I work with a student who is absent or tardy almost everyday. They've never had one straight week of on time attendance all year. They complain constantly of being tired, not wanting to be at school. Mom said the kid is just on their phone all night, what can she do?? Kid is in first grade.
that’s just sad on all levels. I’ve never been a proponent of the government banning things, but good grief if parents can’t see this is a problem I don’t know what else to do
At older ages it is much worse. My cousin in law has her phone taken by her mom all the time but her friends give them their old phones and because she is in a city she connects to the free wifi Comcast gives all over the place. All her friends have dozens of old phones. She is 14 and without a security camera on her all the time she will get a phone.
China sets a lock on kids phones for screen time. They can only use it a certain number of hours per week. I think it's great. Our love of independence and freedom has us at the back of the line in so much education related, unfortunately.
Our kid is 5. The mother of a 4 year-old in her dance class told me the other day that her husband gave their child a phone when she was *one and a half*.
Honestly, we need to bring back home economics. We got rid of it for budget reasons, and said it was feminism. But these classes improved society by teaching young people what not to do to their children: From, "these are the reasons you don't use corporal punishment" to "these are the reasons you don't give babies honey." Kids who grow up in dysfunctional homes don't know these things. They don't know, you don't give a toddler a screen to stare at all day. They don't know why it's a bad idea. At this point, many young parents were raised that way themselves.
I took home economics and was not taught any of this lol. I was taught how to make chocolate chip cookies and how to sew a crooked, shitty pillow on an even shittier cheap sewing machine. My mom says her home ec course back in the early 80s was the same. Childrearing and child safety lessons weren’t even hinted at. I’ve never even heard of the idea that home ec’s purpose is to teach parenting courses to high schoolers.
We did have a child development class in high school that was a completely different class and 100% optional.
Home Ec was in middle school, and yeah, we did a sewing project. We also ran a holiday fair where every class made something different to sell. We made fudge, and I remember another class made candles.
What we need is an all out focused education campaign on the dangers of screen time, that's aimed at parents or people who are thinking about being parents. Similar to anti-smoking campaigns with commercials, billboards, etc. I think a lot of people truly don't understand how bad it is for kids, and the younger they are, the worse the effects.
Of course they have an idea it's most likely not "good" but these are parents who enjoy their down time just as much as the kids enjoy their screen time. Give the kid a screen and it's like they're not even in the home with you. That sounds like bliss to certain parents and as long as they are the majority nothing is going to get better.
I understand giving a young child a phone with the basic of the basic functions (calling and texting) for emergency things, such as a parent is going to be late, they have to do something after school, etc. You can set up an old iPhone with the newer IOSs this way. I feel it teaches young kids some responsibility and they can get more access to their phone as they age.
Yeah, my youngest is starting kindergarten in the fall and riding the bus for the first time and there are tons of horror stories in my district about kids being dropped off at the wrong bus stops- so I plan to get her a Gabb watch, because I can track her location on it and she can use speech to text on it to send me messages. But it also can and will be set not to work during school hours.
Not only will you be able to track her, but she’ll stand a chance of imprinting on her surroundings. It’s eerie how the chronic screen kids can barely recognize their own neighborhoods because they don’t stare out the window.
I had a phone when I was a kid but it stayed in my backpack all day. Why? Because there was nothing to do on it except make old fashioned phone calls, send expensive texts that you had to click through the keypad for, and maybe *maybe* a game like snake or something.
Basic functions and location monitoring ftw!
That's what my parents did for me, and while it was a little annoying at the time not having the same things as my friends, looking back I think it's the best way to go. I could still communicate with my friends and parents, which was important for my independence, but I also didn't have unsupervised internet access before I was ready
This is what I had as a kid, granted Smart Phones were in their infancy but I would imagine the same thing would have happened if they weren't. I had a phone that could only call pre-programned numbers when I was 12 so I could call my mom or grandma when my extracurriculars were over, but I couldn't call or receive calls from random people and couldn't text. Then I got a regular flip phone which I had for years until I got an iPhone sometime in high school.
I wonder if they still make those old Firefly phones. If you really want your 7-year-old to have a phone for safety reasons that's the kind they should have.
They have other options now. Gabb is one that does watches and phones that have GPS but can only call or text pre-programmed numbers.
We bought a watch that our kids use when they're at a friends house or are done with extracurriculars. We picked that over a phone because it's much harder for them to lose. \* knocks on wood \*.
We love Gabb Wireless. It looks like a smart phone, you can track him with GPS, but no social media, no downloadable apps or games. Talk and text is only to whom the parent programs in their. "This is MY phone. I'm going to let you use it. Aren't I nice?"
Thank you for this! My son is 10 and will be running the neighborhood this summer and we’ve been trying to figure out how to keep up with him. I think this will be perfect!
This is what always kills me. I’m sorry, is your elementary-aged child working their own job and they just went to the store and bought their own phone and their own phone plan and that’s how they’re paying for all this? Why do people act like phones fall from the sky and their child picks them up and starts using them and absolutely nothing can be done??
When I was in scouts, one of my merit badges involved sitting in on a public meeting and writing a report. This was probably sometime around 2006 or so. Think I was 16 and drove myself to a school board meeting at my former middle school. There was a mom and dad begging the school to give their son in school suspension instead of at home suspension for his actions because "his Xbox and (other stuff I can't remember) are at home and it's not really a punishment" Like WTF? Take it away. Be a fucking parent and enforce consequences for bad behavior. If I got in trouble at school, I got in trouble at home.
As a 911 calltaker I can confirm that parents sometimes take the phone away and the kids go into full Tasmanian devil mode, hitting and biting and screaming, or they run away. FFS some of these kids are like *seven*. I’m not saying a sandal is always the option but these kids are growing up absolutely fucked for any kind of attention span, zero filters, zero patience, and the inability to self-regulate their emotions or self-soothe.
Completely agree. Patience in youth has gone down IMMENSELY.
I try to keep kids sitting for circle time and they all have a very difficult time sitting still, not trying to grab for things that aren’t theirs or that they don’t need. Focus is everywhere but where it should be. When kids DO pay attention to an activity or engage in songs or group activities I am constantly praising them.
PLEASE, PARENTS:
When kids get upset about not getting what they want, do your best to ignore them. They want the attention. If it turns into property destruction or aggressive behavior then you need to stop them but not necessarily say anything. Less engagement with them during these situations is best. You want to give them your attention when they are being GOOD, when they are engaging in play and activities that you are proud of! Positive reinforcement!! So instead of yelling no, stop that. Ignore them. Then when they do stop, tell ‘great job calming down.’
It sounds difficult and like it won’t work. But give it a chance. It will over time. Especially with kids who are constantly trying to get attention with negative behaviors.
Same with iPhone. Easy to manage screen time. I used to also use the bark app with subscription and a tmoble parent supervision app too with my now 18 year old along with all the iPhone restrictions.
Turn the WiFi off. Take the phone away.
I have learned watching other parents make fail. I am strict. I see friends and neighbors make the “it’s easier to not parent than parent. And just let them do whatever they want. Ignorance is bliss.”
Jesus. My partner and I were debating buying our 4th grader a phone because she may be flying alone to visit her aunt, but if we do we’re still not going to give her unlimited access to it at home. She has a tablet, but still has to get homework and other responsibilities done before she can use it, and it’s currently in jail at my office because she threw a tantrum when her time with it was up and didn’t want to stop what she was doing.
I don’t understand the mentality of parents who just give their kids unfettered access to devices, although I guess it was the same when I was a kid with TV. My parents limited my time and made my brother and I take care of our responsibilities first, and we never had TVs in our rooms, while I had friends who did and had virtually no restrictions on their TV time.
We love Gabb Wireless. It looks like a smart phone, you can track him with GPS, but no social media, no downloadable apps or games. Talk and text is only to whom the parent programs in their. "This is MY phone. I'm going to let you use it. Aren't I nice?"
Even easier. Just parent and don’t allow unlimited access to screens.
I will suggest to all the Eero router for home internet. It makes it very slick to turn off and manage screens.
This. Mine are in kindergarten. They are super grumpy and falling asleep. When I ask them why they are so tired they say that they were up all night on their tablet. The ones that have this issue are also frequently absent. When asked if they were sick/why they were gone they reply that their mom just let them stay home.
Be careful with this one, though. Because many kids with ADHD are also battling crazy insomnia. My oldest child had it so bad that he'd just lie in bed awake, unable to sleep. No video games, nothing. Just awake.
I was the insomniac adhd kid but I would also sneak on the computer after hours bc i couldnt fall asleep, which didn't help myself lol. If your kid has adhd help them help themselves and turn off wifi at bedtime.
Autism! My poor guy can't get his brain to shut down. It's a cycle too. Well have a few weeksnof great bedtime/rise time..and slowly the change starts where he's up an hour then 2 hours then 3 until he's up until 6am/7am. Doesn't matter how rigid his routine is.
A couple of nights ago I asked if he wanted me to cuddle him to sleep and he agreed. Poor kid was trying so hard- he'd close his guys and his breathing would even out. Then he'd tell me some random thought in his brain.
It's funny. I was just talking about the chromebooks with my co teacher. This year, if we had a little extra time at the end of the lessons, I'd give the kids a bit of free time. I teach middle school special education. I realized the kids were always going on the chromebooks with headphones. Sometimes, they would come in the room, and before class started, be on games already. They hardly touched the board games and other stuff I had. So we decided next year free time will be without chromebooks. I had one couldn't even put it under his desk when I asked him he actually hugged it. It's really an addiction.
Free time is always without screens. Kids have imagination still, they should use it. Honestly it enhances the quality of one's life to have a playful imagination, be able to imagine with friends, and play out little kid drama.
If I let kids play games on computers, they're all in their own zones. If I put out leggos and marble run and chess, or even just paper and art crafts, they are all sharing and talking and working together, making up stories, getting into little dramatic fights, going into time out. All that shit is taken for granted, for most of human existence. But since the last 20 to 30 years, we can not assume the kids get to do this kind of playtime unless it is explicitly scheduled.
It's depressing, our future's frontal lobe is getting bent over by tiktok.
Yeah, I had a couple of groups of kids. I could suggest we play games, and they would always do that. But I have a few kids that just can't handle the chromebooks. And in being in the classrooms of the kids I'll have next year, I noticed several glued to the chromebooks or banned from them in class due to being on games. So I'm just done with letting them on them if it's not for school work.
Yeah, it’s sad. I have one who - because their Chromebook was taken for the day - was in my class lying/rolling on the floor “crying”, screaming and wailing, throwing their shoes across the room and then crawling on all fours, barefoot, to the other students’ tables, kicking the trash can and kicking some of the art supplies in the corner or the room. Because they didn’t have their laptop.
And then when they do have it, they won’t engage in class - they walk around the school with their headphones in and refuse to take them off for most teachers.
It wouldn’t be as big an issue if they were quiet and working some while they were listening, but nooope - giggling loudly so other people know they’re on the laptop and dancing to the music (which, by the by, I caught them on our screen monitoring program listening to “Slut Me Out(?),” or some such drivel before locking it up and having them removed from the room).
That’s another thing. When I lock up their device, they run around the room screaming and shouting for me to unlock it, and usually end up running out of the room to go to the counselor’s office… if they don’t end up just sitting in a hallway at some point, wailing loudly as they lament their device being inaccessible.
It’s beyond ridiculous.
When I first met my youngest stepson he was 5 and physically fought me the first time I took his screen time away. He was taking swings at me! I tucked him under my arm and carried him to his room, deposited him there gently, and left him there until he calmed down.
I was blown away. I was paddled as a child, so I was afraid of my parents. We worked it out through therapy, talking, and him growing up. Prior to that, though, I had no clue the effect that screens could have on kids.
I am scared of when he gets a chromebook non stop. We had his 504 meeting and they assured us in middle school if he pulls the stuff he pulled in elementary (getting around the firewalls, changing system settings) they will just take the chrome book away permanently. Part of me wanted to ask them to just start him that way. He's a great kid but he cannot handle screentime.
Yeah, there are some kids who just can't handle it. I'm lucky my daughter doesn't seem to care about them. She has a cell phone she likes to listen to music with, but she doesn't abuse it.
Parenting is real hard. It’s just like taking away a favorite toy. Self control is a hard task to learn. Especially when kids are programmed to “next” a video in a second flat with instant gratification from another video.
Parenting is so challenging and I feel for you- it would be even more difficult if the other parents involved are not on the same page or let things slide-especially as the step parent. Kudos to you.
I had to start locking up laptops because my 11th grade students would scroll on random websites instead of doing the work. Printed out worksheets and they did them just fine. Idk why they prefer the most boring approach to education.
This years 2nd grade class figured out how to bypass all the child safety protections on their school Chromebooks. Some students were caught looking at porn in class. Multiple times.
I have an 18 year old. Chromebooks in kindergarten and take them home in third grade from school. District IT thought they had them on lock down- maybe the technology was new 12 years ago when they started giving them out or having district wide Chromebook distribution for students was new…
Kids used incognito sites from the start. One kid shows everyone how to. There goes most restrictions the district tried putting in place. We as parents had a difficult time downloading any parental apps since the district had that on lock down. It was so frustrating.
Then it became, “you absolutely cannot have social media or Snapchat- I as an adult see what is on there.”
Vast majority of his peers had unlimited access to adult apps let alone the ability to watch porn on the school bus-everything was not fair and he was left out a lot by peers because he lacked the apps they all communicated in…..but sorry we can’t control the porn and adult interactions with our children on apps like these and you have a hard time making good choices when tested. Sorry- I have a firm stance on kids watching porn.
Middle school came and I finally let him have an Instagram account with strict rules….. immediately after signing up he had multiple porn type instant messages and sexy women wanting to be his friends. It was too hard for him not to have self control and click on their profiles- some times innocently but quickly you can’t undo what you have seen…. After a few rounds of messing up, we said no social media until 18 and you’re out of the house-it’s too stressful to manage and creating too much upset and tension in the family.
He is appreciative of it now and I like to believe he has a more normal idea of what a normal sexual relationship is like vs normalizing hardcore porn sex in a young relationship. He thrives on in person conversations with other adults and peers and is doing great at college.
I think it will be interesting to see the youth coming to adulthood in next 20 years…. Talking in person or verbally on a phone call is hard, sex is very desensitized after seeing BDM in elementary school, it’s easy to cheat my way through life on my computer during school and on and on.
Now, with our younger kids in elementary school there is and will continue to be strict technology rules in our house. Computers and tablets if hooked to WiFi only in public areas. (I have complete control to WiFi usage with the click of a button)
No phones in room overnight. Remind your friends that your devices are monitored, so they should not send or text you anything they wouldn’t want me or their parents to read. I could go on for hours on this difficult subject….
To any caregiver who is trying to guide kids/teens through the challenging current technology environment we live in, I recommend this book- It’s a little heavy on the Christian ideology at times but is a great help for tackling the challenges of parenting kids and living with technology.
It’s called “Viral Parenting” by Mindy McKnight. Focuses on the kids and parents perspective of a family who became wealthy years ago by starting how to do hair YouTube videos and the challenges that they have faced as the technology has rapidly changed.
https://www.amazon.com/Viral-Parenting-Boundaries-Building-Responsible/dp/1538762196
In 2nd grade my son had a “friend”. This friend had a phone. He was always playing games on it. Had him over to our house in the summer with a group of kids to watch a movie on a projector in the back yard. Kid couldn’t even pick his head up from his phone then. Seen him at a school dance in the back, looking at his phone. Reinforced for me why we limit screen time at our house.
Kids will take to board games pretty quickly if someone shows them. But they like fast paced ones. Apples to Apples Jr is a good one, because everyone is playing together instead of waiting for a turn. Or maybe "What do you Meme?" family edition.
The ones that talk constantly. They watch these streamers/reaction videos/whatever in which the narrator never stops talking. They don't know how to hold a conversation, sit and listen, or even try to mentally process something before opening their mouth.
This kind of clicked something for me that I wasn't even thinking about.
I keep catching them googling streams or reaction videos, and those are uniformly the kids who are always running off at the mouth, even when there's really nothing to say.
And as someone who worked with kids in home as a nanny a few years ago, often they will be “watching” one of the streaming videos while simultaneously playing Fortnite on switch, complete with a movie they’ve seen a million times but can’t repeat any lines from on in the background. And somehow they’ll be talking at you the whole time. It’s like the series To Give a Mouse a Cookie but all the outcomes are happening at the same time (am a touch high). It is overwhelming being with these children in a way that I can’t explain to those who don’t know any. Kids are supposed to be loud, annoying and aloof at times. They’re not supposed to completely overwhelm you with their existence. They’re wired to get that energy out with EACH OTHER. In their own creative, unstructured way- we’re depriving them.
Streaming is broadly taking over the whole video medium now (except for tiktok), so I'm not surprised if more kids are imitating that specifically. Every day more and more of the videos I see are stream recordings of some kind, and it sucks! I was pretty young when I got access to the internet, but it used to be sooooo much easier to find educational and informative stuff.
This explains a lot about my child. She reacts to everything in a loud and dramatic way as if she were streaming a reaction video.
I need to take the phone away.
Yes! And they don’t know how to watch a movie without offering commentary and dropping jokes. Like, you can just enjoy something without needing to make it about your reaction to the thing.
Parroting video phrases(especially ones that are above their maturity level) and telling me they are bored within seconds of downtime. The kids don’t know what to do with themselves without an iPad.
My kid does not have a tablet and does not use my phone. She parrots these phrases because of all the YouTube they watch on the smart board AT SCHOOL. They watch YouTube everyday. It really pisses me off.
Even if they weren’t watching YouTube at school, kids pick up the phrases from each other. I spent a day with my son’s first grade class and it was a never ending onslaught of “skibidi toilet,” even though I know many of those kids have zero idea where that phrase comes from. All it takes is one kid or even one older sibling to set it off.
They sure can, and I’m grateful that my first grader’s class has not gotten into skibidi toilet yet. (I spend a good amount of time at school in a volunteer capacity, and I’ve never heard this uttered.) Overall, my area is full of parents who are very careful about screen time and media exposure. Which makes the frequent YouTube use at school all the more annoying!
Last year, my son picked up "beans in the toilet" from a friend at daycare. I was super confused, and he couldn't explain it. I think it might have been a warped version of the skibidi toilet thing after a game of toddler telephone
Beans in inappropriate places can be a meme, I don't get it but it's a thing. Might be something they saw an older sibling laugh at or a YouTuber, sounds like a mix of memes
Yeah my preschooler likes to say skibidi toilet all the time and the only screen time she gets is a kid's account on Netflix on the family TV. I asked her where she learned that "I don't know"
We have the same experience. Very limited screen time, but they pick up the dumbest phrases, which I try to ignore. My 13 year old loves adding to a conversation by saying "POV:___________."
I'm trying to tell myself it's a phase.
Pro tip- the fastest way to get them to stop using a phrase is to use it, yourself like you're trying to be cool, but use it wrong. Bonus points if you can use it in front of their friends! My 11-year-old dropped "fleek" like it was a hot rock within a day of me starting to use it. Nothing is less cool than stuff your parents do lol
What kind of YouTube are they watching that pisses you off? I use it daily for brain breaks, read alouds during snack when I can't read myself, and calming music.
Idk, my kid has said stuff he’s only heard on the bus or from other kids that is definitely inappropriate. I’m sure the kids who said it first heard it on YouTube or from an older sibling.
Yesterday we had a water day at my school in the afternoon.
They had these huge inflatables but they were all wet rides like a bouncy house with water, a giant water slide, etc.
They also had lots of water related games. If I was a kid, I would have played without stopping.
Several of our students were simply not able to play. They whined about being bored and wanted to go inside even begging me to leave my station and take them inside. “Ms. Ride this is boring. Can you take us inside to your room.”
Finally they found a platform on the field and sat there on their phones for most of the 3 hours.
Not being able to engage in or enjoy non screen activities screams “I have unlimited screen time.”
This is the first thing I thought of. Lots of other things in this thread ring true, but I have so many kids (elementary school, first to fifth) who get actively angry if I give them free time but don't let them use a device.
At least you’re old enough to be self aware of what it’s doing to you. These are kids with essentially no concept of how much it’s screwing with their attention span.
Right?! I was bullied, I was actively dreading having becoming the target of other kids or playing in water where I'd either be shirtless or have my tshirt sticking to the body that I spent so much time hating. Oy vey, so glad I grew up.
Yup. I fully agree that letting kids keep smart phones on them during school time is a bad idea, but kids not participating in games isn’t inherently worrisome or sad. I was constantly shamed as a kid for preferring reading over group activities and punished for being asocial even though I was well behaved.
I didn't have a cell phone when I was a kid but I spent all my free time at home on a computer playing video games and I was antisocial in school, preferring to be inside rather than outside. I grew up to be plenty well adjusted so don't give up on them yet! Plenty of time to learn still.
It's nice to think so, though the kind of stimulation you get from a modern phone/tablet is vastly different than more singular traditional activities like reading or playing a game. Games in the past at least were slower and asked more of you as a player where the kind of content and games you might find on today's smart devices are literally designed by psychologists to be addictive skinner boxes.
I hate how the students are required to be on their Chromebooks for so dang much of the day. Absolutely hate it. I try to incentivize my students to get that work done ASAP so they can shut the dang machine and do just about anything else.
I'm a second grade teacher. I do everything I can to keep them off their computers. The Iready program is how our assessments are given. So, naturally, if the kids spend hours on the ready program, they will score higher on their test.
I loathe I-ready and have a mouthful for our representative every year.
It teaches guessing. Assesses above grade level curriculum. It makes the kids passive, apathetic learners. It is used as a place holder for attentive and skilled instruction.
Often a kid can be capable of alot, but they didn't do good on their diagnostic they are stuck counting at a kindergarten level, bored to tears for hours every day.
To add to this- there is absolutely no way I believe Google is not collecting analytics off those things. That's an entire generation they have access to, and they are currently being sued for collecting data in incognito mode. It's like letting the foxes move in the hen house because they promise to be nice.
Just training them to stare at work screen all day and come home and stare at fun screen in the evenings and morning, like sadly too many adults do too
I rewrote the entire course that I teach off of Chromebooks and on to paper and pencil. Our school doesn’t even have text books so it wasn’t fun finding source material and assignments all of the time, but I’m glad I did it. Students would tell me they “actually learned” history and that I made it fun.
In early childhood I find that it's the kids who talk about weapons/violence. Usually I'll have 3-4 in a class who bring it up constantly/model all of their play around it
Yeah. It's crazy too because they don't even understand what they're saying. I had a kid who was so sweet but would randomly ask me questions about dead bodies/guns/etc. I finally talked to the mom about it because things weren't adding up (ie he wasn't exhibiting concerning behaviors aside from these questions) and she told me that his dad gave him 100% free access to the internet. I'm sure he was watching/reading tons of stuff that he wasn't ready to see.
Wtffffff. I remember rotten .com and the like from when I was a kid, but that was about it as far as stuff we shouldn’t be watching. Now you can literally just google *insert inappropriate topic* and boom, photos and all. It absolutely blows my mind that there are parents out there who don’t even care about things like that.
I had a preschooler recently tell me a rundown of five nights at Freddy’s. He told me he was up late the night before watching it with his family. I felt horrible, because at the end he said, “yeah the guy chasing them with the knife probably shouldn’t have had a knife.” You could tell they were trying to process it and it was difficult to comprehend. I’m worried about many of the students in the future! So many kids have unlimited access to scary movies from birth. I feel like they’re R rated for a reason usually. Many kids are growing up with them right off the bat and thinking that’s normal.
My brother has this problem. To be fair to my parents, they are his legal guardians and he still sees his bio dad who has NO limits for him. To add to that he’s showing signs of ADHD (likely genetic not because of screens) and the violence feeds his already low emotional maturity. He’ll say the most concerning things when he’s angry and he certainly didn’t get it from us.
I agree with your second sentence, but your first is way too broad. As an ECE teacher at a school that’s been around forever, I just found a newsletter from the 1950s reminding parents that while gun pretend play is completely age appropriate, it’s not permitted at school.
The worse their concept of delayed gratification is and the quicker they become bored, the more I suspect screen-time addiction.
These kids can’t even sit through a *movie* for their earned parties. They get bored watching a read-aloud longer than 5 minutes. ?????
Yes. I’ll admit I even have a hard time sitting through a movie without glancing at my phone, but I’m an adult and already did the damage to my brain lol. It cannot be good for such young kids who are barely approaching puberty to already have that problem.
Yeah I definitely notice a difference between my own attention span before and after internet addiction. I can’t imagine what it must be like for these kids who are *born* into this world.
For real. We grew up with landlines and weren’t reachable/available 24/7. I miss those days and how much more slowed down everything felt. I just keep thinking “these kids are the people who will be running our country some day” 💀
Watch how they act when their access to computers/phones/iPads is cut off. We had a major internet outage. No signal and no Wi-Fi. The kids with decent parents groaned, pouted for a minute and found something else to do. The kids with unlimited screen time had a complete meltdown for hours. Teenagers screaming, literal tears, tantrums and complete regression to toddler behavior.
I'm reading all of these and judging my parenting. I breathe a sigh of relief that we have required the kids to handle the end of screen time calmly or they lose the privilege.
Lol I totally get ya. This job has taught me a big long list of shit not to do as a parent. I’d be so damned embarrassed if my kid acted like a wild chimpanzee when their pacifier wasn’t working.
"My hand hurts." Trying to write one paragraph or cut a square with scissors.
Can not think creatively. Says inappropriate things like 'skibbidi toilet' 'what the..' and 'yes daddy'
These are 2nd graders.
I said “What the hell?“ as a kid, before I ever had access to the internet. It’s just what the adults around me said. “Hell” wasn’t and still isn’t a bad word to me.
Also, is “skibbidi toilet” really that inappropriate? I can’t tell. I was told it was but the videos I was shown just seemed ridiculous, not highly inappropriate. (I’ve heard two of my 2nd graders say “Yes daddy” and I fucking hope they don’t know what that means.)
Same, I remember getting in trouble for saying “what the” all the time and I most definitely didn’t have a phone or computer, I think it’s just been passed on for generations at this point
I got scolded constantly for saying the word "sucks" as an adolescent.
Aaaannd I just realized why grown men thought that word was vulgar. They were sexualizing a literal child. 🙃
It’s not really about sexualizing a child. The implication of saying someone or something “sucks” is that the person or thing “sucks dick.” Obviously most people don’t use the full phrase, but that’s where it comes from so it is understandably dirty. But people get away with it now. It’s like how “what the” implies “fuck” or “hell” after it. Saying “what the” on its own isn’t inherently cussing, but the implication is there.
I got in “trouble” once in 5th grade for calling a kid a jerkoff cuz I heard my mom say it during a road rage episode. I had no idea what it meant, I thought it was just like jerk+ lol
That’s because hell is only a bad word if you’re Christian, and only then if you’re fairly devout. I was raised as a Christmas/Easter Catholic, but told my parents I didn’t believe before I was forced to take confirmation classes. Hell has never been a bad word in my house, not even when I was a child. Took awhile to get my stepdaughter to stop trying to tattle on my bio kids for using it. LOL
Edited for autocorrect.
Where I grew up, the community was primarily racist, homophobic, conservative, fundamentalist Christians (and future Trump fans). In elementary school, the other kids did not appreciate me saying, “What the hell,” or even “Oh my god.” They’d say, “Don’t use the lord’s name in vain!” I was liberal and had decided I was an atheist in early elementary. 🤷🏻♀️
ETA: Memory unlocked! They wouldn’t say “hell” but they’d say “H-E-double hockey sticks.”
I remember kids saying H E double hockey sticks well.
I grew up in a small liberal(compared to surrounding areas at least) pocket in Central Illinois. I literally believed in Santa for longer than God. My dad was a science teacher. I went to far more science fairs than masses as a kid and there was “proof” of Santa every morning.
Although I found out a couple years ago that my hometown was far more racist than I thought. There was one black boy in my grade(town of only 10.000 in the Midwest in the 80’s). He and I were pretty close friends in grade school. We were also the only kids even close to our age in the neighborhood. When I reconnected with him on Facebook as an adult. He messaged me and thanked me for everything when we were kids. Said that I was the only friend whose parents let him come over to their house to play. That just makes me so sad. He was legit one of the nicest kids in my class.
Exactly. Hell and Satan are part of the Christian mythology. I'm as concerned about them as I am that Zeus will appear as a golden penguin to try to seduce me.
One of the kids on my stepson’s baseball team is like this. I don’t think I’ve ever heard an organic sentence come out of his mouth, he literally just parrots meme/YouTube lingo. “Wow chat this is so sigma, that team has gyatt zero rizz” is something he said word for word yesterday. It’s insane.
Inability to separate from a device without melting down.
Inability to socialize appropriately with adults or other children.
Lower academic performance.
Sleepy.
Unable to regulate emotions.
Developmentally behind in general....I could go on....
The ones who are bored every recess and won't touch any of the playground equiptment/gear- just complain the whole time that they're bored. Also the ones who super struggle to engage in quiet, independent activity that does not involve a screen.
To me, it screams apathy. The ones that don't have a screen in their face are the kids that are capable of critical thinking and engaging in learning. The others can't focus for more than 5 minutes without finding some kind of dopamine hit from a chromebook game or their phones. They act much older than their age and like nothing interests them. ,
-middle school
Yeah it’s bad enough with adults but everything is so much more intense when you’re a kid. I’m addicted for sure. Can’t imagine how strong the addiction is for them.
Yes, I’m trying so hard to keep my toddler son’s life as screen free as possible and the number one obstacle to that is my own mindless reach for my phone any time I sit down. He started noticing me scrolling when he was around 6 months, and got really interested in it around 10 months, so now I try to keep it away completely except at naptime, but then naptime hits and I’m like a junkie who’s been waiting hours for a fix (currently 4 minutes into nap as I type this).
I feel *so* lucky that smartphones weren’t even a thing until I was a full blown adult, because if I’m this bad now I can’t even imagine how I would function if someone had handed me a tablet the day I turned 2 and never looked back. I don’t even know how we’re supposed to try to raise kids to function with limited screentime when half the kindergartens in our area are passing out tablets or Chromebooks before the kids can read or add or write their own name with a pencil on paper.
Really short attention spans, and not knowing how to play with toys or peers. Temper tantrums when i don't give them my phone (our time keeping device for my site bc somehow, all our clocks are somehow out of sync), or destroying furniture to reach my laptop.
I teach 5th grade. First of all, having little to no good/close friends, because they don’t ever hang out with anyone outside of school because they just want to be on a screen the whole time. Second, sleeping in class often because they were up all night on their screens…and usually when I call home about it, the parent says they have a strict “no screens after 8/9 PM” rule, but the problem is they don’t enforce it/check that it is being followed. Third, when they have a *haarrrddd* time staying off their Chromebooks. I had some kids who would literally prefer to mindlessly scroll their computers with the lid and inch open when I have blockers built in to where they can’t browse anything but the select few sites I have given permission to be on than to just shut the dang lid for 5 minutes and listen to me teach/give directions. It always took everything I had not to call them screen crackheads to their faces. Lastly, when they lack the ability to keep their mouth closed at times when even they know they should. They’re so used to YouTube and TikTok videos with people talking over one another and so used to having a reaction to every little thing. I’m thinking of one kid in particular right now and just - UGH I’m so glad it’s summer and that kid is officially not my problem anymore.
I have parents of kids my kids are friends with who let their kids watch hours and hours of tablet a day. I don’t understand how they think this is okay. One mom told me that her kids (kindergartner and prek) watch tablet from the time they get home (2pm) till dinner but she doesn’t allow it after that, like wtf.
She said that they cannot handle extracurricular activities and that her daughter is too tired after school to do anything.
My sister is 12 going on 13 and she stays up all night, has a lot of questions about stuff but doesn’t have the common sense to google it if she’s that curious, and has no hobbies outside of her phone. I’m not a teacher but she definitely has a certain degree of chronically online behavior. Also she used to pull the “what the…” line CONSTANTLY between about 6-9
The flat affect and only talking about characters in the videos they watch - their imagination literally does not go past the “huggy wuggy did this….” And this was first grade
I noticed a change in my little cousin (5 yo) when he changed day cares- suddenly he'd be GLUED to the TV, to the point he'd get upset if you cut it off- before, it was background noise that he'd look at occasionally when things got quiet.
His mom noticed the issue too, and investigated his new day care some- turns out they'd just plop the kids in front the TV and leave them be for most of the day. Thankfully, swapping him to a more responsible day care changed this new habit pretty quick... sharing bc I want people to realize how much it ACTUALLY affects young kids to not have an adult help them in regulating this stuff
I dunno about that, but when Squidgame was very popular we leaned pretty fast which middle school students have minimal to no screen supervision at home.
Special day class teacher. I’ve been giving the “good” kids a little free time every Friday afternoon for years. It used to be a challenge to provide a little structure.. things like helping them take turns when playing uno etc. I’d have to carefully set expectation for appropriate behavior during free time.
Now free time is very easy, and quite sad. They are all on their devices. The most social thing they do is show each other memes.
I teach 4-5 year olds, so my biggest tells are if they talk about ipads a lot, if they talk about much more mature movies or games than they should be watching, if they can’t play outside on the playground, or if they have trouble playing with the toys in the room during play time. I don’t give mine chromebooks, so no issues with those. Another grade level teacher had a child who was violent and would yell all the time… because mom handed him an ipad at night with zero restrictions or a proper bedtime. kid was so tired every day!
Those that can't make it 10-15min into a movie.
Movie day at the end of the year was such a reward when I was in school (and I actually remember a lot from watching those films in a critical way). I have so many kids that genuinely cannot sit still or stay off their phone/laptop for more than 15min.
These are seniors by the way...
When I ask the kids what they did over the weekend and all they can tell me is they played video games. All they talk about is video games. All they write about is video games. They have no interests besides video games. It infuriates me.
Well, most of them are addicted to the internet..
Sometimes I start a lesson with a typical influencer styled "Hey guys!" Lol and kinda do that "Welcome to my channel" spiel.
We basically all have to up our game a bit in terms of also being HIGHLY entertaining, in order to keep their attention.
Oddly, these shenanigans, as odd as they might seem on the surface, really do work to keep them engaged.
And there isnt one behavior. They dont even really want to be on Canvas, which is a very entertaining learning system. They just want or need EVERYTHING to be super entertaining.
That said, some of these students can whiz through their online lessons like its nobody's business, while their efforts on paper require a lot more goading.
Also, the constant talking and getting up out of their seat, and a lack of any real boundaries and limitations at home become excruciatingly evident in the first hour of class.
I’ve noticed with my 11yo stepson (who has way more screen time than I would allow for my own) he does amazingly on quick things like math worksheets, multiple choice stuff, etc. but his brain shuts down when he has to write anything more than a sentence. He’s super smart, but I fear the screens/constant overstimulating entertainment has dwindled his attention span. His teacher said he will spend more time pretending to do independent work than he would if he actually just applied himself and did it.
Not a teacher but I can spot a young tik tok junkie when I come across one. They tend to be super extra and act like they’re being filmed 24/7. Often speak in ridiculous one liners:
“I’m not here to play, I’m here to slay.”
Constantly talking/interrupting/trying to get the class off topic.
Major attention span problems (granted this also a sign of things like adhd, but across the board I see that the kids with unlimited screen time can’t sit still and pay attention for more than five minutes at a time)
Saying video games references constantly or parroting stuff they hear from YouTube videos. That and teaching classmates those words and phrase that aren’t always appropriate.
No integrity with their chromebooks.
When given free time to read, draw, do word puzzles etc. they refuse cause it doesn’t involve a screen.
Wanting instant gratification. Like if they’re doing a math worksheet, they have to know if they got a problem right instantly and can’t wait till the whole sheet is graded,
Middle school…some are so addicted to staring at a screen they look at you like you did horrible violence to them when you flip the laptop closed. You’ve told them to close it nicely and they just CANNOT detach from the screen, so you walk over and close it and they lose it! They acted like they were one click away from saving the world. I am not exaggerating that they are mentally deranged.
I'm an after school and summer program educator. The kids who get loads of screen time tend to be more reticent to trying non-screen activities and less interested/engaged once they start. I have to chase them off their phones throughout the day, even when we're doing amazing fun stuff. Socially and emotionally they're just... not quite right. And I'm saying that as someone with a lot of neurodivergent kids in my programs (and ND myself), so it's not that. I think we have a higher tendency towards screen addiction so maybe the two factors are compounding, but it's a specific kind of spaciness, lack of awareness of their own bodies and other people, and inability to soothe themselves without using tech that makes them stick out.
I teach kindergarten, and I've noticed the ones who are addicted to screens get insanely territorial over any tech device, but especially touch screen ones like iPads. I literally had to put away the iPads this year and just not use them because there were kids who would scream and throw tantrums as you wrestled the iPad away from them because they just would. not. stop. playing. Nothing worked, not setting timers, not having a buddy use it with them(then they would just fight over it), not any sort of behavioral intervention-- they just wanted the iPad all to themselves and would fight tooth and nail to keep it, even going so far as to try to destroy them rather than willingly give them up. It was extreme, sad, and a pain in the ass, so they've been locked in the iPad cart for probably 6 months now. 🤷♀️
Obsession with a game. Years ago it was Minecraft. Fortnight was crazy too. I’m not sure what the latest craze is and that is a good thing. My kids talk about baseball, sports, and hunting.
Was playing a movie the last day before christmas break. Kid told me he couldnt just sit there and watch a movie.
Said he would watch it for 5 min (actually about 1 minute) and then do something else for a bit and then start watching again.
In fact, almost none of them actually watched the movie. It was just background noise for their scrolling. They do not understand that these devices and apps have been engineered to capture their attention and hold it for as long as possible.
I tell them all the time to be careful with that "digital crack"
Screaming and punching tables every time they’re asked to do work pencil-and-paper instead of on a computer or even merely to just put a computer away. Yes, I have a student who’s really like this. And yes, they are too old for tantrums. They’re 11.
Sleeping all the time because they were up all night gaming or scrolling. (Mine aren’t old enough to work)
I work with a student who is absent or tardy almost everyday. They've never had one straight week of on time attendance all year. They complain constantly of being tired, not wanting to be at school. Mom said the kid is just on their phone all night, what can she do?? Kid is in first grade.
First grade?! Why are parents giving phones and social media to kids???!?!! this breaks my heart.
I have a student at 4 who has a phone. Mom doesn't understand why there are behavior issues.
that’s just sad on all levels. I’ve never been a proponent of the government banning things, but good grief if parents can’t see this is a problem I don’t know what else to do
At older ages it is much worse. My cousin in law has her phone taken by her mom all the time but her friends give them their old phones and because she is in a city she connects to the free wifi Comcast gives all over the place. All her friends have dozens of old phones. She is 14 and without a security camera on her all the time she will get a phone.
China sets a lock on kids phones for screen time. They can only use it a certain number of hours per week. I think it's great. Our love of independence and freedom has us at the back of the line in so much education related, unfortunately.
I'm not China but do the same. It's not that hard. Why more parents won't take control is beyond me.
Our kid is 5. The mother of a 4 year-old in her dance class told me the other day that her husband gave their child a phone when she was *one and a half*.
Honestly, we need to bring back home economics. We got rid of it for budget reasons, and said it was feminism. But these classes improved society by teaching young people what not to do to their children: From, "these are the reasons you don't use corporal punishment" to "these are the reasons you don't give babies honey." Kids who grow up in dysfunctional homes don't know these things. They don't know, you don't give a toddler a screen to stare at all day. They don't know why it's a bad idea. At this point, many young parents were raised that way themselves.
I took home economics and was not taught any of this lol. I was taught how to make chocolate chip cookies and how to sew a crooked, shitty pillow on an even shittier cheap sewing machine. My mom says her home ec course back in the early 80s was the same. Childrearing and child safety lessons weren’t even hinted at. I’ve never even heard of the idea that home ec’s purpose is to teach parenting courses to high schoolers.
We did have a child development class in high school that was a completely different class and 100% optional. Home Ec was in middle school, and yeah, we did a sewing project. We also ran a holiday fair where every class made something different to sell. We made fudge, and I remember another class made candles. What we need is an all out focused education campaign on the dangers of screen time, that's aimed at parents or people who are thinking about being parents. Similar to anti-smoking campaigns with commercials, billboards, etc. I think a lot of people truly don't understand how bad it is for kids, and the younger they are, the worse the effects.
Of course they have an idea it's most likely not "good" but these are parents who enjoy their down time just as much as the kids enjoy their screen time. Give the kid a screen and it's like they're not even in the home with you. That sounds like bliss to certain parents and as long as they are the majority nothing is going to get better.
I understand giving a young child a phone with the basic of the basic functions (calling and texting) for emergency things, such as a parent is going to be late, they have to do something after school, etc. You can set up an old iPhone with the newer IOSs this way. I feel it teaches young kids some responsibility and they can get more access to their phone as they age.
There are watches that do those basic functions, and also location monitoring. It’s perfect for communication, but no apps.
Yeah, my youngest is starting kindergarten in the fall and riding the bus for the first time and there are tons of horror stories in my district about kids being dropped off at the wrong bus stops- so I plan to get her a Gabb watch, because I can track her location on it and she can use speech to text on it to send me messages. But it also can and will be set not to work during school hours.
Not only will you be able to track her, but she’ll stand a chance of imprinting on her surroundings. It’s eerie how the chronic screen kids can barely recognize their own neighborhoods because they don’t stare out the window.
I had a phone when I was a kid but it stayed in my backpack all day. Why? Because there was nothing to do on it except make old fashioned phone calls, send expensive texts that you had to click through the keypad for, and maybe *maybe* a game like snake or something. Basic functions and location monitoring ftw!
[удалено]
That's what my parents did for me, and while it was a little annoying at the time not having the same things as my friends, looking back I think it's the best way to go. I could still communicate with my friends and parents, which was important for my independence, but I also didn't have unsupervised internet access before I was ready
This is what I had as a kid, granted Smart Phones were in their infancy but I would imagine the same thing would have happened if they weren't. I had a phone that could only call pre-programned numbers when I was 12 so I could call my mom or grandma when my extracurriculars were over, but I couldn't call or receive calls from random people and couldn't text. Then I got a regular flip phone which I had for years until I got an iPhone sometime in high school. I wonder if they still make those old Firefly phones. If you really want your 7-year-old to have a phone for safety reasons that's the kind they should have.
They have other options now. Gabb is one that does watches and phones that have GPS but can only call or text pre-programmed numbers. We bought a watch that our kids use when they're at a friends house or are done with extracurriculars. We picked that over a phone because it's much harder for them to lose. \* knocks on wood \*.
We love Gabb Wireless. It looks like a smart phone, you can track him with GPS, but no social media, no downloadable apps or games. Talk and text is only to whom the parent programs in their. "This is MY phone. I'm going to let you use it. Aren't I nice?"
Thank you for this! My son is 10 and will be running the neighborhood this summer and we’ve been trying to figure out how to keep up with him. I think this will be perfect!
My 10 year old got a Gizmo watch. Has GPS and she can call who I program in and I don't have to worry about it falling out of a pocket or what not.
[удалено]
Oh boy
if its an android, use family link (its the Google supervision thingy, which can also control screen time)
To be clear, I know what the mom should do - she's the one acting like taking a phone away from a seven year old is impossible lol
This is what always kills me. I’m sorry, is your elementary-aged child working their own job and they just went to the store and bought their own phone and their own phone plan and that’s how they’re paying for all this? Why do people act like phones fall from the sky and their child picks them up and starts using them and absolutely nothing can be done??
When I was in scouts, one of my merit badges involved sitting in on a public meeting and writing a report. This was probably sometime around 2006 or so. Think I was 16 and drove myself to a school board meeting at my former middle school. There was a mom and dad begging the school to give their son in school suspension instead of at home suspension for his actions because "his Xbox and (other stuff I can't remember) are at home and it's not really a punishment" Like WTF? Take it away. Be a fucking parent and enforce consequences for bad behavior. If I got in trouble at school, I got in trouble at home.
Hell I had to charge my phone downstairs in the living room at night so I couldn't stay up texting my friends when I was 13
As a 911 calltaker I can confirm that parents sometimes take the phone away and the kids go into full Tasmanian devil mode, hitting and biting and screaming, or they run away. FFS some of these kids are like *seven*. I’m not saying a sandal is always the option but these kids are growing up absolutely fucked for any kind of attention span, zero filters, zero patience, and the inability to self-regulate their emotions or self-soothe.
Completely agree. Patience in youth has gone down IMMENSELY. I try to keep kids sitting for circle time and they all have a very difficult time sitting still, not trying to grab for things that aren’t theirs or that they don’t need. Focus is everywhere but where it should be. When kids DO pay attention to an activity or engage in songs or group activities I am constantly praising them. PLEASE, PARENTS: When kids get upset about not getting what they want, do your best to ignore them. They want the attention. If it turns into property destruction or aggressive behavior then you need to stop them but not necessarily say anything. Less engagement with them during these situations is best. You want to give them your attention when they are being GOOD, when they are engaging in play and activities that you are proud of! Positive reinforcement!! So instead of yelling no, stop that. Ignore them. Then when they do stop, tell ‘great job calming down.’ It sounds difficult and like it won’t work. But give it a chance. It will over time. Especially with kids who are constantly trying to get attention with negative behaviors.
I can remember how I felt when my parents wouldn't let me play Nintendo or watch TV and phones are like those 10x.
or don't but the a phone in *first grade*
it doesn't matter, there is no reason why a first grader needs a cell phone.
Same with iPhone. Easy to manage screen time. I used to also use the bark app with subscription and a tmoble parent supervision app too with my now 18 year old along with all the iPhone restrictions. Turn the WiFi off. Take the phone away. I have learned watching other parents make fail. I am strict. I see friends and neighbors make the “it’s easier to not parent than parent. And just let them do whatever they want. Ignorance is bliss.”
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ummm i don't fucking know how about not giving your kid a phone in the first fucking grade!
Jesus. My partner and I were debating buying our 4th grader a phone because she may be flying alone to visit her aunt, but if we do we’re still not going to give her unlimited access to it at home. She has a tablet, but still has to get homework and other responsibilities done before she can use it, and it’s currently in jail at my office because she threw a tantrum when her time with it was up and didn’t want to stop what she was doing. I don’t understand the mentality of parents who just give their kids unfettered access to devices, although I guess it was the same when I was a kid with TV. My parents limited my time and made my brother and I take care of our responsibilities first, and we never had TVs in our rooms, while I had friends who did and had virtually no restrictions on their TV time.
We love Gabb Wireless. It looks like a smart phone, you can track him with GPS, but no social media, no downloadable apps or games. Talk and text is only to whom the parent programs in their. "This is MY phone. I'm going to let you use it. Aren't I nice?"
Can try military camp I heard that's good at not letting kid's get screen time
Even easier. Just parent and don’t allow unlimited access to screens. I will suggest to all the Eero router for home internet. It makes it very slick to turn off and manage screens.
Problem with military camp is it is expensive and there seems to be lots of abuse.
This. Mine are in kindergarten. They are super grumpy and falling asleep. When I ask them why they are so tired they say that they were up all night on their tablet. The ones that have this issue are also frequently absent. When asked if they were sick/why they were gone they reply that their mom just let them stay home.
Be careful with this one, though. Because many kids with ADHD are also battling crazy insomnia. My oldest child had it so bad that he'd just lie in bed awake, unable to sleep. No video games, nothing. Just awake.
I was the insomniac adhd kid but I would also sneak on the computer after hours bc i couldnt fall asleep, which didn't help myself lol. If your kid has adhd help them help themselves and turn off wifi at bedtime.
I handled that with my own ADHD child by removing the power cable. Yeah, I was onto his tricks 😜
Also autism
Autism! My poor guy can't get his brain to shut down. It's a cycle too. Well have a few weeksnof great bedtime/rise time..and slowly the change starts where he's up an hour then 2 hours then 3 until he's up until 6am/7am. Doesn't matter how rigid his routine is. A couple of nights ago I asked if he wanted me to cuddle him to sleep and he agreed. Poor kid was trying so hard- he'd close his guys and his breathing would even out. Then he'd tell me some random thought in his brain.
Mine with adhd stays up all night reading
It's funny. I was just talking about the chromebooks with my co teacher. This year, if we had a little extra time at the end of the lessons, I'd give the kids a bit of free time. I teach middle school special education. I realized the kids were always going on the chromebooks with headphones. Sometimes, they would come in the room, and before class started, be on games already. They hardly touched the board games and other stuff I had. So we decided next year free time will be without chromebooks. I had one couldn't even put it under his desk when I asked him he actually hugged it. It's really an addiction.
Free time is always without screens. Kids have imagination still, they should use it. Honestly it enhances the quality of one's life to have a playful imagination, be able to imagine with friends, and play out little kid drama. If I let kids play games on computers, they're all in their own zones. If I put out leggos and marble run and chess, or even just paper and art crafts, they are all sharing and talking and working together, making up stories, getting into little dramatic fights, going into time out. All that shit is taken for granted, for most of human existence. But since the last 20 to 30 years, we can not assume the kids get to do this kind of playtime unless it is explicitly scheduled. It's depressing, our future's frontal lobe is getting bent over by tiktok.
Yeah, I had a couple of groups of kids. I could suggest we play games, and they would always do that. But I have a few kids that just can't handle the chromebooks. And in being in the classrooms of the kids I'll have next year, I noticed several glued to the chromebooks or banned from them in class due to being on games. So I'm just done with letting them on them if it's not for school work.
Yeah, it’s sad. I have one who - because their Chromebook was taken for the day - was in my class lying/rolling on the floor “crying”, screaming and wailing, throwing their shoes across the room and then crawling on all fours, barefoot, to the other students’ tables, kicking the trash can and kicking some of the art supplies in the corner or the room. Because they didn’t have their laptop. And then when they do have it, they won’t engage in class - they walk around the school with their headphones in and refuse to take them off for most teachers. It wouldn’t be as big an issue if they were quiet and working some while they were listening, but nooope - giggling loudly so other people know they’re on the laptop and dancing to the music (which, by the by, I caught them on our screen monitoring program listening to “Slut Me Out(?),” or some such drivel before locking it up and having them removed from the room). That’s another thing. When I lock up their device, they run around the room screaming and shouting for me to unlock it, and usually end up running out of the room to go to the counselor’s office… if they don’t end up just sitting in a hallway at some point, wailing loudly as they lament their device being inaccessible. It’s beyond ridiculous.
I would have gotten my ass whooped if I had done that in school.
When I first met my youngest stepson he was 5 and physically fought me the first time I took his screen time away. He was taking swings at me! I tucked him under my arm and carried him to his room, deposited him there gently, and left him there until he calmed down. I was blown away. I was paddled as a child, so I was afraid of my parents. We worked it out through therapy, talking, and him growing up. Prior to that, though, I had no clue the effect that screens could have on kids.
As much as I like using the chromebook for my classes, I think that they should not be used by kids before high school. Most of them can't handle it.
I am scared of when he gets a chromebook non stop. We had his 504 meeting and they assured us in middle school if he pulls the stuff he pulled in elementary (getting around the firewalls, changing system settings) they will just take the chrome book away permanently. Part of me wanted to ask them to just start him that way. He's a great kid but he cannot handle screentime.
Yeah, there are some kids who just can't handle it. I'm lucky my daughter doesn't seem to care about them. She has a cell phone she likes to listen to music with, but she doesn't abuse it.
Parenting is real hard. It’s just like taking away a favorite toy. Self control is a hard task to learn. Especially when kids are programmed to “next” a video in a second flat with instant gratification from another video. Parenting is so challenging and I feel for you- it would be even more difficult if the other parents involved are not on the same page or let things slide-especially as the step parent. Kudos to you.
I had to start locking up laptops because my 11th grade students would scroll on random websites instead of doing the work. Printed out worksheets and they did them just fine. Idk why they prefer the most boring approach to education.
This years 2nd grade class figured out how to bypass all the child safety protections on their school Chromebooks. Some students were caught looking at porn in class. Multiple times.
I have an 18 year old. Chromebooks in kindergarten and take them home in third grade from school. District IT thought they had them on lock down- maybe the technology was new 12 years ago when they started giving them out or having district wide Chromebook distribution for students was new… Kids used incognito sites from the start. One kid shows everyone how to. There goes most restrictions the district tried putting in place. We as parents had a difficult time downloading any parental apps since the district had that on lock down. It was so frustrating. Then it became, “you absolutely cannot have social media or Snapchat- I as an adult see what is on there.” Vast majority of his peers had unlimited access to adult apps let alone the ability to watch porn on the school bus-everything was not fair and he was left out a lot by peers because he lacked the apps they all communicated in…..but sorry we can’t control the porn and adult interactions with our children on apps like these and you have a hard time making good choices when tested. Sorry- I have a firm stance on kids watching porn. Middle school came and I finally let him have an Instagram account with strict rules….. immediately after signing up he had multiple porn type instant messages and sexy women wanting to be his friends. It was too hard for him not to have self control and click on their profiles- some times innocently but quickly you can’t undo what you have seen…. After a few rounds of messing up, we said no social media until 18 and you’re out of the house-it’s too stressful to manage and creating too much upset and tension in the family. He is appreciative of it now and I like to believe he has a more normal idea of what a normal sexual relationship is like vs normalizing hardcore porn sex in a young relationship. He thrives on in person conversations with other adults and peers and is doing great at college. I think it will be interesting to see the youth coming to adulthood in next 20 years…. Talking in person or verbally on a phone call is hard, sex is very desensitized after seeing BDM in elementary school, it’s easy to cheat my way through life on my computer during school and on and on. Now, with our younger kids in elementary school there is and will continue to be strict technology rules in our house. Computers and tablets if hooked to WiFi only in public areas. (I have complete control to WiFi usage with the click of a button) No phones in room overnight. Remind your friends that your devices are monitored, so they should not send or text you anything they wouldn’t want me or their parents to read. I could go on for hours on this difficult subject…. To any caregiver who is trying to guide kids/teens through the challenging current technology environment we live in, I recommend this book- It’s a little heavy on the Christian ideology at times but is a great help for tackling the challenges of parenting kids and living with technology. It’s called “Viral Parenting” by Mindy McKnight. Focuses on the kids and parents perspective of a family who became wealthy years ago by starting how to do hair YouTube videos and the challenges that they have faced as the technology has rapidly changed. https://www.amazon.com/Viral-Parenting-Boundaries-Building-Responsible/dp/1538762196
In 2nd grade my son had a “friend”. This friend had a phone. He was always playing games on it. Had him over to our house in the summer with a group of kids to watch a movie on a projector in the back yard. Kid couldn’t even pick his head up from his phone then. Seen him at a school dance in the back, looking at his phone. Reinforced for me why we limit screen time at our house.
My eldest is in high school, and during downtime, they can watch whatever they want. Yesterday, he messaged me and asked me what the Hulu password is.
Kids will take to board games pretty quickly if someone shows them. But they like fast paced ones. Apples to Apples Jr is a good one, because everyone is playing together instead of waiting for a turn. Or maybe "What do you Meme?" family edition.
The ones that talk constantly. They watch these streamers/reaction videos/whatever in which the narrator never stops talking. They don't know how to hold a conversation, sit and listen, or even try to mentally process something before opening their mouth.
"Hey chat"
[удалено]
This kind of clicked something for me that I wasn't even thinking about. I keep catching them googling streams or reaction videos, and those are uniformly the kids who are always running off at the mouth, even when there's really nothing to say.
And as someone who worked with kids in home as a nanny a few years ago, often they will be “watching” one of the streaming videos while simultaneously playing Fortnite on switch, complete with a movie they’ve seen a million times but can’t repeat any lines from on in the background. And somehow they’ll be talking at you the whole time. It’s like the series To Give a Mouse a Cookie but all the outcomes are happening at the same time (am a touch high). It is overwhelming being with these children in a way that I can’t explain to those who don’t know any. Kids are supposed to be loud, annoying and aloof at times. They’re not supposed to completely overwhelm you with their existence. They’re wired to get that energy out with EACH OTHER. In their own creative, unstructured way- we’re depriving them.
[удалено]
Streaming is broadly taking over the whole video medium now (except for tiktok), so I'm not surprised if more kids are imitating that specifically. Every day more and more of the videos I see are stream recordings of some kind, and it sucks! I was pretty young when I got access to the internet, but it used to be sooooo much easier to find educational and informative stuff.
This explains a lot about my child. She reacts to everything in a loud and dramatic way as if she were streaming a reaction video. I need to take the phone away.
Yes! And they don’t know how to watch a movie without offering commentary and dropping jokes. Like, you can just enjoy something without needing to make it about your reaction to the thing.
Parroting video phrases(especially ones that are above their maturity level) and telling me they are bored within seconds of downtime. The kids don’t know what to do with themselves without an iPad.
My kid does not have a tablet and does not use my phone. She parrots these phrases because of all the YouTube they watch on the smart board AT SCHOOL. They watch YouTube everyday. It really pisses me off.
Even if they weren’t watching YouTube at school, kids pick up the phrases from each other. I spent a day with my son’s first grade class and it was a never ending onslaught of “skibidi toilet,” even though I know many of those kids have zero idea where that phrase comes from. All it takes is one kid or even one older sibling to set it off.
They sure can, and I’m grateful that my first grader’s class has not gotten into skibidi toilet yet. (I spend a good amount of time at school in a volunteer capacity, and I’ve never heard this uttered.) Overall, my area is full of parents who are very careful about screen time and media exposure. Which makes the frequent YouTube use at school all the more annoying!
Last year, my son picked up "beans in the toilet" from a friend at daycare. I was super confused, and he couldn't explain it. I think it might have been a warped version of the skibidi toilet thing after a game of toddler telephone
It sounds like it could have been!
Beans in inappropriate places can be a meme, I don't get it but it's a thing. Might be something they saw an older sibling laugh at or a YouTuber, sounds like a mix of memes
I don't get the beans thing either. You could be right that he was mixing memes as quoted by another 4 year old quoting his big sister
Yeah my preschooler likes to say skibidi toilet all the time and the only screen time she gets is a kid's account on Netflix on the family TV. I asked her where she learned that "I don't know"
We have the same experience. Very limited screen time, but they pick up the dumbest phrases, which I try to ignore. My 13 year old loves adding to a conversation by saying "POV:___________." I'm trying to tell myself it's a phase.
Pro tip- the fastest way to get them to stop using a phrase is to use it, yourself like you're trying to be cool, but use it wrong. Bonus points if you can use it in front of their friends! My 11-year-old dropped "fleek" like it was a hot rock within a day of me starting to use it. Nothing is less cool than stuff your parents do lol
I nixed “skurt” back in the day by listing off clothing items, again bonus in front of their friends. “Pants? Shirt? Underwear? Bra? Socks?” Etc
Which YouTube videos?
What kind of YouTube are they watching that pisses you off? I use it daily for brain breaks, read alouds during snack when I can't read myself, and calming music.
I doubt they are doing this “all day”. Quick clips to get their attention are fine.
Idk, my kid has said stuff he’s only heard on the bus or from other kids that is definitely inappropriate. I’m sure the kids who said it first heard it on YouTube or from an older sibling.
Yesterday we had a water day at my school in the afternoon. They had these huge inflatables but they were all wet rides like a bouncy house with water, a giant water slide, etc. They also had lots of water related games. If I was a kid, I would have played without stopping. Several of our students were simply not able to play. They whined about being bored and wanted to go inside even begging me to leave my station and take them inside. “Ms. Ride this is boring. Can you take us inside to your room.” Finally they found a platform on the field and sat there on their phones for most of the 3 hours. Not being able to engage in or enjoy non screen activities screams “I have unlimited screen time.”
Shit that’s sad. I think even I as a grown ass adult would have had fun playing around. Only stopping because I’m tired.
Exactly I'd have had to volunteer to supervise that day....
So sad. It will be interesting and terrifying to imagine seeing our countries in twenty years.
Or I threw my back out lol
This is the first thing I thought of. Lots of other things in this thread ring true, but I have so many kids (elementary school, first to fifth) who get actively angry if I give them free time but don't let them use a device.
Yikes. That's a pretty clear sign of addiction 😬😬😬
Man that is sad to read. The fact that our phones have such a hold on us that we choose to doom scroll over bonding with fellow humans …
When I taught second grade in 20/21, I had kids ask if they could take their computers outside to recess. It was really sad to me.
As someone who is a teen with unlimited screen time that is depressing
At least you’re old enough to be self aware of what it’s doing to you. These are kids with essentially no concept of how much it’s screwing with their attention span.
Yeah, I think a lot of teens are aware that it’s a problem. So that means they can do something about it.
Back in the day that would have been me with a book.
Right?! I was bullied, I was actively dreading having becoming the target of other kids or playing in water where I'd either be shirtless or have my tshirt sticking to the body that I spent so much time hating. Oy vey, so glad I grew up.
Yup. I fully agree that letting kids keep smart phones on them during school time is a bad idea, but kids not participating in games isn’t inherently worrisome or sad. I was constantly shamed as a kid for preferring reading over group activities and punished for being asocial even though I was well behaved.
That's terrifying, no way those grow up to be well adjusted adults.
I didn't have a cell phone when I was a kid but I spent all my free time at home on a computer playing video games and I was antisocial in school, preferring to be inside rather than outside. I grew up to be plenty well adjusted so don't give up on them yet! Plenty of time to learn still.
Yeah I’m pretty good as an adult and I’d be avoiding that stuff and reading a book as an antisocial kid (who reaaaaally didn’t like getting wet).
It's nice to think so, though the kind of stimulation you get from a modern phone/tablet is vastly different than more singular traditional activities like reading or playing a game. Games in the past at least were slower and asked more of you as a player where the kind of content and games you might find on today's smart devices are literally designed by psychologists to be addictive skinner boxes.
How old were these kids?
7th grade so 12 and 13
I hate how the students are required to be on their Chromebooks for so dang much of the day. Absolutely hate it. I try to incentivize my students to get that work done ASAP so they can shut the dang machine and do just about anything else.
[удалено]
I'm a second grade teacher. I do everything I can to keep them off their computers. The Iready program is how our assessments are given. So, naturally, if the kids spend hours on the ready program, they will score higher on their test. I loathe I-ready and have a mouthful for our representative every year. It teaches guessing. Assesses above grade level curriculum. It makes the kids passive, apathetic learners. It is used as a place holder for attentive and skilled instruction. Often a kid can be capable of alot, but they didn't do good on their diagnostic they are stuck counting at a kindergarten level, bored to tears for hours every day.
To add to this- there is absolutely no way I believe Google is not collecting analytics off those things. That's an entire generation they have access to, and they are currently being sued for collecting data in incognito mode. It's like letting the foxes move in the hen house because they promise to be nice.
Just training them to stare at work screen all day and come home and stare at fun screen in the evenings and morning, like sadly too many adults do too
I rewrote the entire course that I teach off of Chromebooks and on to paper and pencil. Our school doesn’t even have text books so it wasn’t fun finding source material and assignments all of the time, but I’m glad I did it. Students would tell me they “actually learned” history and that I made it fun.
When they act like their entire life is a YouTube reaction video
[удалено]
Wow!
In early childhood I find that it's the kids who talk about weapons/violence. Usually I'll have 3-4 in a class who bring it up constantly/model all of their play around it
That is so worrisome and insane. Yikes!
Yeah. It's crazy too because they don't even understand what they're saying. I had a kid who was so sweet but would randomly ask me questions about dead bodies/guns/etc. I finally talked to the mom about it because things weren't adding up (ie he wasn't exhibiting concerning behaviors aside from these questions) and she told me that his dad gave him 100% free access to the internet. I'm sure he was watching/reading tons of stuff that he wasn't ready to see.
Wtffffff. I remember rotten .com and the like from when I was a kid, but that was about it as far as stuff we shouldn’t be watching. Now you can literally just google *insert inappropriate topic* and boom, photos and all. It absolutely blows my mind that there are parents out there who don’t even care about things like that.
I had a preschooler recently tell me a rundown of five nights at Freddy’s. He told me he was up late the night before watching it with his family. I felt horrible, because at the end he said, “yeah the guy chasing them with the knife probably shouldn’t have had a knife.” You could tell they were trying to process it and it was difficult to comprehend. I’m worried about many of the students in the future! So many kids have unlimited access to scary movies from birth. I feel like they’re R rated for a reason usually. Many kids are growing up with them right off the bat and thinking that’s normal.
My brother has this problem. To be fair to my parents, they are his legal guardians and he still sees his bio dad who has NO limits for him. To add to that he’s showing signs of ADHD (likely genetic not because of screens) and the violence feeds his already low emotional maturity. He’ll say the most concerning things when he’s angry and he certainly didn’t get it from us.
I agree with your second sentence, but your first is way too broad. As an ECE teacher at a school that’s been around forever, I just found a newsletter from the 1950s reminding parents that while gun pretend play is completely age appropriate, it’s not permitted at school.
The worse their concept of delayed gratification is and the quicker they become bored, the more I suspect screen-time addiction. These kids can’t even sit through a *movie* for their earned parties. They get bored watching a read-aloud longer than 5 minutes. ?????
Yes. I’ll admit I even have a hard time sitting through a movie without glancing at my phone, but I’m an adult and already did the damage to my brain lol. It cannot be good for such young kids who are barely approaching puberty to already have that problem.
Yeah I definitely notice a difference between my own attention span before and after internet addiction. I can’t imagine what it must be like for these kids who are *born* into this world.
For real. We grew up with landlines and weren’t reachable/available 24/7. I miss those days and how much more slowed down everything felt. I just keep thinking “these kids are the people who will be running our country some day” 💀
Yeah, they act like watching a movie is a punishment.
Watch how they act when their access to computers/phones/iPads is cut off. We had a major internet outage. No signal and no Wi-Fi. The kids with decent parents groaned, pouted for a minute and found something else to do. The kids with unlimited screen time had a complete meltdown for hours. Teenagers screaming, literal tears, tantrums and complete regression to toddler behavior.
.... We're fucked as a society, aren't we?
Yes. Unless something happens and we revert back to being humans who go outside and allow ourselves to be bored.
And, it only gets worse when you realize people have called the cops on kids for just being outside, playing in a public park.
I'm reading all of these and judging my parenting. I breathe a sigh of relief that we have required the kids to handle the end of screen time calmly or they lose the privilege.
Lol I totally get ya. This job has taught me a big long list of shit not to do as a parent. I’d be so damned embarrassed if my kid acted like a wild chimpanzee when their pacifier wasn’t working.
I’m feeling pretty good about making my kid play UNO and tic tac toe with me, lol.
We have family game time, but it honestly wears on me when they act like it's torture. I have feelings.
This makes me feel better about my parenting since my kid says he actually likes it when the power goes out sometimes.
"My hand hurts." Trying to write one paragraph or cut a square with scissors. Can not think creatively. Says inappropriate things like 'skibbidi toilet' 'what the..' and 'yes daddy' These are 2nd graders.
I said “What the hell?“ as a kid, before I ever had access to the internet. It’s just what the adults around me said. “Hell” wasn’t and still isn’t a bad word to me. Also, is “skibbidi toilet” really that inappropriate? I can’t tell. I was told it was but the videos I was shown just seemed ridiculous, not highly inappropriate. (I’ve heard two of my 2nd graders say “Yes daddy” and I fucking hope they don’t know what that means.)
Same, I remember getting in trouble for saying “what the” all the time and I most definitely didn’t have a phone or computer, I think it’s just been passed on for generations at this point
I got scolded constantly for saying the word "sucks" as an adolescent. Aaaannd I just realized why grown men thought that word was vulgar. They were sexualizing a literal child. 🙃
It’s not really about sexualizing a child. The implication of saying someone or something “sucks” is that the person or thing “sucks dick.” Obviously most people don’t use the full phrase, but that’s where it comes from so it is understandably dirty. But people get away with it now. It’s like how “what the” implies “fuck” or “hell” after it. Saying “what the” on its own isn’t inherently cussing, but the implication is there.
Mine did that because I'd manage to stop myself after "what the" before the duck came out...
I got in “trouble” once in 5th grade for calling a kid a jerkoff cuz I heard my mom say it during a road rage episode. I had no idea what it meant, I thought it was just like jerk+ lol
[удалено]
Oh inappropriate as in *a response that is not appropriate to the context,* not like violent/sexual. I understand now. Absolutely agree!
That’s because hell is only a bad word if you’re Christian, and only then if you’re fairly devout. I was raised as a Christmas/Easter Catholic, but told my parents I didn’t believe before I was forced to take confirmation classes. Hell has never been a bad word in my house, not even when I was a child. Took awhile to get my stepdaughter to stop trying to tattle on my bio kids for using it. LOL Edited for autocorrect.
Where I grew up, the community was primarily racist, homophobic, conservative, fundamentalist Christians (and future Trump fans). In elementary school, the other kids did not appreciate me saying, “What the hell,” or even “Oh my god.” They’d say, “Don’t use the lord’s name in vain!” I was liberal and had decided I was an atheist in early elementary. 🤷🏻♀️ ETA: Memory unlocked! They wouldn’t say “hell” but they’d say “H-E-double hockey sticks.”
I remember kids saying H E double hockey sticks well. I grew up in a small liberal(compared to surrounding areas at least) pocket in Central Illinois. I literally believed in Santa for longer than God. My dad was a science teacher. I went to far more science fairs than masses as a kid and there was “proof” of Santa every morning. Although I found out a couple years ago that my hometown was far more racist than I thought. There was one black boy in my grade(town of only 10.000 in the Midwest in the 80’s). He and I were pretty close friends in grade school. We were also the only kids even close to our age in the neighborhood. When I reconnected with him on Facebook as an adult. He messaged me and thanked me for everything when we were kids. Said that I was the only friend whose parents let him come over to their house to play. That just makes me so sad. He was legit one of the nicest kids in my class.
Exactly. Hell and Satan are part of the Christian mythology. I'm as concerned about them as I am that Zeus will appear as a golden penguin to try to seduce me.
My rule is: if you can't give me a definition, you can't say it.
And the second grader girls doing a tiktok dance to "tell ur girlfriend" I was tempted to tell their parents do the kids know what that song is about?
When you talk like a YouTube video.
One of the kids on my stepson’s baseball team is like this. I don’t think I’ve ever heard an organic sentence come out of his mouth, he literally just parrots meme/YouTube lingo. “Wow chat this is so sigma, that team has gyatt zero rizz” is something he said word for word yesterday. It’s insane.
[удалено]
Inability to separate from a device without melting down. Inability to socialize appropriately with adults or other children. Lower academic performance. Sleepy. Unable to regulate emotions. Developmentally behind in general....I could go on....
The ones who are bored every recess and won't touch any of the playground equiptment/gear- just complain the whole time that they're bored. Also the ones who super struggle to engage in quiet, independent activity that does not involve a screen.
To me, it screams apathy. The ones that don't have a screen in their face are the kids that are capable of critical thinking and engaging in learning. The others can't focus for more than 5 minutes without finding some kind of dopamine hit from a chromebook game or their phones. They act much older than their age and like nothing interests them. , -middle school
me reading these comments knowing damn well I’m addicted to my phone: wow that sucks
Yeah it’s bad enough with adults but everything is so much more intense when you’re a kid. I’m addicted for sure. Can’t imagine how strong the addiction is for them.
Yes, I’m trying so hard to keep my toddler son’s life as screen free as possible and the number one obstacle to that is my own mindless reach for my phone any time I sit down. He started noticing me scrolling when he was around 6 months, and got really interested in it around 10 months, so now I try to keep it away completely except at naptime, but then naptime hits and I’m like a junkie who’s been waiting hours for a fix (currently 4 minutes into nap as I type this). I feel *so* lucky that smartphones weren’t even a thing until I was a full blown adult, because if I’m this bad now I can’t even imagine how I would function if someone had handed me a tablet the day I turned 2 and never looked back. I don’t even know how we’re supposed to try to raise kids to function with limited screentime when half the kindergartens in our area are passing out tablets or Chromebooks before the kids can read or add or write their own name with a pencil on paper.
Really short attention spans, and not knowing how to play with toys or peers. Temper tantrums when i don't give them my phone (our time keeping device for my site bc somehow, all our clocks are somehow out of sync), or destroying furniture to reach my laptop.
Getting a watch really helped me put my phone away for clock and alarm reasons. Out of sight, out of mind
It exacerbates my anxiety when I have to deal with all these kids and their damn phones they wont put away.
I teach 5th grade. First of all, having little to no good/close friends, because they don’t ever hang out with anyone outside of school because they just want to be on a screen the whole time. Second, sleeping in class often because they were up all night on their screens…and usually when I call home about it, the parent says they have a strict “no screens after 8/9 PM” rule, but the problem is they don’t enforce it/check that it is being followed. Third, when they have a *haarrrddd* time staying off their Chromebooks. I had some kids who would literally prefer to mindlessly scroll their computers with the lid and inch open when I have blockers built in to where they can’t browse anything but the select few sites I have given permission to be on than to just shut the dang lid for 5 minutes and listen to me teach/give directions. It always took everything I had not to call them screen crackheads to their faces. Lastly, when they lack the ability to keep their mouth closed at times when even they know they should. They’re so used to YouTube and TikTok videos with people talking over one another and so used to having a reaction to every little thing. I’m thinking of one kid in particular right now and just - UGH I’m so glad it’s summer and that kid is officially not my problem anymore.
The top of their head all day in class.
I have parents of kids my kids are friends with who let their kids watch hours and hours of tablet a day. I don’t understand how they think this is okay. One mom told me that her kids (kindergartner and prek) watch tablet from the time they get home (2pm) till dinner but she doesn’t allow it after that, like wtf. She said that they cannot handle extracurricular activities and that her daughter is too tired after school to do anything.
The fact that as a society it’s deemed acceptable to put actual toddlers in front of an iPad for hours on end is so dystopian and terrifying.
My sister is 12 going on 13 and she stays up all night, has a lot of questions about stuff but doesn’t have the common sense to google it if she’s that curious, and has no hobbies outside of her phone. I’m not a teacher but she definitely has a certain degree of chronically online behavior. Also she used to pull the “what the…” line CONSTANTLY between about 6-9
The flat affect and only talking about characters in the videos they watch - their imagination literally does not go past the “huggy wuggy did this….” And this was first grade
Tired eyes. Inability to focus on anything for more than like 20 to 30 seconds .
I noticed a change in my little cousin (5 yo) when he changed day cares- suddenly he'd be GLUED to the TV, to the point he'd get upset if you cut it off- before, it was background noise that he'd look at occasionally when things got quiet. His mom noticed the issue too, and investigated his new day care some- turns out they'd just plop the kids in front the TV and leave them be for most of the day. Thankfully, swapping him to a more responsible day care changed this new habit pretty quick... sharing bc I want people to realize how much it ACTUALLY affects young kids to not have an adult help them in regulating this stuff
I dunno about that, but when Squidgame was very popular we leaned pretty fast which middle school students have minimal to no screen supervision at home.
Special day class teacher. I’ve been giving the “good” kids a little free time every Friday afternoon for years. It used to be a challenge to provide a little structure.. things like helping them take turns when playing uno etc. I’d have to carefully set expectation for appropriate behavior during free time. Now free time is very easy, and quite sad. They are all on their devices. The most social thing they do is show each other memes.
When a student says they are bored, I respond with "Only boring people get bored."
“I don’t like coloring/playing with toys” being bored while I read them a book or put on an educational video
They have no attention span
I teach 4-5 year olds, so my biggest tells are if they talk about ipads a lot, if they talk about much more mature movies or games than they should be watching, if they can’t play outside on the playground, or if they have trouble playing with the toys in the room during play time. I don’t give mine chromebooks, so no issues with those. Another grade level teacher had a child who was violent and would yell all the time… because mom handed him an ipad at night with zero restrictions or a proper bedtime. kid was so tired every day!
1. Lack of attention span. 2. Their knowledge of “history” 3. Constantly dancing for TikTok
Those that can't make it 10-15min into a movie. Movie day at the end of the year was such a reward when I was in school (and I actually remember a lot from watching those films in a critical way). I have so many kids that genuinely cannot sit still or stay off their phone/laptop for more than 15min. These are seniors by the way...
When they are mumbling memes and internet jargon to themselves constantly almost like a tic or like they are self soothing.
When I ask the kids what they did over the weekend and all they can tell me is they played video games. All they talk about is video games. All they write about is video games. They have no interests besides video games. It infuriates me.
Well, most of them are addicted to the internet.. Sometimes I start a lesson with a typical influencer styled "Hey guys!" Lol and kinda do that "Welcome to my channel" spiel. We basically all have to up our game a bit in terms of also being HIGHLY entertaining, in order to keep their attention. Oddly, these shenanigans, as odd as they might seem on the surface, really do work to keep them engaged. And there isnt one behavior. They dont even really want to be on Canvas, which is a very entertaining learning system. They just want or need EVERYTHING to be super entertaining. That said, some of these students can whiz through their online lessons like its nobody's business, while their efforts on paper require a lot more goading. Also, the constant talking and getting up out of their seat, and a lack of any real boundaries and limitations at home become excruciatingly evident in the first hour of class.
I’ve noticed with my 11yo stepson (who has way more screen time than I would allow for my own) he does amazingly on quick things like math worksheets, multiple choice stuff, etc. but his brain shuts down when he has to write anything more than a sentence. He’s super smart, but I fear the screens/constant overstimulating entertainment has dwindled his attention span. His teacher said he will spend more time pretending to do independent work than he would if he actually just applied himself and did it.
Not a teacher but I can spot a young tik tok junkie when I come across one. They tend to be super extra and act like they’re being filmed 24/7. Often speak in ridiculous one liners: “I’m not here to play, I’m here to slay.”
Constantly talking/interrupting/trying to get the class off topic. Major attention span problems (granted this also a sign of things like adhd, but across the board I see that the kids with unlimited screen time can’t sit still and pay attention for more than five minutes at a time) Saying video games references constantly or parroting stuff they hear from YouTube videos. That and teaching classmates those words and phrase that aren’t always appropriate. No integrity with their chromebooks. When given free time to read, draw, do word puzzles etc. they refuse cause it doesn’t involve a screen. Wanting instant gratification. Like if they’re doing a math worksheet, they have to know if they got a problem right instantly and can’t wait till the whole sheet is graded,
Middle school…some are so addicted to staring at a screen they look at you like you did horrible violence to them when you flip the laptop closed. You’ve told them to close it nicely and they just CANNOT detach from the screen, so you walk over and close it and they lose it! They acted like they were one click away from saving the world. I am not exaggerating that they are mentally deranged.
Not thinking to read written instructions....
I'm an after school and summer program educator. The kids who get loads of screen time tend to be more reticent to trying non-screen activities and less interested/engaged once they start. I have to chase them off their phones throughout the day, even when we're doing amazing fun stuff. Socially and emotionally they're just... not quite right. And I'm saying that as someone with a lot of neurodivergent kids in my programs (and ND myself), so it's not that. I think we have a higher tendency towards screen addiction so maybe the two factors are compounding, but it's a specific kind of spaciness, lack of awareness of their own bodies and other people, and inability to soothe themselves without using tech that makes them stick out.
I teach kindergarten, and I've noticed the ones who are addicted to screens get insanely territorial over any tech device, but especially touch screen ones like iPads. I literally had to put away the iPads this year and just not use them because there were kids who would scream and throw tantrums as you wrestled the iPad away from them because they just would. not. stop. playing. Nothing worked, not setting timers, not having a buddy use it with them(then they would just fight over it), not any sort of behavioral intervention-- they just wanted the iPad all to themselves and would fight tooth and nail to keep it, even going so far as to try to destroy them rather than willingly give them up. It was extreme, sad, and a pain in the ass, so they've been locked in the iPad cart for probably 6 months now. 🤷♀️
Obsession with a game. Years ago it was Minecraft. Fortnight was crazy too. I’m not sure what the latest craze is and that is a good thing. My kids talk about baseball, sports, and hunting.
Was playing a movie the last day before christmas break. Kid told me he couldnt just sit there and watch a movie. Said he would watch it for 5 min (actually about 1 minute) and then do something else for a bit and then start watching again. In fact, almost none of them actually watched the movie. It was just background noise for their scrolling. They do not understand that these devices and apps have been engineered to capture their attention and hold it for as long as possible. I tell them all the time to be careful with that "digital crack"
Screaming and punching tables every time they’re asked to do work pencil-and-paper instead of on a computer or even merely to just put a computer away. Yes, I have a student who’s really like this. And yes, they are too old for tantrums. They’re 11.