If you didn’t grow up with it you can’t understand how stressful it is to maintain friendships when your parents will randomly take away your phone. Its like being randomly grounded over and over for years.
Parents are not encouraged to give children unlimited access to alcohol or tobacco or hard drugs. Sure, they might find ways to break the rules, but are those rules then completely useless? Plenty of teenagers will claim that the rules just caused them to rebel, when in reality the rules were mostly effective and the teenagers are criticising a system from a sample size of 1 with no control.
This "rules are bad" is just silly. Kids aren't perfect and not every flaw is due to the parents making an egregious mistake - often the actions of parents are ones that make children into better people. It's also telling that the archetypal advocate progressive "child-centered" education (where natural consequences are good but authority is bad) was Rousseau, who never raised children himself.
I ruined my college years playing video games 3 hrs a night in my dorm for the entire year. The addiction is real.
Transferring, this wasn't maintainable, and it was honestly my saving grace for entering the workforce. I developed the self discipline necessary to meet the requirements, and 3 hours a day was way more "free time" than I had to actually network, expose myself to new ideas, and handle coursework.
At the easier school, I realize in retrospect that the extra time should've been used building things, making connections, or getting involved in extracurricular work.
Even now, a bit later in life with a family and a career, 3 hours is far more time than I have to waste on a game and still maintain connections with my family, handle household responsibilities, and develop interests that might help me grow as an engineer in the long term.
Maybe you just had fun, gaming? Then I don't think it was wasted time. I would consider it only wasted, if you did it out of bad habit and no better plans.
Having fun has diminishing returns. At some point, like with any addictive behavior, it becomes a matter of habit. Tons of people are in this rut and don't realize.
There are tons of other fun activities that come with positive side effects like physical fitness or an in-person social group
College was useful (at least for me) for those two aspects, neither of which I would have been able to really do well with 3 hours a night of gaming.
Post-college? Do whatever you’d like. In-college, you’re paying for time you won’t get back. :)
I deeply regret it.
Being a parent is hard, and mistakes are going to be made. Positive intent is important.
In my experience my parents issued blanket bans and the threat of punishment for eating sugary foods, using the internet and watching TV. All this did was cause me to binge on all three whenever I had the opportunity at a friend's house, and that behavior extended into my adulthood until I was able to break free of my parents and seek the advice of reasonable adults to help curb my addictive behaviors.
When I discussed this with my parents they doubled down on their behavior, washed their hands of responsibility and blamed me. They used the same tired "how you behave when you are an adult is up to you" line. I hope you aren't doing the same to your children.
I take the somewhat contrarian view: kids (at some age) need to learn to cope with absolute limits that are strictly enforced. How else will they cope with living in real society? Not paying your rent will get you kicked out. Driving over the speed limit will get you a ticket, or worse. Not showing up to an exam in college means you fail the class.
Not saying you should have draconian rules on everything. But some rules need to be enforced with (reasonable) consequences. Otherwise you are doing your children a disservice, IMHO.
My kid has limited screen time that is strictly enforced, roughly 30 minutes a day. They're well aware of this fact and when it will happen.
We occasionally make exceptions for things like movies or what have you on the weekends.
This is not binary. As they grow older, kids should be able to take control of their lives more and more. Probably much more than the average parent thinks they should.
Edit: To clarify, I don't mean kids should become more skillful in controlling themselves according to their parents wishes. I mean the parents should gradually micromanage their kids less and less as they get older.
Indeed. It's strange to me that people try to do things any other way. At the start, you have a tiny person who has no idea how to function in the world and is entirely dependent on others. Somewhere around two decades later, you have someone who needs to be ready to go out into the world on their own and operate independently. How else could you possibly get them from one to the other effectively if not by introducing more freedom and more responsibility over time as they become mature enough to handle them?
Probably the biggest complaint when I've spoken about childhoods with friends of my own generation, and the thing we pretty much all agree we want to avoid with our own generation of children, is strict and arbitrary-seeming rules that remain in place for far too long. Obviously no five-year-old is ready to make their own fully informed decisions about everything. But a fifteen-year-old? Hopefully by then they'll be making most decisions for themselves and relying on their parents more as advisers and a safety net than as figures of authority.
I've read stories of folks successfully getting their kids to manage their own screen time.
There are ways to get interested in things other than hobbies that give you a surface level exposure to hardware and software.
It was actually fun and felt like an achievement.
In the end, totalitarian views are what got us into the current political climate. Being able to negotiate, and sometimes push boundaries and break rules are important life skills.
But don't tell them that.
In this situation the rule had been fulfilled, the meal was finished, and so finding a way to get back online was perfectly "lawful".
I'm pretty legalistic in a rational way with domestic rules for my kids - they can't flout the rules but they can provide a logical challenge and change the rules.
This situation was poor time management on my child's behalf.
Serious question. I'm 40 and couldn't do that without a screen. I go off and play board games with some folks and we usually (but not always) use facebook to plan. A couple of folks don't have social media (by choice), but those folks aren't exactly taking phone calls nor does anyone really appreciate unexpected visitors. (I personally won't answer the door if I don't expect a visitor).
The idea that "nor does anyone really appreciate unexpected visitors." is a recent concept. When I was growing up, that is just how it worked - you knocked on a door. If they were busy or could not play, you respected that and left. If they really didn't have time for you, they just wouldn't answer the door. Obviously, you'd make plans if you didn't live near each other, but kids running around the local neighborhood pulling each other out of homes to play outside was literally an every day experience.
It is truly a difference in generations at this point. I find it disturbing and annoying to get texts and phone calls, but friendly and welcome for friends to stop by and say hello.
While there sometimes is some parental organisation by phone or text, for the most part, local kids just have to go out to see who's available, then be home by whatever time we decide to be the latest.
I realise this will not work across all locations, but out here in the boonies it works a charm.
If some kid comes by asking for my kids and they are not in, (s)he just walks to the next house or playground trying their luck. If I expect my kids back soon, I just invite the kid at the door in to wait for them.
For some reason, when this happens, they usually don't end up just doing screen stuff with their friends. No idea why. Maybe exercising to bike/walk to their friends' houses gets them in a play-outside mood?
I admit it would be trickier for more remote kids, but in that situation asking a parent to set up a play-date (or making a no-screen exception for calling friends on the phone to schedule) would likely work well.
Not impossible, but likely it'd be a purpose-bought feature phone.
Most have access to one, in the developed world.
So there's the option, but it's a service change for many. Which is an argument against your comment.
If you're taking the broader view -- outside developed countries, or to a time when POTS / PSTN are deprecated or abandoned, and I could see that happening within the next five years given recent trends, possibly not. Which is an argument for your comment.
My experience is that both landline and mobile have their own extreme annoyance and distraction factors. So be it.
Outright dismissal may be not fully appropriate and premature though.
Though again, that's households without landline service. The households still have landline access, in the sense that they're wired to the network.
The actual penetration is closer to 20% now in many regions. Staggeringly low. And again, I think PSDN as a whole -- that's mobile dialed and VOIP SIP calls, as well as POTS -- may not be long for this world. The spam / robocall issue is the tip of the iceberg. Personal and business fraud is another major element.
For median household income it would cost 1.5% of after tax income for just the landline
In ancient times, the frequently-called numbers list was pinned next to the phone.
They are learning to manage this kind of situation, for sure: that is, random disruption.
I see them learning peculiar time management strategies that they will have to unlearn as adults.
I see them learning that their efforts on medium-difficulty tasks are often going to be randomly wasted and are therefore not worth bothering with.
I don't like it when someone tells me what to do, but I'll be damned if I let my kids run wild and do whatever they want.
> drawing
> cardboard
> LEGOs
> nerf darts
> book
Sometimes I wonder if people don't realize prep - actually having something to interact with - is needed for this to work.
Sad but true. I'm super self-conscious of dancing because when I was little my mom would always chaperone these events and watch me. Now I always feel like there's somebody standing around with nothing better to do but analyze my every move, judging who I'm talking to, saying, etc. When my friends come over I hate even talking to them in the house because I know she's listening. Same thing with phone calls in the house. I always need to go for a walk for that.
Yes - they turn almost anything into a toy. They have access to all sorts of stuff to build things - lego, clay (and clay sculpting tools), scissors and paper, plenty of board games, and outdoors even when cold and/or rainy.
I doubt Socrates would've developed into such an intellectual powerhouse without his iPad as a young lad.
Wouldn't it just feel like a chore or homework at that point and not something you enjoy ?
People don't realize that a lot of people with large tech exposure severely restrict access to things like phones/laptops. Gates and Jobs come to mind iirc.
There's tons of research showing that exposure to toys decreases creativity and the ability to play on your own with improvised toys. Learning how to use an operating system is trivial with the help of google. All of the arguments for letting your kids have unfettered access to electronics rest on the faulty assumption that familiarity is the important part of learning how to solve technical problems or to gain interest in technical subjects when there's just no consistent evidence to show this.
My point: in every generation the parents complain that kids are spending too much time with the new form media. What they really want is for their kids to do what they did at the same age. Time moves forwards.
Rather than pretend it is still the 1980s, parents should be more worried about their kids not being able to keep up with modern media. Can't bounce between multiple windows, researching this and that while answering emails and composing a policy document on the fly? Can't create a policy document from scratch, along with all necessary citations and formatting, in under an hour? Then you won't be doing my job. "Screen time" can be wasteful, but it is increasingly a necessary skill.
Except the problem these days is that algorithms are preying on human weaknesses and taking advantage of addictive characteristics. Things like video games and youtube videos are purposefully making themselves so addictive that it's different from before. I'm not one to say "this time it's different" but this time it really is.
Basically apply the best practices that you had 25 years ago for TV (not too much, make sure it's not too much for their age, etc) and you'll probably be fine too.
In literature, such tricks can include a short episodic narrative that negates any need for long-term retention of information (short chapters). Reward centers of the brain are triggered by predictable plots. The reader feels smart when they are able to predict what it coming. Banal subject matter also helps get the product into the hands of kids (a book about a wizard school, or a game about farming rather than a casino). Then you wrap a community around the product. You give people the opportunity to advertise their participation and success with the product. You sell the knickknacks to display to their friends. Then you ensure the product has no end. You spread everything out over years so that, no matter how much they pay today, there will always be another purchase to make in the future.
Star Trek has been described as addictive, I think that can be extended to Harry Potter. I'd bet good money that Disney has people working to keep Star Wars as addictive as possible.
Board-games are just substandard video games.
There IS an exception. If the thing they choose to do with their time has online instructions or they will be learning from a tutorial, etc, then the screen can be used to a degree.
They start off bored. They may get ahead on some homework. The littlest one takes the longest to figure out what to do. Often times I ask if they want to play a board game, or go somewhere with me, walk the dog, etc. But if I'm in the middle of something else, it's up to them.
It takes a few minutes, but, before you know it, they're on the floor in their bedroom drawing, or building something elaborate out of cardboard, the LEGOs come out, or nerf darts start flying through the house.
And for the older kids, they will get out of the house, reach out to a friend, read a book, or study a new topic.
Being bored doesn't last long when you don't have a choice. The hardest part is getting started with that "something new".