Why Gen Alpha Stopped Watching TV

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]Do you remember watching kids shows growing up? The Amanda Show, Drake and Josh, I Carly, Good Luck Charlie, Hannah Montana, The Sweet Life of Zach and Cody, Nikki, Ricky, Dicky, and Don.

[00:00:08]Well, I hope you do because no one else ever will again. Nickelodeon recently announced that liveaction kids shows are over forever. Why? Well, kids shows ratings fell 86% on Nickelodeon from 2016 to 2023 and 90% on Disney Channel.

[00:00:23]In order to try and keep the networks alive, Nick and Disney have been trying to bring back their old successful shows. There's a reboot of IIC Carly, of the Thundermans, of Henry Danger, of That So Raven, and even outside official reboots, there are whole podcasts dedicated to Ned's Declassified. Drake Bell has been pushing for a Drake and Josh reboot, and they almost did another Sweet Life of Zach and Cody. As the second youngest Nickelodeon series regular of all time, I feel like I'm one of the last of us. I'm I'm one of the last like kids TV stars. But why? Why are these shows ending and why can't we make any new ones? Well, it all comes down to two words. Gen Alpha.

[00:01:00]>> Who is the IT girls on Disney Channel right now?

[00:01:03]>> There are none because tween media doesn't exist anymore. There used to be a time where 10 to 15year-olds had their own world. They had their own movies, shows, and music. And all these forms of media were made with the tween demographic in mind. shows like Hannah Montana, That's So Raven, Zoe 101, I Carly. It was a sweet spot for an otherwise awkward stage of life. But now it seems as soon as you turn 12, you are automatically switched to adult content.

[00:01:36]Kids watch streamers, social influencers, Love Island, and now networks like Disney Channel and Nickelodeon, they aren't producing the next IT girls because the IT girls of today are not choosing to go after that sort of fame. They are pursuing internet fame. And it's sad because it seems like that stage of growing up is being forgotten about. And now there's that pressure for tween to try and achieve an aesthetic that they simply aren't old enough for. Everyone knows that middle school is the absolute worst because you are still trying to figure out who you are. And I can't imagine not having Disney Channel or Nickelodeon during those awkward times. If I ever have kids, they are definitely going to be raised on reruns.

[00:02:22]>> She's right, but she might not know the whole reason why. Before Nickelodeon and Disney, kids would watch shows like Mr. Rogers Neighborhood when they were little, and when they got older, they'd watch family sitcoms like Boy Meets World or Growing Pains. But what's so striking is you look at any kids show made more than 20 years ago compared to today's shows, and you'll see how little stimulation they offer and how comparatively slower paced they are.

[00:02:43]You'll notice how much today's shows are filled with stimulation and colors and fast-pacing to keep kids engaged and how older shows aren't. That changed in the '90s when Nickelodeon and Disney realized they could make sitcoms just for kids with bigger gags and more rebellious teenagers that parents wouldn't care for, but kids would find exciting. So, in the '90s, Nick and Disney really locked in on this market with Even Stevens and Lizzie Maguire, and pretty soon you get Wizards of Waverly Place and Zoe 101. And what you'll notice, especially if you were a kid growing up at this time, every few years the gags got bigger. The shows got more colorful. Compare how energetic a scene from an 80s show Family Ties is.

[00:03:20]>> What would you do if mommy and daddy ever got divorced? Who'd you want to go with?

[00:03:25]>> I'd get my own apartment and let them visit me.

[00:03:28]>> What about you?

[00:03:30]>> I'd get my own apartment building, let them rent from me.

[00:03:34]>> Compared to a much more energetic recent show like Sam and Cat ON NICKELODEON.

[00:03:42]IT'S ME, SAM. Let me out of this couch.

[00:03:46]>> Hurry.

[00:03:56]>> That's not how you sleep in a sofa bed.

[00:04:04]>> Good morning. You can see there's much more stimulation and color in the recent Nickelodeon shows, which is how Nick and Disney came to dominate the market. But the master of exaggerated humor and keeping kids engaged was Dan Schneider.

[00:04:17]He spearheaded every successful Nickelodeon show at the time. So much so that all the Nick shows that he did not spearhead were basically forgotten. When Nickelodeon fired him, they didn't have anybody else who could write kids shows like he could. So kids shows sort of stopped. Nikki, Ricky, Dicky, and Dawn was one of the very last ones. And in Nikki, Ricky, Nikki, and Dawn, towards the end, a lot of the episodes would be about the quads becoming social media influencers because the writers felt that kids TV was dying and social media was what was coming to replace it.

[00:04:44]>> It's the power of the internet. I'm a social influencer.

[00:04:47]>> Once you built a strong personal brand online, people trust it. They'll believe anything I say.

[00:04:53]>> Anything?

[00:04:54]>> Yeah. I can make up any dumb catchphrase and with one post, my followers will start saying it. Like, uh, You ain't got the bread.

[00:05:07]>> You ain't got the bread. That doesn't even mean anything.

[00:05:10]>> They don't know that.

[00:05:12]>> Hey, where are your Ricky sweaters?

[00:05:14]>> Oh yeah, we're not doing that. You ain't got the bread.

[00:05:19]>> I think that Rick speaks for itself.

[00:05:21]>> Something else that was widely known behind the scenes that you guys might not know was that by the mid-2010s, kids shows were already on a steep decline.

[00:05:29]If you guys remember Sweet Life of Zach and Cody, you'll remember Arwin played by Brian Stanic, who also played Tom on Nikki, Ricky, Dicky, and Dawn. Well, he took me aside one day and said that even though Nikki, Ricky, Dicky, and Dawn was doing really well, if we got the exact same ratings back when Sweet Life was on, so around 2007, 2008, the show would be completely cancelled because back then, kids shows were way bigger and got way higher ratings. To this day, even though Brian was a much bigger part of Nicki, Ricky, Dicky, and Dawn than he was Sweet Life as Zach and Cody, he gets recognized more often for Sweet Life than Nicki, Ricky, Nick and Disney kids shows were so much less popular by the 2010s because streaming was becoming so widespread. And to some extent, people were starting to watch social media instead of television. I remember when I first got Nick, Ricky, Dicky, and Dawn, I was thinking to myself, are we still doing kids shows on cable? We must be one of the last ones. And I was right.

[00:06:15]Even by season 4, Nick's ratings were falling. So, they pivoted to making social media content, but it never quite worked. And so, the reason there are no more liveaction kids shows today is because Gen Alpha is not interested in them. Jen Alpha is interested in becoming streamers and watching Tik Tok get ready with me videos. They don't have the attention span to even watch a mid2010s kids show even though that show has so much stimulation and fast pacing.

[00:06:40]Jen Alpha just can't commit to a 20-minute storyline, and this is really bad for their brain. New research is reporting. Can showing kids '90s TV shows impact their behavior and even their sleep? A couple of moms started showing their toddlers the good old '90s classics for kids? Shows like Arthur, Roly Polioli, and even throwbacks like Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, and say the lower stimulation has made a major change in their kids. The moms and best friends named Lauren and Sarah, known online as Mamas and Messes, found that their kids were less attached to screen time and had fewer meltdowns after they introduced the retro programming to their kids. Meltdowns when taking screens away are of course incredibly common and scientists say it's in part because so much of today's content and especially the platforms on which kids view it are essentially designed to be addictive. So kids literally don't know how to cope when they're ripped away from their screens and content. But Mamas and Messes found that switching to the much slower pace of old school preocial media content had a totally different effect. The kids would just watch an episode or two and when it was time to turn it off, there was no battle. They'd just go back to playing.

[00:07:36]But the biggest shift they noticed was a change in sleep patterns. One mom's little boy was sleeping longer and better, but she chocked up to the slower pace of TV shows from back in the day.

[00:07:44]Other moms online were inspired to try this experiment, too, and had very similar results. So, this is all happening at a time when we're not getting new kids movies either. Think about it. All the biggest kids movies of the last decade are remakes or sequels.

[00:07:57]The Mulan remake, the Aladdin remake, the Moana remake, Moana 2, Inside Out 2, Frozen 2, The Lion King remake. People are so confused. How could we have been so innovative with kids shows and movies in the '90s and 2000s and then suddenly we can't make a single original piece of media anymore? There are a few factors.

[00:08:12]One is in the 2000s and '90s you could basically joke about anything. Like there were gags in Sweet Life of Zach and Cody or Drake Josh that wouldn't be made today.

[00:08:20]>> A recent report from the Union of Maritime Workers found that male employees still make 30% more than their female counterparts.

[00:08:27]>> Way to go, guys.

[00:08:29]LET'S SHOOT FOR 40.

[00:08:31]>> I'M PREGNANT. YOU'RE NOT PREGNANT. WAIT, who's pregnant? Me. Congratulations.

[00:08:37]>> You're a boy.

[00:08:40]You're right. I'm a boy. It's scientifically impossible.

[00:08:46]OW. WHAT? I THINK IT JUST KICKED. YOU'RE NOT PREGNANT. BUT THE much bigger factor is because we have such short attention spans and we're so used to such high levels of stimulation and dopamine from screens that the idea of watching a brand new film we're not already a fan of is so daunting because we wouldn't want to be bored for 2 hours. We'll watch something we already know we like, like a remake of Harry Potter, but we won't commit to anything new. We're no better than Gen Alpha. That's why all the kids shows people watch now are purely reruns from the 2000s or 2010s.

[00:09:16]And here's something that's really hard to accept. Opera and classical music used to be huge entertainment forms for whole societies. It used to be common to go with all your friends to a classical music concert or millions of people would line up to watch Rialletto. Then those mediums started to really struggle and now classical music and opera are niche interests. The same thing happened with plays recently musicals and now it's happening with kids TV shows. Kids TV shows used to be watched by every kid across the country. Now they're becoming niche if they exist at all. If you have any Gen X or millennial family members, no matter their difference in political leanings or their careers, whatever it is, they'll all have watched all the same shows. You can't say that anymore.

[00:09:56]Everyone's watching a different streamer or Tik Tocker. And I've talked about this at length in my Philosophy of Kids TV video, but you can watch this process play out over time. Tween shows from the ' 50s and '60s are not all about the kids and don't have a lot of slapstick humor. In the 80s and 90s, the shows are more about the whole family. And by the 2000s and 2010s, the shows are all about the kids wacky experience, getting hit by paintballs, getting slimed or jumping out of airplanes because shows became desperate to have bigger gags and more slapstick humor.

[00:10:27]And now we've reached the ultimate form of sacrificing telling good stories for keeping kids attention. Where Jana Alpha won't even watch a slapstick TV show that has a story. They won't consume plot-based media. They'll only watch family vloggers and Instagram reels. And this problem is why you see so many parents raising their kids now like it's the '9s or the 80s, only showing them shows from that era because they know it's so much better for their kid.

[00:11:00]Because if you were born before 2007, you remember having to watch a show at a certain time, watching a show that you could focus on for a full 30 minutes or even an hour. You know why kids don't know how to time manage correctly these days? The youngans. Yeah. It's because they didn't have to manage their schedule properly to make sure that they were on time, seated for their show or their movie dropping at 8:7 central.

[00:11:19]There was a time period where I had to make sure all my chores were done. I had to let my mom know like an email. Hi, I will not be available from this time to this time. Please do not bother me. I got High School Musical 2 coming on later. What you need done before that?

[00:11:33]Okay, bet. I will not be available for commercials. That is for bathroom breaks and snack refills. Okay, time management. And because the shows you watched weren't so full of dopamine stimulation every 2 seconds, you wouldn't start screaming when the shows would end like Gen Alpha does now when their iPads are taken away.

[00:12:03]Explorer super cool.

[00:12:09]>> Need your help. Grab your back.

[00:12:16]>> On Tik Tok, people are lamenting the Gen Alpha will never know. this world of serious kids TV where you actually had to watch something at a certain time instead of just having every kind of possible entertainment and dopamine that you want by the click of a button.

[00:12:28]People are even becoming nostalgic about this.

[00:12:31]>> You're too young for me if I ask you what channel did you watch Spongebob on?

[00:12:34]Quickly cuz if you name any streaming services, what you mean you watched it on Paramount Plus? Cartoon Network was on 62, Nickelodeon was on 63, and Disney was on 64. Paramount Plus. So, to demonstrate how much has changed, we're going to look at the same exact story line from one show from the '60s, one from the '90s, one from the 2010s, and one from Social Media Now, yes, there's a story line that fits all four. So, we can see how the same story is conveyed to kids very, very differently, and what that means for their minds. So, the plot we're going to see in all four of these shows, is the kid going to his first day of high school. You'll even see some of these shows tell the same exact jokes, but at very different levels of stimulation. So, from 1962, we have the show My Three Sons. Watch the character Robbie go to high school for the first time.

[00:13:16]>> We're really finally at last in high school. I feel so grown up, so adult.

[00:13:22]>> I think I'm going to be sick.

[00:13:25]>> You can see the show is pretty tranquil.

[00:13:26]We see Robbie talk about how big of a transition this is without jumping up and down or screaming at the top of his lungs. And there's a brief joke where he sees a girl he used to know who he hasn't seen since elementary school and she's had a glow up.

[00:13:37]>> Oh, no kidding. Gloria Davenport.

[00:13:40]>> I guess we haven't seen each other very much since we were in grade school. You see, I live south of Naples, so I had to go to Westport Junior High.

[00:13:47]>> Yeah, I know.

[00:13:49]Boy, I can't get over it. Wouldn't stop being so fat.

[00:13:54]>> Now, we'll see that exact same joke be made in the '90s show Full House. It's DJ's first day of junior high, and we can already see there are many more stereotypical characters, the Mean Girls, and the nerds. Now, watch Full House make the exact same joke as My Three Sons, but it's a much bigger, more energetic, and slapstick delivery. Kathy Sanony.

[00:14:12]>> Kathy Sanony, you grew up big time.

[00:14:19]>> A pretty intense summer.

[00:14:21]>> Did you see that? So when she saw the girl have the glow up, she goes, "Oh my gosh, it's you." But back in My Three Sons, when he saw the girl with the glow up, he was like, "Oh, wow. Nice. Nice to see you.

[00:14:32]>> You sure look real good."

[00:14:33]>> We can see how we're ramping up how big these characters perform. Now, if we go to the 2010s, we can see how absurd and over-the-top I Carly's first day of school is.

[00:14:42]>> Who can tell me how many sides a triangle has?

[00:14:45]>> Three.

[00:14:46]>> Correct.

[00:14:49]>> Nathan, please give Carly $100.

[00:14:53]>> I get a hundred bucks whenever I answer a question. Right.

[00:14:56]>> Of course. Massage time.

[00:15:03]Oh. Oh.

[00:15:06]This school is amazing.

[00:15:07]>> That's insane, right? It's not supposed to be realistic. It's supposed to be hilarious and entertaining for kids that she gets a smoothie and a massage. But when you keep trying to make these bits bigger and bigger, you'll never be able to complete with the final stage, the final form of the kids TV medium, which isn't even TV at all. It's the YouTube family daily vlog. I don't even want to show you this one. It's so over the top it seems like a joke, but this is what millions of kids are watching. Watch how daily vlogging families show their kids first day of high school. Back up, freshman.

[00:15:36]>> You want TO SKIP CLASS TODAY?

[00:15:38]>> WHAT YOU GOING TO DO, FRESHMAN?

[00:15:41]>> Oh my god. TO THE FIRST DAY OF HIGH SCHOOL IS CRAZY.

[00:15:46]>> GET BACK HERE.

[00:15:46]>> All right, the bus just pulled up. Let's do this.

[00:15:49]>> Yo, get out the way.

[00:15:51]>> Yo, chill.

[00:15:51]>> What kind of freaking haircut is this?

[00:15:53]>> You don't like my hair? No.

[00:15:54]>> Oh my. Out the way, twerp. Oh my goodness.

[00:15:57]>> That's insane. And you can see they're using all the tropes we've saw from these TV shows with the popular kids and the bullies and the pretty girls, but they're doing them on like cocaine.

[00:16:07]They're using this hyper stimulus in order to keep kids engaged every second of the vlog. Scientists talk about there are phenomena in nature that are natural stimulants to us. Like when we were hunter gatherers, finding food with a lot of sugar would be very good for our survival, so our brain would release a lot of pleasure. But now we have foods that are engineered to be more full of sugar than any food could naturally be in nature. So it's become a hyper stimulus where our brains will overload themselves with good feeling chemicals when we eat this hyper stimulus.

[00:16:35]Similarly, we've evolved to find it fascinating when someone tells us about their day like maybe their first day at school. We have not evolved to handle a hyper stimulus of the craziest day ever happening where a hundred crazy things happen at once and that's what we see now on family vlogging channels that we didn't see when we had television shows.

[00:16:52]And another really pernicious side effect here is so many of you, and I have experienced this firsthand, have felt like going to your own prom or going to your own high school felt like there was something missing. You felt like it wasn't as exciting or you weren't making as many friends as maybe you should be because we grew up on these kids shows where we saw these teenagers living these idealistic lives where there would always be something exciting every week and our lives felt insignificant by comparison. Well, the family vlog is taking that idea and bringing it to its limit because every second of these kids' real lives, right?

[00:17:21]Like young gen alphas are watching these videos thinking that it's real because it's a vlog, not a TV show. They see these kids having something exciting happening all the time. And when kids look at their own lives and it seems so boring by comparison, of course, all these kids will start watching more and more YouTube videos because that's so much more exciting to them. So, we wonder why can't Jen Alpha pay attention? Why can't Jane Alpha read?

[00:17:41]Well, it's because we have surfeted them with the most highintensity stimulation since they were literal babies. The same reason it's bad for developing minds to do drugs because it will mess up their expectations for life and their brain chemicals. We can see the same thing happening on a smaller scale with the drugs of high stimulation from screens, particularly with content made for kids.

[00:18:02]That's what's so scary. The content that's being made that's the worst for your brain is the content that's specifically targeting kids. And something that struck me so hard was that Fred Rogers, Mr. Rogers himself, warned us that this would happen. That chasing ratings above all else would destroy kids entertainment. Mr. Rogers said that he wanted his show to stimulate kids' minds, but then to get them to play in the real world, and that the real show started when the screen turned off.

[00:18:29]>> We encourage children to make up their own play. So that the important time is after the television's turned off.

[00:18:37]That's when the program has real importance.

[00:18:41]>> How well did it prepare them to play?

[00:18:43]>> He didn't want them hooked up to the television every second of the day. He saw himself as protecting kids from the predatory rating chasers of high stimulation television.

[00:18:52]>> I'll tell you what children need. They need adults who will protect them from the ever ready molders of their world.

[00:19:02]He was giving kids a calm, safe environment to learn about themselves and the world. But his scariest and most preient warning was this.

[00:19:11]>> I would hope that anybody who sets himself or herself out to produce mass programming for children could have the kind of respect of childhood that I had because it's not all clowns and balloons. I'm glad he's not around to see what kids entertainment has become and how it's now run by people who have no respect for childhood, who do not want to cultivate kids minds, but are only competing with each other to get longer and longer watch time. There's a great video essay by Asa Park called Mr. Beast is what Fred Rogers warned us about. And look at the kind of pressure Mr. Rogers was under to make his kids shows more entertaining, more slapstick, more cartoonish, but he refused because he had respect for kids' minds. We had a director that once said to me, "If you take all of the elements that make good television and do the exact opposite, you have Mr. Rogers Neighborhood."

[00:20:03]>> He gave children what they needed, not simply what they would watch. Network executives told him to add more action.

[00:20:10]They told them kids would never sit still for a man talking calmly into a camera about feelings. But Mr. Rogers didn't care. and I've worked in the field of child development for six years now trying to understand the inner needs of children.

[00:20:26]>> It's 1969 and the Nixon administration wants to cut funding for PBS. If that happens, Mr. Rogers show dies along with everything else on public television. So May 1st of that year, Fred Rogers sit before the Senate. Senator John Ptori is running the hearing. Ptori has a reputation for being tough and impatient. Everyone knows that he's already made up his mind. This is a waste of time and the host of a children's television show will not convince him otherwise.

[00:20:55]>> Could I tell you the words of one of the songs which I feel is very important?

[00:21:00]>> Yes.

[00:21:01]>> What do you do with the mad that you feel when you feel so mad you could bite? When the whole wide world seems oh so wrong and nothing you do seems very right. I can stop when I want to, can stop when I wish, can stop, stop, stop anytime. And what a good feeling to feel like this. And know that the feeling is really mine. Know that there's something deep inside that helps us become what we can. For a girl can be someday a lady, and a boy can be someday a man.

[00:21:41]>> I think it's wonderful.

[00:21:43]I think it's wonderful.

[00:21:46]>> Looks like you just earned the $20 million.

[00:21:51]>> It became one of the most iconic moments in television history. A man who believed in the power of genuine human connection walked into a government hearing and changed minds with a children's song. He wasn't fighting for a show. He was fighting for a philosophy. Fred Rogers understood something the entire industry has since forgotten. Children deserve to be respected. And for 33 years, it worked.

[00:22:18]Not because it was optimized, but because it was honest. It was true. It was real. Mr. Rogers tackled topics no other children's show would go near. The Kennedy assassination.

[00:22:29]>> What does assassination mean?

[00:22:32]>> Deadly shootings. There are people in the world who are so sick or so angry that they sometimes hurt other people.

[00:22:42]911.

[00:22:43]>> Thank you for whatever you do, wherever you are, to bring joy and light to your neighbor and to yourself.

[00:22:52]>> But the sad reality is that a thoughtful program made by Mr. Rogers today probably wouldn't be able to survive.

[00:22:59]>> Watch this.

[00:23:01]She'll be very surprised. What shall we make for mother this morning? Muffins?

[00:23:06]>> No.

[00:23:08]>> Waffles?

[00:23:09]>> No.

[00:23:11]>> H.

[00:23:12]Flapjacks.

[00:23:14]>> Uh-uh.

[00:23:15]>> What?

[00:23:16]>> Father Bear's famous flying flapjacks.

[00:23:20]>> Of course.

[00:23:21]>> You be the big chef and I'll be the little chef.

[00:23:24]>> All right, Little Chef. Let's get to work.

[00:23:27]>> Shows like Little Bear and other shows around that time were just so much more slower paced. And you can tell in this video, it is so different than what I see kids watching today. When I see them watching iPads, even at ages like 3, four, 5 years old, their shows are so quick cutting and there's a bunch of colors and a lot going on. There's a lot of zooms, a lot of quick cuts. It's just a completely different vibe from Little Bear. And the people creating these videos are just doing what they know kids like. It's all an attention span thing. When kids watch videos like Little Bear, it was a little bit more dull color. It wasn't like really bright colors all the time flashing across the screen. You can see in this video, it was kind of dull. And all they're doing here is just simply making some food.

[00:24:02]They show some flour. They talk about what they're doing. It's a very simple thing. It allowed kids attention span to really enjoy the scene without having these quick cuts.

[00:24:11]>> It certainly wouldn't succeed on YouTube. And YouTube is increasingly the only video platform kids are watching.

[00:24:16]YouTube is watched more than Netflix or Disney Plus or Hulu. And that's even more true for younger generations. Mr. Rogers wouldn't optimize for subscribers. He might just be completely forgotten in the sea of daily vlogging content that looks like this. TO THE FIRST DAY OF HIGH SCHOOL IS CRAZY.

[00:24:32]>> SO, for many decades now, kids content has been chasing watchtime and gags and slapstick entertainment just to keep kids watching no matter the price. But Mr. Rogers reminded us respect for kids means not just showing them clowns, but things that will feed their minds and make them into better human beings. But I think the ultimate degradation and insult to kids' minds is letting them spend hours every day doom scrolling with unrelated videos that provide no edifying value that increasingly fill up their childhoods and shape the person they'll become, which is a vacuous person, someone without thought, someone without an inner monologue because they're always stimulated from the external world. These kids will have no fond childhood memories watching Mr. Rogers or even watching, you know, Drake and Josh. Instead, all these kids will remember is that they spent endless hours alone in their room at 10 years old scrolling through Charlie D'Amelio dances and Kaiat videos. And they'll look back and wonder where their childhood went and why no one was there to protect their childhood for them. And we'll have to tell them that it's our fault.

[00:25:33]>> It's nice to hear your voice again.

[00:25:36]I've waited all day long. Even wrote a song for you. It's strange the way you make me feel with just a word or two. I'd like to do the same for you.

[00:25:50]So, please raise your kids with Mr. Rogers or even my three sons, just not with Instagram reels or a bunch of 11-year-olds shouting at them in a family vlog. Preserve their innocence.

[00:25:59]Preserve their childhood. Preserve your children. I'm amazed that we think kids can't watch Aladdin or Mulan or Snow White or Sleeping Beauty anymore because it's offensive, because of insensitive stereotypes or patriarchy or whatever, but we're totally fine with kids watching the most degrading uh stimulating, mind-numbing content and doom scrolls as long as it's PC. We're so focused, maybe rightly or wrongly on what jokes can be exposed to or what stereotypes that we stopped asking, well, what about the content itself?

[00:26:28]What about the kids' minds? Maybe there's nothing harmful in the content, but is there anything good in the content? Is there anything that actually shows our kids the real world and edifies their spirit? There's a phrase I've always hated that people use all the time, which is killing time. Oh man, I got, you know, I'm not doing anything this weekend. I got to find some way to kill time, which just means you're waiting to die, right? That you've got nothing substantive in your life that you're living for that you care about.

[00:26:51]You just need something to kill the time in front of you before you get to your next activity and you're closer to the grave. Well, that's what I feel like we're doing with kids. We're not giving these kids anything that actually we want them to watch. We're just giving them something so they don't bother us.

[00:27:03]So they shut up and they don't tantrum and we kill time, right? Because if you look at these kids, they're like zombies. So we really are aptly killing their time and killing their spirits. No generation has been raised like this before. We have no idea how this will affect kids in the long run. But I don't want to find out. I'd rather raise them with Mr. Rogers.

[00:27:20]>> If you don't show it to them, they don't know it exists. currently so far in parenthood. Okay, I know you guys are going to humble me in the comments and our kids probably going to humble us, but he is over a year old.

[00:27:36]No screens, not TV, not our phones, not the iPad, none of it. The only time is when we have to do his nails or when he got his haircut. And it is a low stimulation aquarium video. And he's good. Tonight we went out to dinner. We accidentally left his toys in the car.

[00:27:58]He played with a paper straw, a napkin, and his water bottle. He looked around at everyone around him, was smiling, waving, pointing at things, trying to communicate with us. No screen needed.

[00:28:12]Does it require more attention on our end? 100%.

[00:28:19]But that's how it's supposed to be.

[00:28:21]>> What do you think? This is an important topic, so please like this video and give a comment with your thoughts. I'll respond to as many comments as I can.

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