Kids can't escape screens: America’s schools are heavily promoting devices for classwork and homework

From Cupertino to San Francisco, a growing consensus has emerged that screen time is bad for kids: The benefits of screens as a learning tool are overblown, and the risks for addiction and stunting development seem high, as per the NYTimes.

“Doing no screen time is almost easier than doing a little,” said Kristin Stecher, a former social computing researcher married to a Facebook engineer. “If my kids do get it at all, they just want it more.”

Here is the problem: America’s public schools are still promoting devices with screens — even offering digital-only preschools. The rich are banning screens from class altogether.

Athena Chavarria, who worked as an executive assistant at Facebook and is now at Mark Zuckerberg’s philanthropic arm, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, said: “I am convinced the devil lives in our phones and is wreaking havoc on our children.” Ms. Chavarria did not let her children have cellphones until high school.

Chris Anderson has has 5 children and 12 tech rules. They include: no phones until the summer before high school, no screens in bedrooms, network-level content blocking, no social media until age 13, no iPads at all and screen time schedules enforced by Google Wifi that he controls from his phone. Bad behavior? The child goes offline for 24 hours.

His children attended private elementary school, where he saw the administration introduce iPads and smart whiteboards, only to “descend into chaos and then pull back from it all.”

Tim Cook, the C.E.O. of Apple, said earlier this year that he would not let his nephew join social networks. Bill Gates banned cellphones until his children were teenagers, and Melinda Gates wrote that she wished they had waited even longer. Steve Jobs would not let his young children near iPads.

References:

A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley - NYTimes https://buff.ly/2SYOkhJ
Silicon Valley Nannies Are Phone Police for Kids https://buff.ly/2ENF3Gn
The Digital Gap Between Rich and Poor Kids Is Not What We Expected https://buff.ly/2Srcdyi