Hacker News Reader

Comment by akira2501 | Hacker News Reader

I think we're going to need more than a survey of 1500 British households before we arrive at the conclusion suggested in the headline.

View on HN

Not sure. 1500 sounds like a fairly normal sample size for studies like this and more or less representative if it's reasonably unbiased.

The headline doesn't specify UK only. I wonder what the numbers are in other contries.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the numbers are similar in the rest of Europe and North America. Even national deviations, the numbers are high.

I personally agree. But I've also seen quite a few parents who use ipads as nannies, so it also wouldn't surprise me if it were accurate.

I've come around to the screen-free childhood plan, but most people who I know that have implemented it are affluent enough to have a stay-at-home parent or a high quality daycare.

Not using screens as a babysitter requires a significant amount of a parent's time and energy, so I also won't condemn any parents who use that strategy.

I like the kids version of the Kindle Fire as a way for giving kids screen time. I don't think it's perfect but it offers a fairly large library of applications, games, and videos for a few bucks a month with out allowing internet access. Not all the content is educational but I haven't found anything inappropriate yet. It also offers pretty good options for setting limits. I'm sure you could do something similar on the iPad but I think it would require more effort to set up.

I condemn them wholeheartedly. If you don't have the time and energy to raise your kids without regularly hypnotizing them via chinese doomscrolling then please just don't have kids.

Respectfully, with as flippant as employers can be with employees lives, a "good" parenting situation can become a bad situation in a matter of months. And that doesn't even cover scenarios where someone can become an only parent.

Ideally, it's a place our social safety nets would be better, but they're pretty bad when it comes to helping children right now in the US.

Fair point and I realize not everyone has the resources to raise their kids the way they want to, but I get the impression most parents don't even want to keep their kids away from this stuff, regardless of their financial situation. There's a lot more awareness and concern in tech-related places like this, but the majority of the general population does not seem to have a problem with putting an iPad in front of a toddler, I see it all the time- in fact probably more commonly with middle-class families than working-class ones.

And it's only worse for 2023 results.

Yeah, children should be on the fields, working and socializing with other children, not watching the interwebz.

i guess you're being sarcastic but i literally spent some part of my youth running around in corn fields socializing with other children. not as old fashioned as my dad who made some pocket change shucking corn as a kid. it wouldn't be a bad thing for kids these days to get out of the house and touch maize.

As a parent sending my children to the fields once in a while sounds great!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com