Родители вводят «детокс» от экранов для детей, заменяя стриминг на физические носители

I recently had a friend cancel some plans because she knew her son was going to be irritable and she didn’t want to subject me to that. “What’s going on with him?” I asked. She has a three-year-old son, so I’ve seen him irritable. The wrong color marker is enough to send him into a tizzy, but she and I have gotten pretty good at ignoring his fits until he can explain with words what the problem is or kindly ask for a different marker. “He’s detoxing,” she told me. “He got addicted to TV.” That was something I’d never heard before. I had a vague idea that some parents worry about their child being addicted to screens, but I always thought it was an anecdotal way to say that their children watched too much TV or played too many games on their iPad. “How can you tell?” I asked, because I was genuinely curious. I’ve had nieces and nephews for 11 years, and while some of them like TV, I wouldn’t say they’re addicted. Distracted, maybe, but most of the time any problems went away once the TV was off. She told me he was waking up in the middle of the night asking for TV, and that she didn’t let him watch TV, so he would get mad if she woke up with him. His dad, however, let him watch TV, so he only wanted his dad to get up with him. After several tantrums, he realized the error of his ways and agreed they had a problem. We had been having discussions about television and children’s shows recently, and she told me that they had gotten rid of streaming services and were in the process of buying DVDs instead, because she didn’t like that streaming services gave suggestions on what to watch. “He doesn’t know what the show is, but he sees the picture and says he wants to watch it,” she said. “Plus, it’s never ending. He just wants to keep watching and watching.” But knowing that, I asked, “What was he even watching on TV? I thought you guys got rid of the streaming services.” “Youtube,” she said, and I could practically hear the eye-roll in her voice. “Kids Youtube.” I’ve seen kids Youtube, and I’m with her, I’m not a fan. I do watch Youtube, but stuff aimed at kids on Youtube never settled well with me. At the end of the day, anyone can put things on Youtube, and it’s too difficult to monitor what kids watch all the time and vet everything to make sure there’s nothing harmful in the videos. Besides, there are plenty of children’s shows that are educational or engaging in the right way for children that kids can watch instead. She told me that once he was through with his detox, they’d be able to introduce DVDs little by little, but wouldn’t reintroduce streaming services or Youtube. Honestly, what she was saying made sense. I’ve lamented myself about streaming services and the issues with them. In fact, just recently, my husband decided he wanted to watch Breaking Bad. I don’t like it, but I agreed to watch it with him on the condition he watch a show with me, so we’ve also been watching the original run of Roseanne. As a kid, we only had cable in the living room, so a lot of times I watched TV on DVD in my room, and my mom had the first three seasons of Roseanne on DVD. I loved the show, I watched it all the time, so I know the episodes pretty well. And what is on the streaming service is not what I remember. There are scenes added in, some missing, and there are jump cuts in really strange places. Even the punchline to some jokes are missing, and it’s jarring. After some internet searches, we found that Peacock used an AI to ‘enhance’ some old shows for newer televisions, making them more fitting for higher definition. In theory. What it actually did was edit in strange places and zoom the screen in just enough to cut off the tops of people’s heads. The visual quality isn’t even better. I’m not a fan of AI for many reasons, but this felt personal. So I decided maybe she had the right idea, and I’m checking second-hand stores for copies of the series for us to watch on DVD instead. And while I’m looking, I told my friend that I would look for her as well to help replenish their movie and television stash with more appropriate options. That way, they can reintroduce things little by little, but she doesn’t have to watch the movie Cars 18 times a day. On Demand will have a new meaning. It’s never been a secret that I’m a fan of physical media, I prefer paper books to e-books, we keep magazines on our coffee table to read through, I work at a newspaper where I write for and read physical newspapers all the time. This will just be another form of that, living happily in our home amongst our books, magazines, newspapers, old video games, and my other TV on DVD copies, all of which are well-loved and treasured. Not Breaking Bad though. I don’t think I’ll be rewatching that.