I had a large amount of screentime as a child. And if I could go back in time and have a do-over, I would have liked even more screentime. If I had replaced my entire school life with screentime, I sincerely think I would be 10x to 100x more powerful.
“So Visa what about when you have kids? Or what about your nephews? Do they get unlimited screentime?”
The framing of this is all wrong IMHO. Focusing on screentime strikes me as short-sighted. What do I care about, with kids?
Attention, curiosity, imagination, expressiveness
So rather than try to control a child’s media consumption, which strikes me as a losing game that breeds resentment, frustration and guilt all around, I find it more prudent to challenge kids to talk about what they’ve been watching. I’m genuinely curious, so no faking necessary
A child’s mind is a wild, unruly thing. Lots of adults struggle to appreciate the real value of pre-socialized thinking and expression. Your kid might be watching dumb shit, sure, but you can have intelligent conversations about dumb shit!!
This is one of my fav examples to point at, and it’s really a great visual representation of what I think adults should be doing with kids all the time.
Don’t tell them what to do or how to be. Help them see the magic they already have, & nurture that
it’ll never be possible for a parent to play with their kids *all* the time. And that’s not desirable, either. A parent’s job is to parent, not be a 24/7 playmate or a coach. But honestly, IMO simply encouraging your kids and showing interest in them makes such a big difference
the encouragement does needs to be as outcome-independent as possible. That too is probably never 100% possible – but your kid should see you try. Kids shouldn’t feel like they’re being burdened with your expectations. It’ll just make them avoid you (and you’ll blame the screens)
My growing suspicion about people… is that people talk about things to avoid talking about deeper issues. The fight over dishes is not about the dishes, it’s about your marriage, about sensitivity and attentiveness and needs. The worry about screens is not about the screens IMO
Of course this is really a long-winded way for me to make my usual point that too many people avoid talking about things they should be talking about.
If a parent says “my kid has a screen problem” I’m not gonna OVERRULE them and say “no they don’t!” I can’t possibly know.
But I do think it’s really common for perceived problems to actually be symptoms of other problems upstream, and “what might this be downstream of” is a very handy heuristic to carry with you always.
_
I had problems sleeping as a teenager because I was stressed about schoolwork. I would wake up nauseous with no appetite because I was stressed about schoolwork, and poor sleep + bad nutrition meant I could never focus on my schoolwork, which made me more anxious… good times!
In fact, I picked up cigarette smoking as a way of self-medicating my undiagnosed anxiety. Several of my friends tried it, but it didn’t stick for everyone – it stuck for those of us for whom it was solving a real problem. People seldom seem to realize this about drug problems
I didn’t “have a cigarette problem”, I was using cigarettes to medicate my “visa/school mismatch” problem, which had catalysts including a “parental pressure” problem, “societal pressure” problem
if I were diagnosed they’d just have put me on meds rather than address all of that
“are you seriously blaming society for your personal failings”
yes
the responsibility to fix it is mine
but I didn’t fuck me up, I was doing fine.
about 10-30% of my energy, sometimes up to 95% (that’s about 1% of the time, thankfully) is spent undoing the damage that school did to me. With each passing year this becomes more and more clearly true. I measure progress by the diminishing frequency of school-related nightmares.
“school did damage to you? what are you some fucking snowflake”
yes, in the sense that I got picked on 10x-100x more for being a highly-visible minority
not whining about it; just saying it is what it is
rare for people to really understand this.
Anyway. If your teenager is staring at a screen for troubling lengths of time, I bet there’s probably something else going on other than just “the evil screen is seductive portal to hell”. They might be trying to get away from something; that something might even be you.