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Comment by nelaboras | Hacker News Reader

In addition there is a key qualitative element: are all uses equal? Is watching Teletubbies or Paw Patrol equal to nature documentaries? Is playing addictive repetitive games different than those solving puzzles or following a story? Is videoconferencing with grandma the same or better or worse as doing a math training game?

The key issue often is the parents' role and guidance. Let your kid aimlessly click through YouTube? Or are you fostering their skills and challenge and motivate them to learn something new?

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From watching friends and family in the last ten years, I would like to add economical class and education level (maybe what we would call cultural capital) as one factor to this.

It might sound a bit fascist, but factors that is commonly questioned and scorned nowadays such as screen time, sugar intake, lack of outdoors activity and not wearing bike helmets are more common among families with generally lower status. The more upper middle class a family gets, the more important it seems to be to avoid doing harm to our children. Maybe mostly to save face among our peers?

My point is that kids with more screen time may overlap with not being read to as much, not given as much attention to tell their family about their thoughts, not challenged to exercise their ability to focus, and so on. In a very general sense.

Exactly what I thought. A few years ago, I was in a hotel where one family gave their kids tablets to watch movies during breakfast. I can hardly imagine that this practice is beneficial for the kids development.

Thats lazy parenting IMO. My 2 yo son was not inteoduced to tablets or phones because there are so many more things they could do. He loves for example snap in puzzles where a lot of faculties develop but almost anything physical is beneficial at this age. There is time for computers and tablets later on, whats the rush?

How about both? I have older children 21 and 22, and I have some new ones, ages 1 and 5. I have always done as much as I can with my children. I also have learned to set them up with an activity and let them go at it without my constant supervision. They don't always look for outside answers, but instead figure it out on their own. I was anti-TV and computer with my older children, but I still allowed it, and they are doing great (one a physics major, the other in medical school). My current children seem to be doing just fine too compared with their peers.

Since you were anti-tv you probably kept an eye on what they were watching. TV or tablets aren’t the concern themselves, but the content pushed on them. I learned quite a bit from TV back in the 90s, luckily back then I didn’t have access to addictive junk.

Yeah this is an important detail that is typically glossed over: the device is just a content delivery platform, and the content is what really matters. As a parent I find that policing content is a much more challenging and stressful task than simply managing screen time.

Yes, I curated their content, but I do believe too much of any one thing is bad. We didn't get a phone until I was a 11 or 12, not because of beliefs, but money. I became a real bookworm to the detriment of getting outside and exercising for a few years. I try to mix everything up a bit. I also believe in a diversity of intelligence. Each one of my children has a different angle on intelligence. It's amazing to see the different manifestations even within the same family. I think what we think is good content evolves every 5 to 10 years; a study comes out refuting a solidly held confidence in a technique or manner of raising children. I think if you keep it diverse, and try and challenge yourself, your kids and you gain tremendously.

As a parent myself who is guilty of this from time to time, I think it’s easy to judge those moments without seeing the full picture. Nowadays parents are expected to attend to kids basically 24/7 and keep them engaged, etc,. Just because you saw that happen at breakfast doesn’t mean it was happening all day, every day. Maybe they were out visiting museums or nature parks for the rest of the day.

There are mornings when you just want a quiet breakfast while you’re on vacation without an embarrassing meltdown happening and, for better or worse, the most effective way to accomplish that is by giving your kid a movie or show to watch on the iPad for 30 minutes while you eat.

People shake their heads when the kids watch a tablet during breakfast, they'd also shake their heads if the child misbehaved and disrupted their own breakfast. Sometimes there's not a third option. Most parents would be delighted if they could simply ask their children to be well-behaved and eat in a crowded public space.

I don’t think people really shake their heads at kids disrupting meals (unless it’s really egregious). If a kid screams or something, people naturally look, but you don’t know what they’re thinking. They could just be wondering what’s going on, or remembering their life when they had kids that age. You have no idea. Mostly I would think that the parents are doing their best and they have enough to deal with without me also passing judgment.

For sure, I think everyone who's had kids understands, and a lot of people who haven't also understand. But I've read plenty of comments like the one above that refer to the disruption rather than the placation, and I think people have different definitions of egregious, as well.

Oh they do. A lot. And they complain about it on the Internet too, a lot.

But also, as a parent, I am kind of inclined to hear and accept that my kid being noisy or something is sewhat disrupting other tables. In all honesty, sometimes it disrupts me.

I am significantly less inclined to accomodate randoms whose issue is completely made up problem with phone or tablet during hotel breakfast. I do not care at all. I use tablet to make hotel meal pleasant as opposed to disciplinary issue, for me and for people around other tables. These people don't have problem or pain, they are making up problems in their heads.

It is just that part that makes this complain particularly dumb. Of course public situation is when you are much more likely to use phone. And of course in grand scheme of things it does not matter at all. It is one of millions situations you solve in one way or the other, nit exactly queen visit.

A third option is to systematically beat the children whenever they deviate from approved behavior. ("Beat the sin out of them.") The guardians will receive lots of undeserved admiration for their obedient children. The children may suffer from life-long emotional problems.

I do not recommend this option.

I've seen exactly this with some friends and their kids. If they're at a more adult place to eat the kids are allowed to watch cartoons so they don't get bored and start wanting to leave before the meal's even started. The rest of the time they're limited in their screen time, read books with their parents and go out to all sorts of fun places like nature parks etc.

It's lazy to judge parents just because you see a 30 minute slice of their day

We improved this by always carrying color pens and a minimal playdoh set (couple of colors and tools). First they paint, then they do playdoh, and then, if the meal isn’t over they watch cartoons.

We have almost completely eliminated devices with this tactic because by the time they are done with those two the meal is almost over. And if it isn’t then we also sometimes tell them that they must just wait or engage in conversation with us.

We are lucky that they like painting and playing with playdoh, though.

When I was a kid, we carried a game system to restaurants and we usually played while waiting for the meal to arrive.

The game system was a notepad and pen. The game selection included Hangman, Tic-Tac-Toe, and dots-and-boxes.

We made the mistake of letting our first born watch Mother goose club on the tablet during meals, the upside is she always at her food but then we realized that absent the tablet she would throw a tantrum and refuse to eat and if we left the house and didn't have the tablet that was another mess. We made the decision to get rid of the tablet as well as any electronic stimuli during meals, food time is food time with conversation. We invested in books, playdoh, puzzles, crafts, bug catching kit etc and 2 kids later we have no complaints.

I would also be surprised if tablet during breakfast would destroyed the kids in the future in any realistic way.

This is really just nitpicking parental decisions that basically don't matter.

I hope you are aware, that this discussion is not about 'destroying children'. It is about the effects of early touch screen usage and if it is beneficial for the development of a child. So the question is if a kid would do better or worse, not if one kid would be destroyed.

That these things have an effect shows the study above. In addition, you have to evaluate the magnitude of an effect. For example, not every high IQ person who wants to have a well-paid job has one even though a high IQ is known to have a positive impact on reaching that goal. Similarly, not every toddler who uses touchscreens regularly will show increased anti-social behavior, even though that might be a related effect.

To elaborate, it completely absurd to fret over hotel breakfast touch screen usage.

First, it is extremely unlikely that sight of touch screen does any harm at all for development of children. The possible small effects are quite unlikely to show up unless the kid is using them a lot, to the exclusion of other activities.

Second, you placed emphasis on during as if hotel meal were the special one place where parent would exclude screen even if the kid is overusing it everywhere else. I hope you are aware, hotel/restaurant is the place where movie is more likely to be used then normal. Restaurant time is not special sacred non-screen time, it is the screen time.

You also wrote:

> I can hardly imagine that this practice is beneficial for the kids development.

I can hardly imagine harm. I can hardly imagine kids to gain on it. In all likelihood, taking in all minuscule effects touch screens have on kids, watching movie during hotel breakfast is completely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

Running around causing total havoc in the hotel's dining room, like we did as kids 30 years ago, might have been beneficial for us, but I'm sure it wasn't helping with my parents' high blood pressure condition. And I'm sure other guests would appreciate more us sitting quietly and looking at the screens if it was possible at that time.

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