People when kids screech at a restaurant: ‘Must be shitty parents.’
People when kids run around at a restaurant: ‘Must be shitty parents.’
People when kids use an ipad at a restaurant: ‘Must be shitty parents.’
There’s no winning here. Children just aren’t allowed to exist.
We are the exception because we most definitely weren’t like that at all as a kid. /s
I’m guessing it’s because the perception of people who don’t have kids have the thought “every time I’m in a restaurant I see kids on their parents phone/ipad so that must be what they do 24/7”, and I’m totally guilty of that too. Once I had a kid, I think me and my partner had a pretty good no screen time rule but when we wanted to go out to eat at a restaurant that rule was relaxed not just for us but for everyone else as well.
#2 is shitty parenting. Kids running around a restaurant puts them and staff in dangerous situations with hot food and steak knives etc
It’s when it’s A, B, then C with subway surfers on full blast for the rest of the meal then yeah the vibe sucks and I wish I wasn’t sitting near your kid.
Learn to shitpost kid.
Somewhere right now there is a iPad kid watching skibidi toilet that will one day be president.
Somewhere right now there is a President watching skibidi toilet that will one day be dead.
you jest. fox news would never stoop so low to play that garbage.
they stoop lower by playing fucker carlson, or other fascist talking heads.
Parents use to say leave your toys at home. I guess parents need the virtual babysitter with them at all times.
Meh, back in the days we’d watch youtubepoop videos and whatnot. Nonsense you like os funny, nonsense you don’t is brainrot.
We used to watch garbage pail kids and treated ninja turtles like it was art. I won’t judge kids for what they’re into now
Quantity is an important factor. A half hour a day of brainrot isn’t a big problem, constant brainrot during all your free time is going to impact your concentration abilities, your mental image of the world, your ability to build meaningful logical connections and so many other mental development elements.
Exactly. We gathered together around my friend’s monitor, and laughed at FreddyW videos for 10 minutes, the continued our board game / rpg session.
Compare this to how some kids are watching mind numbing shit whole day on their personal screens. Very diffrent effect
That’s even different because what you are describing is brainrot as a social activity, strengthening the bonds with your friends through shared experience
No. I mean, there’s a plave for low art, but we’re much better at artlessslop these days.
Decoupling art from content the same way we decoupled content from physical media.
Meh, back in the days we’d watch youtubepoop videos
Mofo how old are you, I am 33 and back in the day we didn’t have youtube, we went out and played football.
Old enough to know I’m way into the B side of my cassette,sadly.
Am about your age and was thinking the same! I was an adult when YouTube was widely known.
Imagine portraying Homelander judging anything as an argument for agreeing with him.
Have you considered that that self awareness might be a level to the meme you didn’t recognize?
No. You didn’t. Because you’re the REAL Homelander! /S
App suggestions make it so hard to keep kids away from slop. I started out only letting my toddler watch PBS Kids programs and a few other educational programs, but then your kids start seeing suggestions for all sorts of shlock, and they want to see the show with the superhero kitties is (it’s called Super Kitties and it is garbage). God help you if you try to watch something on YouTube; every suggested video is either low-quality home movies of people playing with toys (which is like crack to toddlers or weird shit like this that absolutely shouldn’t be on YouTube Kids but often is anyway.
So don’t give a tablet then. Or if you do, don’t have Apps like that. Get an wifi only android tablet, install VLC and specific shows and games. Real games and real shows. Not short form shit or bs mobile “games”.
I don’t give him a tablet, he only watches at home on TV (or a phone on very long car trips). I don’t know a toddler parent that has the time to download a curated media library for their kids, and even if you do have the time, things like that fall apart eventually. My wife and I managed to avoid most crap TV until we wound up in a hotel room with two dead phones and a fussy toddler, and that’s when we finally caved and put on Nick Jr. For a while, we managed to convince him that Paw Patrol was only available in hotels, but eventually he saw the thumbnail for it when we were trying to show him Dora the Explorer, and that beautiful lie finally died.
Paw Patrol is a regular length cartoon with a real, albeit basic, plot. I’m talking Cocomelon or Five Finger Family or other short form shit.
I don’t know a toddler parent that has the time to download a curated media library for their kids
No. Curating what your child consumes, both dietary and cultural, is the basic requirement raising a child. It takes very little tech skills to download files and load them on a device. Even just an old school portable dvd player and a disc wallet is preferable. The point isn’t to cut all media, but to cut the short form shit the drains attention. Even a show with a plot that takes ~22 minute to get to the end teaches some degree of patience.
Paw Patrol is empty calories. It doesn’t teach emotional regulation like Daniel Tiger, or shapes and colors like Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, or numbers, letters, and problem solving like Sesame Street. It’s not harmful like Cocomelon, and I’ve accepted that my son loves it, but that doesn’t mean it’s good.
Curating what your child consumes, both dietary and cultural, is the basic requirement raising a child.
Yeah, I curate what my child consumes, thanks, I just don’t have the time or energy to create a bespoke tablet of torrented kids shows to present him, or track down a circa-2002 portable DVD player and start a new physical media collection. If you’ve got that kind of free time, great, but I’ve just got to use the apps I’ve got, accept that he’s going to want to watch some shows that I find worthless, and make sure he doesn’t consume anything actively harmful.
Saying downloaded media or physical media collections are hard and fall apart is illogical considering that’s how everyone on the planet used to engage with media before internet streaming became such a huge thing
Except they didn’t. They mostly watched live TV.
Maybe that was the case where you grew up, the world is a large place and people live different lives, I grew up on bottleg and official CD’s and DVD’s, physical comics and novels, mp3 songs downloaded from limewire and torrented movies, friends and family would exchange flash drives and other media regularly for new content, all my content was both curated and organically found and diverse, and I consumed content from all over the world and my life was better for it. And I still rely on some of these methods to get my media, tech companies benefit from taking away ownership of things from people and packaging it as convenience, I’m not falling for that, I’m building my own home server now to host my own open source apps and services, it’s not even that difficult anymore.
Yeah, I was a teen in the early 2000s too. Most people still consumed most of their media through live TV. Anyway, you’re right, I should build a home server and start burning my own torrented DVDs. That’s the only reasonable solution to, “apps suggest crappy shows to my kid,” and it’s definitely the thing a parent of a toddler has the time to do.
So them put some effort into acquiring good health media for your kid to watch and put that into the tablet and remove all other apps so they can only engage with content that has been pre veted by you, parenting takes effort
Yeah, thanks, I’m not looking for notes.
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Sees someone articulating the problem of streaming platforms elevating low quality or toxic media in children’s feeds.
You (a genius): “This is bad parenting.”
Set YouTube kid to only show selected channels. My kid is actually bored of youtube now.
Holy shit, I did not know you could do that. That is going to be life changing.
Which channels did you select?
We did some shows that we both liked, like bubble guppies, sesame street, ABC mouse, cool school, paw patrol, peppa pig. Then there’s also some like packages that were okay like BBC and discovery kids, Disney channel. The most brain rot one we let them keep watching was pinkfong (baby shark).
Ted Ed, Vsauce, CGP Grey.
Well chosen character, sorry if that’s you.
I’m not having kids, but this always feels like such a missed opportunity to let kids do something more mentally stimulating on that tablet.
Drawing apps and eBooks are right there! Hell, set up Termux and Acode up for them and let them program a bit (or like, I bet there’s a mobile version of Scratch they could use if they can’t read yet). Let them take photos and make little collages. Get them some music Synthesizer App so that they can tinker on their own little beats. Literally just show them that they have the tools to make something great instead of just shoveling in mindless content all day…If I had termux with ghc as a child I would NOT stop studying math.
“just one more monad, dad”
Turns out it holds for adulthood.
Totally agree!
I see the problem more in the parents. First, that these kids can use the iPad so much and second, that they can just consume on it. Like you said: Create, build and explore. Use the iPad, not get used by the iPad.
The thing that would scare me the most is that the parents don’t even know that such things are possible on their devices
Maybe my opinion of others is low, but I find it highly unbelievable most would even realize that something like programming is understandable, or tinkering around with music, or other stuff along those veins. Maybe drawing is still realistic though
But that would just go to show that there’s a lack of all of this in the first place, even for parents
bet there’s a mobile version of Scratch they could use if they can’t read yet
And for older kids apple made a scratch-like game for teaching their Swift programming language!
Scratch also works entirely in the web browser
I am the donor for a lesbian couple. I’m pretty involved in my son’s life. I took him for his third haircut. Midway through, he was bored, and shooting me one of the angriest looks I’ve ever gotten from him. I took a pic and sent it to his mom.
“Oh god look how mad he is, give him your phone!”
What? He’s being quiet and learning how to be patient while a haircut happens. Some parents think reality is a BAD substitute for devices, it seems.
At least one night a week, he comes to my house and plays without any screens. We talk and explore the world.
Makes sense when even adults use phones as a means to escape even a moment of boredom. How many adults use their phones while driving? That’s one of the most mentally stimulating things I can think of, and people get BORED.
To be fair driving isn’t stimulating at all (at least for me). Doesn’t mean I use my phone while doing it though, because… I’m not an idiot
Driving is honestly very stimulating for me. I have AuDHD and it is one of the few times I feel calm because I can actively engage all of my senses. Something about keeping an awareness in your head of what’s around you and your car really keeps me occupied.
i “use” my phone while biking, mounted to the fucker, to play music (so i don’t have to use my bell as often, also music rests my brain) and the other day i passed a kid pedaling, holding his phone in his lap and staring into the thing and jesus heelslut christ he wasn’t even wearing a helmet i’m still worrying about him
Those are harder than the dopamine of brainrot content though. I struggle with it myself. I know programming is far more rewarding in the long-term, yet I often end up browsing lemmy instead due to the immediate dopamine hit compared to the delayed one.
These kids won’t have any sense of self-control or understand why one is better for them than the other and the kind of parent that gives a child a tablet and just turns on YouTube does so because they don’t want to actually parent. So while this is decent advice for proper parents, these kinds of parents aren’t gonna do that, because it requires more work for them.
If you block any of the unproductive apps, and allow only the productive ones, and give the kid “free” access to what they have on the iPad, they will tinker with what’s available
They might fuss around for a bit if they know there’s other stuff, but ultimately they can’t force your hand, and it should still be plenty fun to do the harder things
Why are you approaching other people’s kids and take away their ipads?
I find myself in awe on how this much of brainrot can be watched by a little kid every time I encounter that…
Sometimes that iPad is there for you not the kids, try raising an autistic kid with unlimited energy, when you get them in a restaurant or bus, if the iPad is gonna keep him quiet and occupied, that means you don’t have to hear him complain. Kids aren’t robots, they’re people, and some have special needs and get overwhelmed in the fucked up world we made. If super kitties is gonna keep him relaxed for a bit so be it.
Thanks for this thoughtful and considerate response. As a parent myself, your kindness is so appreciated!
Hey, super kitties is quality content compared to YouTube. We have a YouTube ban in my house - the only exception is if it’s an actual show that can’t be found on streaming services.
The rest of this is spot on. We use iPads to keep our kids quiet in public places that are boring to them, like restaurants or planes.
We’ve all experienced an annoying kid in a restaurant, or a crying baby on the plane. It sucks, but usually that’s short lived. This post just seems like child-free snark/elitism signaling to me.
I’ve recently gotten a hold of an older ipad. I’ve been installing apps and stuff on it and playing with all the things.
And godDAMN that os has problems. I’m back on my android phone and it’s so much smaller, but Jesus Christ having a back button and responsive apps and ui and os feels like coming home.
Android isn’t without its problems though. The apps are all definitely aimed at a poorer/cheaper demographic, the audio drivers suck big fat rectum, and the hamburger-scrolly-floating-button design philosophy is straight up garbage.
But there are so many missing QOL and presumably standard features on Android. On iOS, I get so lost in the loose ux standards that often end up bewildering me. I used procreate for like 8 hours today, and by the end, I had memorized a ton of really really bad designs. They work, and within the app, they’re… Mostly consistent. But I have this deep down rage for whoever made some of these decisions.
It’s entertaining, at the bare minimum, to see UX and UI slowly develop over the years, and neither OS (or Samsung’s OneUI) are perfect. It’s fascinating to see what the other camp is doing.
But yeah… Kids crying over having their ipad taken away? Shame.
Get them something better.
Like a desktop computer.
When you’re
When
Fuckin squeakers
Our future. Get used to it.
