My (three) children are still young, so my perspective is limited, but it seems to me that the main concerns about screen time stem less from the screen-as-medium, itself, and more from applying the same sets of concerns to the virtual/media environment that are applied to the physical world—that is, concerns about unsupervised children encountering potentially serious harms.
Some parents may face constraints such that it could be judged reasonable to turn their kids loose with a screen in order to do whatever else needs to get done. People live in a wide variety of imaginable and unimaginable circumstances. For me though, and for other folks fortunate enough to not face such constraints, screen time just shouldn’t be unsupervised—it should be modeled as something to be actively engaged with, and appropriately limited.
When I turn on a show for my kids, I sit and watch it with them unless it’s both known to be “safe”, and I have something I need to attend to in that moment. I often paraphrase dialogue so they can understand what’s going on and being said (“she means what the other person did wasn’t polite”, “that’s how they used to say they need to use the bathroom”, etc), or ask them questions about it (“do you think they really meant they were surprised, or that they only said they were in order to hide being afraid?”, “how do you suppose they get the camera into the mole burrows like that, and without scaring the moles?”, etc), and if I’ve chosen something with scenes that either have adult themes they don’t need yet, or it’s one of those cartoon movies that seemed contractually obligated to include a traumatic scene, I simply skip it in the moment, and if anything important to the plot happened in that section, I’ll explain what it was. Just because it’s there doesn’t mean you have to sit and take it.
Honestly, the same is true for chapter-book bedtime stories.
And Cocomelon certainly has a presence, but averaging out to a rate of about one per day at its peak. It’s a way to listen to songs sung by better voices than mine, though I almost always sing along, to show that singing is something to participate in, not just take in. It’s also been a way to learn new songs, or song-motions, to then to together at other times or in the car. Some of the activities the too-smooth-looking kids get up to in the videos have also been taken as inspiration for things to do in real life: make “rainbow popsicles”, make a box into a train and push it around, etc.
In that way, it flows pretty naturally with the other snippets of media they get with me: kid-safe sections from movies like Dune or Jurassic Park (for the visuals and for the bigger plot-themes about bravery, hubris, etc), videos of unique creations like Wintergatan’s Marble Machine or Theo Jansen’s Strandbeest, rocket launches, of course, and even slice-of-life videos like “Kids in Other Countries” (https://www.kiocs.org/).
My (three) children are still young, so my perspective is limited, but it seems to me that the main concerns about screen time stem less from the screen-as-medium, itself, and more from applying the same sets of concerns to the virtual/media environment that are applied to the physical world—that is, concerns about unsupervised children encountering potentially serious harms.
Some parents may face constraints such that it could be judged reasonable to turn their kids loose with a screen in order to do whatever else needs to get done. People live in a wide variety of imaginable and unimaginable circumstances. For me though, and for other folks fortunate enough to not face such constraints, screen time just shouldn’t be unsupervised—it should be modeled as something to be actively engaged with, and appropriately limited.
When I turn on a show for my kids, I sit and watch it with them unless it’s both known to be “safe”, and I have something I need to attend to in that moment. I often paraphrase dialogue so they can understand what’s going on and being said (“she means what the other person did wasn’t polite”, “that’s how they used to say they need to use the bathroom”, etc), or ask them questions about it (“do you think they really meant they were surprised, or that they only said they were in order to hide being afraid?”, “how do you suppose they get the camera into the mole burrows like that, and without scaring the moles?”, etc), and if I’ve chosen something with scenes that either have adult themes they don’t need yet, or it’s one of those cartoon movies that seemed contractually obligated to include a traumatic scene, I simply skip it in the moment, and if anything important to the plot happened in that section, I’ll explain what it was. Just because it’s there doesn’t mean you have to sit and take it.
Honestly, the same is true for chapter-book bedtime stories.
And Cocomelon certainly has a presence, but averaging out to a rate of about one per day at its peak. It’s a way to listen to songs sung by better voices than mine, though I almost always sing along, to show that singing is something to participate in, not just take in. It’s also been a way to learn new songs, or song-motions, to then to together at other times or in the car. Some of the activities the too-smooth-looking kids get up to in the videos have also been taken as inspiration for things to do in real life: make “rainbow popsicles”, make a box into a train and push it around, etc.
In that way, it flows pretty naturally with the other snippets of media they get with me: kid-safe sections from movies like Dune or Jurassic Park (for the visuals and for the bigger plot-themes about bravery, hubris, etc), videos of unique creations like Wintergatan’s Marble Machine or Theo Jansen’s Strandbeest, rocket launches, of course, and even slice-of-life videos like “Kids in Other Countries” (https://www.kiocs.org/).