Great conversation! One takeaway for me is how important discernment and judgment is for a parent. Simple rules like no screen time are easy to enforce (and easy for others to comprehend), but taking the time to be thoughtful and discerning, and teaching kids to do the same, opens up far more opportunities for growth.
In addition to curating content, we use a TV on an arm that can be rotated throughout our main living space for all videos and video games. The popular advice is to avoid having a TV visible but since our goal isn't actually to never watch any videos making it easy to watch together and discuss has worked well for us. Plus this way they can use the rebounder and swing and whatnot during long webinars. And for what it's worth the kids do a ton of playing and reading and the existence of a turned off TV has never been a distraction to them.
We also gave them our old e-ink readers as soon as they could read fluently. I see lots of negativity about kids reading on anything but paper, but the fact that they can read each other's annotations and easily look up words they don't know has been fantastic.
I don’t believe we need to completely eliminate screens. They absolutely have value for education and research. But when it comes to video games, that’s where I get concerned. There’s so much happening in those spaces that many of us as parents don’t fully understand. There are predators and plain old bullies hiding behind screens, and they’re not always easy to recognize.
More than anything, I believe we have to stay informed. We have to keep learning, asking questions, and educating ourselves so we can truly protect and guide our kids in a world that’s changing faster than we ever imagined. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Please take advantage of my substack. This is exactly what my content is about as well.
Great conversation! One takeaway for me is how important discernment and judgment is for a parent. Simple rules like no screen time are easy to enforce (and easy for others to comprehend), but taking the time to be thoughtful and discerning, and teaching kids to do the same, opens up far more opportunities for growth.
Great and useful. I'm already thinking about what child friendly social media might look like. Anyone interested in design or deployment can DM me.
In addition to curating content, we use a TV on an arm that can be rotated throughout our main living space for all videos and video games. The popular advice is to avoid having a TV visible but since our goal isn't actually to never watch any videos making it easy to watch together and discuss has worked well for us. Plus this way they can use the rebounder and swing and whatnot during long webinars. And for what it's worth the kids do a ton of playing and reading and the existence of a turned off TV has never been a distraction to them.
We also gave them our old e-ink readers as soon as they could read fluently. I see lots of negativity about kids reading on anything but paper, but the fact that they can read each other's annotations and easily look up words they don't know has been fantastic.
I don’t believe we need to completely eliminate screens. They absolutely have value for education and research. But when it comes to video games, that’s where I get concerned. There’s so much happening in those spaces that many of us as parents don’t fully understand. There are predators and plain old bullies hiding behind screens, and they’re not always easy to recognize.
More than anything, I believe we have to stay informed. We have to keep learning, asking questions, and educating ourselves so we can truly protect and guide our kids in a world that’s changing faster than we ever imagined. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Please take advantage of my substack. This is exactly what my content is about as well.