Re:Ask HN: How much screen time do you let your kids have?
by dsr_ on Saturday December 13, 2014 @09:51PM
(#8747297)
Yup. If they want to program, that's different from watching other people play Minecraft on Youtube.
I also expect these rules to change along with the kids, not remain static. If we're successful, then by 16 or so I expect that the rules will be down to "Don't wake up sleeping people."
Re:Ask HN: How much screen time do you let your kids have?
by jmccree on Saturday December 13, 2014 @10:53PM
(#8747398)
Ok, I'm glad you clarified that. It looked above as if programming would count as screen time. My parents never limited my computer access since we got a 286 when I was two, but I also never had youtube as a temptation. At age 11 I was spending every night working on my website, hanging out on freenode, and playing TFC. As long as my grades were good, my parents didn't impose any time limits or even bed time. I was expected to manage that myself.
I often wonder if those of us who first experienced computers in the 90s (And remember DOS->Win 3.1->95->98->XP) are the last generation for who a computer was a fascinating thing to learn, as now things seem to be moving to computers/tablets/smart phones merely being consumption and social sharing devices. There were several of us that learned HTML in elementary school for our angelfire pages. I can't understand the fascination people have now at watching other people play games on youtube/whatever that other site is. Oh well, C'est la vie.
It seems like a reasonable way to limit unproductive, pure-entertainment computer use. A parent with some common sense should be able to identify what is productive.