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Comment by blotter_paper | Hacker News Reader

I certainly don't take the medical establishment as infallible, and I can imagine arguing against these recommendations, but FYI the American Association of Pediatricians recommends against allowing a 20mo the sort of screen time necessary to learn ad-skipping through trial and error[0]:

>Among the AAP recommendations:

>For children younger than 18 months, avoid use of screen media other than video-chatting. Parents of children 18 to 24 months of age who want to introduce digital media should choose high-quality programming, and watch it with their children to help them understand what they're seeing.

>For children ages 2 to 5 years, limit screen use to 1 hour per day of high-quality programs. Parents should co-view media with children to help them understand what they are seeing and apply it to the world around them.

[0]: https://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/Pages...

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I appreciate the concern. I'm not going to get into a debate about this, nor do I sense you are trying for one. But my toddler is wildly ahead of his peers in almost every measure (edit: wow this sounds pretentious. Not sure what to say. He spells and assembles words he sees around the house. He just turned 2), so I'll give the facts I observe more weight than the massively simplified single sentence prescription that the U.S. medical system likes to give on things.

Heck I bet shipping your child off to daycare every day hinders them more than 90 minutes of tablet time. Particularly in a household of two full time stay at home parents and every conceivable monetary and educational advantage they could want for. But I doubt the AAP goes telling everyone that they're doing it wrong if they pay others to raise their kids each day.

Sorry... I'm ranting. I just don't like highly distilled parental advice from organizations. One size fits all culture we have here in the west, I think, is very harmful.

Out of curiosity, do you get the impression other cultures do parenting advice better?

I think that like most things every culture gets a lot right and a lot very wrong.

I found this from yesterday interesting, https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/03/13/6855333...

I’m not too sold on the terrifying stories though.

> I bet shipping your child off to daycare every day hinders them more 90 minutes of tablet time .... household of two full time stay at home parents

Wow, no surprise there. I'm sure you recognize how privileged you and your children are to be able to grow up this way.

One size fits all advice is necessary because it is not economically feasible to provide individual expert advice to every single person. Many people unfortunately use a phone/tablet as a cheaper form of child care ignoring the child as long as they are quite and entertained.

Ideal would be to support dramatically increased paid parental leave and more social support for children and families, so that everyone would have more opportunity to raise their own children, especially kids <1 year old.

But yes, you are right that it is a great privilege to have a lot of parent time available.

The sadder one to me is the folks who don’t take advantage of their available time. I know quite a few parents who are either not working or wealthy enough to not work for several years with no significant financial/career impact but who still hire someone else to take care of their kids full time, because they think of childcare as an annoying hassle.

Shared care can be helpful in that your child gets used to being cared for by other people and interacting with a variety of other kids.

We send our kids 3 days a week and would probably do it even if we weren’t both working.

Room for a variety of opinions here, agree one size does not fit all.

What kind of activities do you have your 2-year-old do on the tablet / other screens?

My 2.5 year old doesn’t get too much screen time (occasional movies or Mr Rogers episodes), but more because I haven’t spent any time investigating the possibilities than because we have a strong philosophical objection to it.

I appreciate that you didn't take my comment as an attack on your parenting. I definitely share your misgivings about daycare, and would extend them to the educational system in general (another topic, I know). I'm glad that you and your SO are raising a bright kid, and I wish you the best of luck!

Another reason to limit screen time for kids is to prevent developing nearsightedness. Although this is just anecdata, I was talking to my optometrist at my last appointment and he told me he's seen far more kids coming in with myopia than ever in his 30 years of practicing and he attributes it to kids spending too much time on phones and tablets.

edit: Here's an article from nature which compiles some research on the topic. https://www.nature.com/news/the-myopia-boom-1.17120

I was looking for research to say that is a myth. But from a trusted source: The American Optometric Association:

https://www.aoa.org/patients-and-public/eye-and-vision-probl...

I think there's more evidence that it's lack of bright light, not an excess of screen time, that can cause nearsightedness.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5976264/

My understanding of the current consensus among researchers is that nearsightedness is usually caused by (a) not focusing on distant objects enough, and (b) not being outside often enough in very bright light.

There’s no reason to believe that screens are inherently worse for vision than books, knitting, legos, or any other close work. Which is to say, any of these are only a problem to the extent they are crowding out outdoor time.

If you’re worried about it, get your kids out to the playground or walking around the neighborhood or hiking in the woods for a few hours every day.

I’m 24 man I ain’t even thinking about having kids; I’m just putting information out there. Tbf I spent nearly every waking moment of my childhood outside and I’m extremely near sighted. I can’t even see my laptop screen without my glasses.

That’s a bummer. Sounds like you might be one of the few people who would have still developed myopia 200 years ago.

Yeah seems so; it's not too bad though. However, I have high index lenses and they bend red and blue light up or down if I look at the source from the top or bottom edge of my lenses. There's the interesting effect where dark red or blue text on a black background looks like its in 3D. The text even shifts when I move my head around. Honestly, I should really just get lasik; people I know that got it swear by it.

Look into ICL...more expensive but reversible (among other advantages).

Do they say the same for people who stare at screens a foot or two away?

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