Kids Not Hurt by Screentime | Hacker News Reader

Kids Not Hurt by Screentime

scientificamerican.com

8 pointsbokieie6 comments

This research simply says that the children of the age group studied are not hurt by screen time in one particular aspect -- mental health. To draw the conclusion that we should stop worrying about screen time because a single study failed to find an effect in this specific case is a bit of a leap.

I think there's a massive difference between screen time between the ages of 10 and 14, and screen time under the age of 5, when a child's brain is developing very rapidly. And what I worry about most is consequences like ADHD and decreased attention span.

I have no plans on trusting my child with a phone/tablet for a _very_ long time. I mean, the basic income model for _all_ major online companies is to increase engagement no matter what. No thanks.

What I do wish is for the pubic perception of 'screentime' to not include _everything_. This morning my almost 3 year daughter and I watched 30 minutes of Daniel Tiger, 5 minutes of planes landing, and 10 minutes of ballet performances. All highly engaging with questions flowing from her about every aspect. It's not like I sat her in a corner to play some skinner box slot machine for an hour _or_ some brain dead flashy cartoon.

If the question is whether it's a good idea to let your kids sit in front of a slot machine that collects the data they input _and_ the words the say to friends in an effort to further manipulate them then I could have saved you a study. :D

> What I do wish is for the pubic perception of 'screentime' to not include _everything_.

This! My parents would let me have extra time if I was doing something other than mucking about playing games or social media nonsense.

Usually a parent would ask me what I did and if I was learning programming or something like that they would leave me to explore.

I think one of the main problems is that too many parents are just putting a screen in front of a child as a virtual babysitter because they don't want to be bothered.

As much as I want to agree with the conclusions of this study, I have a hard time believing them. Anecdotally I do feel like social media has weakened a lot of social relationships (although they do persist longer than they would have in the past, so maybe thats a plus). I feel like these relationships have weakened because people have started using their online relations as substitute for their in-person ones. In addition to that, I actually feel more anxious/depressed when I spend more than an hour or so on social media, mainly because of FOMO. There have been multiple times in the last few years where I was sure I was addicted to social media and would get anxiety because of it. During these periods I've had to turn my devices off and leave them at home for extended periods of time to "reset" myself.

Again, all anecdotal, and likely this study was very thorough, these are just my own experiences.

Funny, this has been the same argument since books were first published.

If your child went to the library every day would you have the same view point?

All I'm trying to convey is most of these issues are over hyped, on both sides.

Everything is good in moderation, if you abuse something, you will get diminishing returns.

You drink too much water you die.

That's fair, but the article pointed out that some (most) of the kids were on their devices 5-7 hours a day. That doesn't seem like moderation to me, and I really doubt screen time has the same benefits as reading.

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