Comment by jasonjei
12 days ago
Do you have kids? I have a 4-year old girl. And while parenting is so much harder without iPad and iPhone, my daughter is genuinely more interested in the world and imagination play than looking at screens. At age 2, was curious about the other kids with iPads, but now she shows no interest in screens. And we’re doing fine with static or minimally electronic toys. She has a whole adolescent/adult life ahead of her of screens.
This is about a developing child’s mind and the precautionary principle of knowing with the evidence we have now that social media is extremely harmful to mental health, especially to adolescent girls. This is not the same as outlawing alcohol to grown adults.
Good for you, and good for her.
I wish I had kids, but sadly not yet.
Myself, I grew up with a Commodore 64, whose user manual didn't only teach me to code, but was even part of me learning to read.
But everyone is different, what worked fine for me isn't necessarily even a good idea for others.
> This is about a developing child’s mind and the cautionary principle of knowing with the evidence we have now that it is extremely harmful to mental health, especially to girls. This is not the same as outlawing alcohol to grown adults.
Sounds like you agree with me that much of the current stuff is bad. I'm saying that some of the rest is both harmless and helpful.
I had a computer growing up. It wasn’t always connected to the Internet. I had dial up occasionally. But I cannot imagine my child growing up with social media is a good thing. Facebook, MySpace, Instagram, TikTok didn’t exist when I was a kid.
And while the genie is out of the bottle, I want to minimize the exposure of social media. The smartphone experience is shrouded in social media. I want to do everything in my power to put her in an environment with other parents who have agreed to modify their environment. We’re looking at San Francisco Waldorf School. They even have a “computer lab” with designated screen time in the later grades.
> I want to minimize the exposure of social media
There's a reason I was comparing social media to hard liquor (and, if you read between the lines, gambling) — we are basically agreed on the harms side of the equation :)
Right, as they get a bit older, a wholesale screen ban is generally not the answer, we have a ban on consumption-oriented devices, but they have free rein to a raspi 400 with raspbian on it, and kidpix+dosbox/tuxpaint/scratch/other creative software.
Something like a c64 would be even better.
There are so many ways to teach kids to code and read that a smartphone/tablet is totally unnecessary. I refuse to believe for a second that my kids are at any disadvantage for not having screen time at home.