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Comment by ctvo | Hacker News Reader

I don't think a lot of people dispute that more screen time is harmful. Not in itself, but usually because that screen time is spent on social media or platforms like YouTube. It harms our self image, attention span, spreads conspiracy theories, and who knows what else.

Even being somewhat aware of this parents make the tradeoff.

Imagine if cigarettes didn't have an age limit and while smoking your kids were calm, quiet, and easier to manage. What tradeoffs would parents have made? I'd guess a lot more of us would have respiratory issues.

I wouldn't doubt there's a correlation between screen time and socio-economics. Having more money gives parents a choice. They can provide more enriching activities, hire a nanny, spend time directly with their children, n things that are viable alternatives to an iPad that a family with less may not have access to.

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> I don't think a lot of people dispute that more screen time is harmful.

I dispute it. Me and my friends played video games a lot, watched a lot of tv, etc. We all turned out fine. I think most people did the exact same thing and turned out fine too. Screen time = harm is an idea that flies in the face of the common reality lived by everyone born since 1980.

This idea sounds a lot like people who thought novels were dangerous, that comic books were dangerous, that rock and roll was dangerous, etc.

Do you still do those things a lot? Do you have a hard time quitting them?

Turning out fine is not the problem here. It's the addiction that is formed creating habits that are extremely difficult to give up. This only gets worse each generation due to even more time in front of screens. Kids from the 80s spent more time outside than those from the 90s and so on.

https://www.childinthecity.org/2018/01/15/children-spend-hal...

The evidently for the damage of excessive screen time is surprisingly weak. It's a thing everyone expects to be true but studies have been very mixed and don't do a good job controlling for types of content.

As an anecdote, my kids (11 & 14) have no limits on screen time and spend an inordinate amount of time gaming and watching YouTube. So do I. We're all happy and healthy and excelling in school. Social lives are a bit quiet but that's largely due to personality (I was the same pre-internet). Obviously everyone is different but for us, it's fine.

One critical thing to understand is that while you can nudge your children's behavior one way or the other you absolutely can't change their personalities. That's just DNA. I have exactly two parenting rules to live by:

* Marry well, that's 50% of their genes

* Have enough money

Eating vegetables, taking swim lessons, quiet time after dinner. Those are all well and good but will have a negligible impact on their lives long term.

> I don't think a lot of people dispute that more screen time is harmful. Not in itself, but usually because that screen time is spent on social media or platforms like YouTube.

It's both. A poor information diet is harmful of course, but so is screen use in general. Screen use is a sedentary activity which damages your body. At least at work we get compensated for the damage, like a construction worker who gets compensated for wearing out his body with hard labor. The programmer pay is better and the damage more manageable, but it's still not harmless. Too much time in front of a screen will atrophy your muscles and slow your metabolism.

You can offset this damage by getting a gym membership, an active hobby, etc. But kids have trouble finding a healthy balance (not least because so many screen-activities are designed to be addictive) and that's why screen time limits are useful.

Some good points here.

The difference is that smoking is well-known to be net-negative to most people and backed by the department of justice. Our parents used television and video game consoles. We are too early into even seeing the repercussions of this excess screentime. There's only been maybe one generation who had access to constant screentime (millennials).

From the look of some statistics from books like Jonathan Haidt, the CDC, and increasing screentime trends YoY, I would say this isn't looking good.

I recently wrote a book on this talking about all these challenges from the perspective of someone(30 now) who was raised with the over-reliance of a gameboy/TV being my babysitter and the only thing I want more in the world is less time on screens, but it's a hard battle to fight (akin to being a lifelong smoker and trying to quit).

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