this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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We're not allowing our daughter to have screentime until she's two. Other than one video call with her grandparents recently, or to show her images of real animals for education.
It's been pretty easy really. I'm glad we chose to do it. She's 17 months old now and doing great! Just watching her play and learn in the world around her is awesome, I can't imagine her sitting and staring in one direction for 30m straight while some over-energised over-saturated kids show blares at her.
She's too young to understand the narrative, she's too young to understand the art, so what's she getting out of it, other than a bright distraction?
Her mother and I are both super nerdy tech people who love film and gaming, so she's going to have screens in her life at some point, no doubt, but why rush it? Every day she develops more, and understands more about the world around her, and I want to encourage that first.
Same here, we've made it to 3 now without any screens and our house looks like a children's book library, our daughter is bilingual and ahead of her age cohort. Of course that's again a correlation/causation thing, but being able to connect with her over reading books, answering questions (so.many. questions...) has been wonderful. She'll be hit with digital everything soon enough, so why rush it indeed. At the moment she's doing video calls with the grandparents and very occasionally looking at photos or animals on the phone, and that's it.
I have a niece and nephew who are hooked on screens. And while I do care about my brother and sister in law, they obviously allow that to happen.
We were on a trip together just last week, and I was surprised to see they couldn’t get through a meal without their tablets (both had their own of course). They are both bright kids, and they still played with toys and did kid stuff. But they also did a lot of screen time that just seemed like too much. And whatever they were watching just seemed like nonsense garbage YouTube content.
That last sentence is the killer for me. I don't want her watching absolute brain rotting unmoderated YouTube junk ever in her life.
I'd rather download a huge library of good shows and set them up so she can watch them locally.
I'm sure I can't stop her watching absolute crap, especially when peer pressure kicks in one day, but I can hopefully help guide her little brain in the right direction to differentiate between what's distracting and what's genuinely interesting.