A world consensus on children and skärmtid emerges in Silicon Valley

A caution that has slowly puttrat is now developing to broad consensus: the Benefits of screens as a learning aid is exaggerated, and the risks for abuse and impaired development seems high. The debate in Silicon Valley is now about how much exposure to the phones that is okay.

not at all allow skärmtid is almost easier than to allow a bit skärmtid, " says Kristin Stecher, a former researcher in social computing, who is married with a Facebook developer.

" If my children at all may skärmtid they just want to have more.

the 37-year-old Stecher and her husband, Rushabh Doshi, examined skärmtid and came to a simple conclusion: they did not want anyone in their home. Their daughters, 5 and 3 years old, has no ”skärmtidsbudget”, no special times when they are permitted to use screens. The only time a screen may be used is during long car trips (a four-hour trip to Tahoe counted) and during air travel.

in its setting. Every Friday night the family look at a movie. In the future, she sees a looming question: Her husband, who is 39 years old, love video games and think they can be educational and entertaining. She does not believe it.

"We'll take it when it comes," says Stecher, who will soon give birth to a son.

So can the fear of being disconnected are handled

some developers of video applications is now terrified of how many venues there are in which the children can look at the video.

When Hunter Walk, a venture capitalist that has long made products for Youtube at Google, was asked about the skärmtid for children, he replied with a picture of a potträningstoalett with a built-in iPad. He wrote: ”the Hashtag ’products we bought’”.

Athena Chavvaria, who worked as an executive assistant at Facebook, and who is now head of Mark Zuckerbergs philanthropic arm, Chan, Zuckerberg's initiative, saying:

" I am convinced that the devil is in our phones and are creating havoc with our children.

I am convinced that the devil is in our phones.

Chavvaria did not let their children have mobile phones before they started high school. She forbids them still to use the phone in the car, and limit the use hard at home.

the Guide: So you can think about raising children

She says that she lives by the mantra that the last child in a class who receive a phone is a winner. Her daughter was not allowed a phone until she started ninth grade.

Other parents wondering if I'm not worried about not knowing where my children are when I can't find them, "says Chavarria, and continues:

" But I'm thinking, ’no, I don't know where my child is every second’.

technology, it has become a reckoning of their lives and work to look at how the products affect their children.

Among them are Chris Anderson, former editor of Wired and now in charge of a robot and drönarföretag. He is also the founder of geekdad.com.

On a scale between the candy and the crack is the closer to the crack, " says Anderson on the screens.

the impact on children of digital media

He believes that the developers of these products and the writers who followed the tech-revolution was naive.

" We thought we could control it. But this is out of our control. It goes directly to njutningscentret in a brain that is still developing. For us ordinary parents, it is beyond our capacity to understand.

the Notion that parents in Silicon Valley are wary of technology is not new. Photo: Jennika Argent / IBL

Chris Anderson have five children and twelve rules around the technology. These include: no phones before the summer before high school, no screens in the bedroom, software that blocks network, no social media prior to the age of 13, no Ipads at all, and skärmtidsscheman maintained by Google wi-fi and check your phone. Bad behavior means that the child is offline in 24 hours.

"I didn't know what we did with our brains, until I started to look at the symptoms and the consequences," says Anderson.

Is your child addicted to their phone?

" this is scar tissue that is talking. We have made every mistake there is, and I think we did wrong with some of my children. We got a glimpse of the missbruksavgrunden and has scored a few lost years, and we feel bad about.

His children attended private school, where he saw how the management introduced the Ipads and smart whiteboards to then ”fall into chaos and take it all back”.

Silicon Valley are wary of technology is not new. Gudfadrarna within the technology, expressed his fears a long time ago, and the concern has been most vocal from the top. Tim Cook, head of Apple, said this year that he would not allow his nephew to use social media. Bill Gates banned mobile phones until his children were teenagers and Melinda Gates wrote that she wished that they waited even longer. Steve Jobs would not let his young children use Ipads.

But in recent years has an army of high-profile Silicon Valley drop-outs in increasingly serious terms, sounded the alarm about what these products do to the human brain. Suddenly, workers in the Silicon Valley obsessed. Home without the technology are popping up all over the region. Babysitters will be asked to write on an agreement to not use the phones. Those who have exposed their children to the monitors, trying to get them to not become addicted by explaining how the technology works.

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John Lilly, a venture capitalist based in the Silicon Valley working with firms greylock Partners and previously was the director of Mozilla, says that he is trying to help his 13-year-old son to understand that he will be manipulated by those who created the technology.

"I'm trying to say to him someone posted the code to get him to feel like this – I'm trying to help him understand how things are built, the values added in those things and what people are doing to create that feeling," says Lilly.

" And he just answer ’I want to pay 20 dollars to get a Fortnite-skin’.

who does not agree that monitors are dangerous. Jason Toff, 32, who ran the videoplattformen Vine in and is now working for Google, lets his three-year-old playing on an Ipad, which he believes not is neither better or worse than a book. This position is so unpopular among his tech colleagues that he feels that it has become ”a stigma”.

– A reaction I got yesterday was ”it bothers you not that the other techchefer limited skärmtid?” says Toff.

" And I thought, ”maybe it should worry me, but I think I always have been skeptical towards the standards”. People are afraid of the unknown.

– It is motvalls. But I know that I speak for a lot of parents who are afraid to say anything aloud for fear of being judged.

Nine ways to get a healthy relation to your phone

He says that he looks back on his own childhood, when he grew up with to watch tv.

"I think I was okay," says Toff.

Other parents in the Silicon Valley says that there are ways to make limited skärmtid to a less charged topic.

sitting in the board of directors of the Center for the Humane Tech, doesn't allow passive skärmtid, but allows the children to spend a short time with challenging games. She wants her two and four year old children are going to learn programming early, so she embraces their awareness of the tools. But she distinguishes between different types of onscreen fundamentals. To play a construction game made entirely permissible, but to watch a Youtube video is not it, if you do not do it as a family.

And Frank Barbieri, a San Francisco-based director of the startup company PebblePost that follow the online activity in order to be able to send direct mail via e-mail, trying to curtail his five-year daughter's skärmtid to italienskspråkigt materials.

– We have friends who are skärmtidsabsolutister, and we have friends who are skärmliberala, " says Barbieri.

He has read studies which say that it is good for a brain that is developed to learn a second language early, so his daughter watching Italian films and tv series.

Honestly, so I asked my wife to ourselves which countries we would like to visit, " says Barbieri.

This article was first published in the New York Times , a newspaper that DN works with.

Translation into English: Evelyn Jones