No screens before age of two, Swedish health authority tells parents | Hacker News Reader

No screens before age of two, Swedish health authority tells parents

theguardian.com

35 pointsBrajeshwar25 comments

It's also important to ensure the limited screen time is _quality_, especially for young children:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/thoughtful-animal/ba...

The take-away is you want them to watch "slow" TV that is not constantly triggering their attention centers and creating addiction.

I wonder how much of that is to help the child develop a sense for causality. Quick cuts makes it really hard to see what is really happening, if you have already developed your intuition you can piece that together, but it wouldn't surprise me if children develops a really bad understanding of the world if that is most of what they experience.

Video games is a totally different here, since in order to play you have to develop some understanding while with passive video you don't.

Even past quick cuts, you have literal narrative shift. MTV, America's funniest home videos, TikTok are little bite site stories in rapid succession.

It would be great if someone kept a list of “slow” TV for parents to refer to. Have you come across anything like this?

Not a maintained list, but I remember finding these recommended from a subreddit for slow children’s programming:

    Trash Truck
    Puffin Rock
    Snowy Day
    Tumbler Leaf
    David the Gnome
    Elinor Wonders Why
    Rosie’s Rules
    Bear in the Big Blue House
    Curious George

What if the teenager is learning programming at age 12 and it's very passionate about it, do you really limit them to 3 hours instead of letting them do their thing?

Im not sure if we abided by the age of 2. But I will say we have moderated screen time, computer time and TV time (if they should be separated) and do moderate them. To the point that many of my 1st graders peers have much more experience with things like games than he does.

This can be a double sided sword. My kid now, when he DOES get screentime will become fully engrossed it in. Especially games, and will borderline be obsessive. Which is counter to what he wants, because then we moderate it more.

I had cousins that were similar. Were so limited on things like TV, they would just get engrossed. They had TV days and no TV days and TV days were limited to a couple hours. On the whole it seemed good but they would rush to get up at 6am to watch TV and would be basically zombies. While I had relatively unfettered access (I had a TV in my room by age 10 or 11), I was able to learn to self-moderate and not be obsessive.

And thats where I will need to land with my kid. Find a way to allow him some time and to learn to self moderate. I will say Nintendo does this well. You can set a limit on the console and let them somewhat manage it themselves. (they still have to ask us to pick it up currently, but maybe we change that).

I was raised similarly to your cousins. We had fairly strictly limited times when we could watch TV, or especially, play computer games. As I got older, and started having more freedom, I would frequently use that freedom to play excessive amounts of games for an unhealthy amount of time, to the point where other important things like schoolwork sometimes suffered. The restrictions made it very difficult for me to develop self-control where tv and video games are concerned.

There are some caveats there. The restrictions on screens as a child meant that I was forced to find other ways to entertain myself, both via using my imagination and via spending time in the outdoors, which both formed some excellent childhood memories for myself and laid a foundation for some of my favorite characteristics about myself as an adult.

At any rate, I'm fortunate that I was/am able to be functional despite having the above-mentioned self-control issues; I now have a graduate degree and a great career. I'm now in my 30s and have parenthood coming (looming!) in a few months. We have not yet fully decided what our screen time rules will be.

I would say part of it too is nature (vs nurture). Those same cousins never developed that propensity into adulthood at all. And its likely that was due to how well they were parented overall.

Myself had a bit of a different household and those things I had to learn on my own. The lack of restrictions made me grow up a bit sooner. Neither really right or wrong. But some people dont have the best self control (even in adulthood). Ive brought that up with the WFH conversations here. Theres bias here because i would wager many are high performers and have great self control, but working with people I have noticed many adult colleagues arent that well self disciplined and putting them in the office setting does help.

Limiting screen is certain to be good for young kids, especially when it will help limit their exposure to advertising, but I doubt that three hours of screentime for teenagers is a realistic limit. Schoolwork alone will require a large chunk of that.

Teens will use screens to keep in touch with friends and explore their own interests in ways that a young child really doesn't. You want your kids to have the opportunity to get nerd sniped or get lost in some rabbit hole, get school work done, socialize, and still enjoy a reasonable amount of films, television, music, etc. When a single episode of a TV show can be 45-60+ minutes it'd be very hard to budget that kind of time.

I'd worry more about what older kids are doing with their screen time than a specific limit on the number of hours they spend.

What does no screens mean? Like - ideally - not a single second in front of any screen under any circumstances? What if you are working from home and your baby watches you work on your computer? Does it only include intentional screen time and exclude things like your baby watching you work? Can the baby look at pictures you took on your phone? Does it mean zero regular screen time but once in a while being around when you watch a documentary or a game is fine? Does it mean being alone in front of the screen?

Ideally, a Sweden would be taking the considerable parental leave policy - over one year distributed among both parents, and preschool starts at 1 year old, so working parents don't often need to have the kid present while working.

The recommendations are at https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/livsvillkor-levnadsvanor... .

It does say that video calls with relatives and looking at photos is okay, otherwise, avoid where possible.

When it isn't possible, like if an older child is using digital media, sit with them to discuss and explain what's going on, at a level they can understand.

https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/livsvillkor-levnadsvanor... suggests that if you need to your your phone or other screens, for example, to check the bus schedule, buy tickets, or communicate with the school, then tell the kid what you are doing so they know it's for practical matters, not for entertainment or pastime.

I take it as they are in control of the content like a toddler with an iPad or they’re actively watching content of their own like Bluey.

There is nothing magic about showing a picture of something on a screen and then put away vs a photograph.

Honestly, this is surprisingly difficult even if you 100% agree and are trying to do this (which is true for me). Small children learn what matters and what doesn't matter from us, so if we pay attention to our phones then that obviously signals to them that this must be something really interesting and important.

My partner and I have a child of 20 months and she sees us look at our phones all the time. So she is extremely curious about it, and upset quite often that she's not allowed to do so. And recently I bought a smartwatch so whenever she's on my lap she tries to play with it.

So far our best solution is to have occasional video chats with the grandparents and other family members, which I think is not against the spirit of this advice since it's a healthy, social activity together. At least that teaches her that the phone is meant to be a tool for connecting with actual human beings.

I've also made sure that I don't play games in front of her, but that's relatively easy compared to breaking my other phone habits.

They also emphasised parents’ behaviour, it’s not just about the child’s behaviour

> parents must set an example to children when it comes to screen use. “As parents you are a role model.”

These are probably wisely chosen amounts of time. But this kind of assumes that one can “wait out” their childhood and come out all ready for a life surrounded by social media and digital gizmos. I don’t think that’s true though.

I mean… uh, duh?

Our goal is no screens before 6 with the exception of things we can’t control or “I want to see the picture”.

I’m firmly a tech person, but ffs, giving kids screens… what are some of you thinking!?

I can’t wait to see the little monsters that YouTube raises.

I would like all that screens to be powered by Free and Open-Source Software. But of course those 2yo folks are using dissocial social networks which frees some parent's time for the sake of doing same.

What is this mental pull some of us have to see something completely unrelated to one's pet issue (FOSS, or religion, or politics, or exercise, or nutrition, or whatever) and feel the need to jam it in?

Because there is the reason why children and not only children crave those snoop-phones so badly it needs to be limited by state health authorities.

Putting Linux on a phone doesn't change that. Calling things "snoop-phones" and "dissocial social networks" doesn't change that, it just makes serious people roll their eyes.

I never told that putting Linux but keep running proprietary scripts is significantly better. Naming things in proper manner helps me to make long statements short. It is like shaming bad practices.

It's soapboxing, twist some other topic into some core issue for us, stand on the soapbox and talk about it.

I think everyone does it from time to time on different levels, for sure I'm guilty of it.

What does open source have to do with child screen use? Do you think one year old babies would benefit from screens if it had open source software?

They are designed to be addictive. Children will benefit from not exposing them to existing recommendation systems and not to get used to the proprietary interfaces.

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