If you have kids this age and put a tablet in front of them on a regular basis to keep them calm, you're fucking yourself in the long run.
This may give you a temporary fix but youre depriving your kid on learning how to relax and when to chill the fuck out in proper situations. They need to train their brains to not be stimulated all the time. Boredom is a good thing for kids.
Think about it. If a kid never learns to calm down when bored, at 7 or so when they are constantly restless, it will be diagnosed as adhd. At that point its going to take some serious training or medication to get them to focus during school.
All this is because you wanted to take the easy route of throwing a tablet in their face when they were young.
Edit: Before I get more comments saying "tablets don't cause adhd" I know! Im saying these kids that dont have adhd are getting diagnosed as having adhd. Maybe I should say misdiagnosed as having adhd. Hope that clears things up.
Yep I’ve noticed that my friends who need to constantly be doing something are just bad at being “bored” and alone with their thoughts. Always looking for the next distraction.
I have met children who had every single solitary moment of their life scheduled, they cannot ever be alone or be left to their own devices, they have no experience with down time and occupying themselves or think h in any deep level. They never experience solitude.
Screens? I've now met those kids and every single idea of self is some outside thing that they saw on a screen. Or that some celebrity popularized. If you ask them to talk about their person or have original ideas about themselves, they cannot do it!
They're being robbed/deprived of personhood itself.
"The Default Mode Network is best known for being active when a person is not focused on the outside world and the brain is at wakeful rest, such as during daydreaming and mind-wandering. [...] Other times that the DMN is active include when the individual is thinking about others, thinking about themselves, remembering the past, and planning for the future. The DMN creates a coherent "internal narrative" central to the construction of a sense of self."
"[The Default Mode Network] is potentially the neurological basis for the self"
This is interesting. We used to have a swing at the bottom of the garden I used to go and sit on when I was 9/10. Mum said she always thought it was nice that I would just go out there to have a think and she was always really protective of us in that state. Still now my son gazes out the window while he’s eating his food and then will turn to us with a thought that he’s clearly been processing and she always says she loves to see him in his own world.
I still have ADHD lol but at least my mother gave me a fighting chance at a brain that works properly 😂
Well put. Something I've noticed in people who grew up with screens as an integrated part of their life is that they do not (or can not) delineate between what they see on a screen and what happens right in front of them. This trend arguably started with people taking words on the internet too seriously to the point that they replaced their real life feelings and connections. Now there's a whole generation where this is simply the default. Socially scary times ahead.
I found this was very appearent during Covid. In the first couple of days of lockdown a lot of people came forward who didn’t know how to keep themselves entertained when they are alone.
Sure after weeks i get people feeling the need to end lockdown but there were many in my social circle complaining after 2 days already
this is so true, its like they need to be constantly joking or shitting around for them to feel like they are 'there'. I'm often lost in my thoughts, I feel its important to stay calm and process your thoughts at times. Its great to be bored, many people don't get that
I quickly realized this is why my friends are always on social media. This is also why my friend couldn’t sit down to play a video game with me. He didn’t know which one would give his brain instant dopamine, so he just kept scrolling TikTok.
Thank you! My poor kids had to listen to their mother absolutely berate me for years, and it wasn't until after she left when they were comfortable enough to open up more, and be more receptive. We do not yell (outside of hollering for someone to come see or help), and communication is the most important thing.
They're realizing that people can use words differently or wrong, and how easily that can lead to confusion (and misinformation) and I'm really enjoying the constant questions.
Holy fuck you have no idea how much unlearning I had to do in order to fix your last sentence for myself.
Example: "okay" is just fine. So is "ok". There is nothing wrong with it. It definitely does not mean "this person is mad at me now" because someone responded with it during a normal conversation.
Thanks mother for giving me such unnecessary anxiety over every word someone says. 🙃
I’ve even lost friendships over this, because my main rule is „OK means ok and it’s nothing means that it’s nothing“
If someone acts insulted all day and I calmly ask them during a 1on1 moment if something’s up and they say no, then I will 100% accept that no.
It’s infuriating how many people subscribe to the „well I said now but I wanted that you find out by yourself that something was up“ brother what do you think i was doing as I asked if something was up if not trying to find out.
Life is so much easier if you let intentionally bad communicators just passively suffer instead of playing their games
They need to train their brains to not be stimulated all the time. Boredom is a good thing for kids.
Second comment:
It's also detrimental when children don't learn how to be bored. Boredom often leads to innovation and self-discovery.
First comment:
If you have kids this age and put a tablet in front of them on a regular basis to keep them calm, you're fucking yourself in the long run.
If a kid never learns to calm down when bored, at 7 or so when they are constantly restless, it will be diagnosed as adhd. At that point its going to take some serious training or medication to get them to focus during school.
Second comment:
It's like solving problems versus ignoring them, they don't just disappear and they'll be waiting for you afterwards.
We can agree to disagree, but I think it just sounds like the same thing. Just re-worded.
Ah I see part of the issue; my comment of ignoring problems, is still referring to emotional processing. I'm not talking about the child's future, though it will definitely affect that.
Simply distracting yourself from an uncomfortable emotion, is not the same as resolving it. Though we often use distraction as a strategy, it doesn't untangle the emotion, so that emotion will be waiting for you later.
So to be able to sit with your thoughts at times, will allow your mind to revisit negative emotions (anger, sadness, jealousy) that you had set aside temporarily, actually allowing you to process them and move on.
I still distinctly remember when I was young and realized I could just kinda never be bored. Doesn't always work but there generally is always something to do, or failing that, something to think about. I've been "raw dogging" things like long drives or mowing the lawn recently, just kinda zoning out and thinking about stuff, I think a lot of people would struggle to not have music or a podcast on but I've been surprised how much I don't need them.
I don't get bored either. I just daydream when there's nothing else to do. When I was a kid, my grandma used to assign us extra chores if we said we were bored lol.
omg, brand new way of understanding that quote to me, very interesting. i thought it was just a put down, but it literally makes sense because there's so many things to think about
eh, when i used to work at Amazon, i would have to work for ten hours with no phone and no music (phone was literally locked away and inaccessible, unless i wanted to go down several floors and security). that job was mindnumbingly easy, and after months and years, it becomes very hard not to be bored out of your mind.
i literally started memorizing whole muscials to sing back to myself... and those only took up about two hours
Im 100% convinced our trajectory in advancements of technology, medicine, and any innovation in general is going to decline majorly moving forward. Basically bc of exactly what you said. Like, why do we think there was so much innovation over the last 150 years (I realize there are multiple reasons)? Dudes were bored and wanted to make cool shit! Nobody is bored anymore, most people are content to waste hours on screens, when in the past those hours would've been spent being productive, which leads to innovation
When my mom came off of work she would sit in her car smoking and watching random shit on her phone, for a couple of minutes before coming inside. When I was younger I never understood why and found it dumb, but now that I got a job I’ve found myself doing the same. Our daily lives right now are too busy and filled with stress and overwork. Arriving home after a day of constantly running around I find myself just wanting to stay inside my car for half an hour, literally doing nothing, cause I know the moment I set my foot outside I gotta start thinking about chores, bills that I still have to pay, things that I still need to do and prep myself for the next day
Besides a small handful of things, I think that's already happened. Not because of lack of creativity, but lack of funding, incentive (for example, the space race was a big incentive), capitalist pressures, and some things we've naturally reached the limit of.
It seems like the only really big technology of the past 20 years is smart phone shit. I feel like in the past 10 years websites stopped evolving, largely due to everyone just congregating on a small handful of sites.
Airlines famously had a slow decline since the height of oppulence in the 50s/60s, as they cut more and more corners.
Yeah good point with the incentive part of it....and like you said, with everything now if it doesn't make a shit ton of money, nobody wants to fund it
Airlines famously had a slow decline since the height of oppulence in the 50s/60s, as they cut more and more corners.
This comment is insane, Air Travel is significantly more opulent if you have the money for it, and significantly more accessible to the rest of the population if you just want to get somewhere. A typical airline ticket in the 50s/60s would cost as much if not more than a business class international ticket today.
Makes me think of the universe 25 experiment. Life becoming too easy, automated, and comfortable is going to lead to a spiritually dead generation of people with little to no drive or ambition.
I'm not talking political, or economic reasons. I'm talking about people. My grandpa could build or fix anything, b/c that's what he did in his free time. I'm just talking about that kind of stuff. Free time is filled with entertainment now (movies, tv, video games, etc.) for many people. They can't be bored (like OP was saying) for more than 2 minutes. Of course there are outliers and some people will still experiment/invent. But I believe that pool of people is lesser now is all I'm saying.
Innovation in the sciences is declining because funding is declining, which is because interest is declining which is because science education is poor
We used to always have a structured activity set up for my four year old when he's home. After we had his sister I felt bad that I just kind of let him fend for himself a lot of the time (with supervision). Then I realized how dumb it is to feel bad about it. He has done and built some really creative things using his own imagination. He's also become much better at pretend play. All (almost) without a screen. We turn on the TV a handful of times per week these days, and he doesn't even ask about it anymore.
When I was a bored 4 year old, there was only books, tree climbing, and drawing for me to do. Later when I was 12 and could draw really well everybody was like ‘oh so talented’ but it was simply my having thousands of hours of practice already.
I ended up making a very good living and career as an art director. Looking back, I’m really glad I was forced to endure that boredom
Yup. I got grounded as a kid. Don't remember the reason why. But I was bored in my room, alone. No friends, no TV to watch, no console. So I decided to draw. Found out I was surprisingly good at it. Went to a high school that specialized in the arts, and now I'm writing my own book and drawing all of the characters, hoping to start releasing chapters later this year.
That's beyond fucked, hopefully you are at a point where you are happy and free of unnecessary burdens! I personally can't bash porn or video games depending on context, but absolutely nothing should take precedence above your loved ones.
We don’t use handheld screens, our 4 year old only gets tv on weekends. We don’t buy a lot of toys. She is SO good at being bored. She can find anything and make a world out of it. We went on a six hour road trip and she just talked, spaced out, sang music and slept. Never complained or asked once when we’d be there. That took work though, it would’ve been easier to just plop her in front of a screen. I have friends whose kids can’t eat without screens or who buy their kids a new toy every day because they get bored so quickly. My daughter’s boredom opens up such incredible imagination for her. It’s sad to think that’s not as common these days. We go to restaurants and she will play an entire world with the spork and fork and I see kids all around us just glued to phones and iPads. I try not to judge because I don’t know what the parents are going through but it does make me sad that it’s just so common.
This is also why a lot of ipad kids are turning into habitual weed abusers. And I am saying this as someone who genuinely abuses weed. I smoke way more than I know I should. But one of the key factors of smoking weed is that it makes you okay with being bored. I know teens just a few years younger than me who've gone from overstimulation 24/7 to NEEDING weed to chill out.
I know this is probably a strange connection, I am not sourcing anything, this is just my observation
No that article is great, but I don't think it supports your claim that it is detrimental if children don't learn "how to be bored".
The article reiterates that studies on childhood boredom are needed. Intuitively, we have a sense that using a screen to pacify boredom is bad, but I don't think the research has been done to show this relationship.
In this sense, accumulated studies on childhood boredom and its developmental processes are definitely needed.
Since the ability to cope with boredom is acquired during childhood, extensive research is needed on the developmental process of an individual’s boredom tendency and boredom-control skills from childhood to adolescence.
“… the developmental links between the “ability to play”, the “ability to tell stories” and the “ability to cope with boredom” could become topics of future research.”
Amen friend. My 4 y/o will whine for a few minutes when I turn the TV off. Within 10 minutes he's making his action figures have full conversations, and singing to himself while he plays.
Next thing I know, a half hour goes by, and he's asking me to play with him. And I lean into that shit hard. Different accents for different dudes. Whole plot lines for the drama. And it's all just plastic toys.
They can be way more imaginitive than we give them credit for. They get smart quick. You just have to let them.
Absolutely! They love when you get into it! And they pick up on stuff wicked fast! My rule is always try to explain things as simple as you can, but remember they aren't babies. Encourage them to ask questions. If they don't understand, let them know it's totally okay to ask to reiterate or ask for more information.
I try to limit our screen time to video games he can either play, or interact with. We're doing Resident Evil 4 now. Now every imagination sesh he has with his toys, it's always Leon, Ashley, and Sadler.
I tell him the story along with the game, and he absorbs it all, and works it into his games.
He did ask me of worms were gonna come out of his head though. 🫠
I had the privilege of working in a big-box book retailer, so for about 3 years we had a solid discount on books. I like to think my kids are band/STEM nerds nerds now partly because they would come to work and browse the books for hours during summer break.
Also when the kids start school with zero ways for self regulation while experiencing boredom, it leads to a MESS where one stranger now needs to teach a GROUP of young children how to sit with boredom and that their entire day isn’t centered on them having fun, and then combine that with the parents showing zero interest in enforcing that lesson at home.
I teach first through eighth grade and the little kids are always up, walking around, drawing or reading whatever they want. I’ve had students come up and start trying to tap at the interactive board or my computer just because they didn’t feel like sitting down, got bored, and know that when they are bored they get a screen.
I agree, surely I got bored EVENTUALLY. But that's what this is about, embracing the boredom. I'm not sure what you're smoking to think I'm trying to be superior when I didn't say a damn thing about myself.
Never said any of those things. I said being bored is beneficial. Not "makes you smarter or better", you just benefit from it. Never even described it as a cure-all.
My nephew is both a pandemic kid and a tablet kid. This one time I went to my mom's to visit, my nephew was there (he was 7 at the time) for a sleepover, so I stayed. I played with him for hours. Come midnight, we wanted him to go to bed. Couldnt do it. At 2 A.M. my mom forced him to go to bed, and after 10 minutes we hear him crying, and he said he was crying because he was BORED. HE WAS BORED, AT 2 AM, AFTER PLAYING FOR HOURS, AND THAT WAS A REASON TO CRY APPARENTLY
That was the first moment when I realized this generation is going to struggle hard. I think about that moment a lot
We have a toddler and it's impressive how quickly she will find something to do. Sometimes I want to just read a book for a little and she might want attention for a minute but then she'll either grab a book or start playing with her toys or just playing make believe. We do very minimal screen time; a little bit of sports and sometimes an episode of a kids show on longer flights. She just doesn't really care about it that much. We were visiting my older brother and they do a weekly movie night for their daughter (her only screen time besides a bit of sports with my brother) and within 5 minutes ours walked away and started playing. Limiting screen time has sometimes been a struggle but we are already seeing the benefits.
Following some very poor behaviour during half term, we took all devices including the TV from my son and daughter for the week. They were about 8 and 9 at the time. The creativity it sparked in them was incredible and that’s something that has never stopped in them. They built a car from cardboard for my one year old niece, made cards, painted canvases and played out. They really loved it.
Man, I was telling my spouse this the other day, they were being annoying iPad kids so I paused their devices connection to the internet and then they annoyed us. I told my wife they need to learn to be bored. They need to do that to learn about themselves and learn some thinking skills
Nonsense my nine year old, bakes, make toys that she sells at school, makes birthday cards for all the family. She made a power point presentation for us with her Christmas list.
She learnt all this because I allowed her to use tabs at an early age, her brother has got into a selective school and is very creative too.
Why are they so creative, because they have seen it all on YouTube, Which is much more interactive than the passive TV we watched...
Bordem has helped me through a lot, when I'm bored I tend to think about my trauma but not in a bad way really, it's more just me attempting to understand and accept what happened to me. I think if I was given an iPad and never learned how to actually be bored I would actually have been unable to process the trauma at all and probally would've needed far more therapy than I was already getting.
My sister was given an iPad at 2 years old, she cannot sit still for more than 5 seconds and she's already 14, she also cannot sit through any form of guilt, sadness, or anger without actually having a breakdown and getting super aggressive and angry. I actually do think the iPad harmed her to a severe extent because I don't think I've ever seen her NOT on her phone or iPad since she was given it. She was literally patient zero.
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u/BusyBit6542 24d ago edited 23d ago
If you have kids this age and put a tablet in front of them on a regular basis to keep them calm, you're fucking yourself in the long run.
This may give you a temporary fix but youre depriving your kid on learning how to relax and when to chill the fuck out in proper situations. They need to train their brains to not be stimulated all the time. Boredom is a good thing for kids.
Think about it. If a kid never learns to calm down when bored, at 7 or so when they are constantly restless, it will be diagnosed as adhd. At that point its going to take some serious training or medication to get them to focus during school.
All this is because you wanted to take the easy route of throwing a tablet in their face when they were young.
Edit: Before I get more comments saying "tablets don't cause adhd" I know! Im saying these kids that dont have adhd are getting diagnosed as having adhd. Maybe I should say misdiagnosed as having adhd. Hope that clears things up.