The co-viewing thing is one big reason why I've come to believe that the problem is less social media/YouTube/Tiktok/etc than personal screens. When everything is on a big TV screen (super huge TV in today's typical family) in a (relatively) central location with the volume turned up loud enough you can hear it from a typical seating position several feet away on a couch....you almost get co-viewing by default.
Once you have private screens it becomes orders of magnitude harder. It's one thing with teens but with toddlers and elementary school aged children I've come to believe the bigger problem is handing kids an iPad rather than screen time per se. If they were watching YouTube on the big TV in the living room I feel like a lot of issues would be lessened.
Absolutely. We do everything on the tv in the sitting room, and I feel like this is much easier to control. Kiddos only YouTube time is when grandma is visiting and they watch Lego speed builds on the sofa.
I think one important thing to note is that if a child begins to feel like they aren't being listened to or understood when it comes to any part of the internet, it becomes a slippery slope to hiding their usage and viewing history (which is all too easy). As a kid, I always felt that my mother was very fearful of the internet and didn't understand why I liked YouTube, which meant I felt isolated from my peers who had more internet access than I did - I began to hide my usage so I wouldn't feel left out and it led to me watching content that I probably shouldn't have at that age. Teenagers will always want what they can't have! There's definitely an achievable, happy balance.
Thank you for crafting a digestible, easy to refer to and to share article about kids and screens. Navigating the relationship between kids and screens is one of the hardest challenges faced by today's parents, and this type of article makes it a little bit easier.
The co-viewing thing is one big reason why I've come to believe that the problem is less social media/YouTube/Tiktok/etc than personal screens. When everything is on a big TV screen (super huge TV in today's typical family) in a (relatively) central location with the volume turned up loud enough you can hear it from a typical seating position several feet away on a couch....you almost get co-viewing by default.
Once you have private screens it becomes orders of magnitude harder. It's one thing with teens but with toddlers and elementary school aged children I've come to believe the bigger problem is handing kids an iPad rather than screen time per se. If they were watching YouTube on the big TV in the living room I feel like a lot of issues would be lessened.
Absolutely. We do everything on the tv in the sitting room, and I feel like this is much easier to control. Kiddos only YouTube time is when grandma is visiting and they watch Lego speed builds on the sofa.
I think one important thing to note is that if a child begins to feel like they aren't being listened to or understood when it comes to any part of the internet, it becomes a slippery slope to hiding their usage and viewing history (which is all too easy). As a kid, I always felt that my mother was very fearful of the internet and didn't understand why I liked YouTube, which meant I felt isolated from my peers who had more internet access than I did - I began to hide my usage so I wouldn't feel left out and it led to me watching content that I probably shouldn't have at that age. Teenagers will always want what they can't have! There's definitely an achievable, happy balance.
Thank you for crafting a digestible, easy to refer to and to share article about kids and screens. Navigating the relationship between kids and screens is one of the hardest challenges faced by today's parents, and this type of article makes it a little bit easier.
I posted this to FB this morning and it got removed for being inappropriate :/
A happy medium (Shipping Up To Boston by The Wiggles): https://open.spotify.com/track/0yuZU2nhvlgWd2oXr984nq?si=80766da1a0a84706