Often people in these industries use terms like 'the front lines' because it is their job to deal with severely trauma effected people, and that is taxing in just about every way possible. It's tough, tough work.
What this poster's wife does is to help children who are having trouble with normal socialization. My interpretation is that she views kids with behavioral problems that have been given access to a phone before the age of 6 as too far gone. To be honest, anyone's time is limited and if the view of this Dr is that dealing with these children will take more time and not produce great results, it probably makes sense to focus on other patients, as there are always and will always be more patients demanding of more time than there are doctors x hours in the day.
This is absolute insanity. 4 years old with a data plan? Can Facetime you at work any time? Where the fuck do you work?? Why does your 4 year old need an internet connected device of her own??
Seems pretty great to me. She watches Wild Kratz and corrects me when I say that spiders are insects. She Facetimes me in the car on the way home from school, she Facetimes her grandparents who live 3,000 miles away. She's gotten really good at the Paw Patrol iPhone game. She just figured out how to print stuff to color on.
I don't get the screen-time hate in this thread at all. I don't know about you, but I was a nerd who was glued to an NES since age 5, and a computer since age 8. I turned out great (married, kid, good job). I highly doubt most of us on HN were well-socialized little kids who spent all their time playing outside.
A lot of people would draw a distinction with your definition of "great". Great people are moral, intelligent and aware. Lots of worthless people are married, have kids, and make a lot of money.
Your NES wasn't monitoring your every action to try to figure out how to make itself even more addictive to you. And both it and your computer eventually got boring, and made you seek out something else to do.
Phones are categorically different from the technology we were "glued" to in our 8-bit youth. People aren't hating on generic screen time here, they're hating on always-on fully-connected devices loaded with software that is continually adapting to try and increase your engagement time with them.
What this poster's wife does is to help children who are having trouble with normal socialization. My interpretation is that she views kids with behavioral problems that have been given access to a phone before the age of 6 as too far gone. To be honest, anyone's time is limited and if the view of this Dr is that dealing with these children will take more time and not produce great results, it probably makes sense to focus on other patients, as there are always and will always be more patients demanding of more time than there are doctors x hours in the day.