At one years old, 2 hours is massive percentage of their "awake and aware" time, considering how much time they sleep and eat at this age.

I have 2 kids under 5 and we have ~0 screen time (unless we are having some sort of crisis and need a distraction for a few minutes). We spend time with similar families, and those with more screen time. I'm not trying to sound superior when I say there is a VAST difference in ability between the two groups.

Now they did not specify in the freely accessible portion but especially non-interactive stimulus is thus problematic as I understand.

As I recall there have been studies on this regarding toys that flashes lights and makes sound without interaction causing it, and the babies have a markedly different brain response to those, compared to toys which only blinks and sounds in response to direct interaction.

The other reason is that simply playing with the baby using wooden blocks, small dolls and such toys is in my experience plenty to keep them engaged.

A buddies toddler is about a year and just managed to place two cubes on top of each other without toppling them, and was is excited he cries with joy each time he does it. That's learning motor skills and experiencing reward you don't get with at least passive screen use.

Kids, especially kids that age, don't learn from screens. They learn from interactions with people and the real world. A screen just mesmerizes them, and distracts them from higher value activities.

And you shouldn't be trying to teach 1-year-olds counting and ABCs, it's totally inappropriate. They're learning things like speaking, how to move their bodies, etc.

Maybe those kids with such massive exposure are more used to it, never did that experiment with our own kids. I may fail them later in life somehow but I certainly didn't do such basic mistake, screens are toxic to young mind on many levels, active ones quadruple so.

I've heard all the excuses from the parents, but in reality it mostly boils down to 'we are tired, we are lazy, I don't care anymore' from people glued to screens themselves. As parents do, so children follow. its hardly ever a 'good' content, cheap dopamine kicks is what works best.

I wonder when will society wake up, and starts treating these actors in similar fashion as say pedophiles. Active harm to kids is harm to kids, fucking up our future is one of worst crimes out there.

Me personally, I have immense trouble believing that passively watching entertainment has the same effect on working memory as, say, playing video games. And even within video games there’s probably a distinction between the more story-driven games that are a lot more passive to play, versus puzzle games that require active reasoning, versus games that test reaction time or memorization, etc.

(Full disclosure: I was a child of the 80’s and raised by a Nintendo and my computer. I think I turned out ok but I don’t have any alternative childhood to compare to)

There are a couple dozen characters with their own preferences that need to receive gifts to progress in the game. Each has their own preferences. Many items need to be crafted, out of supplies that need to be collected (or received from other characters when giving _them_ gifts). This creates a pretty complicated supply chain to keep track of.

There are a number of major quest lines on the go at once to keep track of. Though the game does have a quest log to help, you still need to keep up with short term goals (talk to this person) and long term goals (craft this thing that needs 100 items I need to save up). Sometimes these need to span over multiple days, or require choosing to save and delay gratification by accumulating an item rather than using it for some fun thing today.

Many mini games require solving word problems and using your working memory. There's a cafe where characters come and place orders, sometimes communicating three or four different decisions. They may be combined with "and", "or", or some combination there-of. Once it's communicated, you go into a crafting screen where you no longer have access to the order and need to remember and select options (sometimes from lists of several dozen items) to complete the order.

It's easy to see the difference in how she interacts with this over "watching TV". Watching TV is passive. If you ask her what happened ten minutes ago, she has no idea. Nor even that ten minutes have passed. She's very engaged with the Hello Kitty game. She's actively engaging with us to discuss, get help thinking through plans and strategies, etc.

I'm on the same page with everyone asking "what _kind_ of screen time?". I don't mind my kid spending an hour watching some educational TV, or a couple hours playing Hello Kitty. I don't want her spending 15 minutes watching Cocomelon.

[0] https://hellokittyislandadventure.wiki.gg/

I've noticed that my child gets more anxious watching TV than VoD because you can't pause. For this reason we don't keep a TV and screen time is limited to the ancient rite of half an hour of evening cartoons.

She's the last person in her class to have one. That means when we drop her off at a birthday, she's the one playing with a fake phone while all the other kids have real ones. She's the one at the end of the school day begging to use her friend's phone.

Social pressure matters and making your kid the odd one out sucks.

Obviously we will put strict limits on it but I honestly felt like I was stuck with two awful choices.

I suspected also that kids in such situations are learning by example, so it's a double whammy of neglect and bad habits

apples and oranges, kids in 70s and 80s had this TV everywhere they moved? in car, public transprot, in playground, everywhere? completely different thing from screen always available in your pocket