We should be clearer on what it means. An iPad will satisfy their need for stimulation but not their developmental emotional and social needs, nor their fine motor skills and executive functioning skills (and it likely harms the latter two, unlike old-school toys). Boredom and non-excessive stimulation levels are essential to letting the child’s inner world develop. Giving young kids iPads so they’ll be quiet is a normalized form of neglect.

Are you talking about Kanye West ? also can you expand what this means? "plugs the laptop mic with a dud cable"

An iPad addiction is arguably better than being sedated so you don't bother your parents.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=brainrot

The best definition I see is

> the crippling addiction to low effort content

But also have seen it used plenty to refer to the low effort content itself

Brainrot is a small portion of social media

As compared to what? To no exposure? Or to unlimited exposure?

I’m from Europe. We have early childcare. Kindergarten teachers (I don’t know if that’s the right term) are still seeing obvious issues with screens and really neglected kids that the parents barely interact with.

I find having conversations with parents at school and the parents of their friends leads to the best results (so far, I’ve only been at it a few years for my kiddos so we’ll see I guess longterm). If you’re all vaguely on the same page it just seems to make things a little easier. If that’s not an option, then just don’t be the first person to buy one and when all their peers start having certain technology you give them access too, but you sit down and talk to them about it or find ways to restrict the faucet.

For instance, when it became clear YouTube was not going to be completely eradicated from my house, I just ripped a few videos and added them to my Plex server. They get to watch a little bit of nonsense content, but they’re not just getting flooded with more of it constantly (or ads). As a result those YT videos are just one among several things they watch. It isn’t special or all consuming.

Video games have also been interesting. Most of the parents I know have, like me, adopted to use older stuff and/or just not let them get on the Internet.

Ultimately at some point you have to do some combination of “controlling the faucet,” watching what your kids are watching so you know what’s going on, and ultimately educating them/giving them context to the media they are enjoying.

Third grade and it’s already happening: My kid has already had trouble in his social circle at school because we made him cut back his Roblox time by a lot. It’s not even that anyone plays at school, but supposedly almost all the boys (and many girls) are playing after school.