I was like this. I used to watch “Sunrise Semester” because it was the only thing on that early.
TV was such an insignificant part of my daughters life. I don’t think she even remembers those shows. Lots of learning took place at home with reading and work books. She was not into video games. I prepared my daughter for the SAT myself. We lived in a location where there was so much for kids to do outside the home. On weekends we would go to the museums and spend time outdoors. I think most of our memories were of the quality time we spent together with friends and family. She was so involved in sports, community service, summer academic programs, and other activities she didn’t have time to sit and watch tv. I remember one year in our home we didn’t even have a tv and today we could probably manage without one. Our lives never revolved around it. Even now in the evenings I just shut off my phone because I want some quiet time. During dinner we sit together and talk about our day or what we have planned for the future.
A couple years ago, DS discovered that almost all the students in his AP Physics B class had been avid Blues Clues fans.
https://www.healthychildren.org/English/family-life/Media/Pages/Why-to-Avoid-TV-Before-Age-2.aspx
Interesting article on TV viewing before age 2. I don’t know if its based on good science but it does offer some interesting thoughts.
“…Infants may stare at the bright colors and motion on a screen, but their brains are incapable of making sense or meaning out of all those bizarre pictures. It takes 2 full years for a baby’s brain to develop to the point where the symbols on a screen come to represent their equivalents in the real world. …”
At the bottom , they mention 2 hours a day being sort of a maximum, so let’s not make people feel guilty if their child is entertained and safe during say dinner prep. Life is hard enough, and not everyone is so fortunate as to have a dedicated childminder available for every waking hour. Egad.
Yes, I agree that kids including infants need simulation from 3D visual sources, smells, touch as well as opportunities to develop gross and fine motor skills. I hate to say it, but the most efficient way of providing this would be
universal high-quality child care and a parent training class to encourage talking to children and things like playing on the floor with a ball
If you are fortunate enough to have good knowledge of proper parenting practices, by having a good education and likely a good home background of your own, and fortunate enough to not be working 2 or 3 jobs, to have two parents in the home or an extended family of loving helpers, just opt out…
I also believe that since it rare to have children as subjects of a study, that the odds are really high that TV watching is highly correlated to lower level of parent involvement, in other words, it’s not the TV it’s the lack of all the other things that children need to build those vast arrays of neurons and their interpersonal skills. The Romanian orphanages were a good study group, but handing a baby an iPad in public is hardly years of rampant neglect.
The biggest concern of mine, as a mom to a teen, is the toxic effect of online porn on the youth now and as they age. This is just one slice of the issue of screen-time, but it terrifies me.
I don’t know why everyone wears it as a badge of honor when they say their kids didn’t watch TV. There are great programs on TV–Animal Planet, Discovery, NatGeo, History Channel, etc. produce mind-blowing educational content. Like most things, TV is an excellent resource when used correctly.
Pickone1
I am a single parent and have always been a working parent. I was even taking Masters classes while daughter was growing up. Dinner time together was the one meal we could relax and have together and catch up. After daughter would go to bed I would work till late night in the evening. I really didn’t have anyone to help me with raising my daughter. I couldn’t afford nannies. I don’t think not watching tv is a badge of honor it is just we didn’t have time for it when there was so much else that needed to get done. Evenings were busy with afterschool activities, dinner, homework, and then bedtime. Morning was a rush to get out the door to beat the traffic. We didn’t have the benefit of two incomes and lived in an apartment. What life has taught me is that you don’t really need a lot to live. A lot of what we have are nice to haves not requirements. We both have what we need but it would probably seemed like less by most peoples standards. I know my friends had a lot more as far as material things. I don’t even own any Apple products because they are too expensive. Our journey was very difficult but all the hard work paid off. I learned to enjoy and be happy in the present no matter what the circumstance. Daughter is attending college with a full four year tuition scholarship and has a good head on her shoulders. What more could I ask for.
Sometimes I get tired of the “technology has got us in a bad place” rants.
We all enjoy technology in our daily life. The call to elderly parents states away. The 411 call when you are broken down. Reading not only your local paper on your iPad, but your favorite newspaper states away. The 30 minutes chatting on CC. I can be so much more productive at work with a computer in front of me. I will not knock technology.
What I will knock is choices. We choose to spend too much time on devices. We choose to hand our child a device in a restaurant instead of coloring the Bob Evans coloring page. We choose to not pick up the magazine in the doc’s office, but to stare at our phone instead. We choose to buy electronics as gifts - “because that is what he/she really wants!”
Children became addicted to devices because adults became addicted to devices. Modeling. Monkey see, monkey do.
Making choices is nothing new. We make LOTS of bad choices. While I don’t wish for any child to spend hours on a device, I REALLY wish they would wear a bike helmet! I REALLY wish parents would go out and exercise with their children. I REALLY wish that schools would prioritize recess. So how can I advocate for these things? Offer to read a book to a friends child when I’m visiting. Run my 56 year old legs around the neighborhood with a smile so people see that exercise is good for any age. Buy a cool bicycle helmet and bike “toys” as a gift.
Be a model for your kids, grandkids, neighbors and relatives. Then hope for the best.
@Parent1337 absolutely. I love travel shows since I can experience the world’s cultures and natural wonders and am not impacting that culture or environment, not wasting precious jet fuel to travel all over the world, and not forcing them to erect a McDs in Patagonia.
How about some thoughts on whether a baby born in 2015 will live the life we have or even understand.
For example, I don’t know if in 2035 people will really be interacting with physical interfaces more than with screen or more likely some kind of sophisticated computer interface. So is it more important to understand how a ball bounces or how a ball bounces on a screen? Learning to relate 2D images to 3D is actually very useful both from a technical standpoint (engineers often build something from a CAD model that is at first highly conceptual) and from an enjoyment standpoint (I can’t be at the beach every night for a sunset, but I can see a beach and use the neural pathways that are pleasurable to relax and signal the end of my day). I need to use a computer for most of my job, complex engineering analysis, data gathering, interactions with a geographically dispersed team, controlling dangerous equipment, using instrumentation, analyzing data. I need to make this rather dry combination of letters, numbers, colors and shapes into something that represents what I need to do and that is enjoyable and absorbing so that I can remain productive for 8 hours a day for years. I need to improve on how these letters, numbers, colors, shapes relate to real objects and how they function. So if I train to really like looking at one of the video games for days at a time, finding enjoyment in making it to the next level, is that now helping me adapt to my life or is it a hinderance?
Would it be better to experience a pile of say marbles, many pictures of marbles, a 3D virtual world of marbles, a poem about marbles, a song about marbles … or a game with marbles on my mom’s phone.
Or for an example that may resonate with anyone over say 50, would you have predicted that a mouse would be all you need to operate many software packages, that your finger would replace that mouse, and that you would be typing many, many hours a day?
I need to effectively communicate with my team, which means writing coherent emails (yes and picking up the phone). I need to understand this virtual form of communications enough to avoid angering people, and ideally enough to build a relationship with these people that is mutually agreeable, highly productive, and adaptable to unknown future activities.
If I can negotiate a somewhat virtual relationship with a far-flung team, I no longer have to spend hours and gas and carbon emissions to go off to a different place to work. I need one place, not two (office + home). I am home after 8 hours, not 10.
In a world where we have given up the easy forms of community (my family has lived here for generations and gone to church here, etc), we need to build some virtual relationships, find people with common interests. We have the ability to stay in touch with people who move … which is better than slowly losing friends as we move several times, change jobs, etc. We need to have ways of meeting new people (Facebook connections, LinkedIn connections, etc, places to chat).
Even video games, the bane of all teenage boy parent’s existance, are evolving into collaborative exercises that often involve people who know each other IRL. And if one of them moves to Cali, they can keep together.
The world has changed a lot in the last 35 years that I have been an adult and I don’t think that is going to stop or that people will do things that do not provide them some enjoyment and are better than what else they have available. Novelty is novelty, so maybe texting at dinner will stop, or maybe some people will choose to have virtual family or friend or CC contact dinners while staring at some kind of screen or hologram.
Or I can check Meetup and find a group of fellow hikers that are leaving tomorrow morning and have an instant group of fellow hikers, some of whom I may actually grow to like.
It is all possible, some may be much better than we expect and some may be much worse. Some things will be taken to extremes or be addictive (And certainly there is an addiction out there for anyone who can’t practice moderation or, to be realistic and kind, for people who are not doing well in their lives and seek some relief). Some will turn out to be not practical or just be overrun by new things. Big box -> Amazon -> ???
I firmly believe that humans are hardwired for social contact and connection and that this won’t be stopped by mere technology.
I remember driving across the country for a year with no phone and only a vague plan of when we’d be where. I’m surprised my parents didn’t have kittens. They mailed us stuff at agreed upon spots and we called collect or when we were with relatives.
Email was a fabulous invention. I remember when I thought faxes were a fabulous invention.
The environment and culture is constantly changing and things are definitely different from when my daughter was young. There are a lot of educational tools on the internet. The concern is having very young kids in front of the screen. My doctor was telling me that too much time in front of the screen disturbs sleep patterns. It takes longer for the mind to switch off when you watch “blue” screen. Especially for growing children lack of sleep is an issue.
Oh my gosh I had forgotten when faxes were cool. I can remember the special filmy paper that faxes used back then. Wow.
TV’s have been around for decades. So the watching of too much tv - which is the case for alot of America’s children - from toddlers on up - is not a new problem nor a result of modern technology. It’s a result of someone in the house not turning the tv off!!!
My concern about today’s technology (for myself, other adults AND kids) is that it is so portable. When we (or our kids) watched TV, at some point that TV stayed at home and the family left the house! Now- my iphone, iPad, iPod etc goes with me (and with many kids) so there is often no real break. I don’t run with my phone, but otherwise I get the shakes if I am more than 3 feet away from it. I own lots of Apple products. My kids watched TV and I watch TV. I think there is a lot of good stuff on TV- especially now.
OP here. Thank you for all the responses - its great to hear all points of view. I like the new technology, especially when I see/hear my college age boys “getting together” in different states playing the same game, talking and laughing while they do this. Or being able to skype with them (well if my boys would actually do this!) I was just wondering how technology with babies, toddlers and young children might affect them, especially as MomofWildChild mentioned, they are now portable. Love to hear more…
MOWC, I’ll give you that point about being “portable”. So true.
OP-
There are many more things to worry about in the world than this.
^ So true, especially for me as my boys are now grown. 
My concern is that these screens are like strobe lights in front of not yet hard wired brains.