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Comment by jcater | Hacker News Reader

> How is TV better than an iPad? I mean, seriously? At least with an iPad there's a plethora of different apps, and a good percentage of them will be more enlightening than watching the ever diminishing quality of TV these days.

Kids are all.. different? What he describes was surprisingly the same for my 6 year old. Tablets cause focus and aggression issues with him. Taking away tablet access has done wonders for our household.

Your mileage may vary.

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Interesting. My five-year old has exhibited some aggression/anger occasionally. I have attributed it to him being tired or going through natural childhood phases. He does use electronic devices a lot. I never would have related the two behaviors, though.

I wonder if this is due to the instant gratification that devices provide, which creates an expectation that the real world should function this way, too, and anger when that turns out not to be the case.

From the reading I've done on the subject and observing our almost 3 year old, the ipad gives a dopamine rush to the brain. Taking it away causes the dopamine to stop and anger/frustration ensues...

At most he's allowed 1 hour a day, half hour after breakfast and a half hour before dinner. Both times he's given a 5 minute warning to turn it off, then he has to turn it off himself. We learned this the hard way, plus a lot if reading to figure out why he got so angry and frustrated when we turned it off.

Nowadays, either we play with him and his toys or he gets bored with that and wants the iPad again. We tell him the times he can watch it and he goes off bored again and starts getting creative with play on his own. The dopamine thing (self made opiate) really opened our eyes to his behaviour when the iPad was taken away.

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