and "cassette tapes" (for computer or radio/stereo/receiver) are the same material, but the magnetic media is in a roll of tape instead of a spinning disk shape.
Man, I seriously miss cassettes and cartridges, especially for video games. I recently bought a Nintendo 2DS for my young kids--having missed out on it during its original run myself, and observing that the children grow rather extreme behavioural issues if we let them play on iPads--and even those tiny little cartridges just have something to them. It makes the games feel more real to me, versus downloaded apps just taking up an icon on a screen.
I banned Disney/ABC at my house due to the same observed behavioral issues. YouTube is a mixed bag, I observe what the youngest is watching and he always listens when I tell him to pick something else to watch.
There are some games that for past some radar like the "Buddy" series - it seems innocuous but it's all about dismemberment of the buddy character. It's "funny" in the way "Happy Tree Friends" is funny. Less so to the plastic developing psyche of a toddler.
My kids---5 and 3--are normally very well behaved. If I let them watch TV for an hour and then I say "ok, it's time to turn it off", they occasionally grumble a little bit, but they do it and then happily trot off to do something else. When they were playing games on an iPad, even silly little "bubble popping" sort of apps, announcing the end time would immediately launch into screaming, crying, etc.
Cartoons and games like Super Mario are episodic. There is finality to completing the episode/level. Most modern games are explicitly designed to be addictive, so they eschew levels and opt for open-world or continuous play formats.
For passive content, they have a similar response (though not quite as pronounced) to turning off the TV in the middle of a movie. I don't blame them, though. It's really shitty to have to stop a movie in the middle. But continuous-play games have no middle or end, so there is no chance for a graceful exit.
So the Nintendo 2DS was an experiment to test the aformentioned theory of episodic content. It worked. I can let the kids play the games for an hour and at the end of the hour there isn't any wailing or gnashing of teeth.
We're not super-strict about screen time, but we're also not lassaiz-faire about it. We try to model appropriate consumption habits: 1-hour max on a "school night" (and almost never on consequitive nights), frequently a movie on Friday nights, sometimes Saturday morning cartoon binge if we don't already have plans for the day.
We let our kids watch TV to let them enjoy the programs they are watching. I'm not going to deny them a pleasure that I also enjoy. I'm also relatively strict on myself concerning media consumption. We're are just not using TV to park them so we can work.
