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Comment by mystified5016 | Hacker News Reader

No. Try actually asking someone who's raised kids recently.

I’m raising two kids right now (4 & 6) and I agree with them. Strollers with built-in tablets are abhorrent and shitty parenting.

Learning how to be ‘bored’ is an important part of growing up, and any parent that is not teaching their children that lesson is failing their children.

When I was a kid and got bored I roamed the creek or biked miles around. Sometimes even with a real or bb gun.

All these things now end in arrest or investigation or at the least a Karen stirring up shit, unless you are real rural. I weep for today's kids. You can do almost nothing nowadays what I did as a kid unless your parents are rich enough to not work and accompany you. The parents want to let their boredom drive them to discover the world, but they usually can't. Instead they're locked in with a tablet where a Karen can't snitch on them for being a kid.

This is such a lost experience. I was a “free range kid” well before that term was coined. It was wonderful. I occasionally got in trouble, but mostly I explored the world and learned a lot.

A student recently asked me if I was ever bored. I said no. They had a hard time believing me. I pointed out that the world is endlessly interesting if you just look at it. This table— who made it? Why was it made this way? What is it made from? How was THAT made? And so on. Even dirt is fascinating. I remember biology teacher demonstrating with a microscope that a small sample of soil contains countless microbes…

I hope that people will eventually grow out of the fascination with online/social media, but I am not optimistic. But if they do, come join the rest of the folks who are having fun in the real world.

I don’t think we should raise ‘fun in the real world’ on a pedestal higher than ‘fun in the digital world’. The problem isn’t whether the fun is digital or real, the problem is that the digital fun isn’t really fun, but drugs. Real drugs aren’t legal, and the same should be true for their digital equivalent.

There's been pushback against this, 8 states have passed “Reasonable Childhood Independence” laws since 2018, Georgia in the last few days, and more will.

There are still places where you can experience these things without "Karen" ruining your life. Smaller towns basically anywhere provide the statistical cover you are looking for. When you dial the density up to a certain threshold, these people become unavoidable.

I have a 5 year old, it takes effort to not expose them to phones and tablets, it's a conscious choice. We even avoid them when driving for a couple of hours, instead she can draw in a coloring book or we can play disney songs on the radio. It's all habits, how come our kid can sit alone in the back seat for an hour and not make a fuss, but her cousin needs mom to sit with her in the back seat for even a short drive. Mostly what I observe is parents using phones as a pacifier when they need the kid to sit still for awhile.

Yeah gotta love those 'cool' parents who even brag how they easily travel with small kids in their cars for a long time. Then you look at the car and of course there is a tablet in front of each kid.

'Bbbut kids then cry and scream!' Well yeah, thats how you raised them overall, don't expect miracles suddenly, world doesn't revolve around you and certainly kids don't.

Fyi our small kids (3 and 5) can handle that 'boredom' of day-long travel without any device just fine. But its due to them being raised without screens, and their parents not being constantly glued to same thing. So they just watch the country go by, go through a book or two, draw with pencil on paper (yes, its still a thing), we talk to them and entertain them and so on.

Your kids are soon going to notice the glowing entrancing screen that other kids (their friends) have access to, and they will absolutely hate you for denying them the same fun. Tale as old as time.

Admittedly not my kids, but my experience of how "tablet/phone banned" kids actually act in that case is "why are these other kids being so boring"

But these kids are pretty well looked after, 24/7 parent available, high engagement parenting. The kids just find stuff in the real world to do. They get 30 minutes of "group" screen time a day, as in the family sits down together and watches something.

I have the same feeling when I see adults on their phones to be honest, and I'm quite introverted. Just feels like a sterile community to be in.

I think what you're referring to isn't actually "raising".

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