It varies a lot. My kids will run around and play given the opportunity, but when they arrive home at 6pm from after-school club, completely exhausted, I think it's fair that they get to collapse in front of a screen for a bit.

For my generation (just post-Boomer), it was the TV.

For my parents, it was the radio.

For their parents, reading out loud for everyone to enjoy ("Mr. Dickens has published another episode of The Pickwick Papers!"), or playing instruments.

Yup. I'm Gen X (1972), and I'd read a book, watch TV, or (once we hit the mid-80s) I had a home computer.

I spent much of my free childhood hours from about 1976 to 1988 in front of a computer screen. But I was certainly not in the mainstream.

I don't think the mainstream people end up on HN.

Music is medicine. I’ve been taking guitar for a few years now and it’s pure joy.

Problem is for the first month of lessons it is not joy, it is hard frustrating work where you sound bad and know it. Even when you are good lessons often are pushing you to do hard things and so they are not pure joy.

My son has been taking violin for years, is really good, and loves it - but most of his practice time is still really hard pieces that need a lot of practice of the hard parts (stitching between 5th and 2nd position...) and he would prefer to sit down at the piano (he stopped lessons years ago) and play an easy piece.

Practicing is always hard and I struggle to find time or energy to push myself but my goal was to be able to play basic chords and make up silly songs around the campfire so everything else is just a bonus.

These things are not remotely comparable. Smartphones, especially social media double depression and suicide rates among teens.

Even then, individual screens is isolating.

Collapsing in front of the TV with the family was still quality time enjoying something together.

For a lot of young people the screen is social - the equivalent of the long after-school phonecalls from the before times. Be it games or just Discord, it's still comms.

The screen is also a continual, addictive flow of short video clips that are largely designed to sell product, stoke FOMO, make people feel inadequate about beauty, etc.

Observe young people using their phones, and you can see the social use is often just occasionally switching from TikTok to a chat app, dashing off a one-line message, and then going right back to TikTok. Big difference from having actual long phone conversations with friends after school.

Most of the social of screens is when you get to a place without them you have something common to talk about. "how about [local sports team]", "what did you think about [whatever happened on latest soap opera]", "lets pretend I'm [some character on cartoon]". It is all shorthand for we have something in common and can skip getting to know each other.

Individual screens let parents get some peace and quiet for a while. As with everything, moderation is the key, not abstention.

Individual screens can be isolating, they can also be somewhat social. I agree, not a complete replacement for other social activities for sure. But, as a kid with internet connected videogames growing up, those internet connected games kept me playing with friends from school and other groups even if we weren't able to physically get together that evening.

Meanwhile, my brother would often go dig in and read a fiction book in isolation. Which is fine and great and all, definitely not taking a dig at reading a book in any way, but its not like only screens lead to isolation. There's plenty of tasks one can do at home that then become isolating.

The play-based childhood is over; the phone-based childhood is here.

Not universally though, the local skate park and sports fields see plenty of activity.

Just until they are shutdown to put in pickleball for retirees.

> Not universally though, the local skate park and sports fields see plenty of activity.

Sure if “at least one match” means activity.

Back in the day, you couldn’t find parking for several blocks radius around every public sports field.

Thankfully that state is far from evenly-distributed.

It’s here but do we think it’s better? Should it stay?

As a society we do get to answer these questions.

As a society we've proven over and over again that we're unable to solve these problems that require coordination against greed. We've pulled the smartphone out of Pandora's box.

There's a 500B industry selling the phones, 2.5 trillion selling telecom services, trillions more selling social media, and most of the economy involves selling their products over the internet. Those are some HUGE incentives to maintain the status quo, or get people even more addicted yet.

I don't think our society is capable of answering that question and starting a Dune-style "Butlerian Jihad" and destroying all machines-that-think.

No, the issue is that most parents don’t want to do any parenting. There’s a product that makes children shut up, of course it’s selling out.