Kids and Electronics, Thoughts? What Age? How much Time? Yes / No? Etc...

[jonebone | 1,307]

So, I'm pretty good at limiting my kids electronics time (ages 3 / 5).  TV does get watched everyday in spurts but they don't have dedicated handheld devices and they aren't screen addicts.  We probably have some video game time 2 or 3 times a week in maybe 30 minute spurts but nothing excessive.

My 5 year old is now asking for this Osmo toy for Xmas, which looks like some type of iPad / Tablet accessory... which would imply I have to get her the iPad / tablet itself.  And if anyone is a parent to multiple children, there's no way in hell I can get one without getting one for the other.  They constantly fight over toys as it is.

Part of me wants to consider it (I know you can limit their time), but I also enjoy spending family time with the kids. I know as they get older they get more independent and want to do their own thing. My wife is also pretty adamantly against it, doesn't want them addicted to electronics.

The irony of it all, I remember begging for a Nintendo as a kid and my mom wouldn't allow it.  My friends had them and I played them there but I couldn't get one myself.  I think I finally got her to cave around age 6, but I was definitely late compared to my peers.  In retrospect I do believe I had too much screen time as a kid (not that they really understood it then), but I don't think I was that negatively affected.

Other parents.... thoughts?

[fcgamer | 4,727]

Not a parent, but a teacher of pre-school children, for what it's worth.

I started gaming when I was three, we got our Nintendo when I was four. My folks had some rules and regulations set, to which my brother and I adhered. I guess my thoughts would be, what don't tv games offer that television / movies do? Or to flip it around, I'd reckon at least with games children can develop some coordination and things, which they wouldn't develop just from tv or movies, yet I generally hear about games being limited moreso than television itself.

Regarding something like a tablet or iPad, I'd personally be against it at that age, just as I'm against my students having their own smart phones by the second or third level of print school. To me, that sort of technology doesn't just provide screen time, rather it also isolates, whereas at least with a tv set involved, a group of people can still interact together in multiple ways .

[RH | 4,908]

The funny thing is as much as a gamer/collector I am, I don't have much time to game.  My wife and I see cell phones as "digital cigarettes" but we call it that because we are all to aware of our own personal habits and if we don't pay attention, we catch ourselves on our phones all day, texting, communicating, reading news and, yes, playing games.  We want to have a balanced lifestyle and really don't want to have a life staring at our phones all day, and would even prefer to be 100% independent of them, but that's hard to do when you are in business.

As parents, we've limited TV/screen time a lot.  Usually it's 30 minutes a day, with some special occasions.  About once every 2 weeks, my kids get to play the Switch (of my video games from my collection when they come to my office, where I keep them.)  These sessions are typically 45-60 minutes.  The thing is, they beg for this stuff non-stop.  It's an extremely difficult thing to manage as a parent because, for one, we feel you shouldn't lead your kids into addictions but, the other part of that is, if you throw out the phones, tablets, TVs and even computers (I'd be out of a job) but we'd be raising our kids to be very isolated from the modern world that is being more and more permeated with screen-based technology.

We have no clue what the right balance is and the right answer is probably the hardest one to accept which is it's a case-by-case thing. You know your kid.  Love them, build the home and lifestyle you want them to have and if they appear to become "addicted", consider how they "tick" and mold their environment to help modify their harmful desires.

[Crazy Climber | 150]

The only thing I've ever required is subtitles on all cartoons with low volume. I swear doing this with Pokemon is the reason my kids read so well...Other than that I let them do what ever they want as far as electronics go...

[DefaultGen | 5,407]

Not a parent so can't contribute with my experience, but I gotta say it was pretty sweet growing up when screwing around on the computer all day meant "I was going to grow up to be an engineer".

Edited November 5, 2019 by DefaultGen

[arch_8ngel | 1,597]

My kids get to share a couple of hand-me-down tablets for TV watching on car trips (and occasional at-home show-watching when my wife and I are using the living room TV).

I am not planning to get either one of them dedicated devices of their own until they are MUCH older.

My daughter (about to be 6) has been making "paper phones" for the better part of a year (she'll fold up paper into a cellphone, populate a calendar for the month, draw a picture to have inside it like a locket, and make the face look like a dial-pad).    Point is, kids already see and get way too much passive exposure to this stuff for me to want them to have a device that they get to claim as their own (making me the bad guy when I take it away) versus a shared family device that they have to ask permission to use at all.

 

I am planning to get a cheapie desktop PC to share with the kids, though, so that they can hopefully have some of the same formative experiences I did playing around on his original Macintosh.

[Boosted52405 | 178]

I do let my 2yo use my tablet for YouTube Kids only, from time to time.  As a single Dad, sometimes it's needed for various reasons, but very careful on when/how long.  I also like to let him "earn" it, by putting all his toys away or helping with laundry or cooking or dishes.  I'm surprised how much educational type stuff he naturally gravitates to on there, and sings/dances frequently.

On a side note, I found out after Halloween last Thursday that kids really do "bounce off walls" when they eat candy...I let him enjoy 1 tiny bag of M&Ms from trick or treating and dude was wired haha (I normally do not give sweets).

[DoctorEncore | 3,691]

Ah, the constant struggle of being a parent who loves electronics but doesn't want a zombie child. We limit our 3 year old son to 0-30 minutes of screen time a day and he never demands the phone or tablet like I see other kids doing at the grocery store or restaurant. He also loves playing outside more than anything in the world. We spend our time together building stuff with Legos, racing cars, reading books, and wrestling.

Obviously these devices are everywhere and our children will need to know how to use them to function in society, but they don't need much time to adapt. They are far more facile and their brains have crazy plasticity compared to us adults. I do have to sacrifice my own screen time so that I don't come off as a hypocrite, but that's okay because I'll never get him back at this age again. We can play plenty of videogames and watch movies when he's older.

Eventually most kids will probably transition to several hours a day of screen time, but I think delaying that as long as possible is a good thing.

[empire | 106]

If I was a parent I certainly wouldn't hesitate to let my kids play NES/SNES games. Build up that hand eye and reflex skill. Modern games not so much, more because the online communities are pretty toxic and offer nothing to a kid.

[BriGuy82 | 768]

My 2 kids ages 9 and 8 get an hour each on the switch, on both Saturday and Sunday. So a combined 2 hours a week individually. They aren't allowed to play during the week. No tablets are allowed in my house. They do sneak games in on their moms phone once and a while but it's typically for like 5 or 10 minutes, and certainly not everyday. After they do reading or math on the computer sometimes they have little games for rewards afterwards. There is nothing sadder to me then when I drop my kids off at before care at their school and see a bunch of zombie kids sitting on the gym floor staring at electronics. 

[arch_8ngel | 1,597]

3 minutes ago, BriGuy82 said:

There is nothing sadder to me then when I drop my kids off at before care at their school and see a bunch of zombie kids sitting on the gym floor staring at electronics. 

Seems like kids need the return of POGS... (though I seem to recall those going out of fashion due to schools banning them as a form of gambling)

[Gamegearguy | 224]

I love pogs! I still have all mine. I have about 1,000 of them. I'm waiting for pogs to return.

[BriGuy82 | 768]

2 minutes ago, arch_8ngel said:

Seems like kids need the return of POGS... (though I seem to recall those going out of fashion due to schools banning them as a form of gambling)

They have all kinds of stuff for the kids to do when I drop them off. They have crafts, board games, checkers, chess. They can play basketball, other ball games. My son brings transformers and he plays with a few of his friends. They bring pokemon cards...   But the school also allows electronics, and sure as shit, there's a row of about 10-15 kids sitting against the wall, not playing or interacting with any other kids. 

[BriGuy82 | 768]

4 minutes ago, Gamegearguy said:

I love pogs! I still have all mine. I have about 1,000 of them. I'm waiting for pogs to return.

You know what made the big comeback? Rubix cubes. My kids are obsessed with them. They have 6x6, 4×4, a pyramid. 

[arch_8ngel | 1,597]

3 minutes ago, BriGuy82 said:

 But the school also allows electronics, and sure as shit, there's a row of about 10-15 kids sitting against the wall, not playing or interacting with any other kids. 

Does anyone have a pulse on when this switch happened?

"Back in our day"... electronics were a sure-fire confiscation to be returned at the end of the day if you were lucky.

At what point did schools start tolerating kids having phones readily accessible?  Seems like terrible judgment, to me.

(though I also think it is pretty poor judgment for elementary aged kids to have their own smart phone in the first place)

[BriGuy82 | 768]

6 minutes ago, arch_8ngel said:

Does anyone have a pulse on when this switch happened?

"Back in our day"... electronics were a sure-fire confiscation to be returned at the end of the day if you were lucky.

At what point did schools start tolerating kids having phones readily accessible?  Seems like terrible judgment, to me.

(though I also think it is pretty poor judgment for elementary aged kids to have their own smart phone in the first place)

Yeah these kids are all playing on their own smartphones. I had a gameboy when they first came out. But I wasn't allowed to bring it to school. I remember my friends getting yelled at and having them confiscated. The only safe place for the gameboy was on the school bus.

[Code Monkey | 2,011]

I'll give you my experience. I had really bad eyesight as a kid and didn't really socialize with other kids so I spent every hour of every day in front of the NES playing games. After the first 6 months of having the NES, I went for an eye exam and the doctor said there was a 50% improvement, something he had never seen before. He asked what changed recently and apparently it was all of the repetitive muscle movement of looking around the screen for 12 hours a day. My eyes continued to get better, my glasses got smaller and 20 years later I was able to get Lasik and be glasses free.

I don't have kids but if I did, I'd like them play as long as they want.

[WhyNotZoidberg | 585]

If my personal experience is of any relevance or help, I'm glad to offer it. I have 2 sons, aged 5 and 3 and of course they also want screen time. Read DEMAND screen time.

Their own personalities play a huge part in their relation with electronics and screens. I find that the less I regulate them, the more they regulated themselves. I let them watch as much TV as they want, and most would be surprised to see that they get completely bored with it in less than an hour and then walk away from it to go play.

We have some LeapFrog tablets that make the rounds intermittently: they go completely out of sight for weeks on end, and then I'll see the boys spend about an hour fiddling around with them and they mostly end up being just another reason to fight lol (I WANT THE ONE HE HAS, all that stuff).

The only exception to that is our phones. Yeah. That's the crack cocaine stuff, but I imagine it is entirely because those are mostly forbidden. We only hand them out to keep the kids patient at restaurants and they throw fits when we ask for our phones back.

If they are going to develop obsession or addiction to gadgets, they'll do it wether or not you give them access to such devices. Of course, keeping it out of their hands allows time for them to discover other activities/interests which will then reduce the risks of your kids becoming Twitch addicted slugs. But really, I guess it depends on what they're doing with "the screen". If it's just watching weird-ass chinese videos were they have Lightning McQueen and friends change colors and going down slides that's lame, but if they're doing something creative or otherwise educational, I say let them be.

Edited November 6, 2019 by WhyNotZoidberg

[LeatherRebel5150 | 1,056]

I recently had the having kids conversation with my girlfriend and we both seem to agree that older electronics would be okay, like a OG Gameboy on a car ride. "Here you go Johnny, here's a Gameboy and Pokemon Red, pray that we drive somewhere with a lot of street lights if we're driving in the dark. Have Fun!". But things like a personal cell phone wouldn't be happening until high school or they buy one themselves, whichever came first. I like hearing how current parents deal with it.

[empire | 106]

12 hours ago, Gamegearguy said:

I love pogs! I still have all mine. I have about 1,000 of them. I'm waiting for pogs to return.

How many of those are Alf pogs?

[ALTQQ | 87]

26 minutes ago, empire said:

How many of those are Alf pogs?

How many are the poison pogs?

[empire | 106]

7 minutes ago, ALTQQ said:

How many are the poison pogs?

At least half. RIP Poison Pogs Inc. 1995-a bit later 1995

[ALTQQ | 87]

4 minutes ago, empire said:

At least half. RIP Poison Pogs Inc. 1995-a bit later 1995

The worst thing to happen in the 90s

[empire | 106]

[Tanooki | 4,934]

We've had to regulate it.  The DSlite she has became a problem to where it would get used for hours, and what broke the trust was sneaking it into bed when she should be sleeping.  Now she has to ask for it and hopefully is given time which usually is 30-60min.  I don't like it, she should be able to use it more when the stuff she's working on can't do much in the shorter end of that time to be of any value.  TV and her mini Nintendo classics in turn have been regulated too, not so much limited other than based on behavior and this is all around an 8 year old.