Rachel Mills has an interesting defense of “screen time,” the big bugaboo that parents are constantly warned to limit.
Experts say we need to be worried about the amount of time they spend on their devices. Too much time stunts their development, and thus we need to impose strict limits with stopwatches or special parental controls or wifi routers that automatically kick them off for blocs of time. I’m skeptical.
. . .
Still need convincing?
What if you told someone from 20 years in the past that we all have in our pockets the key to all human knowledge ever, at the mere swipes and taps of our fingers –
And we strictly limit our children’s access to it.
How would that feel coming out of your mouth?
Like Mills, I do not limit my children’s screen time as long as they are keeping up on their homework, chores and other responsibilities. Along with Mills’ observations, the reality is that my kids are going to live and work in a world where being able to intelligently use such devices is going to be a large part of their success (or failure).
Despite all the nonsensical talk about millennials and digital natives, the reality is that comprehensive knowledge of how to leverage these tools in work and play is still not something most people understand and not something that anyone seems interested in teaching them.
If I had my way, my son would be spending a semester learning how to effectively use search engines to find information and then how to evaluate and use the results. Instead we still run across teachers who basically forbid students from using the Internet for research (I’d seriously considering not hiring someone who said they never visited Wikipedia for information on principle, whereas this seems to be de rigueur at my son’s school).
But since that’s not going to happen, he’s got to learn somewhere, and a good start is not artificially limiting his access to the devices and tools that are going to be crucial in his adult life.