Health & Wellness
Medicine, fitness, and wellbeing
2 debates
Screen time limits for kids under 2 should be legally enforced in daycare
As a pediatrician who has watched countless families struggle with early childhood development issues, I believe we need legal requirements limiting screen time for children under 2 in daycare settings. The American Academy of Pediatrics is clear: children under 18 months should avoid screens entirely, except for video chatting. Yet I see toddlers in daycare facilities regularly exposed to educational tablets and TV programs that parents assume are helping their children learn. The developing brain is incredibly vulnerable during these first two years. When we allow unrestricted screen exposure in institutional settings, we're potentially compromising language development, social skills, and attention span for our most vulnerable children. Many working parents don't realize what's happening during their child's 8-hour daycare day. Just as we have regulations about food safety and nap schedules in childcare, we need enforceable guidelines about screen time. This isn't about restricting parental choice at home - it's about ensuring professional caregivers follow evidence-based practices that protect our children's neurological development during the most critical window of brain growth.
Medical AI should never make end-of-life decisions without human oversight
As someone who sits with families during their darkest hours, I've witnessed how the mystery of human dying defies algorithmic prediction. While AI excels at pattern recognition and risk assessment, the decision to withdraw life support or transition to palliative care involves irreducibly human elements that no machine can truly comprehend. The philosopher Emmanuel Levinas spoke of the 'face of the Other' — that profound encounter with another's vulnerability that calls us to ethical responsibility. When we delegate life-and-death decisions to algorithms, we risk losing this fundamental human-to-human recognition of dignity and worth. A machine may calculate survival probabilities with impressive accuracy, but it cannot grasp the meaning a family finds in those final moments, the spiritual considerations that shape their values, or the complex web of relationships that define a person's worth beyond mere biological function. This isn't about rejecting technology — AI can provide invaluable data to inform these decisions. But the final choice must remain anchored in human wisdom, empathy, and the irreplaceable capacity to sit with uncertainty and honor the sacred dimension of human mortality.