about parental controls. He spends all his time watching Logan Paul and who knows what else. I know how I was as a boy coming of age with unrestricted internet, and I worry about him.

> I know how I was as a boy coming of age with unrestricted internet, and I worry about him.

did you turn out ok?

when I was a kid in the early 80's kids would bring torn out pages from dad's dirty magazines, we'd sneak in to watch adult movies etc, and as far as I can tell we all turned out just fine.

On the other hand there is liveleak now and I'm not sure what effect that would have on a 10 year old's psyche. I guess we'll find out in the next decade or two.

I understand your argument. I had those experiences as well. Then I got high speed internet at 13 or so. Things changed very rapidly from there.

I really didn’t turn out ok. I don’t really want to go into details, but I turned out very far from ok. Maybe I wouldn’t have turned out different without internet, I can’t really know. I do know that I’m going to be really zealous in keeping the unrestricted internet away from my sons. And my girls, but for different reasons.

That's because people like you see 1 example and extrapolate that onto everyone's life circumstances.

For example: What about a single mom who puts on youtube for her child while she does the home chores and cooks because she does not have the money to pay for anything else (youtube is free)? Should she force her kid to sit there without any stimuli while she works? I'd argue that is far worse.

That's a false dichotomy - if you have money to buy a device to show YouTube on, you have money for books, toys whatever. And they needn't be expensive - at least in the UK, you can regularly buy 2nd hand books in mint condition for as little as £0.01 from Amazon, and we have lots of charity shops with great bargains on 2nd hand toys.

No, it doesn't. It recognises that shaming people does nothing to change behaviour or to prevent people taking up unhealthy behaviours. If anything shaming just entrenches those "bad choices".

And you're looking to shame anything, no matter how benign. That's even more wrong.