Screens are horrible. I am absolutely not on the side of screens in general and Amazon deserves this attack. But please don't comment to complain about bad parenting if you haven't had kids or had 1 or 2 neuro typical, easy kids and a wife who did most of the parenting. You really don't know. Really.
torben-friis 2 hours ago [-]
This feels somewhere between an Onion article and one of those vintage ads for giving children cocaine.
mikeaskew4 19 minutes ago [-]
Closer to the coke, unfortunately
hn_throwaway_99 21 minutes ago [-]
I was thinking about what a great commentary Toy Story 5 was on this topic. I'm surprised Amazon didn't call their tablet a Lily Pad.
I recently watched Toy Story 5 on a long flight. I almost felt it should come with a trigger warning - I thought it was a spot on, brilliant yet inherently depressing commentary on on current relationship with tech.
(Minor spoiler alert) One of my favorite scenes was when a slew of toys were running through a house with a family inside. Normally in the Toy Story world when a human see the toys they need to "play dead", but since all the humans were glued to their screens they could run by unimpeded.
SoftTalker 1 hours ago [-]
Well we give them meth, so why not?
TedDoesntTalk 2 hours ago [-]
… until your get to the political messages further down.
1 hours ago [-]
alt227 7 hours ago [-]
IMO even parents who use digital devices to pacify their children know they are making bad choices, but just choose to anyway out of convenience. This choice mirrors a lot which adults have to make these days, and fighting convenience requires strong will and sticking to principles. This is not something which comes naturally or easily to humans unfortunately.
criddell 24 minutes ago [-]
My kids liked to watch Dora the Explorer and Sesame Street (before the age of YouTube). They had to catch it when it was on and when it was over, that was it. They had to go find something else to do. The scarcity made my job as parent a lot easier.
kj4211cash 40 minutes ago [-]
It's also a slippery slope. And a function of our society. We went in with the best of intentions and I'm now letting my toddlers watch 30 or 40 minutes of TV a day. It started with one quick work meeting that I couldn't reschedule or skip. Then they started asking for it, demanding it really. It has taken incredibly strong will to limit their watching to 30 or 40 minutes in the early morning.
vorpalhex 6 hours ago [-]
It's not as if the kids who get the digital pacifiers are well behaved.
Usually my kids are sitting quietly at the table and playing with their little cars or whatever while some kid is melting down that he ran out of roblox or his game isn't working.
I've literally seen kids that are 9 or 10 act this way in public! Like little babies!
Exoristos 2 hours ago [-]
Addiction brings out the worst in people; they're suffering and only become aware -- keenly aware -- between "fixes."
skinfaxi 2 hours ago [-]
Have you considered that their actions could be a consequence of their continued and prolonged stimulation through digital pacification?
californical 57 minutes ago [-]
I think that’s exactly what the GP was saying
skinfaxi 44 minutes ago [-]
The parent comment said "It's not as if the kids who get the digital pacifiers are well behaved." which I was directly responding to.
trollbridge 2 hours ago [-]
Get kids an old computer. They prefer something big they can see, with switches that make a resounding clunk, and drives that make clanking noises.
To a kid, playing games from the 1980s off a floppy disk is not a significantly difficult experience than using the very latest technology, but I suspect the former is far better for their developing brains.
Meanwhile, you can get them to learn how to type on the keyboard and learn the basics of needing to type in commands to make the computer do something, which is a lifelong skill - tapping icons on a tablet is not.
Don't give kids a computer, give them a camera. A real one.
SoftTalker 1 hours ago [-]
A toddler needs manipulative toys to develop patience and motor control. Blocks to stack, puzzles to fit together, balls to throw and catch, books with pages to turn. Nothing electronic at all.
boothby 6 hours ago [-]
> “Kids want a real tablet, not a toy,” the Jeff Bezos-founded company said in a press release
An almost verbatim line from Toy Story. Incredible. Only the main character was quite a bit older than 3.
skinfaxi 2 hours ago [-]
I have a rule for gifts for my kids: no screens. Toys are so much more interesting than screens. They'll prob end up staring at screens their whole lives for work.
Inspired by "Toy Story 5" ... It's amazing how catatonic my 7 year-old can become in a phone or tablet.
kazinator 1 hours ago [-]
> “Kids want a real tablet, not a toy,”
And they have them, like cheap Lenovos and whatnot.
rwyinuse 7 hours ago [-]
Somebody should study whether giving a smart device to a toddler increases their chances of getting ADHD diagnosis and medication at later age. Probably the answer is yes.
If shitty parent's don't care about well-being of their children, they could at least consider the cost of future medication, not to even mention likely worse performance in school and job market.
jdiff 7 hours ago [-]
From the article,
> While observing 422 children ages 3 to 5, a 2022 study led by Radesky found that mobile device use for calming — in other words, a digital pacifier — was associated with “decreased executive functioning and increased emotional reactivity.” (Executive function refers to memory and problem-solving skills needed for everyday life. Emotional reactivity refers to poor impulse control in response to stress, pain, and other negative feelings.)
ADHD is a type of executive function disorder.
seabass-labrax 6 hours ago [-]
The study doesn't claim causation. Instead of mobile device use causing executive dysfunction, it is more probable that the correlation is because mobile device use is more effective at calming down a child with poor executive function than a child with typical executive function. That's not to say it's a good way of calming of course.
throw76539 2 hours ago [-]
Alas, you've received downvotes even though the substance of what you say is valid.
I'll say it's misguided, as well as the root comment to which you're reaponding. The particular study soesnmt show causation, but there's a growing bidy of research that does (it's easy to find).
senordevnyc 37 minutes ago [-]
The meta analysis study referenced in the article that covers 2.8 million kids in total did not find a link between screen exposure and executive functioning issues (or with math, science, reading, and a few other things). But I couldn’t tell from the summary what age ranges were covered.
vcryan 6 hours ago [-]
My kids must be losers - they still like books.
enjoyyourlife 5 hours ago [-]
Don't worry, Amazon still sells books
6 hours ago [-]
BLKNSLVR 1 hours ago [-]
> “Kids want a real tablet, not a toy,” the Jeff Bezos-founded company said in a press release announcing its Amazon Kids Tablets.
Kids don't fucking know the difference you dirty fucks.
Amazon going full Facebook-at-their-worst. Nice to know.
I'm going off on a big tangent here, but hear me out (or ignore me entirely because there's political content, but in a practical context - I think). Humans don't need much of an excuse to reach for an easy answer, and parenting on its own is probably one of the most difficult undertakings in the human experience. "Modern life" is becoming increasingly complex to navigate, we are bombarded with attention sucking ... everything, giving us the sense that time is so scarce that the easiest, most immediate answer is the only option. This is being made true as much for parenting - give them the electronic device - as it is for work problems - MVP, band-aid, temporary becomes permanent.
Amazon product and marketing is an accelerant of this. Encouragement of the ever decreasing time frame of what is already ridiculous short-termism. Amazon are obviously not alone in this, but neither are they working against it or wanting to leave any possible addiction-money profit on the table. This is one of the reasons I'm obsessed with blocking advertising. The more they can convince you of the importance of "all the things" the more of their things you need to buy to create more time for yourself - at the expense of your child. Nice, Jeff. Nice.
On the quality of parenting: My children's grandparents, on both sides of the family, have been a great help. I guess we've been lucky in having them available, but also (maybe accidentally) smart in not moving away from the local support network of family in order to pursue better/bigger/higher-income careers. Where this relates to the above is that, the pace of life, in combination with having children, almost requires a family support network, more specifically grandparents since they're likely retired or in the twilight of their careers and therefore have more time flexibility. Something that's become increasingly obvious to me is the 'life' advantage bestowed upon those with a local family support network over those without. This is something that often puts migrants well behind locals where my anecdotal-only example is someone I used to work with who had three kids but no extended family, and therefore school drop-offs, pick-ups, doctor's appointments and all the other general activities and emergencies that go with having kids is spread out over two people (mum and dad) rather than a full extended family network.
The point I'm trying to make is that this marketing of electronic pacifiers to parents is a symptom of the (unsustainable) increasing 'urgency' of the pace of modern life, which can be made manageable with a decent extended family support network. The advantages of which are compounding.
Something I heard that really stuck with me was: Children form most of their behavioural patterns by the age of three (or maybe it was 5), and so those early years are the most important in shaping them. It requires less work to get something right the first time, than having to fix something that's broken. This isn't to say things can't go wrong, but what it means is to do your best for those years to have a chance at being able to reclaim more of yourself at a later stage.
Ultimately, if you "just give them the tablet" now, you'll be "just giving them the tablet" for the rest of your life.
/ridiculously tangential rant (just had to get some of the thoughts written down to see how they turned out)
ArcHound 7 hours ago [-]
If you think this is a good idea, please tell my why, happy to discuss.
I have nothing else to say rn.
Edit: Thank you for all the comments. I'm still happy to discuss. I've calmed down a bit, so my responses will be slightly softer.
SillyUsername 6 hours ago [-]
This is no different to our parents generation that used to tell us to stop watching TV or get off the games console (like a Gameboy). But this is besides the point.
I feel it's great, but then I use Google Kids on the Fire, because Amazon's app is junk in comparison.
And also, my kid is (disabled) autistic and non verbal and this keeps them calm and happy.
So yes it's a great idea.
ArcHound 6 hours ago [-]
Honestly, I respect different approaches for disabled kids. Must be very hard, I can't even imagine.
Other than that, movies and games are less destructive than algorithmic feeds, especially short form video. It is preferable to move outside or read a book. But I think we're comparing vegetables to candy to cigarettes.
AnotherGoodName 6 hours ago [-]
A loaded question and I feel like people here including yourself are criticizing from the sidelines. Essentially the old "OMG you let your kid play on the phone!!! what a terrible parent!!!!". Although this isn't a phone, it's a device designed for kids with hopefully some apps that have a little more educational value than the typical phone apps.
The talk in this thread indicates absolutely no empathy for dual working parents and just repeats tired talking points. If anyone here looks back on their own childhood perhaps they actually had similar freedoms? Hell i used to play the Apple 2 obsessively from a very young age. I credit it as formative in a positive way.
You can argue that if you're both working and no one has 100% time to dedicate to raising the child they shouldn't have children but that argument leads to plummeting birth rates.
I say all of this as someone who doesn't have kids but I have at least some sense of how freaking hard it is and in the grand scheme of things a tablet designed for kids isn't the worst thing.
Tell me why an alternative that's at least better than a phone is so bad? If you want to argue a phone or any such device that keeps kids occupied for some time is unacceptable i think you're waaaaay out of touch.
CalRobert 5 hours ago [-]
My wife and I are working parents. This is nightmarish. We know screen kids and they are not good around other people.
Our kids use tech - Nintendo Switch, tv, raspberry pis, and yes, even a tablet for things like train or plane rides. But they absolutely did not get this as a toddler. Yes we were tired. Yes it was hard. Parenting isn't easy.
alt227 6 hours ago [-]
> The talk in this thread indicates absolutely no empathy for dual working parents and just repeats tired talking points.
I am a dual working parent. We dont own a tablet and our kids never get handed phones. The kids occasionally watch Bluey and Peppa pig on the TV (live not apps).
Your Apple 2 days were very different to the algorithms and feeds of today. Giving a kid a phone loaded up with the Youtube Kids app is literally like feeding them crack.
> criticizing from the sidelines
You dont even have kids, why do you have such a strong opinion on what real parents are saying about bringing up their own? You are the one criticising from the sidelines whilst us parents are making the tough choices in bringing our kids up.
ArcHound 6 hours ago [-]
I am a dual working parent. It is hard. I am not saying zero screen time.
This is still a terrible idea.
I think it's better to give them a movie rather than an algorithmic feed.
reliabilityguy 6 hours ago [-]
> The talk in this thread indicates absolutely no empathy for dual working parents and just repeats tired talking points.
My kids get no more than 10m of tablet time a day each. Both of us are working full time. When they ask for more I point them to their toys/books/etc, or play with them.
So, being dual working doesn’t mean you have to allow your kids to have lots of screen time.
AnotherGoodName 6 hours ago [-]
At least you acknowledge some screen time unlike the puritans we have in this thread but i also suspect you're not in the most extreme of difficult parenting situations.
ButlerianJihad 6 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
brotherCramIt 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
metadat 6 hours ago [-]
Parenting before the age of tablets and phones was a thing that seemed to work fairly well overall.
shoobiedoo 2 hours ago [-]
My wife and I sent our son to a remote "boarding school" type school near where we live in Japan. No phones or electronics beyond an mp3 player are allowed. We're so lucky it is cheap and readily available here.
The school's policy isn't necessarily from a "phones bad mmmkay?" perspective, but from a "our ancestors had to figure stuff out for themselves, let's foster that" perspective.
mc3301 1 hours ago [-]
Curious about this school; I live in Japan with my family.
AnotherGoodName 6 hours ago [-]
It's true and it's also true that parent's would be criticized from the sidelines for allowing kids, even from a very young age to sit in front of screens for hours on end when i was a kid.
I have a friend who didn't have a television until the age of 12. If you ask which kids turned out well adjusted and which didn't it wasn't the one's with no screen time anymore than the one's with unlimited screen time. There's some reality to life people here aren't accepting and i can't see an issue with some level of hands off parenting that this enables quite honestly.
I know people are going to attack with some extreme of "you allow your kid to be raised by a tablet" or some such but these views are all so tiresome. The reality is that majority of kids have always been allowed some form of screen time and todays screentime is going to at least be more interactive than yesterdays screentime.
phatfish 1 hours ago [-]
You can do whatever mental gymnastics you need to justify parenting decisions. But a static device located in a common area in the home is no comparison a device that follows a child everywhere which they stare at alone.
The content of TV was also vastly different. There was a barrier to entry, not an infinite stream of brainrot content.
There is just no reason to give kids such devices at a young age, far better learning experiences exist until at least 9 years old.
My wife was worried our son would be "left behind". We talked about it and I pointed out he can already navigate photos, and Spotify to play an audio book; from just looking over our shoulders every now and then. Must be around 5 hours interaction in total (he is 4).
Poking a screen is barely a skill, less than a day and he would be caught up to all the kids that had been staring at one for hours a day since they were 3.
alt227 6 hours ago [-]
This assumes TV and tablets are they same, they very much are not.
Your very point about them being more interactive is what makes them much more dangerous.
Fire-Dragon-DoL 6 hours ago [-]
The problems are tablet and phones. Apps are really bad, even the ones made for kids.
I am sure there are exceptions, but if you are a duo working parents, you don't have time to dig through children apps to figure out which are good.
Overall tv in common space is better (occasionally), you can keep an eye on what the kid is watching and how is affecting their behavior.
You realize when they are done watching tv way earlier than they are (if ever)
frankest 6 hours ago [-]
The arbitrage will show up when kids raised without screens compete for the same college / job spots as kids raised by screens.
alt227 6 hours ago [-]
Did you read the article? It clearly references many research projects which show detrimental behaviour, bad temper, and poor attention spans undeniably linked to screen time in under 6s.
TZubiri 7 hours ago [-]
doing devil’s advocate here, because it does look like a nightmare.
IF my kids were to have access to a tablet, I would prefer it be a tablet specifically desgined for kids, rather than a commodity all powerful generic computing device and OS
Fire-Dragon-DoL 6 hours ago [-]
Do notice that the big all powerful computer doesn't come with games and it's way more complicated to use, challenging the kid from the get-go.
Also they have to learn to use a mouse and a keyboard to do that. You probably forgot how hard it was to learn to use both. Double clicking was really hard for me as a kid
TZubiri 5 hours ago [-]
Maybe desktop computers? But touch computers have been designed to be dead simple to use, I don't think jobs had uniquely designed the iphone to be simple enough for a child to use, but he did design it to be usable by people from other countries and cultures with no previous training, children being able to use these touch devices is at least a side effect.
Fire-Dragon-DoL 4 hours ago [-]
I did mean desktop or laptop computers. Yes touch devices are like you described
pizza234 4 hours ago [-]
I've personally tried to do use a tablet in a productive way for the child, and it's all about the apps rather than the tablet itself. Tablets for children (Android knockoffs, essentially) provide what's needed, that is, account controls.
Problem is: there is a limited amount of apps that are genuinely fun and educative. If Amazon wanted really to do something truly educative for children, they'd build a whole market for it, the marketese I see in the article doesn't support that.
ArcHound 6 hours ago [-]
You are the parent, you can start at the IF. I'm attacking the premise, not the conclusion.
And I do respect the disclaimer, but lately my experience tells me the devil's advocates help the devil (and I'm an atheist!)
aleqs 6 hours ago [-]
a big tech device/platform designed and algorithmically optimized to hit/increase corporate metrics with small kids as the subjects... hard to imagine anything more dystopian
maybe it'll help us raise good docile consumers and workers tho /s
thenewnewguy 7 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
alt227 7 hours ago [-]
The original comment invites discussion, yours is just a pointless sarcastic response and will most likely be flagged or killed for being as such.
pizza234 7 hours ago [-]
> If you think this is a bad idea, please tell me why, happy to discuss.
There are several reasons. The most important one is that children (ab)using highly stimulating devices don't learn to be absorbed by or find reward in less stimulating ones (most importantly, books). It's exactly the same risk as giving addictive drugs to adults.
This is not theory. Just look at children whose parents give them mobile phones/tablets as pacifiers - they become easily restless.
The intellectual argument is also important. Gamified learning is nice on paper, but one can imagine what children are actually going to play.
Related to another post: the difference between a child and an adult who plays videogames is that the latter has (hopefully!) learned "slow" skills, so they can choose pastimes like this deliberately.
Having said that, I'm for forbidding children from using this type of thing, but it's a very dangerous slippery slope, and there's lots to work on before that step.
ArcHound 7 hours ago [-]
I see your points, and I kind of agree. I'm trying to express outrage.
tripleee 7 hours ago [-]
Demand for products comes from the consumer, not the producer. This trend happened a long time ago, with parents giving their kids a tablet to avoid actually parenting.
Maybe it's making the best of bad parents
ArcHound 7 hours ago [-]
Not always. AI is being pushed on plenty of people. Let's just say that not all products serve consumers and there's room for regulation.
Even if I want to buy uranium, I shouldn't. And if I want to buy a chair, I shouldn't be seeing only uranium chairs.
tripleee 6 hours ago [-]
I mean uranium can be a hazard to people around you, so I don't think that's an equivalent scenario.
Drugs could be a good analogy as it (mostly) affects yourself. A safe route for people to buy those would fix the #1 leading cause of death of young adults in the US today (fentanyl)
ctoth 7 hours ago [-]
Amusingly, I totally bought Uranium off of Amazon ~7 years ago when I wanted to test my Geiger counter. Doesn't seem to be available anymore though? Sad!
layer8 7 hours ago [-]
I thought that people don't know what they want until you show it to them? They thought they wanted faster horsies but Amazon gave them noxious cars?
tripleee 7 hours ago [-]
The demand was for transportation, not any specific product.
Amazon's target market here, wants to parent their kids without parenting their kids. Whether that's a TV with cartoons 20 years ago, a tablet 5 years ago, or a "digital pacifier" today nothing has changed. It's just being fulfilled differently.
My point is that the responsibility is on parents, not companies who will inevitably get the blame and nothing will change. See the other commenter here who said their kids don't even own a tablet.
1shooner 7 hours ago [-]
This is also a great argument for low-tar cigarettes for children.
tripleee 6 hours ago [-]
Do you have a strong argument against them?
The group of parents who let their kids smoke might get those instead, improving their health
The parents who don't allow it would never consider them
I suppose it depends how many of group 2 could be converted to 1 if they were "low tar!".. my intuition is close to zero
1shooner 6 hours ago [-]
You're asking if I have a strong argument against targeting children with tobacco products?
tripleee 6 hours ago [-]
The existence of them, yeah. I don't think it's so clear cut that it'd be a net increase in harm. Advertising I'm not so sure about, but as for the mere existence of them:
Group A is going to smoke regardless, having a healthier product reduces harm
Group B is never going to smoke no matter what's on offer
ArcHound 6 hours ago [-]
Absolutely no cigarettes should be marketed to children. That doesn't mean various cigarette-adjacent products cannot exist.
tripleee 6 hours ago [-]
The net harm result really only changes because the scope and numbers differ. I don't think I've ever met anyone who actually allows their kids to smoke, I see a lot who give them tablets though.
If we instead imagine a world where parents allowed, even encouraged 60% of children to smoke, and there was no clear route to outright stopping them, giving them at least a better alternative that doesn't hurt them as much would be worth considering
ArcHound 5 hours ago [-]
I think I get what you're saying, but it's really an unfortunate example.
I think it's still better to ban these obviously harmful things and to reduce exposure to them as much as possible.
tripleee 4 hours ago [-]
I don't see what banning it actually accomplishes unless we totally ban tablets altogether. From the way I see it, it's the parents who are choosing to give their kids tablets in order to make their own parenting job easier. Am I wrong there? What do you ban to stop that happening?
1shooner 4 hours ago [-]
This is basically the needle exchange argument. Except instead of just needles, you just want to hand out the drug.
I agree that if a parent is dead-set on giving their kid endless screen time, tobacco, or heroin, they will find a way to do it. But the tobacco story demonstrates there are many interventions that can significantly decrease the net amount of abuse. If you want to take a public health argument, do it honestly.
tripleee 2 hours ago [-]
I don't really think looking at it through the lens of tobacco works. Parents giving their children tobacco and heroin aren't a thing. In reality many are self-motivated to give them a tablet for their own benefit, nothing much to do with the kid
Screens or tablets aren't the harmful drug in this situation, they're the needle. A needle that can contain medicine or heroin. The harm is from specific apps and social media. A device can be locked down. You can control what it's able to do and how much. I've used screens to teach myself a language to fluency, a hell of a lot about software development, and countless other things.
Would you object to a tablet that could only access Khan Academy, Openstax and Udemy? What about if we added on a 20 minute allowance of social media? I haven't looked super deep into the Amazon device much but it seems this is the direction they're heading with the parental dashboard
"Educational content has to come first. Your child completes reading or learning goals in Kids+ and educational apps before entertainment apps unlock"
I mean obviously kids are going to try to game the system to get to what they want.. but it seems like a reasonable path to test, and it doesn't require trying to turn every bad parent into a good one, or do something outlandish like ban tablets
40 minutes ago [-]
voidfunc 7 hours ago [-]
They're going to use a device anyways because mom or dad are going to want to avoid parenting. Might as well give them something designed for them.
ArcHound 7 hours ago [-]
That's no reason to design devices that enable this parent behaviour. We should move in the other direction. Shaming parents who overly rely on giving kids devices for adults can be somewhat effective.
I know there's no hard leverage.
tripleee 7 hours ago [-]
So.. stop producing smartphones / tablets? TVs? What's your other option?
lrvick 7 hours ago [-]
Stop marketing to them to kids or normalizing kids using them?
This is really not that hard. Modern app culture is highly addictive and provably poison for our brains over time. Adults can choose poison if they wish but when they give it to their kids it is called child abuse.
ArcHound 7 hours ago [-]
I'm not saying go to zero. But definitely not over 3 hours and definitely not a dedicated device for them.
rpdillon 7 hours ago [-]
> Shaming parents who overly rely on giving kids devices for adults can be somewhat effective.
I'd like to hear more about the results you've gotten with this approach. How do you approach is this with your kids?
ArcHound 7 hours ago [-]
I don't have data, I don't run a study. Are you saying that shame is an ineffective mechanism of social cohesion?
With my kids, I oversee everything they do (they are under 6). They average 15min daily for two episodes of a kids show.
I'm not saying go to zero. But definitely not over 3 hours and definitely not a dedicated device for them.
pizza234 7 hours ago [-]
> How do you approach is this with your kids?
Regarding my kids: high priority, wide/curated choice (not in terms of restriction, but in terms of actively finding things they may like), accompanied learning, and, crucially, starting from a very young age. It's pretty much standard parenting, that is, one gets out what one puts in.
By the time children start to pressure for this type of devices (say, 10/12), they will have learned to enjoy books and more creative activities.
alt227 6 hours ago [-]
I am in the same boat as you, my kids have never had screens. However I do wonder that if by not teaching them to use tech sparingly at a young age, will they just fall down that hole at an older age when they are young adults?
Mobile devices and social media does not get less addictive as you get older, otherwise anybody over about 30 right now would never have any issues with it. Therefore I worry its entirely possible to bring your children up completely avoiding the downfalls of screentime, but then set them up to fall later because they havent developed the guards against it or even havent 'got it out of their system' so to speak.
voidfunc 7 hours ago [-]
Most of us live in reality land.
microtonal 6 hours ago [-]
Our kid has certainly not had access to tablets/phones the first years of her life and only rarely until she was 9 or 10 or so. We have also banned phones from the dinner table, etc. from the beginning.
Parenting takes time and focus. Putting 0-6 years olds behind a tablet screen is just absolving yourself from your responsibility as a parent. Some TV time can be ok after 3 years or so, but you have to time it strictly (so that it does not become a convenience) and exclude some types of cartoons [1].
It's a such a shame that it's impossible to parent children without a screen in reality land.
alt227 7 hours ago [-]
What? My kids have never ever had a screen of their own. They sit still in restaurants and flights like well parented kids have for decades. Anyone who thinks screens are required for bringing up children is ignoring countless research projects which prove otherwise, and are actively hurting their childrens development.
ArcHound 6 hours ago [-]
Parenting is hard. I know it firsthand. I never said zero screen time.
I'm opposed to dedicated devices for children that expose them to the internet.
It's ridiculously hard to restrict all of the harmful content. And frankly, the big tech is less trustworthy by the minute.
vachina 7 hours ago [-]
Reality is nobody forced you to have kids.
If you cannot raise your kids properly, please dont have kids.
voidfunc 6 hours ago [-]
When has telling people to not have kids ever resulted in said people not having kids? It's a part of our instincts and biology and really really easy to do.
We have to deal with the fact a lot of people produce kids they do not want or regret having. That's reality.
tripleee 6 hours ago [-]
Reality is that telling future bad parents not to have kids isn't going to stop them having kids, even if you say please
TZubiri 6 hours ago [-]
parents will do it anyways, so products that have child safety features are being developed
ArcHound 6 hours ago [-]
It's ridiculously hard to restrict all of the harmful content. And frankly, the big tech is less trustworthy by the minute.
I think by having adult devices parents will be more cautious and mindful of what they are granting to their kids.
trollbridge 1 hours ago [-]
LLMs could change all this - it's possible to quickly do pretty impressive analysis of the content of videos, games, and so forth.
veverkap 7 hours ago [-]
My only possible counterpoint in agreement is whataboutism. Companies make lots of devices designed for "negative" behavior.
Not an excuse but an explanation perhaps?
ArcHound 6 hours ago [-]
What bothers me the most is targeting children. I see why we need to make axes or chemicals. But these come with disclaimers and labels as well as common sense that they are harmful.
dangond 7 hours ago [-]
Enabling the avoidance of parenting incentivizes parents who would otherwise be parenting to also avoid parenting. I agree with OP, hard to see how this is a good thing.
7 hours ago [-]
bibimsz 24 minutes ago [-]
i bought an amazon tablet one time. it was absolutely terrible.
mindslight 6 hours ago [-]
Warm take: a fantastic daily driver for adults as the intended market of the device means all activity on it is a priori subject to COPPA.
micromacrofoot 6 hours ago [-]
It's kind of gross that people think the screens for kids phenomenon is "avoid parenting" — a two working parent household has very little time for anything and it's incredibly stressful (good luck if you're a single parent).
Yeah sometimes you want your kid to not scream the whole time in the car or on a 6 hour flight where everyone will hate you. My 4 year old niece once screamed for the entirety of a 30 minute car ride because she didn't like what color socks she was wearing, you can't talk yourself out of these absurd situations sometimes and distractions help. I'd love to give a book in these situations, but half the time it just gets thrown at your head.
Why does no one say "parents need more time and space" or "parents need help making effective choices in a world that constantly demands more of them" everyone loves crawling out of the woodwork to tell you how horrible you are.
trollbridge 1 hours ago [-]
My kids are far from perfect angels, but they do just fine on a 5 hour flight with some colouring books, a small container of legos (with pieces pre-chosen to be ones we're okay with losing), and then the excitement of getting to order ANY drink they want (from their point of view).
kj4211cash 34 minutes ago [-]
I have 3 kids and it has dramatically changed my world view. They are all very different, despite being raised exactly the same. 1 or maybe 2 would do fine for 5 hours with colouring books and legos. The third absolutely would not. We still limit screen time to almost nothing so I'm not necessarily arguing with your overall point. But my honest reaction to comments like this or, worse, from people who aren't parents, is you really don't know. I'm not a single parent but, yea, imagine raising multiple kids who aren't as easy as yours on your own.
plaidfuji 48 minutes ago [-]
Not sure why you’re getting so strongly downvoted. The travel situations are the ones I find the most reasonable for tablet use. It’s definitely possible to keep a kid occupied for a 5 hour plane ride without a tablet but it takes work. Very few adults can raw-dog a 5 hour plane ride themselves, ffs. I may judge other parents for allowing tablet use in other situations, but not on an airplane.
rationalist 6 hours ago [-]
How much of screaming kids, is bad parenting? None of the kids in dual working parent, or single parent households that I grew up with, screamed.
raincole 1 hours ago [-]
Yeah because each kid is different? Kids are not factory products that you can just quality control. Germany even has a law specifically allowing kid noises[0].
have you spent any significant time with a child under 6
rationalist 5 hours ago [-]
Yes, multiple kids under 6.
6 hours ago [-]
alt227 6 hours ago [-]
I wonder what parents did for thousands of years before screens came along.
micromacrofoot 5 hours ago [-]
spent significantly more time at home and with their community, "it takes a village" isn't just a cute phrase
kids also roamed on their own quite a lot more with other kids
sigma5 6 hours ago [-]
It's funny how those same billionaires who sell these devices, do not give their children devices until the age of 14.
PS to parents: give your child a toy or a book not a tablet ffs.
tintor 6 hours ago [-]
I agree for age of 3-6 years, but until age 14 is ridiculous.
Not all devices are equally bad.
I've been happily learning to code my own video games on Intel 486 PC in QuickBasic since late elementary school (age 10), and yes, I played outdoors with other kids too.
Before I had PC of my own, I was making them on paper (game design and mechanics, not literal code).
alt227 6 hours ago [-]
Another thing to blame on the billionaires then. Soon they will become like gods, feared and blamed for intentionally causing plagues and famines when people dont appease them enough.
phatfish 57 minutes ago [-]
They certainly have more affect on our lives than any "traditional" god. Apparently, reducing their tax exposure brings 10 years of good harvest.
veverkap 7 hours ago [-]
> One product design that concerned me was the handle — like it’s intended to be carried around like a briefcase
Has the extra benefit of getting them ready for the workforce. /s
dead_hn_theory 7 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
pizza234 7 hours ago [-]
Adult video game player here, happy to discuss why you think that's a problem.
zspade 7 hours ago [-]
Worse, as these are key developmental years for children, who themselves are not yet equipped to responsible decisions for themselves.
dead_hn_theory 7 hours ago [-]
It is a vicious cycle.
goda90 7 hours ago [-]
Why does this attitude still exist?
AngryData 7 hours ago [-]
And what kind of entertainment do you enjoy in your 30s and 40s?
ArcHound 7 hours ago [-]
Worse. The adults have to take the responsibility. The children need to learn first what is and isn't right.
dead_hn_theory 7 hours ago [-]
Who is going to teach them?
ArcHound 7 hours ago [-]
At one point, everyone has to take responsibility for their own life. If we take the US limit of being underage until 21, then at 42 a person is an adult for the same amount of time. Plenty opportunities to figure it out.
dead_hn_theory 7 hours ago [-]
Nobody has to take responsibility for anything, and most choose not to.
ArcHound 6 hours ago [-]
And how did that approach worked for them?
whoanoway 7 hours ago [-]
[dead]
bourgeois_news 3 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
bourgeois_news 2 hours ago [-]
Flag me because it’s only acceptable to judge “those kind” of parents. Your decisions are valid and above reproach.
johnny5211 2 hours ago [-]
I can see how a tablet optimized for logic puzzles, e-books, drawing etc. could be highly beneficial but these adverts seem focused on the child's relationship with the tablet. I think an art/puzzle machine is a much healthier starting point than an everything machine.
dbliss 2 hours ago [-]
Using gen ai so I have been able to make bite size mini games for my son to learn letters and numbers. Today he said skeletons are just pretend given we’ve been walking around looking at Halloween decorations. So I’ve had to explain that skeletons are real and they’re inside all of us. So in these mini games, now I’ve added a 3-D rendering of the body for kids to show the skeleton and muscles and what a human body looks like. And I was able to walk them through it and explain it to him and he’s been very excited about the fact that now there’s this he understands there’s a skeleton inside of him. All that is to say, I think curated parent led experiences with technology are still a great way to teach, and we can’t just hand them an iPad and say here’s some shows to calm you down
manbash 26 minutes ago [-]
This is nice that you're walking them through it but I wonder why you'd need a tablet in the first place, then? It's better to sit with them in front of a monitor with the proper posture and viewing position.
johnny5211 1 hours ago [-]
I think that once parents become the OS devs specifically for their own children (or at least app devs) the tablet becomes less like a pacifier and more like a ball game between the toddler and parent, as each throws new stuff (metaphorically) at the other.
bamboozled 2 hours ago [-]
Nice, you're managing a curriculum now.
Rendered at 01:29:45 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
I recently watched Toy Story 5 on a long flight. I almost felt it should come with a trigger warning - I thought it was a spot on, brilliant yet inherently depressing commentary on on current relationship with tech.
(Minor spoiler alert) One of my favorite scenes was when a slew of toys were running through a house with a family inside. Normally in the Toy Story world when a human see the toys they need to "play dead", but since all the humans were glued to their screens they could run by unimpeded.
Usually my kids are sitting quietly at the table and playing with their little cars or whatever while some kid is melting down that he ran out of roblox or his game isn't working.
I've literally seen kids that are 9 or 10 act this way in public! Like little babies!
To a kid, playing games from the 1980s off a floppy disk is not a significantly difficult experience than using the very latest technology, but I suspect the former is far better for their developing brains.
Meanwhile, you can get them to learn how to type on the keyboard and learn the basics of needing to type in commands to make the computer do something, which is a lifelong skill - tapping icons on a tablet is not.
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=dell+pentium+ii+mid+tow...
An almost verbatim line from Toy Story. Incredible. Only the main character was quite a bit older than 3.
And they have them, like cheap Lenovos and whatnot.
If shitty parent's don't care about well-being of their children, they could at least consider the cost of future medication, not to even mention likely worse performance in school and job market.
> While observing 422 children ages 3 to 5, a 2022 study led by Radesky found that mobile device use for calming — in other words, a digital pacifier — was associated with “decreased executive functioning and increased emotional reactivity.” (Executive function refers to memory and problem-solving skills needed for everyday life. Emotional reactivity refers to poor impulse control in response to stress, pain, and other negative feelings.)
ADHD is a type of executive function disorder.
I'll say it's misguided, as well as the root comment to which you're reaponding. The particular study soesnmt show causation, but there's a growing bidy of research that does (it's easy to find).
Kids don't fucking know the difference you dirty fucks.
Amazon going full Facebook-at-their-worst. Nice to know.
I'm going off on a big tangent here, but hear me out (or ignore me entirely because there's political content, but in a practical context - I think). Humans don't need much of an excuse to reach for an easy answer, and parenting on its own is probably one of the most difficult undertakings in the human experience. "Modern life" is becoming increasingly complex to navigate, we are bombarded with attention sucking ... everything, giving us the sense that time is so scarce that the easiest, most immediate answer is the only option. This is being made true as much for parenting - give them the electronic device - as it is for work problems - MVP, band-aid, temporary becomes permanent.
Amazon product and marketing is an accelerant of this. Encouragement of the ever decreasing time frame of what is already ridiculous short-termism. Amazon are obviously not alone in this, but neither are they working against it or wanting to leave any possible addiction-money profit on the table. This is one of the reasons I'm obsessed with blocking advertising. The more they can convince you of the importance of "all the things" the more of their things you need to buy to create more time for yourself - at the expense of your child. Nice, Jeff. Nice.
On the quality of parenting: My children's grandparents, on both sides of the family, have been a great help. I guess we've been lucky in having them available, but also (maybe accidentally) smart in not moving away from the local support network of family in order to pursue better/bigger/higher-income careers. Where this relates to the above is that, the pace of life, in combination with having children, almost requires a family support network, more specifically grandparents since they're likely retired or in the twilight of their careers and therefore have more time flexibility. Something that's become increasingly obvious to me is the 'life' advantage bestowed upon those with a local family support network over those without. This is something that often puts migrants well behind locals where my anecdotal-only example is someone I used to work with who had three kids but no extended family, and therefore school drop-offs, pick-ups, doctor's appointments and all the other general activities and emergencies that go with having kids is spread out over two people (mum and dad) rather than a full extended family network.
The point I'm trying to make is that this marketing of electronic pacifiers to parents is a symptom of the (unsustainable) increasing 'urgency' of the pace of modern life, which can be made manageable with a decent extended family support network. The advantages of which are compounding.
Something I heard that really stuck with me was: Children form most of their behavioural patterns by the age of three (or maybe it was 5), and so those early years are the most important in shaping them. It requires less work to get something right the first time, than having to fix something that's broken. This isn't to say things can't go wrong, but what it means is to do your best for those years to have a chance at being able to reclaim more of yourself at a later stage.
Ultimately, if you "just give them the tablet" now, you'll be "just giving them the tablet" for the rest of your life.
/ridiculously tangential rant (just had to get some of the thoughts written down to see how they turned out)
I have nothing else to say rn.
Edit: Thank you for all the comments. I'm still happy to discuss. I've calmed down a bit, so my responses will be slightly softer.
I feel it's great, but then I use Google Kids on the Fire, because Amazon's app is junk in comparison.
And also, my kid is (disabled) autistic and non verbal and this keeps them calm and happy.
So yes it's a great idea.
Other than that, movies and games are less destructive than algorithmic feeds, especially short form video. It is preferable to move outside or read a book. But I think we're comparing vegetables to candy to cigarettes.
The talk in this thread indicates absolutely no empathy for dual working parents and just repeats tired talking points. If anyone here looks back on their own childhood perhaps they actually had similar freedoms? Hell i used to play the Apple 2 obsessively from a very young age. I credit it as formative in a positive way.
You can argue that if you're both working and no one has 100% time to dedicate to raising the child they shouldn't have children but that argument leads to plummeting birth rates.
I say all of this as someone who doesn't have kids but I have at least some sense of how freaking hard it is and in the grand scheme of things a tablet designed for kids isn't the worst thing.
Tell me why an alternative that's at least better than a phone is so bad? If you want to argue a phone or any such device that keeps kids occupied for some time is unacceptable i think you're waaaaay out of touch.
Our kids use tech - Nintendo Switch, tv, raspberry pis, and yes, even a tablet for things like train or plane rides. But they absolutely did not get this as a toddler. Yes we were tired. Yes it was hard. Parenting isn't easy.
I am a dual working parent. We dont own a tablet and our kids never get handed phones. The kids occasionally watch Bluey and Peppa pig on the TV (live not apps).
Your Apple 2 days were very different to the algorithms and feeds of today. Giving a kid a phone loaded up with the Youtube Kids app is literally like feeding them crack.
> criticizing from the sidelines
You dont even have kids, why do you have such a strong opinion on what real parents are saying about bringing up their own? You are the one criticising from the sidelines whilst us parents are making the tough choices in bringing our kids up.
This is still a terrible idea.
I think it's better to give them a movie rather than an algorithmic feed.
My kids get no more than 10m of tablet time a day each. Both of us are working full time. When they ask for more I point them to their toys/books/etc, or play with them.
So, being dual working doesn’t mean you have to allow your kids to have lots of screen time.
The school's policy isn't necessarily from a "phones bad mmmkay?" perspective, but from a "our ancestors had to figure stuff out for themselves, let's foster that" perspective.
I have a friend who didn't have a television until the age of 12. If you ask which kids turned out well adjusted and which didn't it wasn't the one's with no screen time anymore than the one's with unlimited screen time. There's some reality to life people here aren't accepting and i can't see an issue with some level of hands off parenting that this enables quite honestly.
I know people are going to attack with some extreme of "you allow your kid to be raised by a tablet" or some such but these views are all so tiresome. The reality is that majority of kids have always been allowed some form of screen time and todays screentime is going to at least be more interactive than yesterdays screentime.
The content of TV was also vastly different. There was a barrier to entry, not an infinite stream of brainrot content.
There is just no reason to give kids such devices at a young age, far better learning experiences exist until at least 9 years old.
My wife was worried our son would be "left behind". We talked about it and I pointed out he can already navigate photos, and Spotify to play an audio book; from just looking over our shoulders every now and then. Must be around 5 hours interaction in total (he is 4).
Poking a screen is barely a skill, less than a day and he would be caught up to all the kids that had been staring at one for hours a day since they were 3.
Your very point about them being more interactive is what makes them much more dangerous.
I am sure there are exceptions, but if you are a duo working parents, you don't have time to dig through children apps to figure out which are good.
Overall tv in common space is better (occasionally), you can keep an eye on what the kid is watching and how is affecting their behavior.
You realize when they are done watching tv way earlier than they are (if ever)
IF my kids were to have access to a tablet, I would prefer it be a tablet specifically desgined for kids, rather than a commodity all powerful generic computing device and OS
Also they have to learn to use a mouse and a keyboard to do that. You probably forgot how hard it was to learn to use both. Double clicking was really hard for me as a kid
Problem is: there is a limited amount of apps that are genuinely fun and educative. If Amazon wanted really to do something truly educative for children, they'd build a whole market for it, the marketese I see in the article doesn't support that.
And I do respect the disclaimer, but lately my experience tells me the devil's advocates help the devil (and I'm an atheist!)
maybe it'll help us raise good docile consumers and workers tho /s
There are several reasons. The most important one is that children (ab)using highly stimulating devices don't learn to be absorbed by or find reward in less stimulating ones (most importantly, books). It's exactly the same risk as giving addictive drugs to adults.
This is not theory. Just look at children whose parents give them mobile phones/tablets as pacifiers - they become easily restless.
The intellectual argument is also important. Gamified learning is nice on paper, but one can imagine what children are actually going to play.
Related to another post: the difference between a child and an adult who plays videogames is that the latter has (hopefully!) learned "slow" skills, so they can choose pastimes like this deliberately.
Having said that, I'm for forbidding children from using this type of thing, but it's a very dangerous slippery slope, and there's lots to work on before that step.
Maybe it's making the best of bad parents
Even if I want to buy uranium, I shouldn't. And if I want to buy a chair, I shouldn't be seeing only uranium chairs.
Drugs could be a good analogy as it (mostly) affects yourself. A safe route for people to buy those would fix the #1 leading cause of death of young adults in the US today (fentanyl)
Amazon's target market here, wants to parent their kids without parenting their kids. Whether that's a TV with cartoons 20 years ago, a tablet 5 years ago, or a "digital pacifier" today nothing has changed. It's just being fulfilled differently.
My point is that the responsibility is on parents, not companies who will inevitably get the blame and nothing will change. See the other commenter here who said their kids don't even own a tablet.
The group of parents who let their kids smoke might get those instead, improving their health
The parents who don't allow it would never consider them
I suppose it depends how many of group 2 could be converted to 1 if they were "low tar!".. my intuition is close to zero
Group A is going to smoke regardless, having a healthier product reduces harm
Group B is never going to smoke no matter what's on offer
If we instead imagine a world where parents allowed, even encouraged 60% of children to smoke, and there was no clear route to outright stopping them, giving them at least a better alternative that doesn't hurt them as much would be worth considering
I think it's still better to ban these obviously harmful things and to reduce exposure to them as much as possible.
I agree that if a parent is dead-set on giving their kid endless screen time, tobacco, or heroin, they will find a way to do it. But the tobacco story demonstrates there are many interventions that can significantly decrease the net amount of abuse. If you want to take a public health argument, do it honestly.
Screens or tablets aren't the harmful drug in this situation, they're the needle. A needle that can contain medicine or heroin. The harm is from specific apps and social media. A device can be locked down. You can control what it's able to do and how much. I've used screens to teach myself a language to fluency, a hell of a lot about software development, and countless other things.
Would you object to a tablet that could only access Khan Academy, Openstax and Udemy? What about if we added on a 20 minute allowance of social media? I haven't looked super deep into the Amazon device much but it seems this is the direction they're heading with the parental dashboard
"Educational content has to come first. Your child completes reading or learning goals in Kids+ and educational apps before entertainment apps unlock"
I mean obviously kids are going to try to game the system to get to what they want.. but it seems like a reasonable path to test, and it doesn't require trying to turn every bad parent into a good one, or do something outlandish like ban tablets
I know there's no hard leverage.
This is really not that hard. Modern app culture is highly addictive and provably poison for our brains over time. Adults can choose poison if they wish but when they give it to their kids it is called child abuse.
I'd like to hear more about the results you've gotten with this approach. How do you approach is this with your kids?
With my kids, I oversee everything they do (they are under 6). They average 15min daily for two episodes of a kids show.
I'm not saying go to zero. But definitely not over 3 hours and definitely not a dedicated device for them.
Regarding my kids: high priority, wide/curated choice (not in terms of restriction, but in terms of actively finding things they may like), accompanied learning, and, crucially, starting from a very young age. It's pretty much standard parenting, that is, one gets out what one puts in.
By the time children start to pressure for this type of devices (say, 10/12), they will have learned to enjoy books and more creative activities.
Mobile devices and social media does not get less addictive as you get older, otherwise anybody over about 30 right now would never have any issues with it. Therefore I worry its entirely possible to bring your children up completely avoiding the downfalls of screentime, but then set them up to fall later because they havent developed the guards against it or even havent 'got it out of their system' so to speak.
Parenting takes time and focus. Putting 0-6 years olds behind a tablet screen is just absolving yourself from your responsibility as a parent. Some TV time can be ok after 3 years or so, but you have to time it strictly (so that it does not become a convenience) and exclude some types of cartoons [1].
[1] https://thesciencesurvey.com/editorial/2024/07/07/the-proble...
I'm opposed to dedicated devices for children that expose them to the internet.
It's ridiculously hard to restrict all of the harmful content. And frankly, the big tech is less trustworthy by the minute.
If you cannot raise your kids properly, please dont have kids.
We have to deal with the fact a lot of people produce kids they do not want or regret having. That's reality.
I think by having adult devices parents will be more cautious and mindful of what they are granting to their kids.
Not an excuse but an explanation perhaps?
Yeah sometimes you want your kid to not scream the whole time in the car or on a 6 hour flight where everyone will hate you. My 4 year old niece once screamed for the entirety of a 30 minute car ride because she didn't like what color socks she was wearing, you can't talk yourself out of these absurd situations sometimes and distractions help. I'd love to give a book in these situations, but half the time it just gets thrown at your head.
Why does no one say "parents need more time and space" or "parents need help making effective choices in a world that constantly demands more of them" everyone loves crawling out of the woodwork to tell you how horrible you are.
[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/aug/16/germany-childr...
kids also roamed on their own quite a lot more with other kids
PS to parents: give your child a toy or a book not a tablet ffs.
Not all devices are equally bad.
I've been happily learning to code my own video games on Intel 486 PC in QuickBasic since late elementary school (age 10), and yes, I played outdoors with other kids too.
Before I had PC of my own, I was making them on paper (game design and mechanics, not literal code).
Has the extra benefit of getting them ready for the workforce. /s