apple juice

Good article today in the NYT about screen time and kids. No hard research, but the gut feeling of a number of people in tech that we all need to dial it back when it come to screen time.

This idea that Silicon Valley parents are wary about tech is not new. The godfathers of tech expressed these concerns years ago, and concern has been loudest from the top.

A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley

Raising Minimalist Children in a Society of Excess:

“Don’t feel guilty. Modern parents are made to feel as if they are depriving their children of ‘the best’ if they don’t sign them up for every lesson, take them to every movie, or buy them every brain-enhancing toy. Advertising companies are paying billions of dollars to make you think this. It is not reality… it is a fictional version of reality they are selling. Let it go. Don’t ‘buy’ into it. You are not depriving your children; you are enhancing their mental and emotional development by letting the real world around them captivate and interest them. Do you think the Smiths’ kids are really better off because they spend all their free time in front of a television or playing with a DSI?”

Amen!

. . . raising children in the United States now isn’t more dangerous than it was when today’s generation of parents were young. And back then, it was reasonably safe, too. So why does shooing the kids outside and telling them to have fun and be home by dark seem irresponsible to so many middle-class parents today?

from Stop worrying about your children!

It seems to me that parents these days are worried about things they shouldn’t be, and not worried enough about the things they should.

I remember growing up with basically a home range. This amounted to the distance I could cover on my bike and still be home by dark. As I remember it, I would regularly bike to my baseball games, bike and walk to school, bike to friends houses, the mall, the library, etc. Granted we lived in the suburbs, but still. That was a lot of busy roads and what amounted to basically a 10 square mile area.