Comment by bijection | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bijection | Hacker News Reader

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> The research is clear: Children learn better and more efficiently from play and interaction in the “real,” three-dimensional (3-D) world with parents, caregivers, and peers.

> This resource provides guidelines for parents and caregivers of children younger than 3 years on how to use screens in ways that minimize the potential negative effects and maximize learning.

> Although the body of research on the effect of screen media (beyond TV viewing) is still relatively limited, it clearly points to the following implications for parents and other caregivers: • Be thoughtful about how you use media with young children. Set limits on screen time to be sure that children have plenty of time exploring the real, 3-D world with family and friends. ( ... )

Though the guide doesn't explicitly say it, 0 screen time still seems like the optimal satisfaction of the presented guidelines.

The message is, "Your TV is not a good substitute for a babysitter or any substitute for parenting."

There is absolutely no doubt that real world interactions are what toddler minds are optimized for. Most importantly, children without autism spectrum disorder learn from social interactions. There isn't much of any evidence that you sharing teaching tool with your child that is from a tablet is detrimental.

My family limits my daughter's unguided screen time pretty strictly. She gets 1 episode of sesame street in the morning and one episode of Daniel Tiger at another point in the day. If she is sick or has a supersleep day, we'll get 1 episode of something else she likes to help keep her calm.

But there is tablet and phone time where we focus on interaction. At her age, a camera is fascinating. She takes me to someplace (usually someplace she played earlier) and we take a picture, she then looks a the picture. As per the guidelines, we don't focus on technical features but rather on the social and real world interactions. I feel absolutely no concern about this. I can see her working out how toe camera works and experimenting, and it's amazing. She's fascinated by beaing able to see things from multiple angles at once, and I think this is healthy.

But 0 screen time is just so totally unrealistic in a world of smartphones. What's more, it's not how MANY of us grew up. I was using text consoles, unguided, within a year of learning to read.

I look at people who say all screen time is detrimental with the same dim view as people who say vaccines cause autism. It's often cause driven.

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