And they even get a seizure when you take their ipads away

Good god this hits home

Months ago I was visited by a relative who brought their eight year old. She's single and her boy is ever so slightly mentally not there. He's smart enough but just not there with everything. Plus the mother is not capable of looking after him. So many wrong things and I hate to judge anything about it .... both mother and son are having and will continue to have a hard life.

As we talked, the son spent the entire time with their device looking at YouTube videos.

At one point I wanted to try to make friends and asked him what he was watching .... he mumbled and ignored me. I looked over at his video and it was just a completely nonsensical animation of characters running around like in a video game ... I couldn't understand what was happening or why, the cartoon animals were just mumbling nonsense, laughing, running and flashing lights and constant cuts to new scene after new scene. I looked at the kid and he was two steps away from just drooling.

I couldn't believe it and it scared me. This device was melting any amount of brain power the kid had.

It made me think about myself and what the hell I was doing with my time.

It made me think that the world is all doing the same thing to one degree or another. Some are better, since are terribly worse.

It made me think that humanity is doomed.

In my experience, it's either anime characters and flashing lights/colors or some streamer screaming his head off. Both equally nonsensical.
I have friends with kids like that, and it’s scary. I’m obviously a fan of technology, but critical thinking might go down the drain if children spend all day in front of a screen at such a young age.
- I genuinely think there should be a legal limit to when children are allowed independent access to JavaScript & Internet enabled technology. I would suggest twelve years.
  Having it be law would remove probably the biggest reason children are drawn to technology initially today: social pressure and anxiety.
  I didn't grow up with anything like this (and I'm pretty young... or I was at some point) and thank fucking God I didn't. I barely read today as it is, instead wasting time with screens and YouTube and shit like that; I'm happy I had the opportunity to consume hours and hours of time with reading as a child. Not just reading: I learned basically every knot that exists (I still have my copy of Ashley's Book of Knots), learned an absurd amount of physics (with textbooks! for fun! I wouldn't, couldn't, do that today), learned to program and use Minix (ok, that was highschool, so a little later), and even got into Marxism.
  These are all opportunities I don't think I could replicate today, because I don't get bored in the same way today. Now, if I'm bored, I automatically look at my phone (...lemmy...), or open YouTube, or do something else equally stupid. I didn't have that option when I was young. We didn't even own a TV. I was forced to do interesting things, and I'm really happy I was, because I'd be an exceedingly illiterate boring moron if I hadn't read those novels and learned how the universe worked and understood why capitalism sucks.
  Maybe I'm yelling at clouds and people will become interesting through other means, but it really frightens me how much dumber I've become. I don't want to imagine how much harder it will be for masses of gen Z and Alpha.
  Ok, I feel like I got a little off topic there. Rant over...
- Adults today are, at least wherever Western media and culture has taken over, mostly mentally challenged and vacuous consumerists. What hope do their kids have? I feel bad for my future children, ngl, but they might die in the water wars regardless so maybe they won't have to tolerate nonsense for long, lol.
That's not developmentally normal even for a tablet kid, fyi. I would help them seek immediate evaluation...
I have a family member who was a tablet kid when they were 8. However they engage with me, their favorite thing is to play the addictive tablet game in my lap and they love when I or others play it with them, especially if you make a story out of it. They watch way too much YouTube but they were delighted when I watched with them, we did thumbs up and thumbs down and talked about what we were watching. They sat in my lap and while laser focused and addicted to the content, were also primarily engaging with me. They sadly are a bit attention starved from their neglectful parents but that's a lot more developmentally normal imo.

This look is solely directed at the parents.

Not really, it's a kid, it should know that by using the Ipad it is destroying it's capability to pay attention in the future, not to mention using an Ipad, a product built in a Chinese factory with suicide nets, really the kid should feel ashamed for supporting such a business practice.
- Yeah, time to start canceling toddlers!
- and who gave the kid this iPad? Was it magically summoned into existence?

Don't judge the kid, judge the parents. Parents who should not be parents prefer to make their kids less of a burden to them by handing them over to the overstimulation square

It's easy to judge from like 30 minutes in public, until you have an autistic kid and no support network.

Thank you for saying this. I used to judge parents of kids on screens until I had my own. You never know what's going on and there's a chance that the 30 minutes of quiet that family is getting from the iPad is the only peace they've had all day.
- I mean there's other things besides brain rot. Also people did raise kids prior to iPads.
- Or it's the only meal they've had out in a month and it coincided with a sleep regression or something.
  I have friends without kids tell me how they would parent and what they don't think is "good parenting" all the time. They have no clue...

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..

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
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
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
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.

And their parents allow them to blast the sound in public with no headphones. I can't fathom the lack of give-a-fucks for their fellow humans (to include their own children).

Yes that's kind of a pet peeve of mine. I understand that sleep deprived parents sometimes need to put their kids in front of their phones. But in recent years I have noticed that they just blast the sound really loud and don't care about any other human being. I'm really shy but after almost freaking out on a train ride because of two different kids just watching something full volume I have asked parents to tone it down. They were even kind of embarrassed and nice about it. I have no idea how you can be so disconnected to your surrounding... The worst were grandparents with a 2 year old kid during a kids theater and they just let the kid watch a show with the volume up. I mean what about all the other kids who are performing and you sit in the middle with a phone just blasting full volume. They wanted to stop him and then he started throwing a tantrum. They just laughed and were like oh he's so cute and we can't do anything about it. Fuck that's not cute, if you want to watch a tv show with volume, just sit outside of theater with your little brat!
i mean, if they were wearing headphones the kid'd still be blasting it. it saves the kid's hearing at a minor social cost. tinnitus really sucks and if the parents have to take measures to prevent it, i'll take being annoyed for a few minutes to keep someone else from getting tinnitus. it's beyond a fair trade.
- Set volume limit then? Lol

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.

Meh, back in the days we'd watch youtubepoop videos and whatnot. Nonsense you like os funny, nonsense you don't is brainrot.

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
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.

You watch skibidi toilet on a corporate-controlled spyware machine known as the "iPad"

I read the anarchist cookbook on my RISC-V PineTab

We are not the same.

But you also watched new grounds and shit like goatse
read ... on my RISC-V PineTab
Because it's not powerful enough to play a video. /s (sorry, just teasing)
And do you trust the people that fabricated your RISC-V cpu?

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

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.
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.

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.

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?
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.
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.
Ted Ed, Vsauce, CGP Grey.

This is actually me when I'm in public and see someone judging a family based on exactly one frame of their lives.

I know a family with small kids who watch stuff like this on an iPad. One kid figured out how to get onto regular YouTube, and now watches tutorials to bypass parental controls. A true hacker in the making.

It's been a nightmare for the parents tho, the kid figured out how to turn on all the game systems and plays stuff they're not supposed to now lol.

Also, for anyone feeling high and mighty about the content from their childhood: https://youtu.be/EIyixC9NsLI

I think the problem people generally have with cocomelon or w/e is that it's hours and hours of content that is replacing stuff like Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street. It's okay to watch trash and it's okay to let your kids watch trash but there's a responsible way to do it.

You're on lemmy. Such hypocrisy.

Me when a friend of mine who's an engineer who sometimes works for the CERN unironically watches Mr. Beast and listens to Papa-a-pate (?, this nonsense k-pop song, it was popular some months ago...).

Like, yeah, you have the hardware, why fill your brain with malware! ;-;

Malware for the brain. Best description of brainrot I’ve heard yet.
E: any social media “challenges” pretty much fall under this umbrella as well.
Are you sure they don't work at SERN?
- 10/10 reference!
Is he on the spectrum perhaps?
- Lol, no, he's just a classic "work hard party hard" engineer lad! If any ladies here live in Barcelona and want a (truly) kind hearted, hardworking man to mould a bit, shoot me a DM. 😅

Learn to shitpost kid.

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

Why are you approaching other people's kids and take away their ipads?

Bro I watch Loiter Squad by choice, who the fuck am I to judge?

Well chosen character, sorry if that's you.

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.

Baby shark do do dooodododoododo

The fun thing is you pull even worse faces when the brainrot is taken away from them and now youre stuck in an enclosed space with a screaming toddler running away getting wrestled back, jostling against your chair while youre trying to eat.

I find myself in awe on how this much of brainrot can be watched by a little kid every time I encounter that..

Our future. Get used to it.

I watch OneyPlays in my 20s