You probably won't have much to worry about until you have to decide whether screen time for your kid (at age 3-4) is a reasonable trade-off for you and your partner to have peaceful time to yourselves. Then it'll rear it's head again, after lulling you into complacency, when the kid is middle school age and all their friends have smartphones. Then you have to decide whether the convenience factor (for you) of your kid having a device is worth the trade-off of... them having a device.

Fwiw, my older two are 14 & 16 and we still use device control software on their phones and laptops. The younger of the two complains a bit periodically but the older one just accepts that it's the way it is and gets on with his life [most of the time].

I personally advise you not to let your young kid get into e-gaming. Things like Fortnite, Roblox and Minecraft are gateways to increased device usage, and the benefits are (again, imho) not remotely worth it nor irreplaceable by much healthier alternatives.

Fun tidbit: my 8yo has a Kindle Fire and we've let her have Netflix & Disney+ installed on it. She also uses the Kindle & Libby apps to read voraciously, and Khan Academy for math. When she watches streaming media, though, she frequently watches it on mute with subtitles. That shocked me to see, and I asked her about it. She's 100% cool with that and appreciate the "privacy" of being able to watch things without other people meddling in her business. Shrug.

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SchemaLoad 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Banning a 16 year old from minecraft is so far beyond reasonable imo. I'd agree with not giving young kids ipads and walking away. But what sounds like a blanket ban on gaming is absurd.

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kelnos 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Serious question (I don't have kids of my own): before smartphones and tablets and the ubiquity of laptops and computers, what did parents do to get some peaceful time to themselves?

It's hard to believe that parents were only able to achieve this during the past 15-20 years.

(When I was a kid in the 80s and 90s, I spent plenty of time outdoors with my friends in the neighborhood, and also inside, in front of my Nintendo, either with friends or without. Not sure how much peace my parents got, but I assume it was non-zero.)

	▲	tpxl 21 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Same thing they do now: Get a nanny, ask the grandparents, playdates, ... Putting kids in front of a device is lazy, and unfortunately, most of us are lazy.
	▲	SchemaLoad 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		What era are you talking about? Later than the 90s had computers and game consoles. Before that it was going outside and digging holes, throwing stones.

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Yeul 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Parents have always wanted time for themselves. There are Americans alive today who will tell you that they used to play outside from dusk to dawn and only saw their parents at dinner.