Singapore Study Links Heavy Infant Screen Time to Teen Anxiety
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A recent Singapore study has sparked a lively debate about the link between heavy infant screen time and teen anxiety, with commenters weighing in on the challenges of parenting and the role of screens in childcare. Some parents shared their own experiences, revealing that raising kids without iPads was not only possible but also a more restrictive social life, while others defended the use of screens as a sanity-saving tool for frazzled parents. The discussion highlights the complexities of modern parenting, with some commenters nostalgic for a pre-iPad era and others acknowledging the difficulties of managing toddler behavior in public. As one commenter quipped, "We're lucky these things didn't exist before the introduction of the iPad, otherwise parenting would have been completely impossible and there wouldn't be any humans."
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It’s incredibly hard in the early tastes. Even getting a short break to take a shower or clean the house can be a challenge, especially if you actually do care about being a nurturing parent.
Infants need constant attention and are constantly trying to kill themselves.
Millions of people owe Ms. Rachel child support payments.
Yes, I am. And my spouse and I managed to raise two kids under the age of two without giving them an iPad. Yeah, it meant we didn't go to restaurants as much and that the house wasn't as clean as it was before. It's all trade offs.
I'm not saying this to say I'm a better parent than you are, but you don't __need__ an iPad or to plop them in front of a tv. Claims otherwise are just excuse making.
Don’t read beyond what I said. All I am saying is that I don’t blame parents for using the tools they have to maintain their sanity, which might include a TV screen in moderation.
I don't think toddlers should be at most restaurants. I have a toddler and a 7 month old. I'm not even saying that for the sake of the other patrons. There's really nothing fun whatsoever about being at restaurant with your toddler. We don't even have bad outcomes, but you're sort of trapped in your seat, it's messy, it's expensive, and you're constantly keeping your toddler in line.
Restaurant food is really not so good as to overcome those issues.
For example, in Texas there are loads of TexMex restaurants and Hispanic cultures actually embrace children as part of the environment vs Western European cultures (which I was raised in) which don’t so much.
As I said: horses for courses.
Some fast food restaurants have literal playgrounds inside.
Olive Garden has a kids menu with stuff on it that adults don’t even get (Pizza) along with its own mascot.
They made an entire mascot up just for kids. Obviously they want kids at the restaurant.
My local children’s museum has a cafe…with food for kids. Duh.
But okay, I guess if you have kids you should just shut yourself in your house for 5 years, right?
No, you throw them a cheap Android tablet. iPads are expensive. /s
(yes, I have 3 kids, I am speaking from experience)
(I'm fine with butter, but syrup is 100% off limits. Use berries.)
Yes, to work at home you need a home office and childcare.
Interesting, I grew up in a house like that, and didn't see much of my dad for many years because of it. Something I didn't do with my own daughter, I always loved her coming into to distract me when I was working from home (pre-pandemic).
We're here to discuss topics. If you are going to say that an iPad is a necessary tool for raising children, at least stand behind that point of view instead of removing it as soon as people disagree with you.
Both my kids really struggled at night for years, and I sypmpathize with the lack of sleep.
I've seen people giving their babies bottles of grape soda to suckle on the subway.
The chances that any of those kids end up the president of Harvard is zero.
> Among children whose parents read to them frequently at age three, the link between infant screen time and altered brain development was significantly weakened.
It sounds a bit like the problem might not be so much "heavy screen time" as "heavy screen time, plus no alternative stimulation". Not defending heavy screen time at all, just thought it was an interesting tidbit.
I could see some sort of real world grounding helping reduce anxiety
When I was a kid from a young age I'd go explore the creek, spend all day hiking in the forest with a shotgun hunting squirrels/rabbits, or my parents would hand me some legos or something and leave me for an hour to build stuff. These stories weren't terribly uncommon. It was pretty normal for kids to be let out the house during the day and not come home until dinner. Parents weren't spending a lot of time with us.
Now it feels like if you don't spend time with your kid 24/7 some Karen will call CPS on your ass lickity split and some goon from the state will happily trump it up as neglect or some such. People even get cited for leaving their kid in the car for 5 minutes while they buy a pack of cigarettes.
> A separate study by the same team in 2024 suggested that parents could help counteract some of the brain changes in young children caused by passive screen time by reading to them frequently and engaging more with them in person.
Presumably they haven't found the correlation yet.
Gee, it's almost like it's not about the screen itself at all.
So what?
The infants shouldn't eat so much fast food so they don't get heavy.
The facts are:
- These games/apps are designed for commercial purpose, specifically to get parents to buy things. To do that they are designed to be exploitative and addictive. Adults are very susceptible to this, children even more so.
- These games/apps are inherently anti-social (and in all ways in which they are social is being exploited by pedophiles, see e.g. roblox)
- These games/apps are used by parents to avoid interacting with their children and to outsource parenting (often so that they themselves can scroll on their phone)
- These games/apps are used by children instead of real world interactions with other children
If you take all of these facts together the idea that there aren't serious negative consequences is just laughable. Of course there will be and the only real question is whether they can be mitigated and what avenues exist to reverse the damage.
None of this is to says that no child should ever play a video game, but obviously there will be consequences if a large parts of a child's early life consists of staring at a screen.