My kid is almost 12, iPad only. I do worry about her overall time but most of her time is spent in this huge group chat with all her friends on Discord. We had landlines pre-voicemail when I was growing up and our chat time was limited by that. Her grades are good, room stays clean, and she’s in two extracurricular activities. 4 hours of chatting with her friends is ok by me, it’s at least social interaction, not spending hours sucked into YT or TikTok algorithms. She also has kids messenger. Nothing else.
That’s the problem that everyone shouting “parents need to parent better” here is ignoring.
If you cut off access to the group chat, her friends are not going to call her daily on your landline (that maybe you don’t have) to exchange gossips. What will happen is that she’ll be out of the loop, isolated from the group. When they’re planning an afternoon out they might forget to tell her.
You can’t make your kids live in a 90’s bubble, because when we were kids in the 90’s we had friends living like us. Cut off your kid from messenging and you cut them from their friends and isolate to them from their age class.
That’s absolutely not good for them, and it’s not good parenting.
(Not talking about you comment parent BTW, your parenting is fine, I’m just responding to your comment to address all those saying it’s just parents’ fault)
Good idea now do the same for adults
Parents, do better ffs
A message as old as time
Screens are fine. Kids are fine. Parents are doing fine. This is just fear mongering nonsense.
