Had to bite my tongue when a mom at the park said her 6-year-old's constant screen time was 'fine because he's learning'

I almost said out loud that handing a kid a tablet so you can scroll your own phone for two hours is not the same as educational content, has anyone else noticed this parenting blind spot?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_tessa12d ago

Is it just me or does that kind of thing set the kid up for a pretty rough time once they hit school? Because if a 6 year old is used to constant screen time for "learning", they're going to have a real hard time sitting through a teacher explaining something on a whiteboard without a flashing cartoon to hold their attention. My neighbor's kid is like that and his kindergarten teacher basically had to reteach him how to focus on anything that wasn't a screen.

alice33610d ago

Oh man, I totally get where you're coming from! I actually read this article from a child development researcher who said that a lot of those "educational" apps are really just shallow reward loops that don't teach deeper thinking. She talked about how kids need messy, real-world play to build problem-solving skills - stuff like figuring out how to build a fort or negotiating turns on the slide. It's like the screen gives them all the answers instantly, so they never learn to sit with a hard problem. And you're right about the school thing too, I've heard teachers say the same thing about kids who expect everything to be an animated game.