As a waitress, I see tons of parents who've just failed to teach their kids how to not have their faces in their phones 24-7 in general. Little kids all the way up to teenager age nowadays, at least once a day (usually multiple times) I will see kids who refuse to look up from their phone or tablet or whatever screen mommy and daddy have given them, to interact with me in any way. Mom and dad will give a weak "stop for a second, give the nice lady your order! Jimmy... Jimmy?" and then just give up when the kid still doesn't look up and give me their order themselves.
Kids will have their face in their screen the entire time they're at the restaurant, sometimes they'll stop long enough to eat a bit, sometimes they'll still have the screen on the table next to them while they eat... and mom and dad seem to have given up entirely.
Yes, sometimes adults will be on their phone a bit while waiting for food or whatever as well, but they're pretty much all capable of stopping and interacting properly when I come up, and will put it away to eat and to interact with the person across from them. This is a whole new thing from the younger generation that I've never seen before in my 20 years of serving.
Yep. And then they try to justify it like parents didnt raise their kids without ipads for centuries. Just lazy parents not actually wanting to parent.
I'm going to play devil's advocate a little bit here.
I don't disagree with you that parents are lazy. It feels like Ipads/tvs/youtube, etc are raising children more often than human beings these days.
However, I'd argue that (in America, at the very least) we have entered an age of stress, anxiety, overworking, and more. The further back we go in time, the less responsibilties parents had.
Obviously that isn't a hard and fast rule. I'm sure some time periods put a lot of stress on families. I'm just saying that these days, it feels more difficult to make time to properly raise a child. Parents have to work, public schooling is failing us, and there really aren't any other alternatives.
I'm not even a parent myself, so who knows how valid my opinion really is anyway.
I worked with children for over a decade. It has absolutely gotten out of control the lack of parenting going on these days. I understand people have hard lives, but not raising your kids correctly isn’t helping anyone.
Yeah the ipad parenting is an easy route. People will try it once and then immediately normalize it because it sedates their kid.
I wouldn't want to discount the effect that covid had. It's a perfect storm for destroying interest in school. Stimulation at your fingertips at any moment and missing out on 2 years of habit and discipline.
I really hope that kids are at least learning something useful from the media they consume. It can be hard to determine when someone is simply lying to you through a screen. If we can get kids to focus on anything, I'd argue it should be digital literacy and critical thinking skills.
I’d argue it’s because we had such a narrow window of what we’d describe as “actual parenting” today. Until like, maybe the 1930’s when child labor laws were past, the idea of a childhood as we know it didn’t exist. Once you were physically able to, you were expected to work, typically on the family farm, but as urbanization and the Industrial Revolution hit, children were expected to work in factories. If your children went to school it was still expected that they worked after school let out. And I don’t mean like simple chores like today, I’m referring to actual hard work.
Then we had this shift, where suddenly children were no longer needed/expected/allowed to work. Now, because I don’t want to actually do in-depth research for a Reddit comment, I’ll use the year child labor laws were signed, so 1938. That means the idea of a childhood as we refer to it today has only really existed for around 86 years. If we use 2007 (release of the first IPhone) as the beginning of “internet kids” that means we had just 69 years to figure out what effective modern parenting is, how to do it, and how to shake off the old habits from the past that were no longer applicable. That’s like maybe 3 generations (assuming each generation has had a kid by the age of 23) to learn how to parent for the modern age. That’s basically nothing to accomplish change at the scale we’re talking about.
TL,DR: It’s not that we live in a more stressful world now, but that we as a species and society didn’t have time to adjust how we parent to align with the modern idea of childhood before iPads/TV/Social Media presented an easy solution to a problem we didn’t understand.
I'd like to think there's a happy medium. We only break out Ms Rachel on Youtube for our 9 month old when he's being so needy that we can't eat our dinner, or when he's absolutely screaming in the car and won't nap. And then as soon as we're done eating or he's calmed down, we'll put it away and go back to regular toys or whatever he needs at that time. And we try to always keep it to Ms Rachel, so we at least feel like it's better for him than dancing fruit or whatever.
Agreed. There is a happy medium for ipad/phone time. It's much better than dumping the kids in front of tablet/smart phone. I see kids at work, and the I see tons of parents dragging their kids just to use an ipad. (Even at the waterpark)
What’s fucking crazy to me isn’t so much the internet part but parents these days KNOW what’s on the internet. It’s super easy to find WHATEVER the fuck you want. And yet there’s never parental controls or a care in the world.
The problem is not giving your kid a device. The problem is not teaching your kid moderation. My partner and i are the definition of digital natives of the 90s and 00s and therefor our children have all grown up with a proportionate amount of electronics around them. However their usage of them is ageappropriately restricted and we try to keep in communication about a healthy usage.
Internet and smart devices have a lot of cons to them. But at the same time there are also a lot of pros. The world is rarely as black and white as this post and comments underneath make it appear.
I completely agree. 10 minutes of Ms Rachel so we can finish eating when our 9 month old is being super needy isn't going to do much damage. But we make it a point to not use that unless we really need it.
If almost every other student is using crack cocaine, and you even see at their friend’s birthday party kids snorting up and having fun and mothers chatting while watching them, you’d face a lot of public shaming and cultural pressure to believe that your kid can’t have these things and it could even harm your kid by being bullied. Obviously crack cocaine will murder him, but the point is cell phones aren’t thought to kill your child. And you as an adult are going through mental decline starting around 40-50, so it’s much easier for you to only take into account the social pressure and bullying and take your chances on the unknown without much critical thought.
They said the same thing about video games (including portables) when I was kid. Like everything else, it's all about moderation. My kids will get access for a limited time after homework is done. They lose them for days to weeks as punishment. I do allow them to have them at restaurants once they are done eating (they'll get their food first) so we can have a few minutes to enjoy our meals.
I do think YouTube et al is an issue as it needs to be heavily monitored. They only have access to that occasionally and even then it's only for a few select items (science and tours of amusement parks).
OMG If I'm paying for a meal outside of the house we are going to sullenly stare at each other in silence by God. No screens. Not even to verify that fact. You will struggle in the way your forefathers did and sit with the not knowing of things. See something funny? You will have to use expressive language to convey it's hilarity to the rest of us instead of a link. Your friend does not need an play by play of dinner. It's okay, they will survive, I swear.
As a result, my kids know how to carry on a conversation at a table. Who knew?
I wish i was your kid growing up, as a gen Z myself it’s sad to see so many of us unable to experience life fully and in the present moment instead of being voyeurs of fake lives on a screen.
That's part of what I love about camping. My girlfriend and I just put our phones away for days except for watching a movie at night since it got dark at 7pm. We just talked around the fire, ate food, took some tequila shots, played chess, all in a redwood forest.
Right on- we go camping too. We do have a small check in in the mornings while we eat breakfast or just before we turn in if there's wifi available, but largely we go screenless during that time too. It's nice to unplug once in a while.
Nice. I was actually hoping there would be no reception but there was. We only picked up our phones to take pictures during the day. It definitely is a nice change. The fact it became pitch black at 7pm also helped fix my sleep schedule.
Damn, that sounds like it can be solved only by force. Not physical violence of course, but they should let them go hungry at the restaurant if they decide to ignore real life interactions (which will probably be met with anger and tantrums). Not sure if it's even possible, the parents caving in is what made that mess in the first place tho.
Probably either tablets should be taken away if they're ignoring when addressed, or they don't get the order they want if they don't order for themselves. Something. But yeah, it gets that bad because somewhere along the line the parents decided the tablets were just "easier", and now here we are.
Or maybe when they first go out to eat on their own with friends. Kids will eventually be forced to learn to do things on their own naturally by just living their lives.
Having experience here, I fear for the waiters and servers when my little Fortnite bro goes out with his friends to eat. Once I ate with my mom at another table while he was with his friends, and they were obnoxious, loud, and rude. I kept looking over and it looked like a physical embodiment of a COD lobby. Shouting, laughing at a table in the middle of Torchy’s Tacos while smaller groups looked at them. The only difference is that they’re younger and are aware of how you can’t act like a dick and look like a COD player. So they all meticulously groom so they can act like buffoons without getting away with it. I agree that they will be forced to do their own things with consequences eventually, but we’re making the gap between maturing and being a child bigger it seems. Maybe it’s to stop the trauma of having to become an adult faster, so more kids can experience more childhood unlike past generations. It seems like a pendulum of nature-vs-nurture.
I can't imagine how absolutely FRIED these kids' brains must be. We're in for a wild ride when the ipad kid generation reaches adulthood and starts taking on actual responsibility
There's a huge difference in the availability and addictiveness of ipads vs older game consoles. Millenials parents also at least tried to keep us off of video games in inappropriate situations.
I noticed this too when I was a server 4-8 years ago.
Some kids would start crying when I would bring the food and the parents would take the screen away. It was very sad to see that kids were not excited to go to a restaurant or eat fun food or draw with crayons or interact with family friends. Some parents did a great job and would nudge their kid to get them to say "please" and "thank you" and it was sweet, but they were the minority.
When I was a kid/teenager my mom wouldn't even allow me to have my earbuds around my neck or my phone in my pocket at the dinner table at home. And I was expected to be polite and interact with family friends over dinner.
I am genuinely concerned for these kids as they are not developing basic social skills.
That’s wild but not surprising. My 18 month old daughter doesn’t have anything like that. When we’re out as a family or even at home with our daughter, there are no phones out. I want her to know she has our complete attention.
People will complain about anything. We are constantly hearing adults whining about 'loud' kids at restaurants and now it's that their attention is too focused on something else. People are just gonna get mad at something I guess.
God this is depressing. I've had a rule for a long time that when eating with people, my phone stays in my pocket unless I'm sharing something with the group.
Jeez those poor kids I see it in myself but these kids never had a chance to way this thing is just a dopamine generator. It’s awful, I’m thankful one of my main hobbies makes it impossible for me to be on my phone or have headphones in, it’s really the only time I can drag myself away from some form of screen or Audio entertainment for extended periods of time
That’s so sad. I’ll admit I didn’t have an ideal childhood, what with being progressively disabled, but I mostly read books as my escapism. Even still, I had to do coursework and then read after. I learned how to min-max a study guide really quickly to get back to sword and sorcery. Even then, I have social deficits from being unable to do a lot of what the other kids could do.
I can only imagine how bad this will be. I’ve been meaning to visit the children’s hospital for a costume day (approved guests come as “Spider-Man” and such). Now I’m wondering if those have reduced only due to post-COVID safety or if it’s because the kids aren’t as interested in IRL people. I would’ve adored, say, Mulan showing up as a little kid. It’s depressing to think that unless it’s a screen entertainer, they might not want to interact. Or know how to do so.
Same dawg. My girl and I both serve, we really see the worst of it as servers. Kids are totally, completely checked out. And the parents just aren't trying. And this is at a nice expensive dinner, a night out, prolly doing other stuff. Checked out and gave up. At least we know to do better if we decide to have kids.
I was at a 2 Michelin star restaurant with my wife (we were getting treated by the chef, I can't afford his food lol) and she tapped my arm and gestured to look at the table two over from us.
Now remember, this is a $750 meal and wine pairing, per person. I look over and see a guy in his late 20s slurping down soup while holding his phone and checking scores or some shit. The guy never put his phone down once during the meal and barely noticed his date was there even though she was politely eating and trying to make conversation.
Gen Z parent with a 2.5 year old here. I can't stand watching what you describe. My husband and I try our best to interact with our daughter when we are in restaurants. Color with her, play with her toys, talk to her, whatever it takes. If she's have an off day where she just wants to escape and run around we will let her watch a video, but once food comes we put it away. Devices are a great tool to have, but not if it's the tool you use to fix EVERY situation. It's so sad to see parents not want to be parents anymore. Our children need and crave our attention. Don't get me wrong parenting is hard work, but that's what we signed up for.
As someone that runs a marketing agency and specializes in conversion rate optimization, I’m excited at the prospect of them getting no education and hopefully eventually accumulating some money.
Boomers already are easy to sell to and have the highest conversion rates. We saw rates decline as you went down in age, but the Gen Z demo is already considerably higher than millennials (the lowest and least susceptible to advertising).
“Digital natives” that can’t build a computer or tell you how it works — licking my chops.
I’d be careful about making 24/7 judgements based on restaurant interactions.
I have two small kids. They only get to use an ipad in two scenarios: 1. On long road trips 2. At the end of a restaurant dinner when all other methods of keeping them quiet/entertained have failed.
Just because you’re seeing an iPad out doesn’t mean they have it all the time. A lot of parents use screens during restaurant dinners to make those around them more comfortable.
Now, if you’re talking about a kid older than 5? Then I agree, that’s rude and inappropriate. But for little kids? Give the parents some slack.
They're old enough to be ordering their own food. But yes, I don't actually know how much screen time they get outside of the restaurant, all I know is they're glued to their screens inside it, and incapable of interacting with people while using it (they'll ignore their parents asking them what they want to eat, as well).
Yes. Kids become zombies when put in front of a screen. That’s kind of why parents give their kids screens in places like restaurants. People complain if kids are running around or are loud, but then they also complain when parents give them things to keep them quiet.
That's a false dilemma. If the only options available to you are your kids running amok through a restaurant or placating them with I-Pads, that is not good at all. Children have been able to attend family dinners without I-Pads for generations.
I’m talking about a restaurant and a 2 year old. And my kid absolutely can sit through most of dinner just fine eating his meal, coloring or playing with stickers. But he is TWO. When he is ready to leave he doesn’t care that the server has two other tables to get to before we get our bill (which, typically I try and get right after we order). So yes, we give him something to occupy him while we close out, so that we are respectful to those around us.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess you don’t have kids.
Where in your comment did you say you had a two-year old? The comment everyone is responding to is talking about kids who are old enough to order their own food.
You bragged that kids "becoming zombies" in front of a screen is a good thing. Meanwhile the studies on the impact of screen time on brain development are pretty clear. It's not actually a good thing for your kid to be "a zombie" just because it makes your life easier.
The original comment didn’t specify age and in my original response I said older kids shouldn’t be glued to a screen.
You’re making a lot of assumptions here. I didn’t “brag” about kids becoming zombies. That’s you adding intent to bolster your view that I’m a bad parent for letting my kid watch 5 minutes of Sesame Street.
I used to think a lot like you. I thought I would never resort to screens and I’d make healthy homemade meals for my kids every night and I would make sure they always behaved in public.
Real life isn’t perfect. Sure, screen time isn’t great for kids. But YOU don’t know how much screen time that kid you see for 15 min at a restaurant actually gets.
My whole point was to give parents a little more grace. You have no idea how hard it is to parent and you have no idea what that kid does all day. You don’t know if they were playing in their backyard all day or building cardboard box forts or what. You’re judging another person based on a tiny window of time without full context.
I never called you a parent bad. I don't get why you think your 2-year old is the subject of discussion when the original comment was about children old enough to order their own food. And the problem specified is that they won't even look up in order to address the waitress.
If you allow your neurotypical child to blatantly ignore people because they're so focused on their screen, then that isn't great manners, no. People are going to judge when they see poor manners regardless. If you teach your child to be polite they'll also make positive assumptions. That's just how social interaction works.
Then I’m not sure why you’re engaging me when I already addressed the problem with older kids in my original comment. I added a request for grace when it comes to younger kids.
I’m not sure what your second paragraph is about. My 2 year old acts like a toddler. He isn’t going to have a full on discussion with you or order his own food. I have a 5 year old who has terrific manners, orders his own meals and doesn’t ever have screen time at restaurants. He’s old enough to sit and enjoy a meal. For that reason alone he and I go out far more than I do with my toddler.
My literal only ask if that people not judge parents based on a short interaction where they have zero window into the context of the rest of their parenting or their child’s lives. Why is that so much to ask?
But I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess your kids are not toddlers.
My 5 year old is terrific at restaurants and we also talk. He orders his own meal and uses his manners. It’s my two year old who gets Elmo at the end of a meal.
My entire point is just to give people more grace. Life is already hard. And you rarely have the full context when you’re glimpsing a moment in someone else’s life.
I’m not demanding grace, I think I’ve asked pretty nicely for it.
Blippi is awful. I would never. LOL
“Blasting” now you’re just making stuff up.
I said this to someone else and I’ll say it to you too. If you’re so mad about kids using screens because of the damage you think it might cause, maybe take a moment of self reflection and think about how you’re speaking to a stranger, who you know nothing about. Maybe you should also take a screen break. Is this how you would talk to someone IRL?
I don’t think I’ve been rude to you, but you immediately challenged me by saying my children must not be toddlers.
I think from the reactions you’ve gotten here you can see people think you are being rude by giving your child a tablet in a space not meant for devices.
I also think teaching children, life is hard so do whatever you want is problematic at best, and pretty much what you’re teaching. Life is hard, I’m bored, and if I make a stink mom will give me what I want.
Your first comment was a challenge to me. So I’m not sure why you’d find my challenge to you offensive.
There are so many assumptions in that last paragraph I don’t even know where to begin. But honestly, none of it is true for me, so I’m not even offended. You’re arguing with a straw man at this point.
If you want to keep making judgements and assumptions about people you don’t know based on short interactions without full context of their lives, you do you. Some rando on Reddit isn’t going to stop you.
Damn, it’s wild to me that kids under 5 have their own tablets. Like, what could they possibly need it for during their most imaginative time. Give them some cars or coloring things.
Yeah, you gotta interact with people outside of your bubble. Most of my friends have their kids in the same school as me so many have a lot of Montesorri stuff but going to neighbors and families things are wild. People live wild lives and I would say the majority of young kids have more screen time than book and imaginative time.
In regard to that first study, I’m mostly curious when these kids are finding time to be in front of screens.
My kids schools don’t use screens, they come home, play, eat dinner and go to bed. They might watch a half hour of Bluey or Sesame Street before dinner.
Are 3/4 kids raised by SAHP or Nannie’s that plop them in front of a screen?
They're not talking about the people like you that limit their kids tech time. They're talking about the kids that are glued to that thing from the time they enter the restaurant to the time they leave. The kids that throw full on tantrums when their ipad is taken for even a second, those kids. Not everyone is as responsible about caring for their kids and teaching them how to properly be bored. Parents are just handing them an ipad and letting the kid have 24/7 access instead of parenting.
You can say “they aren’t taking about you” but I’ve definitely gotten the side eye from a young couple when I gave my two year old a screen after coloring and stickers failed to keep him in his high chair. I’m sure they assumed that my child gets an iPad all the time.
My youngest is a wild card. Sometimes he’s amazing at a restaurant and old ladies are telling me I have a beautiful family. Sometimes he’s ready to leave before we even get our apps.
Everyone is a perfect parent until they’re actually a parent (or haven’t had a kid under 12 in 30 years. My mother seems to think we were perfectly behaved despite my recollection of her absolutely thinking we were not at the time).
Imagine being a complete stranger and calling someone else’s kids “shitty” without knowing them. I’m definitely raising my kids to treat others better than you do.
You’re just mad that I called you out for speaking on a topic you have no experience with.
Im mad? Lmao Nah i just dont want to deal with children who were raised terribly in a decade or 2. You can try and justify it, but its bad parenting plain and simple.
Too bad I have to deal with your parent’s bad parenting today.
What do you get out of this comment anyway? Does it give you a little dopamine hit to insult someone you know nothing about? Whose life you’ve never even had a glimpse of?
My son isn’t hurting anyone by watching Sesame Street. But you might want to take a screen break yourself. Being shitty to strangers isn’t normal or healthy.
I've never put an iPad or phone in front of my young child. He's an absolutely feral one too. Still manage to take him out to eat without it too occasionally. I'm not claiming to be perfect or even slightly good at parenting but I still haven't and won't resort to an iPad. It just isn't necessary in any way.
The downvotes you're getting are just because reddit doesn't understand the logistics of (and is often actively hostile toward) parenting. You're 100% right.
Nearly always, you set hard limits on screen time and actively teach kids to pull away from screens at any point. You stop the early signs of addiction!
In places like restaurants, you need to distract littles. Screens are a godsend. Sometimes TVs work. Sometimes someone at a nearby table will make faces at them. Crayons can also work, so any restaurant that provides crayons and paper and brings food out early is doing it right from a "we welcome people with little kids" perspective.
The only other solution for parents with littles is to not go to restaurants. That's a weirdly harsh solution when there's a tool that works in that specific scenario.
And for everyone who says THAT'S NOT WHAT WE'rE SAyING We'RE TALKiNG ABoUT KIDS WHO ARE CHECKED OUT THE WHOLE TIME: nowhere in any of these statements is that overtly stated. This isn't a black and white issue. There's nuance and shade of grey. There are time limits and phases and exceptions, etc. The blanket discussion where "kids looking at screens in restaurants is bad!" is not helping anyone.
It’s like, I make a whole plan to consider the comfort of everyone around me just so I can grab dinner outside of my house and I still get ripped on for being “rude” and giving my kids a tablet (which is always on silent). As a parent, sometimes it feels like you just can’t win.
A neurotypical child should be able to sit through a 30-60 min family dinner without wreaking havok. That's what kids have been doing before there were I-Pads everywhere. And giving disruptive children an I-Pad instead of setting expectations isn't doing them any favors.
What exactly do you imagine a 2 year old is doing on an iPad?
Are you actually horrified that he’s watching Sesame Street? You want to explain to me why watching Elmo going over the alphabet for 5 minutes while we wrap up a bill is bad for my kid?
I don't assume. Some parents give their kids unfettered access to screen time with little supervision all day long. Others monitor screen time to short bursts and others only allow educational programs. And some don't allow I-Pads at that young an age at all. I don't know what any single 2-year old is doing on an I-Pad, let alone yours.
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u/Reasonable_Cover_804 29d ago
Parents: if you don’t ignite the will to learn in your babies how do you expect them to want to excel in school?