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I have three children in the 4-10 yo range. They like screens, and very occasionally they might continue watching a movie while having a snack or weekend dinner, but otherwise it's avoided 99% of the time. I've observed other children unable to eat without a screen adjacent and would never allow it to develop as a habit. I find it incredible that parents have allowed this to form as some sort of crutch. Just boggles my mind.

I don't think it has much to do with the pandemic era. It's parents caving when they should hold firm. It would've happened regardless.

On the other hand, I know one couple with children who are quite firmly against screens almost at all, but it seems unnecessarily miserly. There is excellent content on YouTube (I watch Asian street food videos with my children, or woodworking or Mark Rober's channel occasionally) and I'd rather my kids experience many games ahead of passive TV viewing. Better to play (e.g., Minecraft or Goat Simulator) than watch another kid play the same thing.

COVID absolutely warped kids’ brains in ways we will not understand for decades, but also kids seem to have a hardwired affinity for other kids. For example, I have a two year old who has never seen Youtube/Netflix/TV and has a revolving door of playmates. She loves “reading” books with us, and her non-negotiable toddler “preference” is always for books with photos of other kids. Not animals or cartoons or fun drawings etc. Occasionally we show her photos on our phones and she swipes fast until she finds photos of babies/kids.

Covid didn't do anything to children, the reaction to covid from governments and parents did.

Technically correct! The best kind of correct.

Those silly parents, overreacting by dying, losing their jobs, and and not being available 100% during a generation-defining global crisis of confidence.

hmmm I was generally not that much available during confinment while the kids were kind of let on their own at home...

But there are so many things they did with just fabrics, colored papers, pencils, paint, glue, tape and things in general. I let my daughters on their own for hours without a screen. Sometimes they would complain about not knowing what to do and wanting to watch a show but when I give them hard no I perfectly knew I will find them hours later totally entertained having made a big mess in their room by building things, be them clothing for their puppets, decors for their figurines, cardboard swords and axes, building a giant lego construction, among other things.

Those silly governments, making sure the medical system was slowly whittled down from something that was once actually pretty good at taking care of it's citizens to a system that forced/required society to completely grind to a halt from a pandemic because of exterior motives (votes, profits, etc.)

Those silly large media/news companies, not being responsible and considering the results and after-effects of their always-online, constant fear-mongering instead of focusing on delivering factual information and minimizing sensationalism.

Governments and media worked together to cause this mass panic resulting in mass lockdowns and a failure of healthcare systems in the first world. The world should have been ready for this but governments were focusing on profits and ulterior motives over people.

It's a massive shame that so many children will have been mentally affected by the short-term and long-term damage of these relatively short but extremely harmful lockdowns - socially, mentally, and physically - not to mention all the adults whose lives have been irreparably changed by the inactions of their governments. "Society" should be ashamed of itself for causing so much harm but we're all too busy being distracted with perceived differences between each other and trying to survive with the after-effects of a mis-managed pandemic (inflation, food/supply shortages) still running rampant.

I hope when/if I have children that we don't have another pandemic - I don't want the government forcing my children to stay locked in their home from panicked officials and a broken healthcare system.

> Those silly governments, making sure the medical system was slowly whittled down from something that was once actually pretty good at taking care of it's citizens to a system that forced/required society to completely grind to a halt from a pandemic because of exterior motives (votes, profits, etc.)

Lockdowns were almost universal, and also happened in countries where the healthcare systems are robust.

Healthcare systems are statistical mechanisms. They can't treat abnormal amounts of people at once. And no, we can't overbuild them to cover extreme contingency, it's not economically viable.

It's the same thing as with bank runs or your ISP's network bandwidth.

The overrunning of the hospital system never happened. All sorts of impromptu covid facilities were constructed all around the country but never used. This was not because of the "flatten the curve" efforts - it just was not necessary.

We now know that, by far, the overwhelming majority of folks that needed medical treatment and/or died from covid had existing health - specifically respiratory - conditions that made them far more likely to succumb to the virus. The rest were elderly and at risk of all sorts of virus related deaths, including the common cold and flu.

We panicked, and overreacted as a society, and made an awful lot of mistakes and bad decisions. In the process we crushed a lot of people and children unnecessarily.

There's an entire generation of kids that are simply broken for life now. We just swept them into the next grade level and said "they'll make it up, don't worry"... except they are not making it up. There's a lot more to childhood than reading text books and solving multiplication problems - we robbed all of that for literally no good reason.

There's a lot of lessons to learn from the pandemic. Can we pass the final exam though? I think probably not...

> This was not because of the "flatten the curve" efforts - it just was not necessary.

Citation needed. How can you be sure of a broad conclusion like this?

Because the overwhelming majority of people who contracted covid did not require any medical attention. Even the CDC admits covid statistics were largely projections because of significant under-reporting (because people did not visit their medical provider).

Additionally, the "flatten the curve" efforts were based on falsehoods issued by NIH and CDC, such as cloth masks preventing transmission. If there was going to be an overrun of the hospital system, it would have occurred during the time the public was being mislead about prevention techniques. It didn't...

It seems the forced termination of a significant portion of hospital staff would have had the greatest impact on overloading the system - yet even that didn't matter.

So, flipped on it's head - I think a citation is required when we argue these efforts prevented an overloaded system.

Well except to the ones that died from it.

While tragic, the numbers are so close to zero they are statistically zero.

Over 3 years, CDC has logged 650 total (~216 per year)[1] covid-related deaths for the 0-4 age group. 5-18 years is a grand total of 997 (~332 per year)[1].

These numbers rival fatalities that we don't even blink an eye at, such as automotive related deaths[2].

WHO statistics indicate the US loses around 20,000 - 30,000 children under the age of 5 every year[3].

None of this is to say child covid related deaths are not tragic - of course they are. But the numbers are so small that it makes little sense to worry about them.

[1] https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-Focus-...

[2] https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/child...

[3] https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/indicators/indicator-detai...

I think there's also some "monkey see, monkey do" at play.

Many parents scroll their devices endlessly. It's no surprise their kids want to as well. If you don't want your kids to do it, lead by example. That's easier said than done though.

My kid has had youtube since birth. I would play nursery songs before 1 y.o. Later he was onto toy car and lego videos. Now he is 5, a couple months ago he discovered NumberBlocks and learned to count, first in English and later in our native tongue.

And not just counting, they also teach addition, subtraction and simple multiplication. He can count to 100 and has concepts of thousand, million and even minus one - he wants to know if it is between 0 and 1 :) Then he discovered AlphaBlocks and learned most letters, but he says the letters in English.

Youtube has really been one of his nannies. I don't believe in restricting his access unless he gets obsessed with the tablet. But he plays with legos and blocks most of the time. And the future is digital, I want him to be a digital native. Maybe not all kids react the same way, so every case is sui-generis.

I'm similar. My approach is "guidance and bumper guards, not rules and restrictions."

I don't meter or numerically limit screen time, but I make sure my kids understand they should have a healthy balance between activities (guidance) and if I feel like they've been e.g. watching TV all morning, I'll tell them to turn it off and pick a different activity (bumper guards).

I only really have three rules:

1. I don't negotiate with terrorists. If you throw a fit, I will help you calm down, but any negotiation for whatever it is you wanted immediately ends, settled in my favor.

2. Everyone sleeps in their own beds. I'll make exceptions for exceptional circumstances (severe illness etc) but I haven't had to yet.

3. Family dinner is at the table with all devices off while the whole family is there.

I've never felt like this served me poorly, and (so far...) none of my kids have some problems I've noticed or heard of family members or friends having with their kids (kid is 5 and won't sleep alone, kid throws fits in the supermarket for toys or snacks, etc). I obviously don't know that has a causal relationship with my parenting style, but like everyone else, I like to think it does.

The "solution" is to not expose them to YouTube in the first place. Worked so far, for several families I know.

And/or be “the bad guy” who implements rules and limits

Trying to be good at all times is a tremendous trap. They don't say that good intentions pave the road to hell for no reason.

Be the bad guy. As a parent, you're not your kids beast friend. You shouldn't be. You should be setting examples and teaching them to be good, upstanding, reasonable adults. This involves telling them no and setting boundaries. Fair, firm and consistent.

Agreed - though I would add rationally empathic.

I've found that if I follow-up, immediately, with an understanding of my child's perspective, they are more on-board with what I am modeling. Then, it's not just about me being the authority, but me demonstrating why I have 'a better idea'.

It makes it almost effortless to be fair, firm, and consistent, and was the one thing missing from my own rather draconian childhood.

Honestly that is probably because the parents themselves are watching stuff. Having a screen powered on in the room you are eating* and or generally having social interactions sounds mind blowingly stupid to me.

*I would say except from the occasionnal twice a month pizza / popcorns in front of a movie.

My kids are 9 and 12 now and their computer/tablet/phone/switch is in a shelve in a specific room and they perfectly know they will be punished if they use them without asking me. And time is always limited. They are now using the tablet more as a drawing tool on Krita and to play music than anything. When asked for music I sometimes allow more time but I am doing regular checks that they aren't glued to the screen.

I don't think it's so much not being allowed to be outside but the education that they got, the confinement ended 2 years ago and kinds have very flexible brains. My older niece will be 5 next month and she is NEVER allowed to have cartoons while eating and she doesn't do it and doesn't miss it. However one of my best friends has a kid born the same month and she always has a phone every time I see her.

I also tell you that if I have a child of my own they aren't trying fucking ketchup, the thing with my niece and ketchup isn't even close to reasonable. Kids can get a nasty habit very easily, youtube, ketchup, etc. Pretty much everything can become a problem if it's not cut down.

Eating is immensly boring and I hated it as a kid. I wish I had something to distract myself from the boredom of eating.

Despite not having anything like that as a child I now, at 43, eat all my meals in front of a computer while gaming or watching or reading something.

> Eating is immensly boring and I hated it as a kid. I wish I had something to distract myself from the boredom of eating.

This is usually the time people use to have social multigenerationnal social interactions. Outside of weekends parents have stuff to do all day long, kids have to do their homework, then like to immerse in playing. Sometimes kids and parents spend sometime on a specific game, cards and board games are nice for that, but time is usually against them midweek. Meals and Dinner are those time when family member reconnect and chat. There is no reason to be bored unless your family is totally dysfunctionnal.

I would say even as a single adult, meal can be a perfect time to have that disconnected moment and just think for a little while. Maybe you should try it as an exercise if you don't have those moments in other times of the day.

When I was a kid, I too ate in front of TV even if parents/elders told to eat on table, and not in front of a screen.

It is what kids will do.

And I myself have seen this behaviour, presently for kids upto the age of 10 years old (born around 2010), but the behaviour of newer kids born 3-4 years back is quite weird/concerning to me.

Eating is immensely boring and I still hate it as an adult. The food is nice, but I really need to have my mind occupied by something even remotely useful/interesting during that time. Which is why I'm writing this comment now while eating my dinner.

I still wolf down my lunch at work so I can get back to the problem I was working on. Just like I wolfed down my dinner as an 11 year old so I could get back to my Commodore 64. Finally, a comment thread from the point of view (and empathy) of the immensely bored kid. Kids throughout history couldn't wait to get through dinner so they could go back to the TV or to the radio or to whatever other fun thing they wanted to do. There's nothing abnormal about this.

That's why the have (had?) all that fun stuff on the back of the cereal box. Or the morning paper. It's not a new phenomenon that we strive to fill our idle time with some kind of stimulation.

While this isn’t good I certainly recall having TV on during meals when I was a kid in the 1990s and know many older people who eat watching TV. Not sure this is new.

I have replied to another comment on your topic

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34640384

How many adults would eat happily if you took their phones and TV away? I reckon most of them would get just as perturbed and restless as the kids. I think it’s fairly normal really and we only find it odd because it’s an ipad now… I always had a book at the dinner table as a kid, there’s the stereotype of dad reading the paper at the breakfast table, many families eat dinner with the TV on, restaurants give kids activity menus, etc.

In our family we have the older kids read aloud during dinner while the younger ones eat (0-11 age range).