Ask HN: How are you treating your child's internet addiction?

Not to be (too) flippant, but this is your first child I assume?

I have no particularly good advice for you other than it'll work itself out, and it's probably just a phase. When kids go to school, a lot of things change.

Also, it is often a point of pride for parents to talk about restricting screen time, how much their child reads, plays piano, is a star athlete, etc.

Parents often exaggerate to score points. :). This says more about parents and less about children.

Personally, I don't think devices are either good or bad. Perhaps your child actually loves some show and it gives them comfort. One thing to do is sit there and watch with them, and try to engage in their world. Ask them about what they like in the shows, etc.

Childhood is so fleeting and you will miss it before it's gone!

> Over and over.. like a crack addict..he simply can't control his desires for the eye-cocaine.

Dude, he's 5. He's not some addict. Relatively few 5-year-olds can control their desires in a consistent way. I mean "kid with his hand in the cookie jar" is a saying for a reason.

Be a parent, limit his use (or remove it altogether), and do other stuff with him. Take him to the zoo, maybe karate lessons or something, to the park, etc. I'm sure he'll be fine, as long as you don't continue to do stuff like denigrating him in public as some kind of "internet addict" in the throes of his addiction to "vicious" content (a kid's show, I presume) when he's only 5.

Maybe talk to him about how doctors say kids should limit their TV/YouTube usage to keep healthy. When my kids weren't getting enough veggies and fruits at that age, it deeply impressed them when I took them to the doctor and he talked about how important that was, and they then competed to see which sibling could reach 5 fruits and veggies a day first. The APA (American Pediatric Association) has released guidelines on this stuff (media consumption), if I'm not mistaken.

Hes 5....take it away from him, and teach him other things, remove tv all together (even for yourself).

It's looking like the only option at this point to salvage his budding neurons. But for how long should this 'hardcore' ban last? +5yrs? 10?

The "'hardcore' ban" should last as long as it needs to.

YOU are the adult - HE is the child.

Suck it up. Be a parent.

As the other guy said, be the parent. Take your kid to the zoo, go to a museum, show him how to play catch, both of you should learn to build a bird house, do ANYTHING else besides letting your kid veg out in front of a tv, wtf are you doing... Be there for your child.

> We've tried setting strict time limits and rules for when he can watch them.. but it's not helping. The only thing left to do is purely ban it. But the cat is out of the bag and he took a huge dump.

How are you setting limits? Verbally?

Just enforce the time constraints through the router. Tell the kid you can only watch youtbe/netflix for 40 minutes or whatever at a specific time. Set the mac address filtering and rules on the router, and ta-da!

YT Kids has a built in timer that you can password protect. I am not sure about netflix

Is your son doing physical activities? Does he like drawing, music, art? Are you playing with him enough?

yes - my son has a healthy amount of activities outside of his half-day at Montesorri. Could i spend more time with him? i sure wish i could have half-days too but reality is i get home and have just ~1hr to make dinner, bath and play with him.

next week i will experiment with a 50% reduction of screen time (currently @30min/day) and substitute it with a plethora of strategy games and legos.

hopefully this will do the trick.

ive twlked to a ton of friends with kids and they all deeply wrestle with this.

i honestly feel this will be our generation's greatest challenge. thanks guys for your support.

Wait. Your son is currently only in front of a screen for 30 minutes a day? Tha is pretty good, IMO. Heck, when I was 5 I was watching more TV than that.

30 mins a day, that's nothing. Most little kids watch more tv than that daily - parent babysitter. Doesn't sound like you've got much to worry about. Have 4 kids, all watched hours of tv like there was nothing else in the world, and all turned out well so far. Just make sure there's some balance.

Ya, 30 minutes is not a lot. I have two kids, ages 3 and 5, and they get about an hour a day. They each get to pick a show that we all watch as a family.

Don't forget there's a social aspect to it too. If you cut then of completely, when their v friends start talking about paw patrol or strawberry shortcake, they'll be left out. Same thing with the latest app or whatnot. Sure, they'll never know them all, but knowing none will make it harder for them to relate too.

When I was a kid the psychiatrist prescribed me Ritalin and on an average 22-hour day I probably spent it watching cartoons for hours on end, playing Neopets ferociously, xbox, along with some time outside with the other kids riding my scooter and shouting conversation over the backyard fence with the older kids on the other side.

This was probably tolerated in part because I was a pretty darn misbehaved child sometimes and watching TV wasn't as hard to deal with as explaining to me that no you can't tape a kitchen knife to your toy assault rifle as a bayonet.[0]

I like to think I turned out fine, so freaking out over 30 minutes a day seems a bit hysterical. That in mind here's my advice to get him away from the TV:

- Try taking him to the park. A lot of when I got out and really exerted myself as a kid was when I went to the park. It lets you interact with other kids, climb on stuff, go running around, and play pretend games that are good for the imagination.

- Get toys that encourage him to get up and play pretend. I was always a huge fan of toy guns, action figures, stuff with interesting mechanics (if you're on HN I'm sure you have the requisite taste to find such things). My rooms floor was always strewn with action figures and the like. A lot of the time I'd pit them against each other, sometimes in epic battle royales that may as well have been the Ultimate Showdown Of Ultimate Destiny. [1] Important tip: Kids are generally not snobby, if it were me instead of buying expensive new toys I'd go down to value village and just pull twenty dollars of grab bags with interesting looking stuff off the wall, with the occasional new toy for flavor. When you're that age playtime is half imagination for everything anyway, and you won't get mad when he breaks them. Even when I'd play video games I'd make up my own story for what was happening with narration of the villain growing more despondent as I got closer to the stage end. Do be mindful of the choking risk though!

- Get him some real friends, especially neighbors kids. A lot of what would get me to go outside, was seeing someone else outside in the cul-de-sac and wanting to be with them. Even in those famous studies with rats and the cocaine water they found that when you introduced social opportunities and other recreation the cocaine water became much less compelling.

Overall though, your son is probably fine. As one comment in this thread suggested perhaps you could set a good example and pack up the TV yourself. After all are you really satisfied with the time you spend watching?

[0]: It needed a bayonet! Cmon I was like 9.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WgT9gy4zQA

Thanks Unimpressive.. great tips!

Wait, 30 min a day is addiction?