It's important to be clear and set boundaries, but there is always that one friend where they go to and just watch YT shorts until deep in the night falling asleep like a zombie. Moreover, my kid is often the only one with a locked phone (gets 2 hr a day which is also the time he is on the bus). I think it is already insanely much. But he still wants to plays Minecraft as soon as he comes home, this is also quite obsessively (he's in a lot of SMPs). Again it's nice he has a passion but too bad it's for a screen. My daughter in contrast can just play in the garden for hours.
Of course he's not allowed most of the time, but the pressure is always on.
Most of their peers seem to have unlimited or at least plentiful screen time, and often use their phones at bus stops and things like that so the friction you mention comes up. "It's not fair. Jane has a YouTube account and Instagram!" -- to which I mentally reply "tough shit" but verbally provide more polite answers.
But I've got a younger one not yet in school, who is strictly limited to things like sesame street under supervision. I've noticed other daycare parents are similar as strict with screen time, with similar opinions about social media, something that wasn't the case with my older kids.
I find that change refreshing.
Definitely. We have similar, although have never given the kids portable screen devices (well, they had a tablet in the house and it was still too much, so we took it away). There are our phones, which they can rarely use and only for specific tasks like "play music on the speaker" or "do fantasy football", and there's a game console with a PIN, and there's a TV with a PIN. So everything requires us to do something, and uninstall games is on the table as a severe consequence. The only autonomous device is a Yoto, which is a card-based story playing device.
It's not perfect, but they definitely want screens less than they used to.
At some point they're very absorbed indeed. Being stricter is harder at first but certainly becomes easier than them feeling they always have the option to maybe get screen-time (when it's maybe they strongly feel that whining may win them something, of course that has been the struggle of raining kids since forever), imho.
It could also be that the parent wants to be on their screen at the same time, or wants to be on Instagram later into the night. There will be some correlation with work, but I doubt that explains most of it.
Almost every other parent I speak to are well aware of how detrimental screen time is to their kids, and yet often still use devices when they're too tired for much else.
Not to mention that basically everybody around them disappears into screens on trains/buses. It’s emotional abandonment. We are not here any more.
When I make eye contact, the children light up. But the parents often don’t seem to like random strangers to make contact with their child like that. That I have to avoid or break up contact that the child themselves obviously enjoys, while their caretakers disappear into screens, then breaks my heart a second time.
We have over 100 years of developmental psychology research to know that this is bad. Worse than bad.
Typing this on public transport.