Guidelines also stipulate teenagers should have no more than three hours of screen time a day
Archived version: https://archive.ph/0293p
Three hours for teens? Does that include doing homework and such? At that age I was tinkering with C++, does that going as screentime?
The screen isn’t the problem. The content is.
Not the first time in my life I’ve changed position based on evidence. Not the last.
The only reason to ask questions is to listen to answers, rhetorics be damned.
Is a TV in the background playing Baby Einstein considered screen time? My daughter is 17 MO and she gets interested on the songs but then goes back to playing. Is she ruined? 😭
It’s over, her first words will be, “we need to stop the Rizzler from flushing charged lemonade down the skibidi toilet” and you will be the sole blame.
Fear mongering and authoritarian control over minors.
Not sure how this is fear mongering. It’s common knowledge that increased screen time is detrimental to the mind.
This is a health office issuing a guideline, not imposing a law to jail parents that don’t follow it.
“common knowledge” usually means no scientific evidence right?
I really don’t give a fuck what the “common knowledge” about something is. “common knowledge” is that Vitamin C helps when you’re sick and that carrots improve your eyesight.
The reality is neither has any statistically significant impact.
I don’t have kids so I haven’t read up on screen time and it’s effects but if you have scientific studies about this I’d love to see them.
Here you go.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10353947/
Also, here’s a study that found Vitamin C reduces the duration of a cold by an average of 8%.
RE: Vitamin C has been found to have very little evidence in other studies. The evidence is mixed at best, against effectiveness at worst.
But it doesn’t make things worse so who really cares? Some people waste their money on useless products.
RE: Screen Time, thanks for that meta analysis. It seems like there is solid evidence for detrimental effects of screen time. It also seems like those effects might be socioeconomically correlated but I haven’t gone through all the cited sources to check if they controlled for status.
The impact of screen viewing is predominantly influenced by contextual factors rather than the sheer amount of time spent watching
I think this line was the one that particularly made me want to look into the articles. If screen time is serving as a proxy for parental engagement then it seems obvious that it would have negative effects, but I’ll need to read the additional articles.
The sources help prove your claim, and have changed my view. Thanks again
Good on you for being opposed to a concept, then taking in the research and adjusting your viewpoint. Not often are people willing - or capable - of this shift in opinion.
A two year old isn’t a ‘minor.’ No two year old can be trusted alone for any amount of time. In fact, leaving a two year alone to their own devices is considered child abuse.
Children can have phones, tablets, etc when they are old enough to purchase them with their own income.
Before that, a desktop with parental control software is more than enough for schoolwork.
