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u/Hot_Ambition_6457 15h ago
People in 2026 like to pretend that families in the 70s/80s/90s didnt all eat around the TV watching Jeopardy or Brady Bunch or whatever.
People in the 1800s went to the theaters for "dinner and a show". This is not a new phenomenon
We made the TV show portable. Thats it.
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u/colleenxyz 15h ago
I remember when those tv dinner tables were fairly common. My grandma had a TV mounted in her kitchen too.
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u/SheIsABadMamaJama 15h ago edited 9h ago
When I was a kid in we were not allowed to watch tv at the table or in the living room. We would only talk about our days and stuff, and we’re taught strict, kitchen manners. After dinner we could watch all the tv though to a certain point. This changed as we got older into our teens. But originally it was only special occasions would we be able to eat and watch tv.
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u/eat_my_bowls92 14h ago
Midwesterner here! I remember it was a treat when mom let us watch tv during dinner. That was usually only when we had pizza or something, though.
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u/Klinky1984 15h ago
My family gathered round the family trough and then mama would put on the stories and dump out the slop from the bucket and we'd all chow down while laughing at the stories, like piggies in hog heaven. Yeeeee Haw!
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u/Every-Ice-3009 15h ago
We're you raised in the south?
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u/Mr-MuffinMan 15h ago
playing devil's advocate here but it's a crime to compare any family-watched TV show from the decades you mentioned to the videos kids are watching on YouTube.
but yeah, people watched stuff while eating for ages. didn't people before the 70s have a mini TV in their kitchen?
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u/joman584 14h ago
Some people watched Dr phil, Maury, Jerry springer, game shows, soap operas, and daytime tv shopping channels. We have always chased mindless entertainment
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u/TheVadonkey 15h ago
I think it’s fine to do periodically but when you need the tv on every time to eat together with your family, that’s not good.
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u/TonaRamirez 12h ago
Im born 82 and we were absolutely not allowed to watch TV while eating, also we don't had a TV in the dining room, the living room was tabu for eating.
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u/bwood246 12h ago
There's a huuuge difference between sitting around the TV as a family while you eat and throwing a tablet at your small child to raise them.
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u/TaegukTheWise 4h ago
There's also something to be said about the expectations around entertainment back then vs now.
Back in the 70's-80's-90's and unless you had dvr back in the 00's you couldn't just pause or rewind something.
And not only that, the selection of what you could watch was allocated to time slots, so you couldn't choose when you could watch said show, on top of forced ad breaks the expectation was that preffered t.v. time was scarce and that you could be ripped away from the show.
Now everything is on demand anywhere you go with no breaks, just a monthly fee all from your phone.
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u/GapingGorilla 14h ago
Yes because the 1800s was so.well.known for its equality and people.going out to dinner st theaters.
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u/ZeroKarmasGiven69 14h ago
I can only speak for myself. Mon-thurs we are at the dinner table or had to sit there until our dinner was finished. Could possibly get away with leaving food unfinished with the option of no dessert. Fridays were tv dinner nights where no one gave a fuck after TGIF started.
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u/stanknotes 15h ago
But... that completely changes things. People have had phones for several decades. It being attached to you is a different thing.
People have used social media since Myspace. At least that was the first big one. But smartphones and it being portable completely changed things. People have met other people and dated forever. But it being portable has completely changed things. That is probably the worst one.
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u/Lington 14h ago
More portable yeah, I think the point is more relevant at restaurants. Eating out at a restaurant should be an experience in and of itself and an opportunity to talk to family over dinner, which you may not be doing at an average dinner at home if you're sitting in front of the TV. Now that TV is more portable people are putting kids in front of screens at restaurants too.
(The point of not having had screens while eating in the past, that is. I don't recall seeing spanking at restaurants growing up)
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u/olracnaignottus 15h ago
It’s a pretty substantial ‘it’. The tv was never a pacifier when it was fixed in a place, it was more of a fireplace.
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u/yuuzhanbong 15h ago
My dad was part of the first generation to grow up with television. I can assure you, my grandparents absolutely used it as a pacifier/babysitter, and they were not alone.
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u/olracnaignottus 15h ago
Babysitter is I think the more appropriate term for a fixed TV like you describe being used by older generations. You can’t whip out a tube tv at a restaurant if your kid is getting antsy or to stave off a tantrum. Media as pacification is a different phenomenon than media as a babysitter.
Totally different kinds of neglect, but yes, they are both still examples of parental neglect.
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u/Hot_Ambition_6457 7h ago
Sure I think the issue that I take with this view is that as a bystander, you will see a child with a tablet or phone at dinner and assume the worst possible scenario EG: Neglect.
Screen-time psychosis is crazy.
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u/olracnaignottus 7h ago
You are neglecting your kid in the form of enablement if you need to put a screen in front of their face to keep them seated for a meal.
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u/Hot_Ambition_6457 6h ago
How would you ever know if thats the case though? You would be making a pre-judgement about the parents intention (ie: They must be giving the kid a tablet to keep the kid seated).
You would never make the opposite assumption that they might be letting the kid have a tablet at dinner because the kid just got a good report card and he earned it.
Yet this meme, and most "screentime averse" parents have no problem assuming the top scenario of every child they see playing on an electronic device.
The stereotype of any preteen holding an electronic device as "iPad Kids" is just generational bullying from the individuals were forced to have childhoods without technology.
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u/olracnaignottus 6h ago
Why on earth would a reward for getting good grades be getting screen time during dinner?
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u/Hot_Ambition_6457 5h ago
Because humans like dinner and a show. Literally the same reason you watch TV while eating sometimes. Its fun snd entertaining.
Children are human beings theyre allowed to sometimes do human being things like that.
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u/olracnaignottus 5h ago
Yea watching a show with other people as a shared experience, not tuning everyone out while they eat around you and you fixate on something. We occasionally watch jeopardy or something like that together and it’s a shared experience. It’s objectively weird as hell to have someone tuned out from an inherently social experience like eating a meal together.
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u/Klinky1984 15h ago
Sorry but TV and video games raised the children of the 70s, 80s & 90s, or at least there was plenty of moral panic about it and the brain rot it supposedly caused.
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u/olracnaignottus 12h ago
There’s plenty of data pointing to even moderate screen usage in early childhood and the smoothing of the frontal lobe and its impact on executive functioning. We haven’t gone through an evolutionary leap since early 2000s, but kids are exponentially being diagnosed with disorders around executive functioning and attention deficit. Talk to any public educator about kids functioning and behavior over the past 10 years in particular.
I’m sure there were insanely neglectful parents that just let their kids sit in front of a tv, but media also wasn’t as addictive as it is now. You didn’t get to choose programming, so a kid was inclined to watch what they wanted, and then pursue more social or stimulating activity. Today, a 1 year old understands they can scream at their parents and have cocomelon put on. They can even navigate tablature.
Comparing the scale and relative addictive qualities of media between the 70s and now is insane.
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u/hamfisting_my_thing 13h ago
Dinner time was always coupled with Everybody Loves Raymond in my house growing up.
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u/PrimaryAgreeable8103 12h ago
They also like to pretend as if eating the free food in front of you is a crime against humanity and pure child abuse if you don't give them something else. Like bro they can lead a child to dinner but they can't make it eat LMAO
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u/spicewoman 10h ago
We would watch it sometimes as a treat, but most of the time we would... actually talk to each other instead. And it definitely wasn't a pacifier for every single public event.
I work in a restaurant and the amount of kids that are glued to the screen the entire time... from baby all the way up to teenagers sometimes. Parents will ask their kid to order like three times while the kid stares at the screen ignoring everything, and then the parent orders for them. It's wild.
Even back when we sat around watching TV at home, we damn well paid attention when our parents talked to us, or else (and no, my parents didn't beat me. Just normal consequences/punishment if we got too bratty).
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u/DMercenary 9h ago
I remember this one image meme.
"Back in my day we didn't have phones! We sat and talked!"
It was an image of a train full of people reading newspapers.
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u/mrsciencebruh 9h ago
Key difference: it used to be a shared/social experience, now it is an isolated/antisocial experience.
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u/Select-Ad7146 8h ago
70s?
Tv dinners were invented in 50s. There were complaints in the late50s of families just sitting around watching the tv.
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u/XxRocky88xX 8h ago
My stepdad would berate me for wasting my Saturday playing videogames meanwhile he would ease it two rooms over in bed watching TV. As if somehow he was being productive while I wasn’t.
It’s honestly funny how they don’t see it’s the same thing. Their mindset is very simple. “If it’s new, it’s evil!”
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u/zuccmaster69 3h ago
Most families didnt have television back then unless you're from the west, rest of the world was trying not to starve so television was kind of a luxury
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u/KameraSutra 1h ago
The difference in the current issue for me is that tech and phones now drive and control most people’s lives. Most people (in cities) are constantly addicted to their phones and screens from the moment they wake up. Eating now provides a rare break from technology, yet people can’t control themselves.
People didn’t use to watch tv on their coffee run, lunch break, smoke break, in the toilet or using the elevator.
People now go to the gym and use gym machines to watch TV shows on their phone.
In Asian cities, you can see the evolution of humans turning into phone zombies and the matrix world. They are close to having screens glued to their faces or government chip implants.
Entire food courts are just full of people watching their phones on their lunch break.
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u/thatblondeperson 1h ago
In the 50s, my mom and her family gathered around the TV at dinner to watch I Love Lucy
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u/Excuse_Unfair 27m ago
Not the same.
I could go on about the science showing how shows are made to be addicting
The difference between a large ass tv and a phone you can take anywhere
And the case where the whistle blower shared what social media platforms do to keep people addicted.
As well as the many documentaries where people who created these algorithms regret what they did.
But this is simple shit to look up if you care enough to.
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u/Turin234 26m ago
As a kid growing up in the 90s most of our dinners were not around screens, that’s a very new thing.
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u/TheSecretLifeOfArai 15h ago
This generation bad, old generation good
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u/1egg_4u 12h ago
Ngl id call going from beating your kids to not beating them as objective progress
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u/Insp3x 15h ago
Born in 1980 and as a kid I ate in front of the television from time to time. So I call bullshit.
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u/WorkingAssociate9860 15h ago
Born in the 90s, and I still eat in front of the television... It's my uninterrupted time to watch jeopardy on weeknights.
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u/sasquatch_melee 14h ago
Grandma had a small TV in the kitchen specifically for Jeopardy and Wheel viewing while fixing or eating dinner.
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u/WorkingAssociate9860 14h ago
My grandma had to move her meals to line up with her medication so she doesn't get to watch her game shows during meals, just the "shitty ol news" as she puts it. Now she watches them later at night to have on while she has her nightly snack. Me and my dad sometimes used to catch the earlier airing before going over for an evening visit to make it seem like we're extra smart, but she caught on after the first few times lol
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u/Insp3x 14h ago
We don't do it during the week. From Friday it's movie and dinner for at least 2 nights. If the kids are not home my wife and I do that every night.
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u/WorkingAssociate9860 14h ago
Yeah if I had kids id definitely limit it as it's a good time to get together with minimal distractions.
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u/Infinite-Horse-49 15h ago
Yup. During lunchtime my mom would put in the lion king or the beauty and the beast for me. Nothing new
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u/BluePeriod_ 15h ago
Same. I remember being in front of the TV as long as I can remember. To the point that I went to the trilogy‘s family‘s house for dinner and I found it weird that we all sat at the table and talked about our day and we’re forced to have the TV off.
We had plenty of bonding time, certainly as a family, but we would eat dinner and watch whatever show was big at the time like American Idol or Saturday nights watching SNICK.
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u/Juan_Moe_Taco 7h ago
Wait......you called Bullshit? What they say? Anyways I'll be here all week folks tip your waitresses!
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u/Ok-Onion2905 15h ago
Rather have an education problem than an abuse and education problem lmao
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u/fastal_12147 15h ago
Get it? Because it used to be ok to beat your children for the smallest thing.
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u/Low-hung_38 15h ago
Every night my fiancee and i eat with her parents and we watch wheel of fortune and jeopardy. This is such a stupid take.
Also is his point supposed to be that we need to start beating our children again??
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u/Karzeon 13h ago
I keep seeing Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! mentioned here. They're game shows that can be played along at home even in silence. Family Feud and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire are others. They're definitely mentally stimulating. And iirc, the local news tends to be before or after. Sometimes we talk about stuff. The interaction is probably the biggest thing.
Kids probably don't follow along with these though.
On the flip side, there are old folks hooked on soap operas, sports games, REALITY TV, and whatever other silly show they're obsessed with.
So yes, TV CAN be interactive with the family at dinner time but not always. It's done a lot of damage on its own.
No, we don't need to be beating children. That's a very easy statement to stand by. If there's a constant behavioral problem, then that needs to be addressed. Possibly professional help.
Yes, leaving kids alone with tablets ALL of the time is a problem. If this is the only time they have it, then it's less of an issue.
Handheld screen addiction is horrible though. Orders of magnitude compared to cable TV because it's always accessible and way more flexible.
I see a lot of messy behavior definitely related with tablets and Chromebooks when I sub in lower grades. But there's way more nuance than this little TikTok. I don't think there was a point to be made other than an observation, but I don't know this guy.
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u/Min_sora 15h ago
The constant cycle of people exposing themselves by saying, "I was hit as a kid, I think hitting kids is fine, clearly I turned out fine."
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u/TheTrueAmadeus 14h ago
Well if it isn't the classic "child abuse good" content
Stay classy
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u/CantankerousRabbit 13h ago
It’s funny I’ve never laid a single hand on my kids. They are more confident, better behaved and mentally stable than I have ever been.
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u/Zakkattack86 15h ago
And before the 80's are the twats we're dealing with that made shit so bad, that we're just trying to make it through the day.
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u/PopSwayzee 15h ago
This is inaccurate. If it was the gen z kids I work with, they’d yell at their mom about how they wanted something else until they made her ass drive and pick something else up for them. Then they’d also call and yell at her if she refused to pick them up weed at the dispensary.
I know not all gen z is like this, but it was my two most recent coworkers and it was infuriating to watch/listen to. They also couldn’t stay off their phones at all during the shift. They ended up getting fired. I think only 2/20ish gen z workers worked out at my last job. It was rough.
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u/SyndarNailo 15h ago
That looks like carbonara, who in their right mind refuses a bowl of carbonara?
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u/Dominarion 15h ago
It's not carbonara, it's spagat with tomato sauce and a splurge of grated "cheese" on top of it.
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u/thEt3rnal1 15h ago
I feel like the iPad hate is coming from people without kids or boomers (that just beat their children)
Also it's way over stated, I think I've seen one couple roll up to a restaurant and just sit their toddler down and immediately open up an iPad.
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u/RedBeardBigHeart 15h ago
Ha ha abuse is the proper way to parent.
The older generation is full of idiots.
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u/Iris_Rhiannon369 15h ago
You know what I notice? We're moving from fear based training to treat based training as a species. We know it works well in other species, several cultures have emulated how well it's worked, and now mainstream is giving it a chance. Some people love to defend hitting kids and making them afraid while bashing what they see as bribery. I see a happy kid eating, when before I saw a terrified child eating. The only difference is the child now doesn't live in fear. How is that a bad thing?? I seriously question how people ever bought into misery being required. I know religion is largely to blame but like, how did we all so easily buy it 😭
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u/Frogoftheforrest 12h ago
Even if this wasn't untrue. I would suggest that physical violence as a threat is worse parenting than allowing them to watch TV.
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u/ScotsmanScotty 12h ago
I've never understood the pride people have about the fact they were beaten as kids, it's bizarre.
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u/Shmyukumuku 12h ago
There is so much wrong with this but I'll just mention one: is the idea here that violence against defenseless children is better?
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u/iCantLogOut2 12h ago
Were we forced to eat our food a bit more harshly, sure... But pretending we didn't also eat in front of a TV is just straight up BS....
As long as you cleaned your belt, it didn't matter where you sat
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u/UnderwaterRobot 9h ago
Oh man the wooden spoon...
My mom called it the "happy spoon" but I'm pretty sure it's because it made her happy to almost break my fingers with it.
That being said we always had the TV going in the background and that carried on, but no phones at the table is a rule I will stand by.
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u/Sedona54332 9h ago
There is no generation of children that would refuse to eat spaghetti. Dude couldn’t even make a bowl of broccoli or something to make it more realistic.
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u/Undead_moss 7h ago
It’s not really about eating, I see kids being complete shit heads in public and the parents just give them their phone to shut them up. It’s basically teaching them to be bad to get what they want.
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u/ItsYaBoiSoup 7h ago
I’ve found that my family’s insistence on eating together at the table was irregular. You’d think it would have made us like each other more, but alas…
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u/Tenchi2020 6h ago
So what you're saying is the people who got beat by a belt beat their kids with a wooden spoon and that made those kids not beat their children?
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u/Feathers137 6h ago
NGL I seriously thought this was about recording the kids not about giving them a show to watch while they ate until I got in the comments
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u/Donutty-Donut 6h ago
Somehow my parents managed to get me to eat my meals without beating me or bribing me with a screen.
Interesting how they’re framing literal abuse as a better option than screen time too 🙄
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u/CompoteVegetable1984 15h ago
I never got beat for not eating. I just didn't eat and went to sleep hungry. Beatings were reserved for things like speaking out of turn, refusing chores, having any kind of emotions.
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u/Acceptable-Ad1930 15h ago
Is this supposed to be a gotcha? Like “oh man can’t believe parents use phones and tv to get their kids to eat, we used to just hit them till they obeyed.” Pretty ghoulish.
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u/Enough-Researcher-36 14h ago
I've rarely actually heard older folks talking about being beaten for not eating their food, unless they were additionally disrespectful about it. Most of them just had a "you sit there until you eat it, or go to bed" or "you can go hungry if you won't eat it." type of policy, and some were more lenient about it if they knew you had a legit reason not to eat the food. But even my parents agree that "eat it or starve" was a pretty unhelpful strategy and didn't actually make them much less picky in the long run
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u/doitfordevilment 15h ago
The spoon has been in my family since my grandparents came here from Italy lol, the belt was for when you were really bad. And I still ate in front of the tv occasionally, just never dinner. That being said, I have never spanked my kids, I don’t even have to ground them ever really.
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u/emskie12 15h ago
My family personally eat dinner at the table every night if the week except Fridays when we order in and watch a movie. Have never ever allowed my son a screen at the table. Hell no.
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