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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

Yeah me too. Anecdotally with my two children, they make huge educational jumps every time we increase their screen time.

Screen time for us was playing games with an educational value and watching TV with at least some educational value.

Recently we've started letting the five year old watch TV purely for entertainment, and the three year old sometimes watches too, but even then, both of them suddenly got a lot better at storytelling and coming up with their own original stories.

So even "pure entertainment" seems to have educational value for the kids.

The rule in our house is that you can't use a screen if the sun is up unless it's a weekend. That seems to be a good balance (although under the current conditions that's flexible if the screen is for an online class).

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You started out I was expecting you to be very liberal with 'screen time', especially agreeing with the GP who seemed the same. But:

> The rule in our house is that you can't use a screen if the sun is up unless it's a weekend

I think that's actually limiting screentime more than most US households, you aren't actually on the "no need to limit screentime" side at all!

It's important to note that we are night owls. The kids have TV basically from 7pm (when I turn on Jeopardy regardless of sunset) until they go to bed around 11pm. And during the current situation, sometimes they go to bed around 1-3am.

So they actually get a lot more screen time than most of their peers.

Yeah, we've shifted to later as well, I'm a night owl by inclination, the boy seems to be as well, he'll crash from 3am til 12pm then get up.

Given he's happy I'm not rocking that boat.

Five and three year old go to bed around 1-3am? I don't necessarily have an opinion on that, but it surprises me :)

They also wake up around 11am-1pm, so they still get 10 hours of sleep. :)

Turns out not every kid loves mornings!

I know I didn't!

I think they still get less "screen time" than a lot of kids I know, especially since pandemic time at home skyrocket.

I think limiting screen time is to allow young kids to concentrate on tasks for longer periods of time. This is recommended by most pediatricians.

Our kids, who are home with us and in the same room as where both me and my wife work, are able to play by themselves for the most part every weekday from 9-12pm.

My partner and I were just having a similar conversation. About how we "feel bad" when our child uses their tablet a lot in a day but we're not quite sure why.

When using the tablet they are playing educational games about sorting/identifying shapes and colors, painting by numbers, solving puzzles, etc.

Or watching/listening to songs that are teaching them colors, numbers, letters, etc. And dancing around because they like the music.

These are drilling home lessons in a fun and repetitive way that we simply could not do for our child otherwise. And we've seen educational jumps from it too.

Plus, let's be real, I make my living through a screen. So why is "screen time" stigmatized as a bad thing?

I've come to the realization that screens are not an evil thing to be minimized at all costs. They are the most powerful tool of the modern age.

It's just important to get some exercise and fresh air too.

I think it's irrational. "Screen time" is today's Dungeons and Dragons and heavy metal. People are doing things differently today than I did at that age, therefore it's bad and needs to be limited.

I love the fact that my generation (nearly 40) and the one after me both grew up playing ultra violent games and listening to rap etc and yet the crime statistics for violent crime are lower than they've been for about a century.

Schadenfreude on that one.

As a millennial who spent most of the past decade behind a computer screen (and probably the previous decade before that inside of books), I mourn the time I lost that could have been spent interacting with the world.

Moreover, maybe both sides are right? Maybe you need heavy "screen interaction" to be successful in this world and maybe too much time is being consumed by screens rather than physically interacting with the world. Maybe there is a balance that isn't close to being struck by most.

Maybe I would like my future children (if I have them) to interpret the world largely through their own eyes rather than a clickbait interpretation manufactured to get more money.

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