Katherine, as a fellow boy mom (ages 3 and 7) I appreciate all of your writing and practical suggestions! It can feel lonely out here as a low-tech parent. Completely agree about never introducing the tablet. Our go tos: set up a digging pit in the backyard, let the boys use real tools, ride lots of bikes, climb high walls/trees, use walkie talkies, etc. There's more boo boos, more mess, and more noise. Also a great suggestion from Dr. Meghan Owenz: go back to physical media. We borrow audiobooks on CD from the library or old DVDs (think Reading Rainbow) and let the boys put them in an old CD player. But like the other commenter, I worry about whether my boys will have peers or partners in their 20s and 30s that can navigate these times...
This is SO important, YES!! As a Montessori educator for 30+ years, a fellow parent, and head of school watching children from birth to adolescence developing themselves in all areas, I cannot stress enough how SIMPLE and crucial it is (and easier as you point out well in your book and Substack articles) it is to raise children WITHOUT these devices. Just smash them, yes! And save a child’s life from the misery of missing out on this beautiful world.
I saw this study a few days ago and my initial reaction was that the numbers seemed backwards. How is it that kids who are in school full-time are watching more screens than kids who are home 24/7? If anything, you'd think it the other way around! School is soaking up TONS of hours a day. When you throw in the screentime are they actually doing anything besides school and screens?
My next thought was "actually 3 hours a day seems pretty easy to hit for a lot of school kids". Parent picks them up from school. Get home. Watch 1 hour while parents are prepping dinner, throwing a load of laundry in, etc. Dinner finishes at 6 or 6:30. Whole family watches TV (because that's what American families do in the evening) until 8 or 9 or whenever bedtime for the 8-year old is. Bam, suddenly you've hit 3-4 hours without even really meaning to.
> Yes, plenty of wonderful things do exist online, but all of those beneficial things can also be found offline, particularly by a young child.
I read Anya Kamenetz's The Art of Screen Time a while back which I mostly found frustrating because she continually bent over backwards to give screens the benefit of the doubt. You can use them to video call relatives in other countries! Cory Doctorow used one to look up videos of something his kid didn't know about while they were reading a book together! Maybe that parent in the park with their eyes glued to the screen is responding to a demanding boss and not just scrolling social media!
Okay, yes, there are definitely valid uses for a screen. But kids aren't Facetiming relatives in the Old Country for 3 hours a day. They aren't looking up Wikipedia articles of something they don't understand for 3 hours a day. There's a reason Cocomelon has 190 million subscribers and have over 30 videos that EACH have over one billion views.
It's like people are compelled to say "screens aren't 100% evil therefore those AAP guidelines are dumb."
Our daughter is about to turn 10. For Christmas we gave her an iPad - only my husband and I know the password so she needs to always ask us before she uses it and she's not allowed to use it anywhere else other than the living room. Currently she uses it to play PBS Kids games, do some math practice, and FaceTime with her best friend who lives out of state (which is great because prior to this I always needed to be around so she could use my phone to FT her). I am logged in as myself on the iPad so I can see everything that happens. To be honest she has not used it (or asked to use it) as much as I thought she would and we try to keep her sessions to 20 minutes each day, and there are some days she doesn't even ask. My husband and I are both Gen X - we're trying to give our daughter not necessarily the exact same experiences we had, but the same opportunities for imaginations, creative play, being with other kids, art, bike riding, etc, while also making sure she has limited access to a digital world so she is able to engage with it when needing to at school.
She and I recently went home to Australia to see family and while waiting for out return flight, I glanced up to see a family of four sitting in the gate area, all next to each other, heads down screens on, all in the same position and no one engaging with anyone else. We don't choose that for our family .. . but sometimes I wonder for all the people that also follow this non/low tech path . . .will there be enough peers for our kids to engage with when they reach their teens/twenties and beyond?
Katherine, as a fellow boy mom (ages 3 and 7) I appreciate all of your writing and practical suggestions! It can feel lonely out here as a low-tech parent. Completely agree about never introducing the tablet. Our go tos: set up a digging pit in the backyard, let the boys use real tools, ride lots of bikes, climb high walls/trees, use walkie talkies, etc. There's more boo boos, more mess, and more noise. Also a great suggestion from Dr. Meghan Owenz: go back to physical media. We borrow audiobooks on CD from the library or old DVDs (think Reading Rainbow) and let the boys put them in an old CD player. But like the other commenter, I worry about whether my boys will have peers or partners in their 20s and 30s that can navigate these times...
This is SO important, YES!! As a Montessori educator for 30+ years, a fellow parent, and head of school watching children from birth to adolescence developing themselves in all areas, I cannot stress enough how SIMPLE and crucial it is (and easier as you point out well in your book and Substack articles) it is to raise children WITHOUT these devices. Just smash them, yes! And save a child’s life from the misery of missing out on this beautiful world.
I saw this study a few days ago and my initial reaction was that the numbers seemed backwards. How is it that kids who are in school full-time are watching more screens than kids who are home 24/7? If anything, you'd think it the other way around! School is soaking up TONS of hours a day. When you throw in the screentime are they actually doing anything besides school and screens?
My next thought was "actually 3 hours a day seems pretty easy to hit for a lot of school kids". Parent picks them up from school. Get home. Watch 1 hour while parents are prepping dinner, throwing a load of laundry in, etc. Dinner finishes at 6 or 6:30. Whole family watches TV (because that's what American families do in the evening) until 8 or 9 or whenever bedtime for the 8-year old is. Bam, suddenly you've hit 3-4 hours without even really meaning to.
> Yes, plenty of wonderful things do exist online, but all of those beneficial things can also be found offline, particularly by a young child.
I read Anya Kamenetz's The Art of Screen Time a while back which I mostly found frustrating because she continually bent over backwards to give screens the benefit of the doubt. You can use them to video call relatives in other countries! Cory Doctorow used one to look up videos of something his kid didn't know about while they were reading a book together! Maybe that parent in the park with their eyes glued to the screen is responding to a demanding boss and not just scrolling social media!
Okay, yes, there are definitely valid uses for a screen. But kids aren't Facetiming relatives in the Old Country for 3 hours a day. They aren't looking up Wikipedia articles of something they don't understand for 3 hours a day. There's a reason Cocomelon has 190 million subscribers and have over 30 videos that EACH have over one billion views.
It's like people are compelled to say "screens aren't 100% evil therefore those AAP guidelines are dumb."
Our daughter is about to turn 10. For Christmas we gave her an iPad - only my husband and I know the password so she needs to always ask us before she uses it and she's not allowed to use it anywhere else other than the living room. Currently she uses it to play PBS Kids games, do some math practice, and FaceTime with her best friend who lives out of state (which is great because prior to this I always needed to be around so she could use my phone to FT her). I am logged in as myself on the iPad so I can see everything that happens. To be honest she has not used it (or asked to use it) as much as I thought she would and we try to keep her sessions to 20 minutes each day, and there are some days she doesn't even ask. My husband and I are both Gen X - we're trying to give our daughter not necessarily the exact same experiences we had, but the same opportunities for imaginations, creative play, being with other kids, art, bike riding, etc, while also making sure she has limited access to a digital world so she is able to engage with it when needing to at school.
She and I recently went home to Australia to see family and while waiting for out return flight, I glanced up to see a family of four sitting in the gate area, all next to each other, heads down screens on, all in the same position and no one engaging with anyone else. We don't choose that for our family .. . but sometimes I wonder for all the people that also follow this non/low tech path . . .will there be enough peers for our kids to engage with when they reach their teens/twenties and beyond?