If you need kids distracted for a while, at least take take the time to thoughtfully pick out some books or physical media like DVDs they can enjoy ad-free with dedicated offline media players, or give them a mechanical puzzle, or a yo-yo, or legos, or paper and crayons.
These same arguments were put in front of the public when TV was released. A steady stream of boob-tube content was seen as a detriment to society and many questioned it. But now we have a new wave of technology that parents are using to placate their children to avoid the challenges present in parenting today, just as they did 70+ years ago, but now we’re saying things like, “we’re taking away their smartphones and putting them in front of TV content we grew up with!”
I am not advocating parents plop their kids in front of devices of any kind, but to argue it’s abuse is absurd. And furthermore, to claim that TV shows prevalent in the 80s and 90s are somehow an acceptable proxy is almost as absurd.
Also it is not about 80s/90s content so much as it is about helping a kid develop a longer attention span. Give them things worth watching more than 10 seconds at a time, or puzzles and project kits worth playing with for hours.
I mean, watch CoComelon and Sesame Street (or Mister Rogers, or Daniel Tiger...) side by side and tell me there isn't a qualitative difference between the two.
> Key implications:
> 2. After the DPT vaccine entered the population, neurological and behavioral issues rippled through society. In the 1950s, “minimal brain damage“ [MBD] was coined, with hyperactivity as its defining characteristic. MBD symptoms overlap significantly with encephalitis, DPT injuries, and autism. Eventually, they found it could be “treated” with stimulants, and the disorder was renamed ADHD.
> 3. I suspect something similar is happening with screens—their dopamine-releasing nature is being used to counteract behavioral disturbances in vaccine-injured children. Many parents lacking bandwidth to handle misbehaving children are forced to provide addictive technology, transforming children into lifelong users.
I have never sat my kids down with some stupid YouTube channel like CoComelon -- or any YouTube channel for that matter -- yet I am at the mercy of the same strong market forces that make that style of content popular. As a result I have the same issues with emotional disregulation related to screen time with one of my children (the other two handle it mostly OK).
So now, just like everything else it seems, the parents are left alone to try and fight this battle with trillion dollar corporations all by themselves. Yes, some parents have given up and willfully handed their kids' future to these sociopaths. But I assure you there are millions of us who are left in a David vs Goliath fight with no end in sight.
Gave up my own phone entirely a few years ago partly to ensure kids never see me use one or rely on one so they know such tools are optional in life.
I like teaching kids modern technology starting with a soldering iron making an LED blink, and building a PC from parts, and eventually compiling an operating system from source code. I see absolutely no reason for a kid to ever need unsupervised access to the internet until at least high school, and even then not on a phone, but via desktop computers in common areas where there is accountability.
I say this as the father of a 17-year-old who once read 200 books per semester in elementary school, winning school and city reading awards. This year in high school, she’s read maybe a couple of short stories at most. She’s grown up surrounded by bookshelves in every room, but now she has no inclination to even glance at the spines, much less open a book.
We read aloud together every night for years, usually books well beyond her grade level, which was already advanced. I exposed her early to Bergman, Antonioni, Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, and other great directors. Now her media diet is mostly TikTok and gaming YouTube videos. Musically, she’s remained open to everything from classical to oldies, fortunately. As for technology, despite learning quite a bit of Python and JavaScript starting at 10-11, she’s currently uninterested in and actively hostile to understanding anything about AI architecture or underlying systems.
Is this a teenage phase? Maybe. I’m hoping with everything I have that it is, and that the curiosity I modeled for her will resurface eventually. You can create the ideal environment, model the behavior you want, and do everything you can as a parent. But once kids develop autonomy and see what their peers are doing, they make their own choices. Sometimes those choices look nothing like what you hoped to cultivate.
