I am a bit  of a quandary about screen time. My son has his friends round every day and they spend a lot of time playing on their respective mobile phones.  By the noise there's plenty of interaction between them,  i do ensure that they go out and ride their bikes at cooler times of the day and there are times when, like all kids, they have bursts of energy and chase each other around the house or go outside and kick a ball around.

 

My quandary? By all accounts my son spends far to much time on mobiles, television and my desktop. BUT his whole life is going to be dominated by computers. School, work, leisure. The better skilled he is at interacting with all types of programmes (and he is very skilled!) the better able he will be to find a path through the digital future. My career spanned ready reckoners to Windows. Some people still of working age I understand are having difficulty moving to digital work environments after redundancy. I hope my son will be IT savvy enough to take any future changes in his stride.   

On 5/2/2019 at 10:38 AM, webfact said:

NN did not specify what those activities should be.

Maybe walking to get some exercise?

Oh that's right, I forgot Thais do not walk, they ride a bike, even if it's only 200 meters.  

 

 

8 hours ago, Sir Dude said:

The kids here (and elsewhere) these days are idle, unmotivated and lacking vital skills like the communication/organizational ones for the future whether at work or in their social lives and a lot of them seem quite isolated with the path of least resistance always winning out

Hmmmmm ..... my 7yo can speak 2 languages fluently and a couple of village languages as well.

How are you doing reading/writing/speaking Thai?

The "Gaming disorder" mentioned here is not supposed to be a blanket disorder for anybody playing a little too much video games for their parents to consider reasonable. This is way out of the "head of the Innovation and Inventor Association of Thailand" area of expertise and it's just another high ranked dude said generic statement story, not news.

 

On the video game topic, I find it amusing that some still find a way to make it a Thai thing. Video games, gamers and addict are in everywhere but it's not what comes to mind when discussing thailand's problems. Playing is not inherently bad and surely soap operas and other facebook videos overloaded with the same sound effects over and over again can't be better.

2 hours ago, BritManToo said:

Hmmmmm ..... my 7yo can speak 2 languages fluently and a couple of village languages as well.

How are you doing reading/writing/speaking Thai?

Not interested in your fantastic personal situation ... was a general comment regarding your average kids here that don't have your "wonderfulness" as an influence. As for me speaking Thai then, yeah fine ... and for this one then gam-sanong-gam (what goes around comes around).  

Edited May 6, 20197 yr by Sir Dude

I can relate to this problem. While it is easy to say take it off them, bin the phone, in my day we were out and about more and would read books etc, things have changed dramatically. It's a totally different world, such that having access to a smartphone (and social media), especially for kids, is essential. Nothing worse than zombie kids and not seeing them out playing like when we were young, but take it off them and you cut off access to their friends and the wider world. Let's face it, we'd be exactly the same if this stuff were around in our day.

 

Only real workable way, as mentioned, is to curtail the hours spent online and offer incentives, if needs must, for especially stubborn offspring. A big issue is when parents themselves are addicted and somewhat hypocritically come down on their kids for overuse.