Hacker News Reader

From very very early in their lives I taught my children what advertisements are and why they should avoid them. My youngest one shields her eyes when an advertisement comes on. She knows what a paid promotion is on YouTube and will completely skip that show. She knows that advertisements are forced on her to get certain prizes in her game so she will play the ad then put the iPad down or completely walk away as it plays. We don’t have cable television and I pay premium for most services to avoid ads.

I’m hoping they become hyper aware of advertisements as they grow older because they are going to continue being embedded in everything

Paying for YouTube premium to cut out ads on all platforms has been nice for the amount of miss Rachel we have allowed.

A real challenge is the toy based YouTube videos.

It was my main motivation for running pihole, killing off more adverts across everything, not just in browser.

I tried to do this, but apparently I didn’t start early enough.

Now my six year old daughter trolls me, saying “I love the ads” and refuses to let me press SKIP AD if we are watching a YT video together.

instead of presenting something as scary, you can try presenting it as lame.

keep talking about how you love the ads and soon your kids will reject them

My 3yo now helpfully exclaims "Stupid ads!" when a Youtube ad comes on. Dad mutes it and lets it count down to "Skip ads". Repeat as necessary.

For babies research has shown that screen time is undifferentiated. Babies learn from watching real humans talk. Not from a screen. And screens mean that caregivers use fewer words as well.

For older kids there is a lot of nuance. But in the first 12 months the evidence is pretty clear.

> For babies research has shown that screen time is undifferentiated.

The research is largely undifferentiated, and overwhelmingly (maybe even entirely, for good ethical reasons) is observational studies that, even if they were able to distinguish between a differentiated relationship and an undifferentiated one would be unable to distinguish between, in <1 year olds, screen time causing developmental delays and conditions which cause developmental delays also causing behavioral differences which lead parents who respond to how things affect their children's behavior to be less likely to curtail screen time.

Whether research is generally undifferentiated, as you claim, is not the same as specific research that proves that screen time is undifferentiated.

In other words, are you saying there are no such evidence as parent asserted?

> Whether research is generally undifferentiated, as you claim, is not the same as specific research that proves that screen time is undifferentiated.

They are directly opposed: you have to have differentiation in the research to distinguish between a differentiated and undifferentiated effect.

> In other words, are you saying there are no such evidence as parent asserted?

I am stating a basis for my skepticism that there is sufficient basis for what he claims the research clearly shows, in that AFAICT the research is weak on both whether there is a differentiated association and not of the type that would be able to make strong statements about the causality of any association, differentiated by type of screen time or not, that it discovered.

>My son’s major motivation for learning to read came from watching us play Breath of the Wild and getting tired of not knowing what was going on.

My son gets a few dozen minutes of Youtube kids as a treat if he has done well. The in-built timer asks you to solve a simple multiplication problem to add more time: he has gotten remarkably well at doing those even though he hasn't had multiplication at school yet. Now I am pretending that I am not seeing him solve those problems!

If anybody here works at Youtube kids: please add division!

And/or/xor/nand, popcount and maybe FMA.

Division, bah!

To continue watching baby shark please:

solve the Riemann hypothesis

I've added screen time restrictions to the ipad my kids use (5 and 7, but mostly the 7 year old - the younger one seems to not care much for TV of his own volition). I set it to 10 minutes per day per year of age (so 1h10m per day, as only the 7 year old seems prone to overuse). This is a maximum, but he reaches it most days and then after some grumbling accepts it and does something else.

One advantage: when the iPad "decides" it's time out instead of me or my wife, he is somehow a lot more ready to accept it! With both our kids we only started allowing them to watch TV/use screens at around 2 years of age using roughly the above formula.

It's undifferentiated because for 1yo and under it is measurably undifferentiated. I recommend you read TFA. This is an appropriate use of a catch-all.

I was a bit confused reading your comment because I struggled to imagine a 1yo engaging in a meaningful way to BotW or Oregon Trail, let alone learning to read.

Obviously Idiocracy levels or qualities of screentime are demonic to practically any age group, but I don't really think what you present is controversial. If anything, not letting older kids consume at least some media seems pretty weird to the populus.

But for literal babies? My alarms go off.

It's not obvious to me that video games would be better than watching videos. That's different research question, and unless there's already research establishing a difference it seems reasonable to clump them all together.

In your examples you're also heavily involved in all his video gaming. I don't know that that's true of every kid playing games.

Playing games, including video games, often involves reading, imagination, creativity, problem solving, and other active tasks. Passive video consumption certainly involves less of all those things.

Obviously, there is a lot of variance here, and Candy Crush or whatever 3 years are playing these days probably doesn't have as much benefit as some story driven game with important text dialogue and battle mechanics. But even playing Candy Crush is probably better than watching Candy Crush.

I think you're underselling the strategy involved in a match 3 game. Anything that involves extrapolation of future states aren't of the board is pretty complex, at least mentally.

Interesting that you introduce to me a new category to my system of classifying "screen time". Previously I had learning, creating, and consuming categories, with only the consuming category really being restricted. But now I see that "recommendation engine" should be a category in itself, distinct from consuming, and outright banned.

*unaligned recommendation engine

With the right personal, deliberate tuning aligned recommendation engines would be amazing tools!

Edit: Think e.g. Spotify Discover Weekly but for everything and more tuneable

I divide consumption into active and passive. Watching a video is passive, but reading a novel is active, for example.

But it turns out video consumption can be made even more passive. Sure, a video plays whether you're paying attention or not, but at least you need to select the next video. Recommendation engines make this more passive by suggesting next videos. TikTok goes even further: you don't even need to select anything, just choose when to watch whatever's next.

In short, I agree with your taxonomy, but would extend it based on passive versus active consumption.

Unlimited screen time taught me a foreign language that nobody in my family speaks. As a small child I watched German-dubbed anime on TV and picked up German from it.

I know at least a dozen other people my age that had the same experience in my country. I think what you do with the screentime matters a lot.

(Unfortunately, knowing German hasn't been all that useful outside of hanging out with people online.)

Passive consumption doesn’t engage. Other types of content can be helpful.

Watching TV in a language you don't understand isn't entirely passive consumption though. That's how I learned the language and that's how basically everyone learns their native language.

They will make sounds and then show what they're doing. Over time you associate the words with activities.

I think a critical part is "no subtitles" so that your brain has to do the work to try to figure out what's being said.

Agreed.

My comment wasn’t disagreeing with you, it’s entirely dependant on the viewers ability to be passive with the comment.

Engaging is definitely qualifying as other types of content.

I doubt that was at age 1 though. The effects they're describing sounds like they're limit the ability to do what you're describing later on.

I don't know the exact age I was. I can tell you that I don't have any memories from before I could understand German.

It probably was in the 1-2 (maybe 3) age range though based on what my parents have said.

The way we treat screentime these days feels like a strange continuation of the way it was treated for those of us who were kids in the early 2000s even though the world has changed significantly since then.

I remember that back then schools and TV shows were all pushing this idea that all screen time was harmful for kids and to not let them have more than an hour or two a day.

It may have made some more sense than nowadays since CRTs were more common back then and seemed to strain the eyes more, but the lack of differentiation between actually productive screen time and plain old replaceable entertainment caused a ton of friction in my family as I was growing up.

In comparison, with my currently 5 year old niece and 1 year old nephew (more visible in the niece of course), having access to productive screen time has been pretty impressive for her development, with her having learned the alphabet, developed a decent vocabulary, learned addition enough to even reason about numbers for which she hadn't memorized the answer, and even picking up on some multiplication, all before starting school.

With screen time there’s a big difference between consuming vs creating.

Same here. Screen time really should mean un-directed TV time.

Directed TV/PC time can turbocharge learning: khan academy, scratch, or math maze (put together by another HNer, thx!) https://gogamewise.com/games/math-maze-2/

Almost every child that uses a screen is just using it to consume. Yes in theory it is simplistic to say "screen time bad", not everything needs to be a super detailed, super nuanced discussion all the time.

I think when it comes to things about raising kids, a nuanced discussion is necessary, otherwise we end up with parents who blindly enforce the simplistic idea, thus actually being detrimental to their kids.

Unless you can present something to actually increase nuance, this is just diluting the conversation. Screen time for under 2 years Olds is bad and comments saying otherwise with anecdotal evidence shouldn't change anyone's mind.

I strongly suspect those comments come from two groups: Parents who have done this and are now trying to justify it for their conscience, and people who are on their phones all day themselves and can't bear being in "the bad group".

Assuming responsibility and having boundaries is hard, but admitting you have problems in those areas will set you free.

It's funny how you guys are going around accusing everyone who disagrees with the study of being too addicted, while not actually responding to any of the numerous shortcomings of the study people have pointed out here.

Maybe you're the ones too set in your opinion to consider anyone else's?

Fair point, but it's because I'm so tired of these arguments.

They all sound like rationalisation of behaviour that the person making the argument exhibits. I don't think anyone making these arguments _doesn't_ exhibit the behaviour they're defending.

Think about how emotionally invested someone has to be to say "No this study on _one year old babies_ being negatively effected is nonsense, because it doesn't negatively effect 12 year olds" — of course I'm heavily paraphrasing for effect, but just read some of the comments above.

These are the studies we have. Disregarding evidence that we have because it doesn't follow some specific parameter that you care about means that you are valuing your experience more than studies.

By default, why are you assuming that screens for under 2-year-olds are good? What is your evidence here? We have a lot of evidence that it's bad, maybe it's not perfect evidence, but since we don't _any_ evidence to the contrary, it seems bad faith to believe otherwise or intellectual laziness.

Actually my point is that blindly enforcing the simplistic idea would be beneficial in the vast majority of cases. Also I think the parents whose children are using computers productively know it, anyway.

Just an anecdote, my little brother also learned to read for and with video games. He got tired of having to ask his mum what was happening.

My English definitely got kickstarted by Police Quest 1 with the added incentive for fast typing. (I still remember failing to properly and quickly type "use handcuffs" so many times...)

I predict future social media will be required to come with Recommendation Algorithm warnings in a similar way that cigarettes now need cancer warnings.

At age 1 though?

> This undifferentiated trend of “screen time” as a catch-all can’t die soon enough.

Sigh, why does it always have to be about you? Why can't blanket statements exist for the greater good of the general public people. I can 100% agree that we should never create laws.

It's simple and easy to understand and if individuals choose to do educational things w/ their screens then awesome! But you're the exception and removing the messaging is way more harmful than letting the "blank statement" exist.

I for one think most people can absorb more complex messages than "screen time bad".

Pretty much all studied show that "screen time bad" is actually true for babies up to 2 years. Snippets won't change that.