"Screen time" is just the term that most people use for "use of technology", in this case TV, and other computer tech (tablets, desktops, phones). What they are really talking about is the applications or "services" the kids are addicted to staring at and using by way of the screens.

> Screens are not inherently bad, or good, or anything anymore than a window is bad or good.

Once you understand it's not really the screens as such, but the things the kids are looking at by way of the screens, then the value neutral claim kind of falls apart because the things the kids are looking at by way of the screens are made to be addictive and optimized to an absurd degree for that effect of habit formation. Tech companies have been on a decades long move to remove the concept of "just a screen", an obvious example being TVs which are now all "smart". Seeing as we know that habit formation is easier to bring about in children (their habits and behaviour as children defined by their plastic nature at that age) it's within reason to be worried that an industry and parenting practice is essentially enabling intense habit formation in children for material gain.

I wouldn't let imprecise language get in the way of the main issue: is addiction to certain services and technology something we want for our children? The fact that tech execs have decided "no" seems to be ironic considering they have no problem with other children doing it.

There's more to the internet than corporate sites and TV streams.

Even if I accept your premise that there are corporations out there literally intentionally addicting kids (successfully!) in a way that fits the medical definitions of addition, it's still just those corporations. The internet, and in general technology, are so much more. Screen time limits are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Maybe it'd be better to block corporate sites and still let the kids explore all the amazing educational and personal growth potential out there.

I know people who limit heavily usage of the devices (1-2h per day at most), but those kids have Instagram, FB etc., even though kids are way too young to use this kind of tech (<10 years old, so accounts would be locked out if reported).

On the other side of the spectrum I know 11-year olds who spend 6-7h per day on FT calls with their group.

In the end, both behaviours are screen time.

Do you know any people who actually limit screen time, without making a bizarre exception for social media?

It isn't no much "use of technology" as "immersed in media"

And by media I mean this shared dreamland that we are navigating at the moment.

The dreamland has gotten more powerful over time (..text..radio..tv..games..social media..)

It has gone from entertainment and news to an alternate reality that we spend part of our life in.

So ya, living in dreamland... you gotta think about that. The pros and cons and such.

I suspect that the focus on "screen time" originally came about because the genre of low-effort studies that try to squeeze headline-grabbing correlations out of "time spent watching TV" needed to switch to a broader measure because conventional TV has dramatically waned in popularity over the past ~15 years.

As far as I know, the large-scale freakout happened after the American Academy of Pediatrics released a report recommending limits for "screen time" specifically for young children, which grabbed a lot of headlines. They later walked it back and basically changed the recommendation to be against unsupervised media consumption, and that grabbed a lot fewer headlines.

I’m guessing you don’t have kids and haven’t seen what happens if you tell them to put down the phone/iPad cause it’s time to do X, then watched them bargain with you for the device back. It’s like seriously like talking to a drug addict.

This is totally right, but I think the majority of people understand this, and use "screen time" as shorthand for completely passive and solitary use of screens. I know many people really do say it is the screen itself that's the problem, but I don't think that's the most common colloquial use of the term.

This is being so characteristically HN-pedantic it hurts. "Screen time" in this context is used disparagingly to refer to useless time in front of a computer or phone. No one classifies reading the encyclopedia britannica on a computer as "screen time".