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Comment by xyst | Hacker News Reader

Anecdotally speaking, this is kind of true. Most parents just give up and instead of disciplining and raising their child. It’s just easier to give them a tablet loaded to the tits with “YouTube kids”, parental controlled Netflix, TikTok, and other short form video services. Have even seen children get access to unfiltered YT, TT, IG.

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Putting kids into a technology induced coma can be useful in specific situations... such as on an airplane. But it should generally be a last resort, and avoided. Many parents use it too quickly.

our son's almost 3 and this is the use-case.

1) when he's sick

2) when on a plane

3) when we are at dinner with others and NEEEEED the break. Last resort.

i'd wonder with #3 if you're slowly training your child to misbehave? i'm sure you're aware of this, i ask more to start the convo if you have observations

We behavior-correct just fine other times. You are right that you get the behavior you reward, though

YouTube clearly quickly became the world's biggest nanny. I don't think there's any way to undo that one anyways so I'm interested to see what will be the long term impacts of that in the future.

It occasionally produces art: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1BneeJTDcU

EDIT: Mr. Burnham is vintage 1990, so he's a bit too old to have been weaned onto it

Forgot to add: live streaming services as well.

Twitch. Whatever Microsoft’s version was called at the time. And YT Live.

Probably better of a nanny than YT vods.

Replaced the TV from the 80s and 90s.

Not quite. There was 1 TV in the median household in the 80s and 90s, which made TV a contested common resource from one point of view and a focal point of social gathering from another point of view.

The median American household today has >1 internet-enabled screens, many children from the age of 5-7 have their own "personal device".

90s TV at least had physical boundaries on its use. Most people couldn't watch TV in the bathroom for example. Phones and the Internet can be used anywhere at this point.

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