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Screen Time Not Intrinsically Bad For Children, Say Doctors (theguardian.com)
Spending time looking at screens is not intrinsically bad for children's health, say the UK's leading children's doctors, who are advising parents to focus on ensuring their children get enough sleep, exercise and family interaction rather than clamping down on phones and laptops. From a report: The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health has produced the first guidance for parents on how long children should spend on their laptops and phones, which throws the ball firmly back into the parents' court. Each family should decide what is best for its own members -- although all children would benefit from switching off the screen an hour before they go to bed to help them sleep. The college says the focus for parents should be on what the family is doing together, saying screen time is not an issue if parents have control over other aspects of their children's lives. The guidance appears to run counter to the thinking of the health secretary, Matt Hancock, a father of three young children, who has asked England's chief medical officer, Dame Sally Davies, to draw up some rules on the use of social media.
What can we blame bad parenting on now? It used to be comic books, then radio, then TV, then violent video games.
This would possibly imply that kids learn bad behaviors by:
1. Watching their parents
2. Their parents not setting boundaries and sticking to them
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Is ANYONE still listening to these lying fucks anymore? Seriously?
Shall we go down the list of the ever-changing bullshit opinions of these guys? Or shall we just replay the “greatest hits”?
Only the latest to join this list: screentime not bad for children, it’s totally fine... NO, WAIT! IT IS BAD for children! No, wait... it’s NOT bad for children... fuck you, you fucking liars.
Here’s an idea. Make all “scientific” “research” classified until not only has it been peer reviewed, but until the peer-reviewing has itself been peer reviewed.
Maybe even peer review the peer review of the peer review of the bullshit research BEFORE releasing it to the public as if the research is reliable or the researchers know what in the goddamned fucking fuck they're talking about?
How about that, I ask while drinking coffee that has at various points been declared good for me, bad for me, full of carcinogens, and I think the latest word on coffee is, “FUCK YOU, LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE TO ENJOY MY FUCKING COFFEE!”
LOL Doctors... FAIL!
Fuck off, “Doctors”. No one believes your bullshit anymore.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
There’s this quote later in the article:
But Prof Russell Viner, the college president and an author of the evidence review published in the BMJ Open journal, said that while there was moderately strong evidence that screen time is linked to obesity (through TV snacking and lack of exercise) and mental health issues, the way to tackle it was not through universal curfews and bans.
“It is important that we recognise that screens are a modern way of being,” he said. “Reading we see as a hugely positive thing, but it is largely a sedentary thing. We have never done studies to look at the link between reading and adiposity [being overweight] but it is sedentary [lifestyle]. Five hundred years ago we thought it was bad for women’s brains to teach them to read. Reading and pamphlets have radicalised a lot more young people than screens have ever done. Yet we somehow worry about screens being different.”
So, basically, we think it’s tied to obesity and mental illness, but so are other activities we accept, so it’s “not intrinsically bad”.
My wife and I made our kids:
Play a sport
Learn a musical instrument
Do their homework
Join scouts
Learn another language
Cook meals
Do their own laundry
Etc., etc., etc.
It's only when people are lead astray that's it's bad. See, totally not intrinsic. ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Hallux-F-Sinister: Oh shit, there's a lump that shouldn't be there...uh-oh, it's bleeding.
Friend of Hallux-F-Sinister: You need to see a doctor.
Hallux-F-Sinister: No, they are all lying sacks of shit.
Friends of Hallux-F-Sinister: (Through bag over his head, tie hands) We're going to see a doctor.
Hallux-F-Sinister: Mmmmphhhh....
Doctor: Yep, what ya got there is a bog standard penis cancer. We can cure it but if you let it go, it will kill you.
Hallux-F-Sinister: You lying sack of shit, I'm not believing no doctor.
(year later)
Friends of Hallux-F-Sinister: Too bad he never went to see a doctor, he does look peaceful in that casket though.
Yes, that's an option. Many scientists would love it if the public would just butt out and let them get on with it. Most realize that the public has both a right and a keen interest in ongoing research though. It IS unfortunate they're not more knowledgeable about it.
There are two big problems:
1) to get funding to do research scientists have to hype it.
2) the public can't tell the difference between science and a celebrity or physician, or celebrity physician spouting off.
"Spending time looking at screens is not intrinsically bad for children's health,"
It's not the looking at screens per se that is unhealthy, it's the sitting on their asses for 12 hours that is.
We already know back from the '60s-'70s, when education was only for the elite, that those students were reading more books than the average, their eyesight was deteriorating towards myopia. There is ample proof from current research that extensive device time is leading to whole crowds suffering from myopia."Not bad for children" is one of the stupidest and worst statements I've heard from medical experts in a very long time.
But then, neither is sugar.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I haven't been one to buy screen time is bad in itself. The majority of my kid's screen time is educational stuff. My oldest kid is getting more into the toy videos. However, they do grow tire of it after maybe a half hour and put it down to do something else. If my wife and I start working on something in the yard or doing something interesting they'll put it down and get involved in what we're doing. The only time they really throw a fit about putting it down is at bedtime, but it's usually the typical "Awwwwe, I don't wanna goto bed." It's not tantrums. I'm not really concerned for mine anyway.
My coworker's kid throws horrid tantrums when he's separated from the tablet. They hate giving it to him (not sure why they keep doing it!). That would concern me if it was my kid.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Sure, not intrinsically bad, but there's still the opportunity cost of not doing something (more) worthwhile with their time.
Before the 1980's and the introduction of much more screen time in education the UK had generations with the skills to keep and run a global empire.
With the introduction of more screen time the UK has not become an educational, computer super power over a generation into the 1990's.
The UK consumer used Microsoft and Apple. Played lots of computer games.
Screen time did nothing good for the UK but make a generation buy into US game, computer, software and OS exports.
Enjoying too much computer time, computer games did not result in good traits for a generation.
It was great news for the US brands selling consumer games and software into the UK.
To load a game from tape, to copy a game from a book.
To play a game. To listen to music, watch a movie. To surf the web.
More screen time did not have the same engineering firsts and great military results past UK generations enjoyed.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
No link to the paper. No mention on who paid for the study. Zero hits when searching for "screentime" and "Royal College of Paediatrics" in the same document query search.
is it just me? or is somebody actively hiding something, deep in that buried text that we are just not supposed to figure out?
Was listening to the news on BBC radio, where it is a religiously held fact that computers are evil and bad and wrong. They really, really didn't like this result and the reporting changed as they had time to react. "isn't bad" quickly changed to "insufficient proof that it is bad" (which is true of course, but we're in can't prove a negative territory), which quickly changed to "more research needed into showing this is bad" and full commentary utterly ignoring the results and asking what we could do about this terrible plague.
Was funny to listen to. I went through the same demonising of things in the 80s as a kid playing on Spectrums and C64s, then the satanic panic over D&D...yawn. Hopefully the next generation doesn't have to put up with this, since by then most people of broadcasting-presenter age will have grown up using screens anyway.