Relax. You are not the perfect parent, and it's OK to let Johnny use the iPad

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/15/perfect-parent-ipad-screen-time

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A few years ago, I watched a video of a baby desperately trying to “swipe” a magazine with her finger – to that tiny technology native, a print publication was simply a malfunctioning iPad. I remember being horrified (and a tad judgemental): How could these parents have let their daughter – not even a toddler yet – become so engrossed with technology? How on Earth could she not know what a magazine was?

Three years later, as I finished up some work on my laptop, my 4-year-old daughter tried to swipe our television screen.

“It’s broken,” she said.

Tsk-tsking parents who let their toddlers get used to iPads is easy. Poo-pooing moms and dads who allow their teenagers to spend hours on the internet is even easier. But trust me: Every inch of judgement you reserve for those parents is nothing compared to the guilt we feel every time we hand over that iPhone. Because we know it’s not the best thing for them. Even Steve Jobs did, apparently.

Catherine Steiner-Adair and Teresa H Barker, authors of The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age, looked at how technology impacts children’s developing brains and how they connect to caregivers. The results were not good, especially for younger children. The short version: Babies and toddlers need imagination, not instant gratification – which is what screens often provide. The researchers also found that parents who used technology instead of engaging with their children negatively impacted their kids’ sense of well-being and security. “Babies are often distressed when they look to their parent for a reassuring connection and discover the parent is distracted or uninterested,” they wrote.

For parents of older children, the consequences are just as scary. We live in a connected culture where sending naked pictures via text is the new love note passed in class. Hell hath no fury like a parent who finds her preteen Snapchatting.

So, yes, too much technology is bad. I don’t think anyone would argue that it’s probably better for little Johnny or Jane if their parents would rather whittle wooden figurines with them than pop them in front of Frozen or Angry Birds on the iPad. Or take a walk in the park rather than buy them a new app. But the panic over children’s technology use wrongly assumes that all parents before the internet or Apple were somehow spending hours a day making sure their kids were properly stimulated. Newsflash: We’re all semi-shitty at parenting, and have been for decades.

The idea that parents should spend all of their free time ensuring their kids are well-developed is a relatively modern concept – and a hopelessly unrealistic one at that. Our kids will be fine if we hand over the iPhone at a restaurant so we can have some grown-up conversation. They will likewise survive if they see us busy on the internet and need to wait a moment before we answer a question or a request for more yogurt.

I’m certainly not arguing that hours upon hours of screen time is a good idea, or that we shouldn’t try to broaden our children’s horizons. But beating ourselves up over screen time doesn’t serve our children well, and it doesn’t help us become better parents.

Who among us didn’t give our parents a much-needed weekend break by sitting in front of Saturday morning cartoons? Who can really complain that now it can always be Saturday morning, on demand? If the iPad ain’t broke, use it.