Comment by ale42
5 days ago
Not to criticize the idea, but do we really need to give our kids yet _more_ screen time, especially young ones? Pedagogically, what is the message for them here? You need a phone for everything?
5 days ago
Not to criticize the idea, but do we really need to give our kids yet _more_ screen time, especially young ones? Pedagogically, what is the message for them here? You need a phone for everything?
Not all time spent interacting with a screen is "screen time".
The problematic thing is kids spending endless hours just absorbing rather than playing or interacting or doing stuff. It culminates in kids (and adults) who cannot mentally handle being bored- they must have the screen to relieve the horrors of the idle mind.
If achieving these same goals is easier without an app for you and your kids, then by all means, do that. But an app on a screen is a very powerful tool to structure and organize things. My daughter is still a bit young for this one, but I can see how useful it will be when she's a couple years older.
> The problematic thing is kids spending endless hours just absorbing rather than playing or interacting or doing stuff.
That's totally true, but it's not the only point. Here we are also teaching kids that they need apps for anything they do. They should be able to do that themselves, before using an app to assist them. Otherwise they wont develop capabilities that they wont be able to acquire so easily at a later stage in their lives. If we take this approach to the extreme, why bother learning to write and do maths, when a computer can do it for you?
Correlating reality on 2-D screens is damaging to kids allocentric and egocentric divergences. Kids before 10 shouldn't control screens. Kids until 14 should be limited in portable screens. We know this now.
https://www.childrenandscreens.org/learn-explore/research/?t...
Gotta get them hooked early. You really shouldn't need apps at any age to keep you on track with tasks.
It's easy to judge, but the alternative might be a kid that's on his phone anyway, but struggles to have a structured routine.
Sure, but why the kid his on his phone?
1 reply →
Task management apps are crutches. If any part of their role is to inspire change in somebody, it's not going to happen. All that you do is make people reliant on them, and everything disappears when the app is no longer around. They're best for reference (day-to-day and team coordination).
The concept of a task management app for children is dystopian. It's treating them like office workers from the beginning, and considering the example given is the typical chess, piano, Chinese lessons, it's just overloading the child for exhaustion.
Parents should be parenting their children. Limiting their exposure to things, including screens and the internet, and disciplining a child to study or work are part of a parents purview. I can't see why people even have children if they delegate all of their parenting responsibilities to screens and software.
2 replies →
One core component of managing ADHD (at any age) is "externalize", of which an app can be a helpful component.
How about "thoughtful use of tools can help you create structure and systems which help you achieve your goals"
What is screen time any way? Spending 3 hours playing candy crush and 3 hours reading moby dick on the kindle app are both screen time. What's the commonality between them?
Both are worse than the non-screen equivalent by many measures?