> while beneficial for children's learning and socializing
citation needed? or are we just assuming because, well, there's education and social information and apps available on them?
citation needed? or are we just assuming because, well, there's education and social information and apps available on them?
This isn't Wikipedia. It's a casual internet forum, and you don't need someone to come armed with mountains of proof for casual (and obvious) statements.
BTW: One of my kids learned to read by playing a Cookie Monster word game during the pandemic. We've had enough "edutainment" software for a few decades that you don't need to ask for proof in a casual atmosphere.
Basically we need more things like Facebook's push a few years ago to show more personal updates from close friends and less mass-shared political posts from organizations.
As someone who grew up just before smartphones became a thing, I kinda also managed using books and shit.
Don't get me wrong, I am not dogmatically against smartphones/tablets for kids and I understand the pressures parents operate under, but if you want to figure out whether it is good to let your kids do X vs not doing it, you should probably take into account:
- what are the benefits? (claimed: easier learning and socializing, but also: parents don't need to deal with their kids)
- what are the downsides? (there are man studies linking e.g. depression to excessive smartphone use in kids, also: parents don't deal with their kids, smartphones are mostly used for consumption, hard to monitor where the algorithm takes them)
- are there any alternatives that have similar advantages while having less of the bad stuff? (I mentioned books, but of course it might be even feasible to limit the amart phone use to certain times of the day etc.)
And then you weigh those for yourself and decide. This was the point of my post before.