Research indicates that kids who are exposed to more than
two hours a day of recreational screen time ...
A couple of thoughts.
The klaxons about kids+phones+harms are always louder than the researchers who come along later and look at the same data with a less narrow lens.
Over and over and over we find that phones are not the demon that is portrayed.¹ And there are much better reasons for youth mental health issues.
In the last 60 years we have wholly eradicated the adult-free time and spaces where kids learned their most critical social and problem solving skills. Instead, we permanently trap kids in a series of adult-curated, adult-curated boxes.
If our goal was to ruin youth mental health, this is about as pervasive a method as we could orchestrate. Conversely, phones are often how youth cope with this crippling, disastrous loss.
I have a 2 hour window after I wake up, to do the kind of thinking that leads to persistently useful conclusions.
The article calls out the phone but mine phone often provides inspiration (caveat: curated use of less than a half hour).
The real barriers to this deep thought are weekday work schedules; they have me out the door shortly after waking up. (FTR, insomnia says NO to waking 2hrs earlier).
The klaxons about kids+phones+harms are always louder than the researchers who come along later and look at the same data with a less narrow lens.
Over and over and over we find that phones are not the demon that is portrayed.¹ And there are much better reasons for youth mental health issues.
In the last 60 years we have wholly eradicated the adult-free time and spaces where kids learned their most critical social and problem solving skills. Instead, we permanently trap kids in a series of adult-curated, adult-curated boxes.
If our goal was to ruin youth mental health, this is about as pervasive a method as we could orchestrate. Conversely, phones are often how youth cope with this crippling, disastrous loss.
¹ https://www.npr.org/2019/08/27/754362629/the-scientific-deba...
The article calls out the phone but mine phone often provides inspiration (caveat: curated use of less than a half hour).
The real barriers to this deep thought are weekday work schedules; they have me out the door shortly after waking up. (FTR, insomnia says NO to waking 2hrs earlier).