I don’t believe “screen time” is a black-and-white thing or purely negative. I think Richard Osman and Marina Hyde discuss it well in The Rest Is Entertainment podcast episode “Why Kids Must Watch More TV”. Some quotes:

… so long as you’re supervising what they’re watching … so long as you have some sort of quality control …

No guilt about the fact that people around the world have made extraordinary things for you to watch

(I recommend listening to the full episode, but the question that spawns this dialogue starts at ~10:53 if you want to cut straight to it)

Ultimately they get at the concept that there’s actually fantastic quality (and educational, even if not intentionally educational, but it doesn’t have to be educational!) content that kids can consume healthily rather than lots of low-quality or harmful things. It’s overall not a bad thing and even worthwhile to expose your children to such content. A bit like diet - you generally want to be eating higher quality meals for a healthier body and this is much the same. Conversely, an occasional bit of fast food won’t kill you, it doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing. As a parent, it’s still your responsibility to moderate this in both quality and time of course. A series of one, two, three Instagram reels by Dr Arif Khan also give a nice overview of what it might mean to be “quality” content for kids.

As a (still relatively new) parent myself and one that quite likes a Montessori style upbringing (so, lots of freedom and exploration, hands on and tactile play) I’m in no rush to get my child whiling away hours in front of the TV or on an iPad or phone, but I do believe there can be some benefit in both TV time and technology and I do let my son enjoy some limited and curated TV. The question beyond that is: what is good and how do you encourage it? I have not really found many good resources on this - my gut feel is that’s down to a mix of current culture and current times - phones are the dominant personal computer now and touchscreens the main interface. They are abundant in every household rather than a single shared family PC at best or reliance on library or school PCs. I think “Screen Time” is also quite polarised and it’s tough to find nuanced recommendations or personal accounts in the middle but plenty easy to find anti-screen-time writings or parents justifying their use of TV. From my own experience, I was lucky to grow up with access to a PC from an early age (and the internet, even!) and it sparked a love of computers that unfortunately led me to code for money instead of becoming a world-class mountaineer.

I fondly remember playing all sorts of strange games, DOS shareware, and even weird interactive 3D “Home” environments that acted as a novel computer interface at the time (seriously go watch a video about Packard Bell Navigator if you never had the pleasure of experiencing it yourself). I also remember simply navigating settings menus, tweaking things, and customising things as simple as folder icons. I’m definitely nostalgic for it with a heavy rose tint, but I do sincerely believe I benefitted from it. I also acknowledge my access was fairly uncurated, unguided, unrestricted, unmoderated.

I don’t want to turn my son into me, but I am happy to give him an opportunity to play, explore, learn as he wants to, and provide something well moderated and importantly curated for him. We’re a technological world now, it’s worth having some appreciation and understanding of technology. I am presently giving him occasional access to an old laptop (like, from 2011?) with a simple Linux install on it. He’s only 2 and a long way off understanding he can use it to access YouTube, but he has plenty of fun even exploring a word processor. I’m currently trying to find more software he stands a good chance of exploring, games or otherwise, without much friction so he can get something out of his PC time.

He’s not capable of typing or differentiating keys easily, but I was able to teach him how to move the mouse on screen with a trackpad (after he stopped jabbing the screen with his finger to no response, thanks phone) and click with intent now. I can ask him to click things by pointing or describing them and he can play simple mouse games. I’ve also bought a USB NES controller for very simple input which he can use to play some games or control simple interfaces. I’ve spent a lot of time looking for good software and it’s not simple or easy - a lot of stuff is quite complex or easy to “fail” at. He doesn’t care about failing but being stuck in an unrewarding loop isn’t fun or educational. If not that then it’s aggressively educational, or it really leans into the “mindless” sensory stimulation (an early application I let him play with was bambam - no shade, it nails being a simple and rewarding app but I think it’s lacking a bit of purpose for what I’m after). Two of my current favourites are:

  • GCompris - “Educational” software by the KDE community which is a big library of small games all designed to let children practise skills. While some of this is a bit too directly educational and a lot of it is beyond his ability right now, there are some excellent filters to find simpler things, great categorisation and a “Favourite” feature making it easy to filter to relevant minigames. This is what allowed him to practise his mouse movements and clicking enough so that he can now use a trackpad with intent and purpose. It’s readily available on Windows and Android too!
  • Excitebike - a fantastic old NES game with extremely simple controls and freedom with no frustrating “lose” loop. He can hold A to go, it doesn’t matter if he falls off the bike as it recovers automatically, and the level eventually ends if you hold or tap A enough. Nothing stops him from making progress, like a Goomba in Mario would if he ran into it.

In the long term I’m starting to set up the computer much more personally for him and expand what he’s got access to and his autonomy over it. I started off on Pop!_OS which I have since binned for a much more raw and quicker/more compatible Debian XFCE install. He doesn’t need his own user account anytime soon because he won’t understand how to log in, but I might be able to set it up to automatically log into his and strip it down so it has no internet access - not that I expect he’ll understand how to use the internet anytime soon - and locked-down settings so that he can explore menus without breaking anything badly. I’m still on the hunt for any applications or games that would be interesting to add. I don’t have a strict plan or goal - it really is free but guided play and exploration as I sit with him and talk about whatever he is doing, point to the screen, make suggestions or help and show him things.

There’s some old tweet in the back of my mind, which I’ve failed to google, that talks about how “Logging onto the family computer used to be an event, and you would log off afterwards and that would be it”. It’s hard to get that relationship, purposeful connection and disconnection now and I do think being always-on and readily accessible can be really negative. Having something clunky that takes a while to boot and load things, needs some configuring, occasionally breaks and needs repairs, has raw file system access and application installs rather than a marketing-heavy app store helps build a lot more technological appreciation and gives a lot more of a naturally ’limited’ access than a phone with YouTube Kids.

For the majority of the day though, his scooter, a wooden kitchen and a well-stocked library (Big up The Works and their Mix & Match children’s book deals) are keeping him plenty busy when he’s indoors still.