Five year olds 'having panic attacks over socializing with their friends' | Hacker News Reader

Five year olds 'having panic attacks over socializing with their friends'

telegraph.co.uk

22 pointsAndrewBissell29 comments

What’s the average screen time of these five year olds?

Intuitively, this seems like a simple result of over screening because kids don’t behave like devices.

Every time I go to a family restaurant, I see a tiny kid (frequently too young to even speak) sitting with a phone or iPad watching and maybe swiping away. And usually I experience a tantrum when that kid has to break away from their screen to do something in the real world.

If young kids spend more time with youtube than friends, that’s going to result in lots of stuff.

Fun fact, if you ever bring up how screens are bad for little kids you will fight with parents.

Your intuition doesn't really mean much, and it's super easy to finger wag at parents who don't raise their kids the way you think they should. Even easier if you don't have kids of your own. Judging parents is much easier than actually raising children.

Our 4 year old (now 5) was depressed and anxious for months during lockdowns. Why wouldn't she be? People aren't meant to be cooped up together all day like that, and she needed space from us as much as we did from her. Space we couldn't really give her in our tiny home.

By the time she went back to school she'd been home, away from almost all other kids except her baby sister, for like 8 months. That's basically forever in 4-year-old time.

As to screentime, you don't know anything about those other "parents". If I let my daughter play educational games for 20 minutes so my wife and I can actually have a conversation over dinner, what's the problem with that?

> Judging parents is much easier than actually raising children.

I have seen this line used often. However, from an anti-natalist perspective, actually raising children is a mistake. Therefore, no one should actually expected to actually raise children, and simply judging those who do without that firsthand experience is perfectly reasonable.

I'm not sure why you think the thread stemmed from an anti-natalist perspective.

Even then, raising children is not what anti-natalism condemns. It's bringing children to life. It's not reasonable to condemn a care giver who didn't beget the child (and it's usually impossible to know whether they did).

I think my intuition means quite a bit as young kids use a lot of screen time.

I’m not sure why discussing facts wild count as finger wagging. I’ve patented and continue to parent a bunch of kids and understand how hard it is, although everyone’s experience is different.

The scientific literature is pretty settled that even “educational” games are counterproductive. [0] The American Academy of Pediatricians discourages all screentime, except for video chat, for kids under two years.

The problems with me, or you, giving a screen for twenty minutes is called out in the article I linked.

It’s not the end of the world, but it’s a negative contributor to many factors including obesity, anxiety, sleepnessless, violence.

It’s also funny that you assume I and others aren’t parents and can somehow know my situation.

I’m not criticizing you and I’m sure you and your wife deserve to have a conversation. I was just bringing up how the study should have looked at confounding variables like screen usage that could partially explain what’s going on.

[0] https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/childrens-healt...

> I think my intuition means quite a bit

This is just as meaningless.

> This is just as meaningless.

...as your own screed above.

Screens or not, people are isolated in COVID times. Even hardened criminals go mad in isolation. Children are way more sensitive than that.

> Every time I go to a family restaurant, I see a tiny kid (frequently too young to even speak) sitting with a phone or iPad watching and maybe swiping away. And usually I experience a tantrum when that kid has to break away from their screen to do something in the real world.

I've seen this too, but often from overworked single mom or people in a difficult financial situation. I think people already did this before by putting kids in front of the TV.

I agree and I’m not passing judgement on the parents, more of remarking on what’s occurring and that it contributes to negative outcomes.

It’s hard being a parent and dealing with the stresses it brings. Although I think that I and most of my social circles are pretty well off and we plugged our kids in front of iPads.

Home schooler here: our children have way more 'screen time' at home than the norm, I would guess. There's plenty of time left over for school work, board games, exercise, socialising, cooking, etc. No tantrums, no panic attacks.

I doubt that 'screen time' is a thing any more than 'page time' would have been a thing a century ago. I suspect it's an issue to do with mainstream schooling/parenting but I'm not sure what exactly. Maybe because computers aren't used much in schools? If you think about it many adults have 8 hours screen time per day, and what is education supposed to be if not preparation for life?

I'm so thankful to be in Texas and to have made the choice years ago to home school our kids. Though it has still been tough, being in a better position to make our own choices has made the past year easier. Our kids have mostly been able to continue doing their normal routine with schooling and seeing friends. I feel terrible for the kids that have been forced to leave their normal day to day routines and friends.

We're going to spend the next years, or decade, dealing with the fallout of these lockdowns.

It seems like politicians in some countries are keeping the charade going, just because they don't want to start dealing with the post-COVID era.

The data is very clear that countries which didn't lockdown had very modest increases in deaths (eg. Sweden and Ukraine, +6% deaths YoY) and are now able to recover and resume normality much faster.

Whereas countries which did lockdown, faced much higher per-capita COVID deaths anyway, and now have all of these social problems to untangle: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat...

If a family kept their child inside and out of school for a year, they would be arrested. Instead, we have willingly forced this on every child. We (in lockdown countries, who didn't protest or agitate against this tyranny) should be ashamed of ourselves.

Let's keep in mind what we avoided with these "lockdowns". In Los Angeles at one point the entire medical system was overwhelmed, people had loved ones dead in their homes, and were told to put them on ice, because there was zero capacity to come and pick up the dead. Ambulances with patients dying had ZERO places to take them.

Here's the story from someone who was there

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdpSgEQKVNE

When I was a kid, we were told to go outside and not come back until the street lights turned on. We didn't have computers, internet, or more than 5 TV channels on our 1 family TV.

Now the media has scared everyone into keeping their kids inside 24x7... then the plague made it even worse.

How can you not expect kids to end up with all that free time being burned up in screens? Parents don't suddenly have more free time, and energy, to deal with kids than they did in the 1970s.

Many of the children in the 1st world haven't been in the same room with other children in a year. Of course it is going to be difficult transitioning to our new normal.

I feel like kids learn a lot about how to socialize from other people. How much worse off will they be learning from screens and people acting (pretending to socialize) instead? Additionally, they won't have the ability to practice socializing either.

Five year olds don't have panic attacks. They have tantrums.

Source for the claim five year olds cannot have panic attacks?

Panic can happen to anyone, if you can't tell the difference between panic and a tantrum, you shouldn't be in a parental role.

Honest question to those who have supported lockdowns: Are you surprised?

Edit: Apparently not.

and the point you're making?

I have asked a question.

No, but still think even more widespread deaths would’ve been worse.

You're right, maybe the 1% of kids this is affecting would be better off with one fewer parents instead. /s

Are lots of 65+ year olds (the vast majority of people at risk of death from Covid) having kids these days?

There are quite a few deaths in younger groups with comorbidities too.

"quite a few"

How does in the incidence in non-lockdown states and countries compare to, say, car accidents?

Even including them, the death rate among younger people remains insignificant.

"[A]n extra 1.5 million children" is a lot more than 1%.

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