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Comment by delbronski | Hacker News Reader

I’ve noticed a lot of fear mongering with screens and kids. So called “experts” have taken a few correlational studies and concluded that screen time is the devil. Instagram is full of these podcast clips of experts warning parents of the terrible effects of screen time. However, if you actually read any of these papers, they make it quite clear that is impossible to fully separate screen effects from family environment, and effect sizes are often modest.

Giving your 2 year old an iPad with YouTube everyday for 2 hours is obviously going to be bad for them. That’s a terrible extreme. But 20 minutes of Bluey here and there throughout the week is not gonna mess anybody up.

So while I’m glad people are more aware of the negative effects of screen time, I also hate how extreme it has become. Parents, specially new parents are so susceptible to this kind of fear mongering.

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Obviously, it is common sense.

But here is the thing: lots of parents (or people in general) are not able to use common sense and they need to be told absolute statements, because they will break them anyway, just like speed limits. So if you told them "absolutely 0 screen time" they will give them anyway some here and there screen time - which is fine. If the "expert" writing books, speaking on podcast or showing up in reels tells you "ah it's fine, here and there is fine, just use common sense" you will have an army of parents thinking that 2 hours YT for a toddler is "here and there" because "hey, it's not 6 hours a day like my neighbor!"

Yup, the advice is geared towards being very conservative, rather than lenient. An example I like to give people is that here in Wisconsin, drinking culture is huge. A friend of mine's father had pancreatic cancer and went to see his doc and wasn't given too much time to live. He was a big fan of having a nice glass of scotch with his fish fry, so he asked if it was still okay to have it, especially with how much time he was given. The doctor was like: "I have to tell you no, it's not okay. But the reason why is because if I tell my other patients that they can have a drink on "special occasions", well, suddenly, Monday becomes a special occasion, and Tuesday becomes a special occasion, and you see where this is going."

I don't think when people say "terror of screen time" they mean 20 minutes of Bluey here and there.

20 minutes of screen time daily is extreme parenting effort. That’s olympic level. I would say the new normal is 20 minutes after each meal.

I'm lucky enough to be able to send my child to day care where he doesn't get any screen time (obviously), so typically his only time he gets to watch something is when we are out and about, and even then we have a rule of timers before he can watch, or if we are at a tap house or something, we've made him actually have to sit and talk to people/friends, ask them how they are doing, introduce himself, etc. Once he does that, he can choose a Pixar movie of his choice or a live concert video to watch.

And even with all that, I still feel guilty due to the reddit mob telling me it's going to destroy his brain.

Yeah I think even 2 hours is an underestimate these days.

According to a few viral Instagram posts it is.

2 hours? you don't know how bad it is out there my friend.

I am conflicted (I am a parent).

First there is the challenge where "sceen time" is a statement that bundles together a whole bunch of different behavior, that affects children differently.

My kids when they watch tv they completely disconnect: I have to pause the tv to ask if they want to eat something or they won't hear me, so of course we drastically limit that one (I didn't have that problem, is that because I watched way more tv than them?)

At the same time, I don't let my kids play any videogame on a tablet or phone because I am a gamer and I recognize that quality of games on phones is terrible, it's an attention grab (there are exceptions).

I do let my kids play videogames quite freely though (nintendo switch, sometimes steam games). The difference in engagement is enormous: they play together, they roll on each other and make jokes and afterwards they create something with their toys that's similar to something they liked in the videogame.

Yesterday my daughter got a new videogame (the new yoshi): she played way more than any other day in her life, but she was DEEPLY invested in it, loving every minute,you could see passion. I sat near her, working from my laptop, she cuddled against me and proceeded to tell me everything she was discovering and her thought process to solve some of the more complex levels. These are the situations that I don't understand: how can that be bad? I did not stop her, I let her play as much as she wanted. It doesn't happen often and it's so rare to see her finding the right videogame (looks like puzzle is her genre!)

What's the difference between doing that for a book you love and a videogame you love?

Screens aren't inherently bad. It's about the quality. I think your instincts are 100% spot on, keep trusting them.

But quality/distractions aside, there are other dimensions to consider. For example, reading does take more effort than most videogames, and that's brain exercise that will make a difference in aggregate (the assumption being that books and videogames are both entertainment, they compete against each other to some degree, and doing a lot of one means you'll do less of the other). So in short, playing videogames a lot isn't bad in itself, depends on the videogames. But on the other hand books have additional positive sideffects on top of the primary effect which is entertainment.

They definitely compete, but reading is somewhat of a "poor hobby" from the social aspect (reading out loud takes away from the experience), but the imagination part of reading is way more than you do in videogames.

At the same time, the "puzzle solving" skill you do in videogames is way more than you'd do in a book, so there is that.

I played Blue Prince with my wife and daughter recently, I think I have 40 pages of notebook written down, along with spy-like photos of everything relevant in the game: that was very intense from the brain perspective.

But I do see your point. However, I second guess myself constantly, it's really hard, especially because I did go through some form of game addiction and my way out was going very deep until I realized I wasn't even having fun (yes, mmorpg are similar to free-to-play games: compete for your attention). I push strongly for single-player pay-once videogames, especially indie games, on consoles and PC. Split-screen coop games without online component are great too, or where the online component is a way to "split screen with people not in your home".

Anyway, thank you for the message, gave me some relief I'm not ruining my kids life, lol.

> However, if you actually read any of these papers, they make it quite clear that is impossible to fully separate screen effects from family environment, and effect sizes are often modest.

The "does smoking caused cancer" question took about 20 years to be settled, I believe between 1950 and 70 or something like that. And yet, a lot of people already knew already in the 20s that smoking does all sort of weird things to your throat. So the common sense take got to the right answer much faster than scientists.

Likewise with screens. Common sense tells us that 1) we FEEL the distractions and the addictions, common sense says that children will too, 2) we KNOW that the companies building these products have an interested in distracting us, common sense says that they will act on it.

But then we have takes like "akshually if you read the papers".

Lots of kids aren't spending 2 hours a day on a tablet/phone, they spend every waking minute on a tablet/phone. When you see someone walking and scrolling on their phone, you can already tell that they do not turn it off, ever.

"That's how I was raised, and I turned out TV!"

- Homer Simpson

better be safe than sorry

I don't think screen free kids won't miss anything by not watching Bluey for 20 mins, OTOH not so great parents will keep pushing those 20 mins further and further with worse and worse content, so I guess it's just easier to say any screen time is bad since the border between reasonable/good screen time and bad screen time is very small.

Screen Time isn't the Devil - but it represents the hellish front-line in the algorithmically driven war for your attention.

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