The Ipad Baby Problem

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:00]Now, a lot of what I make videos about are these big systemic issues that are affecting everybody and are complex intergenerational problems that have been raging for decades that there's no easy solution to. And even trying to free yourself from these cycles of torment and suffering are very difficult. So, today I wanted to take a look at one issue that everybody could very quickly just stop doing one thing and make the world a better place. And we're talking about an unusual subject here. We're talking about the iPad babies. Now, if you've gone outside into public at least once in the last 5 years, you've probably seen these little guys. They've got the big iPad with the rubber, you know, soft drop case.

[00:00:32]They're sitting there, they're watching some YouTube kids. They've got maybe some sort of Pakistani sweat shop AI slop queued up. And they're sitting there, they're focused. They're staring at the screen. And what they're doing is they're not making noise. This is the the core of the iPad baby. The iPad baby is quiet. It's no mystery out there that children are loud. They like to run around. They like to scream for no reason. And when you're out in public, this can be very disruptive. So parents have found this kind of this miracle cure where you just give the kid an iPad and the hypnotic effects of whatever you know Spider-Man Elsa videos. Are they still doing Spider-Man Elsa videos?

[00:01:03]That's a different topic. Whatever whatever they're watching on that little screen, it gets them focused. It gets them quiet and it lets the parents go out and take the kids out for a nice dinner and get away from being at home cooped up with the kids all day. You know, it's a nice thing for these young parents. The problem is that this is turning your children into a Gollum.

[00:01:19]It's rotting their brains. It's socially stunning them. And there's even uh reports coming from kindergartens now that there are children who can't jump and climb because they've been sitting looking at iPads so long that they haven't developed the crucial muscles to you know just for basic human locomotion. It's a well doumented scientific fact that I don't think enough people are aware of that the the period of your life between the age of 2 and five is when you have the most mental plasticity especially for language development. you know, toddlers in bilingual or even, you know, three language households. If they're exposed to several languages at a conversational level during this two to five era of their life, they can learn all of those languages at a conversational level just effortlessly. You know, this is something that would take an adult decades to learn. But just when you're in that 2 to 5 window, that developmental stage, your brain is actively seeking for language and wired to learn language. So, you can learn these as effortlessly as you learn anything else. And it's it just it retains. This is why, you know, rich people send their kids to these Chinese language immersion daycarees where a lady just talks to their kid in Mandarin all day to try and make their children Chinese. It doesn't exactly work like that. You do have to keep speaking and listening to and learning to read and write the language as you grow older.

[00:02:28]But the point is that you can supercharge your language development between 2 and 5. That is a crucial period where the maximum range of what you're able to do with your language occurs. And if you spend that time watching AI slop videos on your mom's iPad, you're not going to develop at the same rate a kid who isn't doing that will. Now, if you know anything else about child development, this is also a crucial period for social development.

[00:02:49]This is where you learn who other people are, that they're different from you, that you can interact with them. This is where kids learn things like eye contact, talking to other people, you know, learning to share, learning to play with other kids. This all starts between two and five. And if you're if you're just staring at a screen by yourself, you're not going to develop any of those skills and it becomes harder to learn them later on. So you have this sort of downstream effect where kids are becoming socially delayed from the iPads as well. There's some research out there on that. It's not perfect yet. I have this study here where they measured it according to screen time. And uh let me see if I can't pull that graph up for the video.

[00:03:22]You know, just generally it's the kids who have less screen time. It's a it's a straight downward trend. The more time you spend looking at screens during the day, the slower these emotional skills develop as you come into older elementary school age and the less present they are in the group who have a heavier screen time. When it comes to social development and cognitive development, this is a crucial age where you are egocentric and you're sort of your ability to think logically or to consider hypothetically what is happening in somebody else's head. That is very low. You're in your own head and you're starting to see the world through your own eyes. And then as you come into the sort of prepubescent phase, you start to understand that other people see the world in the same way you do.

[00:03:59]And the way kids move out of this as their brain develops is they start to have social interactions. They see that their friends get hurt when they're mean to them or they break the rules. And they they realize that other people feel the same way they do when the same thing happens to them. This is, you know, empathy. They build this through social interaction. If they're not having social interaction and they don't know how to have social interaction, this this development is stunted completely and they get older and older and their brain keeps developing in the same pattern where they're completely egocentric and incapable of thinking outside of their own brain. You know, and this is a bigger problem. It's not just the iPad babies. Everybody else who grew up in these very solitary social patterns driven by technology, even if it didn't hit you during the crucial stage when you were a little kid, we're still seeing social stunning in young people. Like, have you ever seen how stone cold some of these people are when you try and have a conversation with them? Like, they just they don't they don't have that sort of free flowing conversational social spirit that humans are supposed to have. The worst part really is that this is happening just so the parents can get some peace and quiet. Like, it's not a malicious thing.

[00:04:57]There's not a doctor telling you to give your kid an iPad. Just these mothers are noticing that the little kid stops squealing and running around when he has an iPad to look at. And you know, if they want a little quiet at the house or they don't want to make a scene at the store, it's this easy skeleton key solution, which is really sad because this is borderline satanic. We're talking about like, you know, proxy labbotomy here. These kids are becoming Gollums. You know, I think this is an important point to push back on the sort of antiatalist attitude that's crept into everything. Just as an individual, as somebody who doesn't have kids, I would rather have screaming children at every restaurant in every store than see another iPad baby ever again in my life.

[00:05:33]Don't don't have this attitude that you're disrupting other people in public. And you know, maybe you know, people do feel that way that they're being disrupted and there's a lot of these hateful ghouls who just hate children in general, but those people are genetic dead ends. If they hate children, they don't they don't have any stake in the future of the civilization.

[00:05:50]So, you can disregard that. And if you're not a hateful ghoul who hates children, you should put that idea forward that you're fine with screaming children and you know, you're not bothered by it. because if you don't, they're just going to keep getting the iPad treatment and they're going to keep turning into these little zombies. I want to change the attitude that people have towards the iPad baby phenomenon.

[00:06:08]Like people are aware of it and they they kind of have a negative attitude that like, ooh, what's up with the little guy? You know, what's his future like? But, you know, there's not a firm push back. It's not like you're watching somebody give a little kid a full liter of Mountain Dew every day when it's more harmful than that. Probably the kid with the Mountain Dew, you know, at least he's got some energy. But the the iPad baby, he's got nothing. You know, there needs to be a little bit of social innovation and bringing back of old systems to fix this problem. Cry rooms in public as a more common thing. People having a more lax attitude towards screaming children because this is a real opportunity cost. Every iPad baby is a future street sweeper to your, you know, just drone human who's not going to be helping us and not going to be paying our damn social security. I'll tell you that. So, if you know an iPad parent, you know, tell them off. Send them this video even. I mean, I could use the views, right? If you're if you're an uncle or an aunt to these kids, maybe offer to take them off the parents hands for a day. Give them a day away from the iPad where the parents can get that peace and quiet because they do need it. That's not that's not something I'm hating on parents for is needing peace and quiet. You know, there used to be these these social systems where your parents and your extended family would be around to do that for you.

[00:07:12]Everybody's working. Everybody's busy.

[00:07:13]Nobody has time for that anymore. So, it you know, it's it's noble enough that people are still having kids. And if you're in their family, you should help them where you can so that they don't have to lean on the iPad as the solution to that. So, in conclusion, don't give babies iPads. Don't look kindly on people who give babies iPads. End this trend of iPad babysitting now so that we can get these kids back into their proper social development. If you have a good iPad baby story, please share it in the comments section. One of my favorite things about making these videos is reading the testimonials in the comments. It helps me know I'm talking about a real thing and not something I just came up with in my head. when I see that other people have had real real life stories about it. If you couldn't tell, this video is a little different from what I usually make. I'm going off of a bullet list of notes that I've taken instead of a full script. This was originally part of a video I was doing about literacy. Uh, somebody asked me if I could make a video about why little kids can't read anymore, and this was originally a part of that. The focus of that video narrowed a little bit, and I want that to be a nice, concise, well-edited video. But I still think this is a topic worth talking about, so I made its own thing. Let me know if you like this more ranting and raving format. I think I'm going to save it for, you know, smaller subjects or subjects I have a less firm opinion on or haven't done as much research for.

[00:08:24]And, you know, thank you for watching. I do really appreciate that people watch these videos.