98% of children aged 0 – 8 years spend more than 2 hours/day on screens

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:2 hours a day sounds like a lot. Where did you get that stat? My kids don't watch TV (we don't have it, and they've never been into shows). Oldest is 7 and has lots of friends in a similar situation. No video games or apps either. Occasional movie nights, but right now due to the youngest it's a short film, like 30 min.

Do you want a cookie or something?

TV isn’t evil.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How is it shocking? Growing up we had TV and video games.

I don't care how long my child is on it as long as they do their schoolwork, activities, music practice and exercise.

+1, but DCUM gonna DCUM.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:2 hours a day sounds like a lot. Where did you get that stat? My kids don't watch TV (we don't have it, and they've never been into shows). Oldest is 7 and has lots of friends in a similar situation. No video games or apps either. Occasional movie nights, but right now due to the youngest it's a short film, like 30 min.

Do you want a cookie or something?

TV isn’t evil.

OP: Do your kids watch TV/etc? Average kid watches/uses 2 hours a day.

PP: Hm, 2 hours sounds high. My kids don't really watch any TV.

You: Obviously PP is an idiot who thinks TV is the devil incarnate, and that she's better than everyone else. I am a normal person who is not at all
wildly defensive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:2 hours a day sounds like a lot. Where did you get that stat? My kids don't watch TV (we don't have it, and they've never been into shows). Oldest is 7 and has lots of friends in a similar situation. No video games or apps either. Occasional movie nights, but right now due to the youngest it's a short film, like 30 min.

Do you want a cookie or something?

TV isn’t evil.

OP: Do your kids watch TV/etc? Average kid watches/uses 2 hours a day.

PP: Hm, 2 hours sounds high. My kids don't really watch any TV.

You: Obviously PP is an idiot who thinks TV is the devil incarnate, and that she's better than everyone else. I am a normal person who is not at all
wildly defensive.

?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:2 hours a day sounds like a lot. Where did you get that stat? My kids don't watch TV (we don't have it, and they've never been into shows). Oldest is 7 and has lots of friends in a similar situation. No video games or apps either. Occasional movie nights, but right now due to the youngest it's a short film, like 30 min.

Do you want a cookie or something?

TV isn’t evil.

OP: Do your kids watch TV/etc? Average kid watches/uses 2 hours a day.

PP: Hm, 2 hours sounds high. My kids don't really watch any TV.

You: Obviously PP is an idiot who thinks TV is the devil incarnate, and that she's better than everyone else. I am a normal person who is not at all
wildly defensive.

Time to log off, dear.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:2 hours a day sounds like a lot. Where did you get that stat? My kids don't watch TV (we don't have it, and they've never been into shows). Oldest is 7 and has lots of friends in a similar situation. No video games or apps either. Occasional movie nights, but right now due to the youngest it's a short film, like 30 min.

Do you want a cookie or something?

TV isn’t evil.

OP: Do your kids watch TV/etc? Average kid watches/uses 2 hours a day.

PP: Hm, 2 hours sounds high. My kids don't really watch any TV.

You: Obviously PP is an idiot who thinks TV is the devil incarnate, and that she's better than everyone else. I am a normal person who is not at all
wildly defensive.

Time to log off, dear.

You first, darling.

[Anonymous]

My 22 month old knows all of her letters and numbers by sight, colors and shapes etc, is playing with complex puzzles. She also watches probably 2-4 hours of tv depending on the day. My husband grew up as a latchkey kid watching tv for hours and hours every day and graduated from an Ivy League law school. I think 95% of how kids turn out is genetic. Unless you're really ignoring them there's not much you can do to stunt their potential.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My 22 month old knows all of her letters and numbers by sight, colors and shapes etc, is playing with complex puzzles. She also watches probably 2-4 hours of tv depending on the day. My husband grew up as a latchkey kid watching tv for hours and hours every day and graduated from an Ivy League law school. I think 95% of how kids turn out is genetic. Unless you're really ignoring them there's not much you can do to stunt their potential.

I agree completely. My single mother had schizophrenia and was an alcoholic. I watched TV non-stop when I wasn't in school. I graduated from a good university and an Ivy League law school.

[Anonymous]

I admit I deal with it too, but how much more time would we have if we gave up the guilt on screen time?

[Anonymous]

Pre-Covid we were part of the 2% - kids watched 1 or 2 shows when they got home from school and that was it. On the weekends they could watch 1 or 2 in the morning as well. They had very limited leap pad/ipad/kindle time and for the most part never asked about it.

Post-Covid, hahahahahahaha.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:NP who knows how to use Google:

https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/15/health/screen-time-averages-parenting/index.html

"Report: Kids up to age 8 spend spend an average of 2 hours and 19 minutes every day on screen media"

This is from 2017, so everyone please smooth your pandemic hackles.

I don't understand how people are skeptical of this stat. It includes older kids along with babies, and it's an average. When I was growing up, we barely had a computer, no gaming system, no internet, no cable. But the TV was on almost all day. I got 2 hours a day on weekdays and I was only home and awake about 2 hours a day on weekdays. That's not a defense, BTW-- I just don't see how it's shocking.

I have trouble believing that the curve here is that narrow. The 98% statistic isn't in that article, and it seems really unlikely that the 2nd%ile would be that close to the average.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I admit I deal with it too, but how much more time would we have if we gave up the guilt on screen time?

This. I very much want to be one of those people who doesn't care, and I think sometimes I even accomplish it, but it's such a constant touchpoint for parents that it's impossible not to feel at least some guilt about my kid watching TV.

Though realistically, if we got rid of the guilt about TV, we would just replace it with something else -- what our kids eat, where they go to school, how much exercise they get, how much time they spend reading, etc. There is no escaping parental guilt in our culture at this point. It's baked into the very idea of becoming a parent. We encourage people to have children, offer little to no societal support to families, and then sit back and grade parents on how they perform. Which, in the end, is just a way of grading parents on their available resources since that's what it boils down to anyway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My 22 month old knows all of her letters and numbers by sight, colors and shapes etc, is playing with complex puzzles. She also watches probably 2-4 hours of tv depending on the day. My husband grew up as a latchkey kid watching tv for hours and hours every day and graduated from an Ivy League law school. I think 95% of how kids turn out is genetic. Unless you're really ignoring them there's not much you can do to stunt their potential.

I agree completely. My single mother had schizophrenia and was an alcoholic. I watched TV non-stop when I wasn't in school. I graduated from a good university and an Ivy League law school.

So attending an Ivy is the be all and end all of life? As a fellow Ivy alum (and not Cornell) I know you know that isn’t true.

You can’t prove a negative. You can’t say how much better you would have been without so much TV.

So you’re saying you couldn’t be more creative, more imaginative, more athletic, more engaged, happier or more secure?

I let my kids watch TV, btw. I just loathe faulty logic and false justifications.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Of course they do (unless you are in a household where one parent is not working) - what world are those who think otherwise living in?

Or a household with a nanny. DH is deployed and I work full time from home (currently). We have an 8 year old and two year old and are solidly in the 2%. Toddler has never seen a screen and older DS gets one show and 30 minutes on his tablet when I’m putting toddler to bed.

I am assuming this doesn’t include remote school.

Why would you assume this? Of course it includes school, and screens at school, etc . . .

Where is your toddler when their sibling is doing school? Where are they when you are on DCUM? How have they never been to a store that had screens?

No, it doesn’t include remote school. It couldn’t.

It included school. So, now to make a comparison you need to include remote school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My 22 month old knows all of her letters and numbers by sight, colors and shapes etc, is playing with complex puzzles. She also watches probably 2-4 hours of tv depending on the day. My husband grew up as a latchkey kid watching tv for hours and hours every day and graduated from an Ivy League law school. I think 95% of how kids turn out is genetic. Unless you're really ignoring them there's not much you can do to stunt their potential.

I agree completely. My single mother had schizophrenia and was an alcoholic. I watched TV non-stop when I wasn't in school. I graduated from a good university and an Ivy League law school.

So attending an Ivy is the be all and end all of life? As a fellow Ivy alum (and not Cornell) I know you know that isn’t true.

You can’t prove a negative. You can’t say how much better you would have been without so much TV.

So you’re saying you couldn’t be more creative, more imaginative, more athletic, more engaged, happier or more secure?

I let my kids watch TV, btw. I just loathe faulty logic and false justifications.

You need to unclench.