This is sort of a poll, but there are far too many options for it to be a Poll
So…
When you were a kid, what were your rules for the amount of TV/computer time you could have?
How much “screen time” did other members of your family (eg parents) have?
How much time do you spend in front of a screen each day now (excluding work time) and what determines this amount?
I’ll start.
An hour a day was the rule, but I could also watch with my parents when they were watching. So maybe 1.5 to 2 hours on average. Computers didn’t exist then.
My parents watched 2 or 3 programs a week. There was more TV happening at Granny and Grandpas when I stayed - generally we’d watch over dinner, and then an hour or two after that till bedtime.
I currently have a principle of not going online till after dinner. This is to be A Good Example ™. Then I tend to spend Far Far Too Long on the Internets (for someone who has to be up at 7 in the morning) - maybe 3 or 4 hours all up. Mostly reading news or message boards - sometimes Internet TV. I don’t tend to play many games, because when I do I can get really hooked, and I don’t have time for that these days.
1.) I could watch what I want before dinner, as much as I wanted, as long as an adult wasn’t watching anything. Since there were always an adult watching something I didn’t like, that was seldom. Weekend mornings I got the tv though, as I was the first one up. I didn’t get my own tv until I was a teen.
2.) My mom rarely watched anything aside from the evening news, which was an hour. My sisters would watch stuff in the early morning. My brother was pretty much into whatever I watched. Now my youngest sister pretty much gets to watch what she wants, when she wants.
3.) Way to damned much, between tv and computer. Though when I’m on the computer, most of my time is spent reading books. I’ve got something like 300 books on between between the ones I copied over before ebooks came out, and the ebooks I’ve bought since they became purchasable.
I don’t recall there being any limits on the amount of time I could watch TV or use the computer. I spent a lot of time doing both every day. I also spent a lot of time outside.
My mother didn’t have time to watch TV. My dad spent a lot of time sleeping in front of the TV, but he didn’t really watch it. My brothers and sisters had the same freedom I had. It was good that there were only 6 channels to choose from so we could usually agree on what to watch.
I watch about 90 minutes of TV each night. The amount of time I spend on the computer depends on whether I have anything to do (shopping, searching, etc.) but it’s usually not more than 30 minutes a day.
Our kids get 30 minutes a day of screen time during the week and 60 - 90 minutes on Saturday and Sunday.
When you were a kid, what were your rules for the amount of TV/computer time you could have?
There were no rules. The only TV programming remotely interesting for kids was on Saturday morning. Otherwise it was all News, Laugh In, and Lawrence Welk. Computers filled large rooms and were used by universities and governments.
How much “screen time” did other members of your family (eg parents) have?
3 or 4 hours a night. (News, Colombo, Rockford Files, etc.)
How much time do you spend in front of a screen each day now (excluding work time) and what determines this amount?
I don’t really use the computer at home unless I’m specifically doing something. If I was to just log on and idly surf my wife would think I was doing something nefarious.
I don’t watch much TV either: maybe an hour a night.
My father was an electronics engineer. I had one of the first black and white TVs on the block as a kid. I had it in my room and listened to it constantly without supervision. There were not many controversial shows on TV at that time. The TV was often background noise as I did homework late into the night. Because I scored high grades, my folks never censored the TV. They also let me smoke in my room as a kid, so maybe more restrictions should have been in place. I overcame it all.
No TV on school nights. This rule was relaxed a bit by the time I got to high school, I think mainly because my mother was tired of arguing with us about it. But if grades slipped (which was her reasoning in the first place), the TV was a no go once again.
They could watch as much TV as they wanted. My mother swore by her novellas. The one time I got to watch TV on a school night was when my mother was doing something to my hair. Sadly, though, believe it or not, Spanish soap operas weren’t very thrilling to me. Neither was “Murder She Wrote.”
Too much. Entirely too much time on the internets, and maybe an hour or two of TV a day. Six months ago, it was zero hours of TV a day. Always too much time on the internets, though. Damn tubes!
My brother and I didn’t have any t.v. rules at home. But we never had anything other than rabbit ears, until they did that whole conversion thing. Seven channels doesn’t afford much to watch. We never had a computer either. We had a Sega Genesis and PS2, but still only played for a few hours a day maybe.
My parents didn’t watch too much t.v. either for the same reason. Maybe two or three hours of t.v. watching.
Nowadays I’m spoiled with cable and internets, but I still only play on the computer for a couple hours, and watch like five hours of t.v. a day.
We had the perverse rule of “as much broadcast TV or movies as you want, but only 1 hour at most of video games”. I suspect this was because…
My parents essentially have two TVs on at all times they are in the house, for background noise if nothing else.
I typically don’t watch any TV unless I’m sitting down to a movie, but I get 8 hours of screen time at work (system administrator) and then spend generally another 3-5 online in the evenings. It’s wildly variable, though–if I’ve got some new books, then I might not even look at the computer beyond a cursory glance at e-mail, but at this point in my life a new paperback lasts me for two days, tops, so gaming is really my most reliable entertainment.
