Comments on: Best of Both Worlds podcast: Thoughts on our own screen time

By: Laura Vanderkam

Laura Vanderkam — Mon, 03 Jul 2023 12:54:48 +0000

In reply to SHU. @SHU- stock art for the win!

By: SHU

SHU — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 16:55:34 +0000

who is in the picture shown above? It doesn’t appear to be either of us 🙂 🙂

By: YUKUN WU

YUKUN WU — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 05:17:38 +0000

That is great.

By: Laura Vanderkam

Laura Vanderkam — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 01:34:52 +0000

In reply to Rachel.

@Rachel – I guess the question is what people did with this time before 2005 or so. Unclear! Not all time can be spent “productively” and to me, some screen time is fine as it goes…

By: Rachel

Rachel — Thu, 29 Jun 2023 19:42:26 +0000

I’m glad you addressed the low energy hobbies to replace social media! Although I’m not on social media I can spend too much time googling stuff, looking at news on Chrome… just holding my phone when I’m feeling really low energy. It’s easier to adopt good habits when I have other good things to do! I noticed this especially when I was suffering from first trimester fatigue, I just wanted to stare into the space of an ipad. Without apps I just spent a lot of time staring, it wasn’t very productive. Thanks for a great series. It’s really interesting to hear both your takes.

By: Laura Vanderkam

Laura Vanderkam — Thu, 29 Jun 2023 17:07:27 +0000

In reply to Lisa of Lisa’s Yarns.

@Lisa – yep, there needs to be more good stuff to fill that time when you’re bored and you don’t really need to pay attention, but you sort of half do. Social media does fill that need very well!

By: Lisa of Lisa's Yarns

Lisa of Lisa's Yarns — Thu, 29 Jun 2023 15:20:17 +0000

Well you know how I feel about this from my patreon comment. I was very much influenced by SHU to leave social media and it has been such a positive change overall. For me, the negative effects outweighed any positive effect. I do miss seeing posts from our block’s FB page but my husband is still on FB (very low user/total moderator) so he can keep me posted on anything important that gets posted. I do think when you are in the younger kid stages of parenting, it can be easy to spend A LOT of time on social media because you are often monitoring them while they play. I can see how it’s different when your kids are older and you are taking them to activities, etc. Naturally there is less time to be on your phone. But with toddlers/preschoolers, there is a lot of kind of boring time to fill, especially in the winter when we spend hours in our basement. So I replaced social media with learning Spanish on duolingo. I use it far less in the summer because I am a more active participant in what my kids are doing since we are outside on walks, playing in the yard, blowing bubbles, etc. But when they are playing with paw patrol toys or blocks or whatever, I’m a bit less apt to be an active participant and that’s when you could really be pulled into mindless scrolling.