Parents - How much tech time do your kids get?

Everything else!

Moderators: Bakhtosh, EvilHomer3k

User avatar
Holman
Posts: 28907
Joined: Sun Oct 24, 2004 8:00 pm
Location: Between the Schuylkill and the Wissahickon

Re: Parents - How much tech time do your kids get?

Post by Holman »

We're very relaxed about screen time with our boys (17 and 14).

These guys are in school on their computers all day, they do homework online, and then school transitions into social life with their friends (usually mediated through Steam and Dischord) in the evening.

As long as they get their school work done and accomplish other tasks that need doing (walking the dog, various chores, some form of exercise, etc), we don't clock the non-school screen time other than making sure the computers are off before 10 pm.

In practice, this means they get to do a lot of gaming, but it's usually social with their friends, and friends are important. Since we also make time for a sit-down family dinner every night as well as board games, etc, it doesn't feel TOO unbalanced.
Much prefer my Nazis Nuremberged.
User avatar
naednek
Posts: 10866
Joined: Tue Oct 19, 2004 9:23 pm

Re: Parents - How much tech time do your kids get?

Post by naednek »

AWS260 wrote: Mon Mar 01, 2021 2:01 pm
Paingod wrote: Mon Mar 01, 2021 12:01 pm
AWS260 wrote: Mon Mar 01, 2021 11:07 am Other than school and after-school enrichment stuff, his online time is a mix of Roblox (so much Roblox), YouTube (so much YouTube), and quasi-educational things like Scratch and Tinkercad.
Sounds like my 12 year old when he was 11 - and he's now dropped Scratch in favor of playing with the Unity game development platform.
Is there a teaching resource you used to get him started on that? He's told us that he wants to learn C#, but neither parent knows a whit about coding.

Sounds like Ethan and your son would get along quite well. He loves scratch and roblox, and watching videos on youtube about scratch and roblox.
hepcat - "I agree with Naednek"
User avatar
Skinypupy
Posts: 20339
Joined: Tue Dec 07, 2004 10:12 am
Location: Utah

Re: Parents - How much tech time do your kids get?

Post by Skinypupy »

I do expect that we will likely be more lax when the kids are older. I’m leaning towards tying it to grades and chores (I.e. you can have all the tech time type want, as long as you keep your grades up and chores done). That doesn’t work as well when they’re 7
When darkness veils the world, four Warriors of Light shall come.
User avatar
AWS260
Posts: 12666
Joined: Wed Feb 08, 2006 12:51 pm
Location: Brooklyn

Re: Parents - How much tech time do your kids get?

Post by AWS260 »

naednek wrote: Mon Mar 01, 2021 7:42 pm Sounds like Ethan and your son would get along quite well. He loves scratch and roblox, and watching videos on youtube about scratch and roblox.
And they're almost the same age! You should move to New York.
User avatar
RunningMn9
Posts: 24461
Joined: Tue Oct 12, 2004 11:55 pm
Location: The Sword Coast
Contact:

Re: Parents - How much tech time do your kids get?

Post by RunningMn9 »

Paingod wrote:I don't know, though, how to ease a kid into the actual C#. Having seen what Scratch can do, I know kids become aware of object-oriented programming. To that end, Unity does have an object-oriented programming option called Bolt. It's been a while since I looked at it, but IIRC, Unity was intending to build in a similar feature. Bolt (or a similar feature) may help make Unity more understandable for a kid coming from Scratch.
Just as a note, C# is one of the most object-oriented languages on the planet. Bolt is a whole different animal (visual scripting/programming). Bolt is much more like scratch, but is not really object-oriented programming in the traditional sense.

As for the original question, I can report on the results of one of the extremes. We never had any limits. Growing up, I was completely unrestrained, and I never thought that it impaired me. I turned out reasonable enough.

My son got a GameCube when he was little, and cut his teeth playing Super Mario Sunshine with his grandmother. I gave up even the concept of limits when he was playing GTA when he was 12 (it was just a driving game to him and his friends). When he was old enough and bought his own XBox, that became a portal to his friends.

He still played sports up until COVID, playing on a travel soccer team with his friends, so we never worried about it.

He’s dialed back on his own of late, instead focusing his time on chess and watching chess videos. Although he and his friends from high school still stay in touch via Madden leagues, so there’s that.

My daughter isn’t a big gamer, but uses her phone almost as much as I do. We had an incident when her and her friends first got their phones with some online bullying, but everyone got together and dropped a hammer on all of the girls, and they stopped. Haven’t had any issues, and they made it to adulthood (18 and 20).

The only criticism I would level at them is one I would level at me. We’ve lost the ability to be bored, because the entire world is at our fingertips at all times.
And in banks across the world
Christians, Moslems, Hindus, Jews
And every other race, creed, colour, tint or hue
Get down on their knees and pray
The raccoon and the groundhog neatly
Make up bags of change
But the monkey in the corner
Well he's slowly drifting out of range
User avatar
RunningMn9
Posts: 24461
Joined: Tue Oct 12, 2004 11:55 pm
Location: The Sword Coast
Contact:

Re: Parents - How much tech time do your kids get?

Post by RunningMn9 »

AWS260 wrote:
Unagi wrote: Mon Mar 01, 2021 3:08 pm I myself learned by way of a "Udemy" course, I would recommend it.
Thanks!
I own several of those and my primary recommendation is to wait for the sales! I’ve never paid more than $10 for a course on Udemy. I collect those classes like I collect video games on Steam. :)
And in banks across the world
Christians, Moslems, Hindus, Jews
And every other race, creed, colour, tint or hue
Get down on their knees and pray
The raccoon and the groundhog neatly
Make up bags of change
But the monkey in the corner
Well he's slowly drifting out of range
Post Reply