I have just witnessed a scenario that prompted this thread:

A relative an her two daughters (ages 6 and 4 years) had just finished lunch. Almost immediately, she began to rebuke one of the girls for interrupting her conversation by asking to use her ipad. She reminded them about the reading, writing, and other school work they had to do and threatened to seize the ipad. These kids watch mostly cartoon programs for hours and little of educational stuff if not redirected.

This brings me to the question of at what age and how much should parents allow their children the use of electronic devices such as tablets, phones, and ipads, etc. My option is that these devices have the tendencies to cause addiction and distraction if not checked, especially in children. In this era of technology, opinions will vary, obviously.

My practice in my family is to withhold devices that are likely to cause distraction or not really necessary for proper learning until they can control their use by themselves. When in primary schools, I provided kiddies computers that taught Arithmetic, languages, etc but no movies or cartoons.

For those in secondary, they could only use laptops that were loaded with video tutorials in various subjects. Only when they got to senior classes
did my children have their own phones. This is because, at this time, they had made friends and needed to keep in touch when home on holidays.
Graduation from secondary school or admission to the university warranted a laptop for learning.

Parenting is one area that is subject to lots of variations and theories. I would really like to know what others practice think and practice so I can adjust accordingly. If you ask me, I have not seen any improvement in learning or school performance in those kids who had these devices at an early age. At most, they know more about fairy tales and cartoon characters.

What do you think?