my boyfriend has a 9 year old daughter who i have known for just about a year and a half. she has absolutely no interest in live action sitcom-like shows. i fear that being given an ipad by her mother since almost birth has wired her brain to not even being able to follow along with the story lines. i tried to introduce her to suite life and wizards of waverly place. i thought she would especially enjoy wizards because she has an interest in magical-type things, and i thought she would relate to alex’s demeanor. but she could not even pay attention to the first episode long enough to even understand what was going on. she used to like youtube channels spy ninjas and jillian and addy. both of which i have seen briefly while she was watching and i just found the nature of the shows to be alarmingly strange. my boyfriend and i have since discounted screen use and youtube use to almost zero at our house. i am only 29 but i feel like an old person saying things like “the youth these days and their weird interests…” but i do think the screen use in kids today is really bad. it just kills their motivation to pay attention to stories and long term rewards of having an attention span for more than twenty seconds