Wake up, babe—a new way to mom-shame just dropped.
They’re known as iPad kids, and if you’ve been on TikTok recently you may have seen Gen Z creators warning against this scourge. These children, they claim, are the progeny of millennials and are a group of poorly behaved, unintelligent menaces being unleashed upon society mostly thanks to unmitigated screen time. Why are they this way? Their parents, of course. But really, we all know this just means their moms.
“I am one hundred percent judging the parents whose kids are addicted to their iPad that in order to get them to start behaving in public or stop having a temper tantrum, they need to shove a screen in their face,” posted one creator, noting she’s not a parent, but she doesn’t care if her comments make people mad.
“Ipad kids” as a meme has been ongoing, but the concept has taken on new life in recent months, likely because of a viral TikTok by creator Gabe Escobar. Escobar, a 21-year-old actor, got 20 million views on his video, in which he tells millennials that their kids are “bizarre and terribly behaved.”
“You’ve been shoving media and screens in these kids’ faces since birth,” he continued. “They probably have no imagination because their brains haven’t actually been forced to come up with any original thought.”
He concludes: “Gen Z isn’t allowed to raise iPad kids.”
K.
It’s an interesting time to be a parent, especially a mother. We, and the generation of young kids we are raising, have more access to technology than ever. I don’t know how I would have survived without my robot nanny rocking my daughter to sleep or my apps that helped me track every diaper and feed she had in those confusing and overwhelming newborn days. But this access is also a curse, as it means screens are lurking around every corner, ready to ruin our children’s brains irreparably before they even start school.
As every mom of a young child knows, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that parents limit their childrens’ screen time in various ways as they grow up. Before a child is 18 months of age, it is recommended that babies are only allowed to watch a screen if they are FaceTiming. After that, children are recommended to be allowed a slowly increasing number of minutes of screen time according to their age. My daughter is almost 18 months, which means her screen time should be “limited to watching educational programming with a caregiver” (i.e., don’t just set her in front of a device on her own; try to make it a shared activity). After she turns two, I can allow her an hour of screen time per week and three on the weekends.
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At least in my circles, one of the things moms are stressed about the most is screen time. In Reddit forums and Facebook groups, moms hem and haw and worry that they are somehow setting their kids up for a lifetime of attention disorders and bad behavior, and probably, if we are being honest, turning them into mini serial killers, because mom lets them watch Ms. Rachel or Cocomelon.
What’s even more pervasive is the guilt. The idea that, because the guidelines around screen time are so strict, that one slip-up or bad day or, God forbid, illness, and you become the parent of an “iPad kid” who is “addicted” to YouTube. Moms write stream of consciousness odes to their mistake, saying that they just turned it on once because they really needed a break, or weren’t feeling well, or needed to get something done. Underlying their words is this sense of failure, that letting your kid near a screen is somehow a mark of the dreaded label: bad mom.
But the problem is that in the real world, moms aren’t perfect. Before my daughter was born, I also thought I would never let her watch TV or YouTube before she started preschool. Then, you know, I actually became a parent and realized I didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about.
In real life—not TikTok—many moms are using screen time because of an actual need. Crucially, almost every mom I know personally has a full-time job where they have to go into an office multiple days a week, as do I. I put Elmo on YouTube on the mornings when I need to get ready for work (my husband leaves before I do, and before my nanny arrives), and my daughter isn’t always satisfied with her toys. Trust me, I already feel conflicted enough turning on the TV or the iPad to distract her when she really just wants me to hold and pay attention to her, and I can’t because I have to go to work. Now I get to go on TikTok for work at said job and see some 20-year-old is smugly telling me I am ruining her brain as well. Fun!
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I was recently looking at my old baby photos at my parents’ house and came across pictures from my first birthday party. I realized the theme was Sesame Street, and then remembered that I, like my daughter, loved Elmo as a toddler. Wait a second, could that mean that I watched television before the age of 1? Could it be that my own mother, who worked full-time when I was born, put me in front of a screen from time to time, enough so that I developed an affinity for Elmo? That seems to be the case, yet my brain isn’t fried, and I actually as an adult watch less TV than most people I know.
I can hear the buts now. It’s fine to let your kid watch TV at home, but what we are against is those kids on the iPads at restaurants (in a TikTok comment, one person proudly proclaimed that they’d rather hear a kid scream for the entirety of a meal thean see a kid on an iPad at the next table). Do I immediately plunk my iPad in front of my daughter as soon as we arrive at dinner out? No. But would I try it as a last resort, to get through a meal in peace? Absolutely.
According to the internet, “screen time has soared by blah blah blah very large percent” during the pandemic. Duh. For some wise parents, keeping it together meant dropping the guilt and turning on YouTube's most successful children's channels.
But—as a lot of these TikToks cite—teachers are saying (also on TikTok) that iPad kids are a menace in the classroom! Okay, but TikTok is not the be-all and end-all of scientific information. If there are large, rigorous, comprehensive studies done in the last few years finding this is the case, sure! I haven’t seen any, though, and we also should remember there are a variety of factors that could be affecting the mental health and behavior of young children right now (like, hello, the pandemic?).
The thing is, this whole iPad-kid thing isn’t really about screen time at all. TikTok is an endless churn of various trends, where people just try to scream the loudest in order to get noticed, build their audience, and go viral. It’s not shocking that shaming moms is popular (welcome to Earth). So one creator gets traction with one iPad-kid video, then everyone follows suit. It’s a tale as old as time, and it’d be funny if it wasn’t so enraging.
Because you know what tired, worn-out millennial (or any) moms don’t really need, in between working full-time, trying to pay for astronomical childcare bills, dealing with this country’s lack of paid leave and support for parents, and of course, parenting? A bunch of smug childless people telling them they are doing it all wrong and making them feel even worse.
Stephanie McNeal is a senior editor at Glamour and the author of Swipe Up for More! Inside the Unfiltered Lives of Influencers.
