Completely anecdotal, but I was chatting with a teacher a couple of months ago, and she said it's actually a common thing with young children that have been raised on screens. They are addicted to their devices and have poor socialization skills, so they tend to throw tantrums when asked to put the devices away to focus on the class itself.
He was kind of ADHD person, never confirmed by anyone, but he was jumping in place everytime something exciting was on the screen, always wanted to move around, hit other people. And most noticeable - he was furious when somebody told him to turn off tv/pc.
I've seen many not behaving kids of course, this one had uncontrolled access to technology even then.
And now we're alarmed? We had a lot of time to notice. Don't forget that TV and computer isn't something new. People were addicted to mobile phones (without internet of course, just SMS) even 10 years ago.
Did your cousin carry the TV around with him?
> TV and computer isn't something new. People were addicted to mobile phones even 10 years ago
It used to be rare to see teenagers with cell phones, let alone toddlers. The iPhone is ~11 years old, and in that time it has become common for me to see people of all ages, from toddler up, always on a smartphone or tablet.
I disagree strongly that the situation is just the same as TVs decades ago.
And I'm not interested in the picture of the people reading newspapers on the subway. It's always been common to ignore strangers of public transit, I'm more interested in a photograph of friends/family staring intently at their own newspaper while at a dinner table or some other social event. This is the norm with smartphones, and color me skeptical that it isn't new.
We actually told her that Masha went on vacation, and are going to be trying to crank down her screen time down to near-zero (from a few hours on the weekends, and occasionally 45 minutes after daycare if only one parent is home and e.g. dinner needs to be cooked)
Is the daycare cooperating with your desire for near-zero screen time?
What did parents do before that when they need to cook dinner?
I know this is kind of a rhetorical question, but:
- they'd prepare dinner ahead of time
- the other parent would watch the kids
- they'd have extended family watch the kids
- they'd have neighbors watch the kids
- they'd park the kid in the kitchen
- they'd hope that the kid didn't do anything too destructive in the other room
- toss them outside and task them with entertaining themselves until dinner is done
You can't do that anymore with other parents calling the cops if they see a child outside unattended for longer than 30 seconds but it was effective
We bordered on a large plot of forest. So we'd pay attention if it was hunting season (wear orange/yellow if it was), and go traipsing through the forest. We would routinely be gone for hours. Some times, we'd go from sunrise to sunset.
We'd also build a tiny fire, and have cookouts. One of us had a rifle, so we'd go for small game. First time I had squirrel was doing that. We put out the fires like they told us to do in cub scouts.
(Tl;Dr. Kids with guns, fire, basic camping gear, out for hours)
There's no way in hell anything remotely like this would be "allowed" today.
But yes it was critical asked. Im a software engineer but with quite a negative view on mobile phones.
I close my lit or put my phone away at conferences and try to focus. Still so many people around me doing everything but concentrating on the topic is strange.
If our generation is already like this, how will be a generation growing up without?
You also had - well, have - the option to just drop the kid in a high-chair or a playpen with a couple of distracting objects in the corner of the room. Sometimes the kid gets unhappy about being in a playpen with nothing to do and just screams for an hour while you prepare dinner.
Then you either have the option of stopping to sooth the baby or power through, and everyone wonders why either dinner is late/burnt or why you're in such a foul mood after listening to a screaming infant for an hour.
I've learned to keep my kids' screen time limited and it works best if it's a rigid timing (after homework but before dinner). I give them additional time if they watch in French audio track - in fact that seems to minimize the crankiness when its time to put away the devices.