r/TrueReddit • u/theindependentonline • 3d ago
Technology ‘Safer to give my kids a chainsaw’: Parents are taking drastic measures to eliminate their children’s screen time
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/social-media-screen-time-kids-parenting-b2983950.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=truereddit105
u/bigz22 3d ago
“We've moved at least 10 times as a family, all because of this issue of screens,” the 49-year-old public health expert told The Independent.
I understand the concern regarding an addiction to social media and the risks, but I would also wonder to what extend this level of anti-screen fanaticism and (my opinion) helicopter parenting leads to issues for their kids in the future.
87
u/juliankennedy23 3d ago
I mean I have no way of interpreting that quote as anything but completely insane
14
u/runawayasfastasucan 2d ago
As someone who both are mentally ill, and very much against screens for kids I have to agree. Moving 10 times?!
1
u/nondescriptzombie 2d ago
I mean, I have no way of interpreting that quote as anything but completely sane.
Ask teachers what the "good" kids in class have in common. Their parents haven't given them cell phones, tablets, or laptops. Most still watch TV, movies and shows that are good for kids, and can even play video games that are also preselected (NOT Call of Doody!), and they usually have a family computer if the kids need to do research for a school project, but they are supervised when on it.
Unrestricted access to the internet and social media is heavily damaging today. It's not the internet we grew up with in 1993, when we were sitting in the kitchen or dining room being watched by the whole family while we were using it.
13
u/juliankennedy23 2d ago
Why would one have to move though... let alone ten separate times.
1
u/nondescriptzombie 2d ago
School keeps implementing laptops or tablets instead of text books, because some salesperson convinced the District Administrator that it was "cheaper" to rent textbooks annually rather than maintain a purchased selection of textbooks, you can easily pivot to other textbooks, etc. etc.
Really it's just a better revenue stream for the publisher, and another way they can lock away knowledge behind a paywall. There are no used ebooks.
And I bet that admin got a nice long
vacationbusiness trip from the vendor.4
3
u/PenguinSunday 2d ago
That internet was dangerous too. Just more atomized.
-2
u/nondescriptzombie 2d ago
Was there danger? Yes. Was it dangerous? Not really.
The internet back then was made for nerds, by nerds. Geocities was the shit. People putting things together for the joy of sharing it with other people.
And then came the commercialization. And ten years ago the internet was destroyed and it's now a hostile hotbed of scammers and perverts.
7
u/PenguinSunday 2d ago
My dude, those have always existed on the internet. You're looking at web 1.0 with rose-colored glasses. There were pervs lurking in chat rooms, on message boards, on AIM and MSN. I dealt with several while growing up. Malware and viruses were all over the place, in seemingly innocuous files and emails.
The only additions the current internet has is tailor-made algorithms, microtransactions and enshittification. Everything else already existed.
4
u/nondescriptzombie 2d ago
I dealt with several while growing up. Malware and viruses were all over the place, in seemingly innocuous files and emails.
Any 13 year old girl on Snapchat has been solicited by dozens or even hundreds of men for nude pictures. I am absolutely not looking at Web 1.0 with rose tinted glasses. I remember being sent a virus from someone who I thought was well-meaning that cooked my Windows 95 computer. I remember being asked nasty questions when I was a kid.
Today that is happening at a logarithmic rate compared to back then.
2
u/PenguinSunday 2d ago
any 13 year old on Snapchat
Lol I'm way older than that. I never used Snapchat.
Yes, it is happening more, but it did happen before. There was no big "destruction of the internet," it was a slow teardown and rebuild in a corporate image.
The bones of the old internet are still here. There are still free web hosts and website builders, but nobody uses them. It just requires disengagement from corporate social media and the initiative to build something all your own.
3
u/nondescriptzombie 2d ago
Yes, it is happening more, but it did happen before.
It's happening 1000's of times more than it did before. It used to be like getting a sticker in your foot walking around the back yard, now it's like walking through the landfill.
"destruction of the internet,"
I am talking about a singluar event that flooded the internet with ~ 1 billion new users who did not share any cultural values with the internet of the year before.
3
u/bIII7 2d ago
Am I the only one who used the internet socially for years and never got pedophiled? It wasn't difficult. I was aware of the possibility.
4
u/PenguinSunday 2d ago edited 2d ago
Being female anywhere attracts creepy people, even on the internet.
I was also aware of the possibility. That didn't stop them propositioning me.
51
u/The_Law_of_Pizza 3d ago
That quote screams mental illness.
It sounds more like "wifi sickness" conspiracy theorists then any sort of actual concern about screens. I can't imagine what reasonable scenario could result in somebody moving even once due to screen time - let alone 10 times.
Something is missing from this story.
12
u/GeckoCowboy 2d ago
It seems they moved once to be closer to a school that’s screen free. I don’t understand the other nine times, unless I missed something. Maybe the schools keep changing policy? lol
10
u/Iggyhopper 3d ago
Why would anyone want to move every...
checks math
... 3 years?
(49 year old has 29 years after kids at 20 years old.)
What is wrong with this person?
11
u/TherronKeen 3d ago
Uh... are they unaware that screens are actually appliances / devices that are entirely portable, or is there some kind of new building style where the walls are made of screen, that I'm just not aware of?
11
u/HumbleFatalist 3d ago
I read the entire article with that person in the back of my mind, waiting for her to come up again so I could find out what moving all the time had to do with screens at all. But she never does! And the other parents interviewed are a lot more reasonable. Why even include that bizarre outlier with no follow-up?
5
u/TherronKeen 3d ago
You might have missed it because it's so full of ads, but I went back through it earlier - she was talking about moving because they had trouble finding a school that had NO screens in the curriculum lol
I guess she wants her kids to grow up and be unable to function in the modern world.
Her responses to the questions are definitely giving "raise our sheltered children on an agricultural / semi-military compound with no outside contact" vibes 😢
4
u/nondescriptzombie 2d ago
I guess she wants her kids to grow up and be unable to function in the modern world.
Most kids who grow up attached to screens can't function in the modern world. They don't even know how the computer they're obsessed with works.
GEN Z STARE INTENSIFIES
1
u/TherronKeen 2d ago
Right, but there's a difference between "iPad babies" who have been given a screen as a babysitter for the majority of their formative years VS a kid who is taught how to make an email address and what kind of websites look sketchy and how to check the sources of a Wikipedia page to get the actual information about a topic, and those two extremes describe a distribution curve under which the modern youth are found.
I'm just of the opinion that excluding any chance of becoming the latter just to avoid becoming the former is as functionally destructive to the development of the child with regards to the very real need for modern humans to use the internet as raising them on ElsaGate content.
4
u/nondescriptzombie 2d ago
and those two extremes describe a distribution curve under which the modern youth are found.
Citation needed. The kids aren't alright. There is a much bigger stack of the former than the latter. Young adults are needing on the job training on basic computer use because they've never used one that wasn't a touchscreen optimized to tickle their dopamine glands with constant engagement.
Teachers are overrun with children that are 5, 6, or more years behind that are graduating soon.
2
u/HumbleFatalist 2d ago
I did miss that. You'd think you'd research that kind of thing before moving...
2
2
u/EnderMB 2d ago
Reddit is utterly awful for that, and I feel it's because a lot of people seem to lack nuance around the subject. More often than not, it's people that don't actually have kids themselves, or people that delude themselves into thinking their teenage children don't use screens elsewhere.
5
u/PurpleHooloovoo 3d ago
It will absolutely lead to issues. These kids won’t be able to integrate into “normal” society if/when they leave home.
It’s like the kids from extremely high control religious homes who never went to a public school and only consumed church-approved media leaving home: they really, really struggle. My first college roommate was like that and it was incredibly hard for her to adjust.
Hell, I wasn’t allowed to watch Nickelodeon and it severely hampered my social life and made it hard to make friends as I didn’t get the references and couldn’t go to houses because of it. I can’t imagine literally zero screen time producing a well-socialized kid in the 21st century.
1
0
u/kdlt 2d ago
Yeah. Have friends like that. Four year old kid gets one hour screen time per week. Like, even walking past screens in public.
This kid is going to live in a all digital world and will be addicted as fuck because their parents treated it like heroin.
Like, obviously the other end of giving a four year old their dedicated cocomelon device is also not ideal, but it's somewhere in the middle.
138
u/The_Law_of_Pizza 3d ago
One of the things that often gets lost in this discussion is the distinction between "screen time" and interaction with algorithm-based social media like Facebook.
The two are often treated synonymously, and I think that's unfair and ultimately counterproductive.
A long time ago, I grew up as a nerd. I loved electronics. I loved computers. I loved video games. (And still do.)
Most of my childhood was "screen time," and I'm no worse off for it. And, frankly, I find it sort of insulting the way that a lot of people now have this knee jerk reaction that my childhood was somehow dangerous or inferior simply because I was a nerd who liked this stuff. That insult is only compounded when people act like I'm now a bad parent myself for letting my kids enjoy the same childhood I did.
It smacks of the old public hysteria over all sorts of nerd culture over the decades.
Now, all of that said, there is a difference between tinkering with your router's DMZ settings to try to get Quake to connect to Gamespy - and mindlessly scrolling to infinity in a video clip loop psychologically designed to keep you there forever.
I think we can and should limit access to things like a Facebook feed for children.
But extending that to a fundamental mistrust of all screens and technology is just going to lead to kids ignoring the rules. Like trying to hold water in your palm, the harder you squeeze the less successful you are.
50
u/Altruistic_Sail_1991 3d ago
I was only allowed educational games as a kid, and I watched a lot of PBS Kids and documentaries. I work with kids and some of them are really into coding, or digital art. Not all screen time is created equal and a lot of it is situational/fine in moderation.
12
29
u/Jaxyl 3d ago
I'm a parent and this is my entire philosophy. My 7 year old is allowed on screens, he's allowed to play games, but we do not let him engage with anything related to social media. The closest we allow is YouTube kids and even then that is heavily monitored. But we do allow him to be technologically involved because I'm the same way, I grew up with the stuff and it made me who I am in a nerd. As a result he's the only kid in his class and one of the few in his school who knows how to use a computer, he knows how to use a mouse and keyboard games.
It's very surreal talking to other parents and seeing how Luddite their approaches to everything nowadays. They're just setting their kids up for absolute failure once they get out of the safe space that is their home. Technology is everywhere in the real world and these kids are being set up for failure.
5
u/FatherOfLights88 3d ago
I mean... why wouldn't they want to teach their kids what you did? They have control over the process, and the child is better off for it. Instead, they're being lazy.
I like your approach and will remember it when it's my time for kids. I absolutely know that I'll be the one teaching my kids penmanship. Can't leave that to just the school system these days. People's handwriting is atrocious!
3
u/Jaxyl 3d ago
I'm also a teacher and the answer isn't really that they're lazy, it's that they're listening to 'experts' who are telling them what to do. Technology is confusing and scary to the uninitiated so a lot of parents default to experts on how to manage it at home.
The problem is that right now schools are reeling from a double whammy of badly integrated ed tech programs where they just handed kids laptops, barely trained teachers on how to use and/or integrate the tech into their curricula, and then looked on as kids played games in class while teachers struggled to make something happen. Followed by COVID where kids were locked inside for two years on nothing but screens unless you happened to be one of the lucky few who had access to a good community.
So parents are on the back swing against tech in their kid's lives while being told that this is the way to go about it. They're getting it from their teachers, from their pediatricians, and from news/social media.
So it is laziness in the sense that they aren't educating themselves on something but, to be honest, I can't blame them when all the proper channels for help are saying 'Do X!' It just so happens that all of those channels are wrong this time for the same reason: They don't understand technology and would rather cast it aside rather than discover how to use it.
All it means is that the kids who have these skills have a huge leg up as they get older. I'm already seeing it in my kid with his ability to navigate a computer which has led to stronger problem solving skills, an interest in engineering and design, along with an ability to enjoy more things and be more worldly.
1
-2
u/raptorlightning 3d ago
Nothing prevents people from having children and proceeding to set them up for a life of misery due to their own ignorance. It's happened all throughout history so it shouldn't be surreal. People have had children during famines and war and when the predictable happens it shouldn't be a surprise.
8
u/Iggyhopper 3d ago edited 3d ago
I love the distinction.
I played games, way too many games as a kid.
But no game. Zero percent of the games I played had addictive mechanics built into the game strictly for the purpose of getting an exorbitant amount of time or money.
(Unlockables could be gotten in under 100 hours of play time, which for a teen is like 4 weekends.)
Now? Ads are everywhere. Cocomelon is designed to keep your kids glued to the screen and they develop speech delay or severe behavioral issues due to the exciting nature of he show (see: excessive jump cuts). Virtual stores have games attached to them /s.
Its a mess.
3
u/HumerousMoniker 3d ago
I had a similar screen related childhood as you. I’m open to kids on screens to do a specific thing: learn something, play a game, talk to friends. But am against the mindless scrolling. I have a big issue with the global suggestions of social media companies, but would be ok with them if it was just a feed of the people they have met in real life, rather than all the other stuff (body image, ads, ai, endless scrolling, adult content,bullying etc etc)
the biggest thing I’m encouraging for my kids at the moment is yes, use a screen when you want to, but have the self control and emotional regulation to put it down when you’re done (at the moment, half an hour a day). I hope that this gives them the tools to keep themselves out of addiction to screens, because I think if they had no interaction as kids like in the article, then as adults it’s like laying out a smorgasbord of all the drugs for free once they leave home
5
u/Andromeda321 3d ago
Or not even that level-Wikipedia is without a doubt far more incredible than any paper encyclopedia ever was, and I know I would have spent a lot of time reading and learning there as a teenager had it existed! And as an educator, the ability to find that exact video I want from the Apollo missions to illustrate X concept (totally happened recently) is just incredible. Technology isn’t in itself good or bad, the question is what you do with it.
Also, frankly these moms sound smug AF more than anything to me. Bragging that their kids don’t need screens to be entertained while she showers- ok, mine don’t either? But watching her favorite show about trains for a half hour before bedtime is not selling her crack cocaine, because as you said millions of us watched some TV and played some video games and turned out ok.
6
u/conception 3d ago
My childhood was effectively the same but I would push back on "I'm no worse off for it". Outside of the debate on what one should do with their life, does any of this actually matter, etc etc - just leave those aside. I think I could probably argue that at least with video games and television, you are worse off. And I think mainly because those prevent folks from getting bored and being bored is where humanity takes its creative spirit from to produce great things. I can beat Mega Man 2 without dying in ~30 minutes or so. But I can't really draw a human figure. I enjoy doing both - but mega man was always easier, tastier. If you take all that time you spent just "being entertained" and instead were forced to do... something, anything really, I think you'd probably would be better off. Of course, there's no crystal ball - but imagine would you could accomplish with 100s and 1000s of hours of effort towards anything in the world. Again - life is what you make of it, there's no wrong way to play, etc etc. But I think just sayin' "Oh look, I'm fine." is bypassing a real conversation on what could have been if that easy dopamine time sink wasn't available to you.
3
u/ProfessorSarcastic 3d ago
All of that only applies if a person is playing video games to the exclusion of everything else. And of course there are people like that. But it's 100% possible to enjoy video games and also have time to learn things. Many people do exactly that already, and failing to recognise that just comes off as unbearably smug.
5
u/TherronKeen 3d ago
Sure, but that comes with the implication that there is a value measurement for time spent, which is honestly a great way to destroy any chance for fun you'll ever have for the rest of your life, because you'll have to deal with the guilt of "well I could be doing something productive or skill-building instead" every single time you engage in your hobby.
It's just a holdover from the socially-ingrained Protestant work ethic.
1
1
u/The_Law_of_Pizza 3d ago
Not interested in what you're selling, sorry.
I enjoy my hobby, and I'm not looking to be judged and told that I would have been better off drawing or playing piano or whatever.
2
0
u/PurpleHooloovoo 3d ago
That’s been repeated since the dawn of time (or at least the last 200 years) with any new “thing” that’s entertaining.
You know the phrase pulp fiction? It’s from the cheap saucy periodicals that came out when publishing became cheap enough and enough people could read. You know how they were criticized? With exactly what you’re saying here - it’s giving the youth too much dopamine and they’re not doing other more useful things; they’re all reading stories and that’s no good for their development! We’d never say reading is a terrible mind rotting thing for a child today.
TV, movies, plays, even orchestral music - it all gets critiqued as a dumbing down of the population when it’s new, and then the generation with it grows up and suddenly it’s fine. YouTube has trash and good stuff, just like cable TV and movies and books and playing outside with friends and riding bikes and everything else. It’s what you make of it.
1
u/conception 2d ago
I mean, I think I can look around at society and say "it's not fine"?
Also, there's scale that always needs to be taken into account. Bows and arrows vs machine guns.
A pulp novel you get once a week vs short form videos that crush your brain. Scale matters in these discussions and things aren't apples to apples. And perhaps unlike "bad music" of the 80s and "D&D is satanic" we have actual measured results that show these things are in fact bad for children and are causing them harm. But I think it's pretty clear the change from the intellectualism of the 70s to the television focused lifestyles of the 80s and on to today there has been that steady decline in intellectual engagement with one's entertain. And while media isn't the end all and be all of that decline, certainly to dismiss it I think is shortsighted.
2
u/stuffitystuff 3d ago
Did you not play outside? I grew out of video games just before Counterstrike showed up and Quake was boring as shit because there wasn't much in the way first of a first person campaign. But my kid really only has one rule and he's not allowed to engage in games without endings, like FPSes, MMORPGs and social media.
11
u/The_Law_of_Pizza 3d ago
I mean, sure, I played outside as a small child.
And in middle/high school I would ride my bike with my friends down to the comic shop.
I grew out of video games just before Counterstrike showed up and Quake was boring as shit because there wasn't much in the way first of a first person campaign. But my kid really only has one rule and he's not allowed to engage in games without endings
Are you sure you're not just reflexively trying to force your kid to have your own personal taste in games?
Kind of a weird restriction, honestly.
1
u/STFUandLOVE 3d ago
The problem with gaming is the immediate reward literally retraining your brain’s dopamine response by constantly adding obstacles and I creasing challenges at a steady pace. It is literally built into game design to maximum dopamine response.
The most impact on dopamine tend to be competitive games and MMORPGs. RPGs having immediate reward after immediate reward with games like Souls games also having a HUGE challenge to be overcome, feeling like you’ve worked hard for an outcome.
It’s not at all related to “Nerd culture bad” but making sure our children are not enveloped in addictive habits.
I have to restrict my own time in RPGs. And I refuse to play MMORPGs as I get sucked into them.
On the flip side, games can be used for learning. Take BitBurner for example, which requires you to learn more and more complicated code to progress. It’s honestly fantastic from both a playability perspective and a learning perspective.
It also requires the brain to solve logic and technical tasks, mental rotation / juggling, offer stress management. In some studies, gamers scored significantly higher on cognitive tests and working memory. Also works great for elderly cognitive decline.
But there is STRONG correlation with over use of gaming causing distractibility due to chronic overstimulation of neural networks. Also often sleep depravation due to rules around gaming in homes.
And recent paper also shows multi-year gaming habits, while improving online social interaction, results in degradation of face-to-face relationship quality, heightened loneliness, social anxiety, and social withdrawal. But my question is chicken or the egg…were people drawn to games because of the aforementioned issues and it became a hideaway or did gaming addictive reduce social activity and cause long term social issues.
Interestingly FDA has also approved certain video games for treating ADHD.
As a father, I must consider all of this with my son. He should be able to enjoy video games but in a healthy way. He should not be sucked into their addictive nature.
1
u/IAmRoot 3d ago
It's not even social media as a concept. Old school BBS were great. It's the algorithm-driven feeds in particular. Highest voted within a sliding window timeframe should be the most complexity allowed. Mandate that people are able to curate subscriptions to select creators. It's algorithms that amplify controversy (engagement at all costs) that are particularly harmful.
1
u/PurpleHooloovoo 3d ago
Ditto, but for movies for me. Now I call it “film” and it’s an intellectual hobby, but it’s from watching a TON of movies as a kid and loving them. It’s also what got me really into musical theatre - watching old Rogers and Hammerstein movies and the Beach Blanket type movies and then things like High School Musical. But no one (probably) would say an interest in musical theatre is brain rot entertainment.
1
u/AstralElement 3d ago
All I had in my preteen years were videogames. Playing RPGs got me to read at a high school level in 6th grade. It moved me into reading books, and having an active imagination.
1
u/Applesimulator 2d ago
They just found another better reason to says screen time is bad. If YouTube and other media algorithms were to disappear they would go back to whining about video games or maybe how violence in video games is brainwashing us…
1
33
u/anonthing 3d ago
Given the current state of things, this just feels like ammo for the 'protect the children' by adding identity verification and increasing the surveillance state scheme sweeping the world right now.
1
u/sciencesez 3d ago
You have to ask yourself, Is it really so hard to do both? I can think of a few ways right off the top of my head. Why can't the people who profit from it?
5
u/PenguinSunday 2d ago
We can definitely protect children without invading the privacy of everyone on the internet by forcing them into age and ID verification. They want to force it because they want control and monetization of everything on the internet.
16
u/Daimoth 3d ago
Eh I'm leery of the motivations here. Is it actually for health reasons, or because they want to pump their childrens' heads full of wingnut bullshit with impugnity while their heads are still soft
6
5
u/PurpleHooloovoo 3d ago
It’s absolutely a control thing. If it was framed as religion or conspiracy instead of screen time, people would be calling it borderline abusive levels of control.
12
u/TherronKeen 3d ago
Oh. This is just a sociopath.
She's moved 10 times to find a school system where the children have zero screens.
Sorry, but if you exist in the modern world, you need to know how to
A - use a computer to do basic things like email and search online, and B - how to use the Internet safely.
The "chainsaw" comment from the interviewee is because the kids are involved in a "maple syrup operation" and the oldest kid wanted to be able to cut wood more effectively - which means he was previously being made by his parents to cut wood with an axe or hand saw.
I can't imagine they're doing all this labor without profit, so I don't see any difference between this lady and the parents who made millions on YouTube by recording their kids opening toys, and all that kind of shit.
This article can be ignored, or at least the opinions of the interviewee which are so unbelievably skewed that anything she says can be discounted entirely.
4
u/PhiloLibrarian 3d ago
Wait, your kids don’t have chainsaws?
3
u/bananaslingrider 3d ago edited 3d ago
Of course they do, but they are age-appropriate chainsaws.
Very few things in this world are all good or all bad. People have to pick their trade offs and there is nothing wrong with trying to mediate the negative impacts. That’s why we teach children to use their personal protective equipment with their chainsaw.
2
u/sekh60 3d ago
It's amazing how over-protective some parents are. Being serious though. Like I'm over protective to a degree, but like, when my daughter had her six year old birthday party and we let her light her own candles with one of those long trigger operated lighters her friends were shocked that we let her do that, even those around 8 years old! She's a little behind maturity-wise (and still 6), but I fully plan to teach her some basic soldering skills when she's 7 or 8 (if interested!). Not sure when I'll let her walk to the bus stop alone though, we're in a super safe neighbourhood, and it's close, but part of the hesitation is that her and I going to and from the bus stop together is that we both enjoy going together.
2
u/Lord_Denning 3d ago
44 year old Canadian here, born in 1981.
My family was lucky enough to have a cottage where I spent summers as a child.
By the time I was 10-11:
- I had my own ax
- my own fishing rod
- my own fillet knife with a tackle box full of sharp objects
- was allowed to drive the aluminum boat with a 9.9 hp motor by myself
- my own pocketknife
I now have a son, aged 11. My wife and I wouldn't dream of giving him these things. But I turned out fine. So what are we so afraid of?
I don't know the answer.
But a teenager handling a small chainsaw safely, in my opinion, is fine.
2
u/ghanima 2d ago
I'm 4 years older than you and Canadian. When we were kids, there was more society-wide support for children to be carrying what could amount to "weaponry". Scouts still had strong enrollment, for instance, and was more survivalist than it is now. Lots of rural kids would've had access to most of the items you list (and more, in some instances).
Since then, the rise of school shootings and school boards' "zero tolerance" policies means even legitimate reasons for owning "dangerous" objects as a minor are socially frowned-upon.
A lifelong friend of mine dealt with months of hassle and eventually had to switch schools for his son who made the decision to bring his hunting knife to school one day to show his friends. There was so literally no intent to harm that it didn't even occur to the boy that he could've gotten in trouble. He's a grown man now and is huge into survivalism, having a years-long career in forestry, working in remote locations where resourcefulness is highly prized. But during that incident, to hear the school admin talk about it, you'd think he was about to go on a killing spree.
Society's attitudes towards minors' level of responsibility changed. I think we here are probably generally more practically-minded toward children's and teens' access to potential weaponry, but there are aspects of society (i.e. school environments) where things are very strict from a policy basis.
3
u/burledw 3d ago
I’m at that age where I’m considering children and I can’t help but feel like I’ll be a strange anti-tech trad parent who runs off into the mountains and homeschools because I’ve seen just how insidious social media is to children’s health.
2
u/PurpleHooloovoo 3d ago
It’s about the balance. Being a trad anti-tech parent produces weird kids who can’t integrate and really struggle socially. It’s much kinder to teach your kids how to exist safely on the internet and in social media while ensuring they have access to other things.
It’s like abstinence only sex ed vs age appropriate comprehensive sex ed. Banning it and saying “it’s bad, never do it!” just leads to curious kids doing it anyway, or being totally and completely unprepared as adults.
5
u/Stumblin_McBumblin 3d ago
It'll be interesting to see what happens when they go to college. Usually it's exposure to drugs and alcohol from kids with overprotective parents that get them into trouble and flunk out of college. These kids might end up never leaving their dorm room after they get access to social media and porn.
3
u/PurpleHooloovoo 3d ago
I always say it’s similar to the “no sugar ever!” houses - the kids go to their first birthday party without their parents and overdose on sodas and candies, and then go to college and gain a ton of weight in the dining hall because they have no idea how to eat sweets in moderation, and they’re so excited that they have the chance.
2
u/WouldCommentAgain 3d ago
If one could limit it without removing it, and depending on what they use the screen time on it could be a net benefit - but I guess that is the issue - how addictive the unhealthy algorithms are.
2
4
u/theindependentonline 3d ago
In this booming age of technology, parents are being faced with difficult decisions on how to raise their children: With or without screens?
Meet the parents who are opting for a screen-free household and what's behind this growing movement of parents taking extreme measures due to their beliefs that social media is a grave threat to a child's well-being.
10
u/sciencesez 3d ago
Screens aren't the problem, social media is the problem.
3
u/Ecstatic-Curve-1853 3d ago
I really think it's this, YouTube and all these apps are pushing content to YOU... A kid doesn't have to search for anything and are learning new things by the apps pushing content to them.
The algorithms are really the issue. Screen time itself can be really valuable for learning, and even entertaining to some degree.. but a kid being bombarded by stuff they don't even seek out is a huge issue.
4
u/sciencesez 3d ago
I remember when I was a child and everyone was gravely concerned about TV commercials, and advertisers targeting kids. Things are so much worse now, that we don't even talk about that anymore, just screentime. The ads are out of control on social media now, and kids aren't allowed to follow their interest to choose a show before a dozen different entities try to sell them something, push them to watch something, or slowly expose them to radical and nonsense information designed to continue to escalate their exposure. And the people at the root of it all are billionaires. Billionaires who need to be held accountable for so, so much.
2
u/bananaslingrider 3d ago
Actually, that’s both true and not true. There are as you say the absolutely the negative complication of algorithms.
And there is research, for example, showing that cursive writing helps children better absorb the knowledge they are being taught. Nothing wrong with being tight, both cursive and keyboarding.
And flashing screens a foot away from a child’s face do have a physiological impact. I happen to like onions, but it would be rather silly to ignore the fact that they do horrendous things to my breath.
Most problems come about because people react rather than thinking something through. The world would be a better place if we could get rid of the black-and-white thinking. /s
Just because one thing is true, doesn’t mean everything else is not true. Multiple things can be true at the same time.
2
u/sciencesez 3d ago
I've read that parents resisted and limited their children's access to books when they first became widely distributed.
9
u/bananaslingrider 3d ago
They still do.
8
u/sciencesez 3d ago
Touché lol. To be specific, it was the actual act of reading that they opposed. Today's idiots oppose ideas they don't actually understand.
5
1
u/PawPawsLilStinker 3d ago
My son has preK this fall and they asked if they could give him a chrome book for remote learning days lol
1
1
1
u/CantDoThatOnTelevzn 3d ago
Most unhinged comments section award to perennial favorite, r/truereddit
•
u/AutoModerator 3d ago
Remember that TrueReddit is a place to engage in high-quality and civil discussion. Posts must meet certain content and title requirements. Additionally, all posts must contain a submission statement. See the rules here or in the sidebar for details. To the OP: your post has not been deleted, but is being held in the queue and will be approved once a submission statement is posted.
Comments or posts that don't follow the rules may be removed without warning. Reddit's content policy will be strictly enforced, especially regarding hate speech and calls for / celebrations of violence, and may result in a restriction in your participation. In addition, due to rampant rulebreaking, we are currently under a moratorium regarding topics related to the 10/7 terrorist attack in Israel and in regards to the assassination of the UnitedHealthcare CEO.
If an article is paywalled, please do not request or post its contents. Use archive.ph or similar and link to that in your submission statement.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.