Very interesting thread! We've been a combination of fairly restrictive and fairly lucky, so far -- DD is only 6. She did some online schooling (~6 weeks total) and had a chromebook during that time, but she would only use it for about 2 hours a day (1.5 for "school", .5 for "educational" games). She'll watch 30 minutes of TV a couple of times a week (typically Daniel Tiger or Mr. Rogers), and sometimes watch more on the weekend (typically live sports) with my wife and I. Obviously (I think) she doesn't have a phone. We have some old video game systems (PS2, Wii) that she'll watch me play periodically -- I might play an hour or two a month, and I stick to kid-friendly stuff like Mario (even though I must confess my preferred genre is FPS).
I agree with a lot of the advice that's been given -- first of all, it starts with the parents. I'm on a computer all day long for work (from home) but after that I spend very little time on my computer or my phone. I don't do social media, and I almost never text. DW uses her phone more than me, but (I assume) less than most people, in part because she doesn't spend all day on a computer -- so she'll do email via phone, which I never do. I also agree that "screen bad" is an over simplification. When DD is watching a kid's yoga video and doing yoga in the basement, that seems pretty innocuous to me, vs. the concept of "unboxing" videos, which are absolutely verboten in this house (not that my daughter even knows what they are).
We also talk very openly about the insidiousness of advertising and attention grabbing algorithms. And, in addition to limiting screen time, we were also very anti-licensed characters, so DD doesn't have particularly strong brand allegiances in that vein. We've softened on that a bit, but she still doesn't have any particularly strong preferences. She likes "figures" but she doesn't really care what they are. She's also pretty timid when it comes to media, still (anything with conflict is too scary) so she isn't pushing the envelope at all in terms of watching stuff. I think the only real movie she's ever seen is Tottoro. Once of these days I'd like to watch the Never Ending Story with her, but I can wait. :)
And like was mentioned, we spend a lot of time outside. We're outside pretty much every single day (in Nova Scotia). And she spends a lot of time doing imaginative play (making worlds and telling stories with figures, blocks, etc.). She also loves to read. I feel like these last two would be the things that fell by the wayside if she spent a lot of time engaged with screens. I've tried to get her to play board games with me, but so far that hasn't really taken off.
I was raised very differently. I had some rules around TV and video games (I'm old enough to remember getting cable for the first time, and I had a Colecovision when I was 5) but they were pretty generous -- maybe 2 hours per day, and not a lot of rules on the weekend. I played outside a bunch, but I also absolutely played a lot of video games and watched a lot of TV. And I found as I got older that the video game habit was pretty hard to break. The reason we have really old systems (neither of which I bought) is because I don't really trust myself to have the modern ones in the house. Even a PS3 I think I would have a hard time saying no to -- those games a really good! For context, I'm in recovery (booze and drugs) and I tend to be pretty leery of other things that seem to at least flirt with addiction.
Finally, I don't worry overly much about the "she needs to learn technology" argument. For one thing, she does have some screen time (and she'll do things like Khan academy or Scratch). For another, I'm in IT (as a semi-non-technical BA, but still) and I remember 10 years ago feeling like -- oh man, these digital natives are coming and they're going to run circles around self-taught old dogs like me. I didn't have the internet until college and I got my first smart phone 5 years ago. All I've found, though, is that they're much better than I am at social media. Being a "skilled" consumer of technology is different (in my experience) than being good at using technology professionally or being able to build things with it.
