Appropriate age to let kids use an iPad?

[Cam]

What do you think is the appropriate age to give your kids an iPad? Or do you think they should be given one?

[civilspouse]

Our kids started using screens more around age 2. They were a bit older when they got their own tablets but that was mainly because kindle fires were $35 for Black Friday and I figured I would rather have them break one of those than my ipad. It’s nice for them to have their own screens during road trips but we’ve been doing more audiobooks because they tend to get car sick otherwise.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[SoonerTexan]

Heh. We start them young in this house. But we do limit it to Amazon/Netflix and I keep an eye on what they are watching and it isn't completely unlimited. Open youtube scares me. I'm not going to lie though, there is a lot of screen time during the summer.

[TulipsAndSunscreen]

We don’t do screen time except on special occasions (movie night, etc). We didn’t have a tablet until this year so that wasn’t an option and ours is old and slow so it won’t really do Netflix.

But this is because during the school year, we have a nanny every afternoon and I’m homeschooling all but 1 morning a week. There really isn’t time to do screens during the school year and we mostly just keep that up in the summer through camps, etc. We just aren’t in the big habit but M and I don’t watch much TV.

Seriously no shade from me re: screen use. I know I’d use it a lot more without a nanny. And I won’t hesitate to use it next week for example when I’m packing.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[scarlett09]

Started young here. Mainly the mouse of ABC and videos. She will also watch old videos of herself on my phone, so I’m probably raising a narcissist. Most days, it’s zero minutes to 30 minutes of screen time. Sometimes she will preoccupy herself while we are getting ready, and sometimes she won’t. The worst days approach 1.5 to 2 hours, but those don’t happen terribly often.

I thought it would be so easy to follow the (old) AAP recommendations on screen time. Now I’m amazed that we made it without her watching any TV until 1.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[alotofyarn]

Both of my kids have ipads. We didn't buy either of them. We do try to limit it to weekend mornings and times when I need them to sit still, like C watches it while E is at gymnastics. I also monitor the apps and try to keep it educational, though there's a lot of Disney Jr and Nick Jr. And I don't let them watch YouTube Kids anymore because there's too much garbage, although I am trying to let E a bit back into it now that they've increased some of the parental controls.

Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

[civilspouse]

I loved it when DS thought the only thing available on a screen to watch was the Pbs kids app. That’s long gone and now he’s always begging to watch crap like video game play throughs on Netflix or Amazon.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[spotty_dog]

[MENTION=5617]Cam[/MENTION] I forget your intro thread, how old are your kids? I think we were doing iPad regularly by 5 or so, but only unsupervised/on YouTube by 7 or 8?

[diggitydot]

Our kids didn’t touch an iPad until HS. They just weren’t interested and had more interest in other electronics.

[SoonerTexan]

I loved it when DS thought the only thing available on a screen to watch was the Pbs kids app. That’s long gone and now he’s always begging to watch crap like video game play throughs on Netflix or Amazon.

I hate that those were allowed on those platforms.

[alotofyarn]

I hate that those were allowed on those platforms.

Yes! E keeps finding these on Amazon, and it's making me crazy.

[MrsK]

Appropriate age to let kids use an iPad?

I hate that those were allowed on those platforms.

Oh, those give me the creeps. I won’t let my kids watch them. I’ve also been really disappointed in the parental controls for 8yo screen time on Netflix. My boys were watching a cartoon where a teen boy told a teen girl that another boy bet him he couldn’t get her bra off. It was over my boys’ heads and totally inappropriate. Another cartoon that my kids discovered and loooooved is “The Day My Butt Went Psycho” which is mostly fart jokes and potty humor. Imagine the adults who come up with this stuff. I shut that down fast. Now, they need me to enter a passcode to watch anything.

As the kids are getting older, I find myself tightening screen time restrictions. During a particularly obnoxious stretch of bad behavior, I unplugged our living room TV. It’s amazing what a positive impact that had on our household. It’s been several months now and I don’t miss it at all. We have 1 tv in the house now and it’s in my room. TV time is a big treat. The kids will do anything to watch TV and I can much better control what they watch and how much than I could when the TV was in a open floor plan.

We got a chrome book this summer. Primarily, I got it for an on-line summer reading program that the kids are taking. But, my boys have been asking to use it to access games through their school library’s webpage and a website called coolmathgames.com. The only one who has discovered that it can be used for YouTube, is Lambie. LOL.

K2 (age 7 — can you believe it?) also bought a small hand-held video gaming unit with his birthday money. It has pitiful graphics but all the games are pre-programmed and they are old school things like Pac-Man and Frogger.

On one hand, I worry that my kids will be the biggest nerds ever because they don’t have access to TV shows and games their peers are using. On the other hand, I don’t really care. I’m not convinced that being able to repeat fart jokes they heard on TV is the best inroad to popularity. FWIW, the boys had a friend over the other day and the three of them spent at least an hour huddled around the cool math games site.



Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[MrsK]

Also, I want to add that during residency, there was a period where my toddler boys watched TV all day long. I’d lost my job. I was overwhelmed and depressed. I didn’t have funds to take them out unless the outing was free. We went to everything available that was free and educational. We went to the library story time every week and had something to do for an hour or two most days. The rest of the time, the boys watched PBS while I sulked and hung out on iMSN. It was a lot of screen time.

I only reigned it in recently. Over the last year or so, it seems that my kids bottle up too much energy watching TV. They fight me when I try to turn it off and when I do, it’s like letting the cap off a shaken soda bottle. Shutting it down wasn’t easy but so worth it.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[MsSassyBaskets]

Mine is 3.5 and doesn't get tablet access. She's used it a handful of times, mostly on airplanes. She gets about 2 Sesame Streets worth of screen time per week. I understand using a little more screen time if you stay at home and need to get things done - it's hard - but we work full time and expect that when we pay for high-quality child care, there is next to 0 electronic babysitting. By the time we get home, it's time for dinner, bedtime, etc. and there's no time for screens, so she only watches on the weekends. If we're going through a phase where she gets some "extra" like vacation or other special circumstances, then we generally detox and don't let her have any for a few weeks. I'm sure it will probably be a little harder if we have a second and our attention is more divided.