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Comment by supersrdjan | Hacker News Reader

Why is screen time singled out as an undesirable form of sedentary activity for children when it is just as sedentary as, say, sitting and doing homework?

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In my experience, kids won't do homework for 3 hours straight, but they can watch iPad for 3 hours straight unless you tell them not to.

Or just change the format and make study / practice fun and enticing.

Many creators are very good at this

This torpe of making learning fun needs to stop.

Things in life are sometimes hard. We need to go through hard things to create great things. Let’s instead teach kids that they need to do hard things to become great people. As a footnote, it will do wonders for their dopamine addiction (which is fueled by everything being fun and easy).

I have a dopamine addiction from my edit → compile → test cycles.

> This torpe of making learning fun needs to stop.

Ehhhh, bullshit. Making learning fun isn't just about making things easier, it's about making concepts stick.

We're mammals. Look at how mammals learn - they play.

> Let’s instead teach kids that they need to do hard things to become great people.

There's no reason a class teaching that very concept couldn't be fun.

And what makes great people great isn't the fact they did something hard, it's that they did something great. Something with meaning.

The hardness isn't the point. Power steering doesn't make for worse drivers, and difficult homework alone doesn't make great mathematicians.

To that I would also add, fun does not necessarily mean easy.

Which can only go so far.

Screen time can impact behavior and psychological well-being differently compared to most other sedentary activities. While both can affect physical health, excessive screen time specifically affects psychological well-being along with its impact on the body.

E.g.:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36924568/

I'm not sure how these studies ever conclude that screen time affects psychological well-being. What they do not account for is whether the parents of those troubled kids are less creative or available to nurture the kids, which in itself leaves the kids with more time to watch TV. Or perhaps these kids are just difficult little humans to begin with, and the parents need a break more often by allowing them to watch some TV.

Thanks for sharing, I will look into it.

I'd argue that one activity is far more passive than the other, on the whole.

You're right, passively spoon feeding endless low brow entertainment into a barely matured mind while ruining their attention processing as well as their eyesight is totally being unfairly singled out.

I think you are right about the eyesight part. Though I think what you did there indeed is unfair, you made it sound like “screen time” can only mean “passively spoon feeding endless low brow entertainment.”

From personal experience, I suspect I sit much stiller and fidget lessin front of a screen

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