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Comment by clnq | Hacker News Reader

I never understood restricting screen time, can you explain the reasoning for me?

My parents did this when I was growing up but it only handicapped me because I was interested in coding and didn’t have enough time to learn to go to the competitions I wanted. And I learned that coding was bad because my parents kept a strict time limit on it while other things were encouraged.

Maybe it’s difficult for me to see the benefits of a time limit when I think it has done more harm for me than good. It would make more sense to limit harmful apps and websites but not time from my perspective. But everyone is taking about time-restricting.

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Mostly its a matter of making sure he runs around, and doesn't just sit on the floor staring at a screen. I mean sure they go outside for a few hours a day at school, but I expect children to be "active" in whatever way they enjoy.

Later if he has interest I'm sure I could talk to him about coding, but I know he's seen me do enough that he'll not consider it bad..

(It has to be said that a lot of people who talk about bad content are also saying they don't trust that youtube, and apps, will have appropriate content. And a lot of the time kids want to play with phones and the internet they want to do it alone..)

Physical activity and exercise is a good point and I think it's safe to say that exercise is a good, or at worst, a neutral pastime for kids. Probably good, as it would be for adults as well.

What about getting them involved in a physical hobby like a sport, and not restricting screen time? Would that be more beneficial for the kid?

As a dad also in Finland who has a child around the same age... I think I struggle with this wrt my son because I am honestly ambivalent. There is part of me that feels as you do. "Why not? He's active, popular, does sports, spends time with friends, is doing well in school, even has a girlfriend." On the other hand, I know that he would happily give that all up to play Zelda endlessly. When he's not on the screen at home he is restless and bored, which is a conundrum.

I'd say that "screen time" is just a convenient categorization since, for the most part, kids are so drawn to addictive and arguably low-value content that once those things are off, there is no interest in the screen. I've given unlimited time to my kids for more learning-centric stuff, but they hardly use it.

I can tell you if my kids were coding, making music, reading, or otherwise engaged in something more productive with their screens, I'd absolutely whitelist those apps for much more time. But it is, sadly, more YT Kids shit, Roblox nonsense, etc.

> I'd absolutely whitelist those apps for much more time.

I think this is a much better approach than blanket screen time restrictions.

By the way, I got into programming when I was about 10 because an informatics teacher at school showed me how to do it and encouraged her students to compete in school programming competitions. I think it's very difficult for kids to engage with learning-centric stuff on their own, so an incentive (even a very basic one) helps a lot.

What do competitions have to do with learning to code? Also algebra is needed before getting really good at it.

There are very many programming competitions for school students in most countries. Algebra isn't needed much, they are more like LeetCode.

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