Ask HN: Babies and screen time?

I have four kids ages 14, 11, and twin 7-year olds. We have never watched TV, don't own any tablets, etc. We rarely watch movies (about a movie every 2 months or so), although I just took the older two to Star Wars. So basically little to no screen time at all for our kids when they were under two.

I can only comment our our family's experience. Our kids have never said they were bored. They build things in the garage out of scrap wood. They play with Legos. My eldest son has built several working boats from scratch, including a birch bark canoe. My daughter spoke at Velocity Conf in 2014 with me on learning to program (she was 7). All of my kids love to read, draw, create, etc.

Anecdotally, I'd say no screen time has forced my kids to not be passive consumers, but to be creative in many different ways. They are also kind and empathetic, probably from so much reading.

I think Facetime with grandma is just fine, even for little kids.

The one or two times our kids came home from their grandparents and had watched 2 - 3 movies, they were crabby and demanding. So we had a gentle chat with my parents to not show them >1 movie per visit.

This is one of the best books I've found on parenting that actually supports claims with evidence: http://www.parentingwithreason.com/

There's a chapter on media consumption and "Baby Einstein" type media products. They found no real evidence to support that media helps or hurts children, as long as it isn't vulgar or violent and limited to a reasonable amount of time.

I'd be curious to hear people's logic for concern about screen time as a general category, vs something like "unrewarding screen time".

To me it seems like, as with all new media, we are going through a period of moral panic that it will corrupt the youth by its very nature (the same has been said of video games, comic books, movies, television, rock and roll, blues, jazz, the twist, and, yes, even literary novels back when they were "new media").

In my opinion I think it makes sense to limit screen activity that is analogous to "junk food"; everyone will have their own categorization, but I think things like child-targeted Youtube autoplay spam videos are easy candidates.

On the other hand if a child wants to use a screen for something productive and enriching ... why is that a concern, even at fairly high levels of use? Obviously there are limits (e.g. eye strain, opportunity cost of playing outside and socialization etc.) but I just can't understand the seemingly popular theory that screen time, per se, is a problem and must be carefully controlled.

I would genuinely be interested to hear people's thoughts on this.

It's been a slow downhill for me and my 17 month old. It started with no screen time...to let's see this photo or video we just took... To let's see this video we took in the past that you like...to OK here's a fun video to watch (YouTube).

Now she can voice her own demands she will sometimes request for a certain video. Will still try to limit it as much as possible, though.

Its also impossible to avoid video chats with relatives.

We still rarely turn on the TV so at least have that going.

Our pediatrician's recommendation is to limit it to 2 hours a day.