I saw a post recently about someone setting up parental controls – screentime, blocked sites, etc. – and it made me wonder.
In my childhood, my free time was very flexible. Within this low-pressure flexibility I was naturally curious, in all directions – that meant both watching brainteaser videos, and watching Gmod brainrot. I had little exposure to video games other than Minecraft which ran poorly on my machine, so I tended to surf Flash games and YouTube.
Strikingly, while watching a brainteaser video, tiny me had a thought:
I’m glad my dad doesn’t make me watch educational videos like the other kids in school have to.
For some reason, I wanted to remember that to “remember what my thought process was as a child” so that memory has stuck with me.
Onto the meat: if I had had a capped screentime, like a timer I could see, and knew that I was being watched in some way, I’d feel pressure. For example,
10 minutes left. Oh no. I didn’t have fun yet. I didn’t have fun yet!!
Oh no, I’m gonna get in so much trouble for watching another YTP…
and maybe that pressure wouldn’t have made me into an independent, curious kid, to the person I am now. Maybe it would’ve made me fearful or suspicious instead. I was suspicious once, when one of my parents said “I can see what you browse from the other room” – so I ran the scientific method to verify if they were. (I wrote “HI MOM” on Paint, and tested if her expression changed.)
So what about now? Were we too free, and now it’s our job to tighten the next generation? I said “butthead” often. I loved asdfmovie, but my parents probably wouldn’t have. I watched SpingeBill YTPs (at least it’s not corporatized YouTube Kids).
Or differently: do we watch our kids without them knowing? Write a keylogger? Or just take router logs? Do we prosecute them like some sort of panopticon, for their own good?
Or do we completely forgo this? Take an Adventure Playground approach?
Of course, I don’t expect a one-size-fits-all answer. Where do you stand, and why?
I’ve got an 8 year old with a 20 minute timer for YouTube on the tablet, but a bunch of other things wide open. If they want to watch YouTube more, the TV will let them just as much. I’ve got timers on the tablet, keeping it locked out until 5:30am, because they’ll wake earlier to use it more in the morning otherwise and be a grumpy butt throughout the day. (It’s just what happens when there’s too much in the morning)
As for apps, permission is required, but I’ll just ask what it’s about and install it anyway.
You prevent them from waking up earlier, huh? Youngsters definitely have infinite energy at the odder times. I sure did my fair share of waking up early to increase the fraction of the day I gamed for.
This is a pretty convincing stance in favor of timers, actually. The idea of transferring video-watching from the iPad to the television is a friendly way to prevent an unchecked iPad-kid situation. My opinion shifted a little. :P
Do you have timers on the iPad for any mobile games, or just YouTube?
None in the mobile games. It’s mostly strategy and puzzle games, with a few that are just silly for being silly. The Android tablet has decent family controls.
Minecraft is not on the tablet. Yet. (They know it can be installed, but like using the switch for it right now.)
I’ve noticed how kids seem to get into far nastier dopamine drip addictions with a tablet/phone than the same kid does with a TV where there’s more friction to changing videos. I’ll probably do something like this to encourage healthier content consumption habits once mine are old enough to do more that pause/unpause the TV