[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How to deal with children's online habits?
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Ask HN: How to deal with children's online habits?
Or, more generally, how to give children freedom and privacy, yet
also be there to help them understand the lessons the world is
about to teach them? I have this preconceived notion that I don't
want to violate my children's privacy. It's very tempting, of
course, to passively monitor e.g. their spending or online habits,
but I don't want to. (As a concrete example, I know a some people
get very detailed reports from the daycare about what their
children have been up to. I'm not interested in that -- when I want
to know what the daycare experience is like, I personally spend a
day at the daycare. This gives me much more nuance than a report
ever would, but it also feels more respectful toward my child that
they're allowed a part of their life outside of my supervision. But
the reason I can do that is because there are other helpful adults
at the daycare. That won't be the case everywhere, unfortunately.)
So I want them to have privacy, but I would also want to pick up on
problems early -- either their own bad behaviour, or if they're
victim's of someone else's bad behaviour. Some more concrete
questions in the same vein: - What fraction of their online time
should I sit with them? - Do I play all video games with them or
should they have some of "their own"? - Do I give them the ability
to do online purchases? - Do I allow them to use up all of their
money even as a mistake, or do I set up a limit? - Do I limit
their "screen time" (hate that term) or will that prevent them from
interacting with their friends in the way they would want to? This
depends on maturity levels, of course, but I'm looking for
generalisations. My children are 2 and 0.2 years old now, so this
won't be relevant in a while but I like to be prepared and if you
have thoughts regarding any maturity level, please share. The
reason I ask you HN folks is (a) that you are likely to understand
my concern for privacy and personal integrity, and (b) that I've
received very useful and thought-out child-related advice here
before. ---- I'm also skipping a bunch of privilege-related
questions like "who the hell can take a day off to spend it at the
daycare?" Or, perhaps more importantly, "what determines how much
time you spend online with your children may not be what's
appropriate, but how much time you can spare for it?" And yeah,
both of those are problems for myself as well -- I'm interested in
all creative solutions here, also that help work around such
problems.
Author : kqr
Score : 125 points
Date : 2022-07-17 05:57 UTC (17 hours ago)
| [deleted]
| s1k3 wrote:
| I kind of don't understand all the crazy concern around kids and
| tech. Was like every current parent negatively impacted by their
| computer and internet use when they were younger?
|
| Is this simply a concern around social media usage which has
| ballooned in the past 10 years?
|
| I sometimes feel like I'm in the minority here when I'm going to
| give me children wide latitude in their tech/internet usage. And
| only intervene if I see detrimental behavior as a result.
| frogger8 wrote:
| Some may like and some may dislike this solution. Sharing in case
| automating some of these challenges using smart DNS is useful for
| your use case.
|
| https://github.com/1stOctet/YouWillUnderstandWhenYouAreOlder...
| jugg1es wrote:
| I thought I had a good handle on my kids' online activity until
| COVID hit and suddenly they were home 24/7 for a long time. In
| order to keep working, I had to give up on a lot of limits on
| screen time in order to retain my sanity. The rules we have
| settled on is that they can't use devices until at least 3 or
| 4pm. This manages to limit their screen time considerably and
| forces them to use their brains for most of the day.
|
| I installed Qustodio on their computers and made sure that
| everything on their is set with an age limit (including their
| windows account, youtube, and chrome account). You'd be surprised
| how much support there is now for limiting content for your kids.
|
| I also strongly discourage them from watching youtube videos and
| prefer them to actually play video games.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| My wife is a pediatric occupational therapist who works with
| children in Silicon Valley, including the some of the uberwealthy
| (Los Altos Hills, Portola Valley ranch wealthy, "would you just
| come with us on the jet this week" wealthy). She has also worked
| in pre- and post Katrina New Orleans, college towns, east coast,
| west coast. tropical islands. She's been around, seen kids at the
| absolute top and some versions of the very bottom (families
| living in shipping containers). I'm a physician informaticist.
| our kids are now 17 and 20. One is going to UCLA, the other is
| going to run out math at the local community college before he
| graduates high school.
|
| I generally agree with the others who say if you can solve child-
| rearing, please let me know, we're going to be rich.
|
| That said, the best advice I can offer is exemplify the adults
| you wish them to become. To the extent possible, raise children
| through benign neglect.
|
| That said, screen time is the devil incarnate. You don't want
| your kids to be the first ones with a phone, or the last, but you
| should try to be as close as possible to last as you can.
|
| The pediatric in-patient psych beds in California were full a
| decade ago. Californians are now filling all the psych beds in
| the neighboring states. It seems to hit young teen girls the
| worst. If you want a peds psych bed and you live in California,
| start looking at Denver or Omaha. I personally know two teen
| girls who are seeing psychiatrists or psychologists. Their
| younger brothers tend to follow. And two other girls in long
| term, out-of-state psych wards.
|
| It's dose dependent. BEFORE they have devices (which, again, you
| should avoid like the plague) get Google WiFi and time-limit
| their access. If you own a TV, throw it away now. My wife threw
| ours out in 2007. Best decision ever. We eventually bought a
| projector, but it only works if it's dark enough ... Which is not
| much of the day.
|
| Get a lockbox. Put it at the front door. Sometimes, shit's gonna
| get real and you'll need rules like "Devices go in the box when
| you get home", "Devices go in the box until homework is done", or
| "Devices go in the box and hour before bed". You should also have
| them reflect, even journal, on the experience so they concretely
| incorporate the knowledge of how they feel with and without the
| phone.
|
| Once they are in either middle school or high school, encourage
| them to take notes in bound notebooks. My daughter prefers spiral
| college rule 8x11, my son prefers Leuchtturm A5 color-coded by
| subject. Tell them you will keep those notebooks for them until
| they are old enough to store them themselves.
|
| Encourage paper books.
|
| Buy subscriptions and shun any company that serves ads despite
| having paid for the subscription.
|
| Take long walks. Get a dog. Get two. Take your kids out into the
| world. A lot. Every weekend.
|
| Fuck kids sports. My daughter's gymnastics coach broke the Nasser
| story. Fuck kids sports. The adults are awful. High school sports
| are pretty healthy. JV is fine. Kids need a lifelong love of
| exercise, not ACL repairs in high school (record I've heard is a
| girl who got 7 ACL repairs before graduating college).
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I see posts like this about all the rules and pitfalls or
| raising (functional?) children these days, and I just wonder -
| why are people doing it? What do they want for their children
| to do in the world? I couldn't enforce this level of discipline
| on myself, let alone a child. I suppose I'm happy someone is
| raising the future laborers and tax payers that I might rely
| upon someday, but the whole thing just looks very dreary and
| grim to me.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| Having kids was the best decision of my life. They are
| wonderful beyond compare and will lead the world. My wife,
| the kids, and I are all thriving. But we are just starting to
| exit the shitshow of teenage years and let me tell you, the
| internet has made childhood insane. Like Meow Wolf with live
| ammunition, stripers, and cocaine.
| kart23 wrote:
| "Be the adults that you want your kids to become" is the best
| advice. My parents would just pull the wifi plug, I think that
| works well since its a rule that applies to everyone. kids
| sports that are uber-competitive suck. stuff like little league
| can be good, it all depends on the coach and the community.
| fleddr wrote:
| I have friends with children in the age of 12-14, one of which
| excessively monitors his son's online behavior.
|
| He's shown me results of his monitoring and it pretty much ended
| the debate. Weird old guys contacting his son, excessive
| cyberbullying, swearing (fine by me, but still), being drawn to
| the wrong kind of "friends", hate speech, general addiction and
| obsession with games and in-game items, the list goes on.
|
| Doesn't mean one should intervene all the time, but you should
| know. I'm not a parent so I don't know at what age you should
| back off, but I'd say don't do it too early. Your trust is
| misplaced.
| rajin444 wrote:
| > Your trust is misplaced.
|
| Could you provide some explicit examples to what you linked
| above?
|
| > Weird old guys contacting his son
|
| This one sounds a little weird, but the rest could just be the
| kid isn't following modern western progressive values (and
| being obsessed with games depending on how much is just being a
| kid).
|
| > swearing (fine by me, but still), being drawn to the wrong
| kind of "friends", hate speech
|
| I'd need specific examples here, but it sounds like the kid is
| just rebelling against the current cultural norms. Much like
| most of us rebelling against conservative norms growing up.
| enumjorge wrote:
| It's sad that being against hate speech is considered modern,
| western and progressive. It seemed like the norm not too long
| ago.
| sneak wrote:
| > _Weird old guys contacting his son_
|
| I'm almost 40 and weird old guys contact me on the internet all
| the time.
| Majestic121 wrote:
| The difference is that you're not a naive, inexperienced with
| life and prime target for predators 13 years old boy.
| hiptobecubic wrote:
| On the internet, no one knows you're a middle-aged man
| jdmoreira wrote:
| Or a dog for that matter ;)
| ethbr0 wrote:
| If a 13 year old is that inexperienced and much of a
| target... it's probably time to have a conversation about
| sexuality and the perils of sharing sexual pictures of
| oneself with random people on the internet.
|
| I swear, most of the "But what if?!"isms boil down to "I
| don't want to have an uncomfortable conversation with my
| child to teach them about the world."
|
| (Said as the father of a 14 year old)
| tsol wrote:
| You should, but at the same time kids are naive and
| sometimes do things they know they shouldn't
| Misdicorl wrote:
| I think you underestimate the problem space.
|
| Think of it like security issues where the
| attackers/researchers are constantly evolving and
| generating novel ways to hack a system. Your solution is
| telling fresh out of school developers to be really
| careful about use after free bugs and spear phishing.
| Obviously a good start. But it's not enough in a lot of
| cases.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| The central problem here is trust: either your kid trusts
| you enough to discuss things with you, or they don't.
|
| If that doesn't exist, implementing a technical
| panopticon is a way to paper over its worst effects, but
| it's not a solution to the root problem.
| woojoo666 wrote:
| > The central problem here is trust: either your kid
| trusts you enough to discuss things with you, or they
| don't.
|
| I don't think it's that simple. A predator can catfish as
| a high school girl, send raunchy texts and images to the
| boy, and the boy might be tempted to engage but wouldn't
| tell their parents out of embarassment (just like how a
| teenage boy isn't going to tell their parents about their
| porn watching habits)
| ethbr0 wrote:
| The solution to that isn't tapping your boy's IM and chat
| history though. It's having a relationship with him where
| he feels comfortable mentioning he's talking to someone
| new.
| Misdicorl wrote:
| And the opposition is doing everything they can to
|
| 1) make that communication remain innocuous long enough
| to fall into background ignore status
|
| 2) escalate in a way that will either avoid communicatong
| with you or even better seem fine to the child but not to
| you and so invoke the "my parent isn't fair" response and
| stop consulting you wholesale
| klyrs wrote:
| The "girl" doesn't want him to mention her, because her
| dad's possessive and abusive and if he finds out, she's
| dead meat. Your kid now has a selfless, noble reason to
| be uncomfortable sharing that information.
| thih9 wrote:
| > Your trust is misplaced.
|
| This way of approaching the topic feels unhealthy to me. I'd
| put less focus on "don't trust your kids", and more on "make
| sure your kids have a responsible adult they trust".
| tmaly wrote:
| What does your friend use for monitoring?
| intothemild wrote:
| Here's my thoughts.
|
| > - What fraction of their online time should I sit with them?
|
| I try to spend any time I'm not doing something like housework or
| whatever with my kid. But ultimately (and you're going to hear
| this repeated) I ask her if I can join. I will state "ok I've
| finished my chores can I come and hang out with you?" She usually
| says yes. But I make sure to emphasize that I was doing chores as
| to give context and to also normalise the idea that when you do
| chores there's no tv or anything else. (music is fine)
|
| > - Do I play all video games with them or should they have some
| of "their own"?
|
| I let my daughter drive this... Almost always she wants me to
| play a multiplayer game with me. But about 20% or more she wants
| to play something by herself. So I give her that space.
|
| > - Do I give them the ability to do online purchases?
|
| Yes and No... We have a calendar on the wall, and every night
| before bed we do a ritual.. if she was a good girl she gets to
| color in the day green, if she wasn't good, then she colors it in
| red. If there's less than 5 red days then she can chose something
| to have... Last month was a pokemon game for her switch.
|
| That said... I have setup our online consoles so if she wants to
| buy something it sends me a message, and I approve it. This never
| happens, as I do the purchasing. But it's an option you can
| consider.
|
| Finally on our Xbox, Game pass is amazing.. she knows if she sees
| something in game pass she's free to download it and play..
|
| > - Do I allow them to use up all of their money even as a
| mistake, or do I set up a limit?
|
| Depends on the age of the kid. If they understand the idea of
| money, you should probably setup goal oriented systems.. so do X
| and get $Y, it's important for them to learn how to earn money,
| and the value of money.
|
| If they are too young to understand money.. then a behaviour
| based system such as my red day green day calendar system.
|
| > - Do I limit their "screen time" (hate that term) or will that
| prevent them from interacting with their friends in the way they
| would want to?
|
| No, screen time is a stupid fear a bunch of people have. It's
| just the next dumb panic. Our grandparents had it when our
| parents were put in front of the TV. I'm guessing if you go back
| far enough there was probably panics about kids sitting in front
| of the radio.
|
| Screen time is dumb. However the real issue is what they are
| doing..
|
| There should be some educational component.... BUT remember that
| everyone needs downtime.. you cannot expect your kid to go 100%
| education all the time....think about us at work, we need to
| browse the web or table tennis or whatever to have a mental
| break. So do kids.
| idontwantthis wrote:
| #1 Recommendation is no Roblox. It destroys kids. Not to mention,
| exploration by the game itself, and pedos. Kids who play are
| unable to do anything else. Maybe your kid will be able to
| regulate, but I'd guess not. Ask an elementary school teacher
| about it.
|
| #2 is no devices in their own bedroom.
|
| Edit: Exploitation not exploration
| phoronixrly wrote:
| You mean exploitation, right?
| idontwantthis wrote:
| Yes, edited.
| mecanicox wrote:
| Never allow a children below 12 access to internet, a not give to
| they cellphones until the 14 or until they needed, in my
| experience as father, I give him 4 or 5 hour in videogames or
| videos in the computer monday-saturday, sunday is for family
| time, everytime he ask for buy something, I tell him that he must
| work for obtain that as reward or compensation, not let them take
| the monitor outside of your range, even in his room my son has
| the monitor close the wall but in front of the door so I can see
| what is he doing when I pass to his door, our family policy is
| that all the rooms are with open doors, is forbiden stay in a
| closed door, constantly I ask what is he doing in the computer,
| sometimes he lies but is ok, I not cross certain limit, sometimes
| I stay with him looking him playing his videogames, talk a lot
| with them, tell all the good and bad things that are in the
| internet, tell about the scamers, and all the bad actors in the
| social networks, but most important, show they that you love them
| and you care them and those are the reasons why are you doing
| this things.
| ripvanwinkle wrote:
| I'd be more flexible.
|
| There are kid safe quality sites and apps like Khan Academy,
| Youtube Kids , SplashLearn, the local library and more
|
| Its possible to allow list only specific URls and apps and set
| time limits and that works well with my 5 year old.
| smugma wrote:
| Does watching PBS Kids or Disney+ count? What about YouTube
| Kids or YouTube?
|
| The point being that almost all content is on the Internet now.
|
| I guess your reply can be seen as a good faith response because
| if you block everything, there's no need to monitor. It's just
| very extreme to disallow content if provided over the Internet,
| rather than building trust and nuance, which I think is more
| along the lines of the original question.
| jaclaz wrote:
| > - Do I give them the ability to do online purchases?
|
| > - Do I allow them to use up all of their money even as a
| mistake, or do I set up a limit?
|
| IMHO you should not allow online purchases until a certain age, I
| would say until 10 years old or so, before that they should ask
| you for something and you pay for them (if the request is
| reasonable and anyway if they deserve that).
|
| Starting from 5 or 6 years old you will need to teach them about
| money (its uses, its risks, how it costs time and sweat to have
| it), which is something extremely difficult in these times of
| "immaterial" money, in the old times it was easier, with "real"
| money kids had their own piggy bank that had its own weight that
| could be felt, when you opened it there was the ritual to count
| the coins (and possibly a few notes) and see if it was enough to
| buy the _whatever_ was desired, a 5 /6 years old kid will have
| difficulties in understanding what the balance of an online
| account is (that those numbers represent actual money).
|
| When you will be able to allow them to directly make their own
| purchases (again after some training with you) you should let
| them spend what they want to spend within a given total budget,
| i.e. refill a rechargeable card to (say) 100 dollars and give
| them access to it. (i.e. they should be free to spend the whole
| 100 dollars on a single, stupid item or buy 5 items 10 dollars
| each and keep the remaining 50 in the balance, without any
| intervention by you).
|
| At a given fixed interval (let's say monthly) you credit (still
| say) 50 dollars more to the card, plus you may credit some more
| dollars for merit/prizes (if they behaved good, had an
| exceptional good vote at school, etc.).
|
| This way they will (should) learn that money is a finite amount
| and that - while one is free to use as he/she wishes - it doesn't
| come out of thin air.
|
| The problem might be with gifts from relatives, in my times (I
| was a kid many years ago) I had some uncles that often slipped a
| note to me (without telling anything to my parents, it was our
| little secret), now the kid would probably have to "declare" this
| extra income to you in order to be able to spend it online (and I
| doubt - but I may be wrong - that modern uncles will recharge the
| card online directly).
| tiluha wrote:
| I would only allow them to do online purchases themselves once
| they turn 14 or so. No restrictions what they spend their money
| on. Reduces the risk of them falling for phishing and scams
| lr4444lr wrote:
| As a tech worker with kids, what I see is an all out war being
| waged on their attention span, motivation to consume, and healthy
| self-concept with zero regard for their healthy cognitive
| development. I let my kids watch certain specific shows on
| YouTube Kids and Netflix, and that's it. About 30 minutes a day,
| tops, and I am almost always in earshot. Articles that came out
| in the last 5 years or so about Silicon Valley execs keeping
| their kids away from the very products that make them rich was a
| very telling indicator. Much good as the internet has done or my
| life, I was also blessed to have grown up with a childhood that
| was not permeated by it during my early formative years. There is
| some great content out there, but the data is coming down firmly
| on a negative correlation between screen time and a variety of
| child health measures. Kids deserve their innocence. When they
| are older, I will definitely be installing monitoring on my
| router for their IP traffic.
| oxff wrote:
| fdsafdsfdsa wrote:
| >you are likely to understand my concern for privacy and personal
| integrity,
|
| I've given up on the high ideals I used to hold about (online)
| privacy (and anonymity). There's an argument that they, in some
| circumstances, are the antithesis of personal and public
| responsibility.
|
| My current plan is that my kids will get tech when they can
| afford it themselves. I'm also dreading it, as more parents bow
| to the pressure and allow kids to have phones and tablets at an
| ever-younger age. I do understand the downsides of this, and also
| don't want my kids to be social pariahs.
|
| Also - you role model what your kids will do. If you think it's
| ok to sit and scroll on your phone at every opportunity, so will
| your kids. If you game till the early hours, so will your kids.
|
| FWIW both my wife and I gave up smartphones last year, and all
| "tech" in the house is banished to our home office. When a family
| computer becomes a necessity, it will be in a shared area.
| nemo1618 wrote:
| Can you talk more about giving up smartphones? That's a pretty
| radical move.
| synergy20 wrote:
| My way is to block the internet at study times and only let
| education-related site be available, block the porn sites at all
| times for them, with a wifi router.
|
| as long as the internet is on for kids, it's really hard for them
| to get off-hooked without some strict (technical) rules in house,
| talking with them did not work for us after many trying, wifi is
| the only thing works when it is needed(e.g. study time, or no-
| game time, or no-internet time).
|
| I have been thinking this self-customized wifi might have a
| market actually, it worked well for us so far, once the study-
| mode is on, there is no way they can get around to it, not even
| with tor-browser or any proxy server or vpn(technically this is
| the hardest part, but I pulled it off), and they can actually
| focus on studying(these days many home work requires internet to
| be on, so you have to manage the sites, and you can not just turn
| internet off).
| patrickdavey wrote:
| ? How did you pull that off? Can they not just set their own
| DNS so you can't block them finding sites, and then if they're
| communicating over tor how do you even know what they're
| looking at?
|
| Most impressive!
| synergy20 wrote:
| it took me 3 years to figure out(as one of my kids kept
| finding ways to bypass it, who was a game addict, that forced
| me to improve the design), it's a combination of different
| approaches to make the whole thing work at low cost, my kids
| said it is much more 'clean' comparing to their school wifi
| network, where they can bypass easily with some free VPN
| software and proxy server, and kids exchange their findings,
| so campus-network to them is pretty much fully open.
| darthrupert wrote:
| Ideally, this should not be the responsibility of the parent.
| Mainly because it's practically impossible to protect every kid
| in a household-by-household basis. Ideally, the government should
| have strict restrictions on what content providers are allowed to
| show children.
|
| I've seen two kids practically destroyed by these devices, by the
| inaction of myself and my society. I thought that because I
| handled computers and later Internet just fine, that they could
| do it just as well. I think I underestimated the level of the
| danger by a huge margin.
|
| I have two more kids who are yet mostly unharmed, and due to this
| experience, I will clamp down on their device use in a much more
| drastic manner.
| [deleted]
| Thorentis wrote:
| My opinion: children don't need access to the internet, period.
| There are plenty of ways to let them explore, learn, and play,
| without giving them any access to the internet. I plan to host an
| entirely off-line copy of Wikipedia, a bunch of other resources,
| video games, programming tutorials and libraries. Basically a
| whole bunch of content that will let them learn about computers
| and the world, without having access to the internet. The
| internet is not what is used to be, and the cons severely
| outweigh any possible pros, especially since the pros can be
| achieved in other ways.
| hiptobecubic wrote:
| Counterpoint, if your child grows up and isn't "internet
| native" they will be like people who "don't get computers" over
| the last decade. It's very limiting.
| 42e6e8c8-f7b8-4 wrote:
| I grew up without access to computers at all until I was 12.
| I thought I would break my uncle's computer by moving the
| mouse.
|
| I've had a career ranging from telecom and supercomputer
| chips to mobile, desktop, and web dev. I do not think my lack
| of exposure to the internet at a young age has limited me.
| Macha wrote:
| One person in my CS degree (which started in 2008) had his
| first time using a computer a few weeks before said degree
| which was interesting. He managed it fine.
| wngr wrote:
| They might not know how to navigate an iPhone or TikTok, but
| those are not foundational skills.
| mbg721 wrote:
| Spending time on the Internet doesn't make you understand
| computers. (It does make you understand that you get a hit of
| happy-brain-juice when you press the Play button.) My wife
| teaches college courses and laments that her students, fully
| in the always-online generation, are helpless in Excel, let
| alone something like a command line.
| lakomen wrote:
| All I can say is, I grew up in the 80s and that means no
| internet. I come from a working class family. The neighbor was an
| architect who had a C64. Because of that I got interested in
| computers at the age of 8. Age 10 my dad bought me a CPC 464. I
| learned that BASIC and wrote a graph that displayed a static set
| of numbers, kind of a stock exchange graph. I had a deal with my
| dad that he'd pay me if I managed to write this and complete it.
| He paid. Later I got a C64 because of games. Also the Final
| Cartridge 1. It had the ability to freeze execution, a memory
| monitor and assembler editor. I cracked my 1st game at the age of
| 11. One year later I wrote cracktros and linked them with my
| cracked games. I also used it to cheat in games. However I never
| did professional piracy. I only distributed the disks locally
| among friends. It was really amazing seeing one of my cracktros
| years later at someone's C64, a guy I never knew.
|
| Nowadays the playing field is different. The internet isn't real
| life. I have never witnessed such hostility in real life that I
| have on the internet. But it is now part of life. And it's full
| of junk. But you can't shield your kid from it. It will have to
| deal with it sooner or later. But... I still had a somewhat
| normal childhood, exploring nature, building tree houses and
| such. If your kid spends all its time in front of a screen, it
| will never experience or learn about the real reality, not the
| fake interreality. Already the rudeness of the internet is
| changing real life. Because people get used to be rude because
| they're sheltered from repercussions on the net, but get used to
| that behavior in rl.
|
| To make it short, I was not supervised or monitored. I had great
| grades in school without learning. Just listening to what the
| teachers had to say was enough to make it through school with an
| American B result in the end, without ever learning for a single
| test. I would've liked if my parents pushed me a little bit. That
| B could've been an A if I tried. But I really enjoyed my freedom
| and when the internet came 1995 I enjoyed the freedom I had
| there. The internet was something that wasn't on the mainstream
| people's radar. It was my refugee from real life and its harsh,
| controlling rules. Over the years it turned into this trashpile
| that's the complete opposite of what it was. It's now used to spy
| on you and to monitor you and everyone. What was once a dream of
| freedom and progress is now a tool for oppression and used to
| spread nationalism and racism or let's put it like that...
| reality has caught up with it and made it part of its ecosystem
| only without the barriers of decent behavior toward each other.
| But then again it's just a medium. The way I live my life and
| have lived it in the past 25 years was like a slave, sitting in
| front of a computer screen writing things in a made up world,
| because I need to earn money to live or rather to perpetuate this
| slave existence.
|
| I often wonder if I had a child what I would teach it in regards
| to the internet. Probably that it can be a dangerous place, just
| like the real world. I would not prohibit its use or have
| dedicated "screen time". But I would not allow purchases. If they
| manage to make their own money in it, of course they could spend
| it any way they want. I would urge them to go outside and play vs
| spending time in front of the computer. Nowadays you have your
| computer with you. I would explain why, with every decision I do,
| so the kid understands why I do what I do and why it should as
| well. And sometimes I would have to be the authority, because
| that's life.
|
| My dad said once, "I don't want to be your dad, but a friend".
| That is not what I wanted. I wanted a dad, friends I could always
| have, but only 1 dad. I think he said that so it was easier for
| him to accept his role. I'm not good with kids either or other
| people. When I was younger I hated chit chat or smalltalk. Most
| jokes were not funny to me. I always admired Mr. Spock for being
| cold and logical. When things wouldn't go my way instead of
| having emotional outbursts, like it did when I was younger I
| would get cold and robot like and express my disagreement that
| way. So yeah, of course play with the kid if that's what makes
| you happy, because if you do it only because you think it's good
| for the kid, then it's superficial and bad for both. In the end
| it's just another human, so what do you do with other humans?
| With your child you have more in common than with other humans.
| It learns from you, copies you, your good and your bad. Whatever
| you do, be honest. No, never mess with them and their friends.
| They're theirs friends, their relationships, not yours. Of course
| if you see something that is not ok, talk about it. In the end
| you're the parent.
|
| Communication is everything. Talk talk talk. Remember when you
| were young? Spot stressing about it and just go with it.
| [deleted]
| majkinetor wrote:
| Nobody can help you here. They would get a Nobel prize if they
| knew how to raise kids. By having kids you accept all risks
| involved, to both your kids and yourself.
|
| There is no silver bullet.
|
| As always, going for education is the only thing you can do to
| reduce risks.
| lwswl wrote:
| There is always a silver bullet. There just isn't always a
| werewolf.
| contingencies wrote:
| Every child is different. As parent only you can make the right
| decision in context. We select and watch film together unless its
| clearly kids content. Personally I do not encourage spending.
| Money is a vile thing.
| 42e6e8c8-f7b8-4 wrote:
| Every child is different, but surely there are patterns and
| broad commonalities. Surely you should guard your children from
| heroin and meth and there are some nasty and destructive
| content on the internet that couldn't possibly be a good choice
| for any child to consume. When should your kindergartener start
| consuming snuff pornography? Answer: they a shouldn't, lest we
| wish a million serialer killers to bloom.
| thoms_a wrote:
| Expose your kids to activities that are more compelling than
| screens. Trust me, once you take a kid go-karting, they aren't
| going to be as excited playing a video game.
|
| Do cool shit with your kids. Go skiing, camping, fishing, go-
| karting, flying (small plane tours), drone racing, etc.
|
| I know most of us here are nerds, but the jocks really do have
| life figured out when it comes to fun stuff.
| Macha wrote:
| I realise HN has a disproportionate amount of software
| engineers, but I know my parents would struggle to afford the
| likes of skiing, flying, go-karting as regular activities,
| never mind in sufficient quantities to displace video games and
| the internet. Even a trip to the bowling alley was a rare treat
| when I was growing up.
| mbg721 wrote:
| It takes a few years before even something as simple as a
| walk to the park isn't exciting anymore. And I think the
| thing that's implied in most of the pessimistic responses
| here is "you have to start early or you lose control".
| FrenchDevRemote wrote:
| >What fraction of their online time should I sit with them?
|
| Unless they're 5 year old and learning the ropes or asking for
| it, then none
|
| >Do I play all video games with them or should they have some of
| "their own"?
|
| If they want to play with you: as much as you want, otherwise
| none.(I kinda wish I played with my parents honestly, but they
| never cared)
|
| >Do I give them the ability to do online purchases?
|
| Physical products? Probably yes, but it should go through you to
| check that the site is not a scam or shady. Virtual items, crappy
| lootboxes and predatory subscriptions? Absolutely not.
|
| >Do I allow them to use up all of their money even as a mistake,
| or do I set up a limit?
|
| Depends on how much money you have.
|
| >Do I limit their "screen time" (hate that term) or will that
| prevent them from interacting with their friends in the way they
| would want to?
|
| No, I don't see the point. I spent hours doing programming
| exercises in freaking notebooks because my parents were soo keen
| on limiting my screen time. Dozens of arguments because they
| would take away my consoles. Not worth it.
|
| Also I'm not really in favor of trying to control what your
| children do, but block TikTok if it still exists in 5 years, some
| social medias aren't social medias, they're psychological
| warfare.
| chupasaurus wrote:
| Completely agree on all points, but wanna add my thoughts:
|
| About sitting with kids: they'd come to you or at least mention
| if they found out something interesting anyway.
|
| About budgeting: that's a whole course of it's own to be
| taught.
|
| I know only 2 good solutions about screen time: you have to set
| the upper limit with mandatory things to do and can virtually
| lower it by presenting activities that would be genuinely more
| interesting than the online ones.
| Wertigoyr wrote:
| They are kids.
|
| Kids should be able to have their room door closed but that room
| is a save space.
|
| The internet is not a save place it's like walking in an huge
| anyounmous city
|
| You should not let your kids walk alone in a huge city until
| certain knowledge is learned.
|
| Unfortunately the internet provides even more hurdles than a huge
| city.
|
| I personally would even create a list of things I would teach my
| kids over a period of month and years. From grooming, pedophiles,
| scams, password management, spyware etc.
| guidedlight wrote:
| I have some pre-teen children that have access to an iPad, Xbox,
| and an Apple TV.
|
| My #1 recommendation is NO YOUTUBE, unless it's for education
| purposes. I don't have the App installed on any of my kids
| devices (they can access it via the website, but they don't do
| that). It's just a cesspool of garbage for kids. Even YouTube
| Kids is bad. Occasionally, they will complain about not having
| the YouTube app... but I never took it away, so they aren't
| missing it.
|
| I've loaded up the iPad with fun age appropriate games and
| activities, that don't require any In-App purchases. If my kids
| want more apps, then Apple will ask my permission on my iPhone.
|
| I use an Ubiquiti Dream Machine as my home router, so I have some
| basic content filtering and I have some categorisation of the
| traffic available, but nothing detailed.
|
| In terms of video games, my recommendation is have a games
| console in the living room. They have access to video games, but
| they can play them where everyone can observe. They can have
| their own video games, this isn't a problem. Microsoft sends me a
| family report every week about what games were played, but I
| don't pay much attention to it. Purchases require parent approval
| on Xbox too.
|
| With a 0.2 and 2 year old, you are somewhat lucky. The ages are
| close enough that they will play with each other a lot... and
| screen time won't be too much of an issue until they hit teenage
| years.
|
| Good luck.
| rj111 wrote:
| YouTube is really bad and hard to stop. When kids get curious
| about something on the fringe, the algorithm pushes them
| further and further into the rat hole until they are
| practically brainwashed by the craziest YouTubers.
| Unfortunately Google has chosen profit over allowing controls
| that are effective for parents.
| anibalin wrote:
| Great tips. Agree with the youtube vision you have. How do you
| deal with banning youtube all together? It's even on the smart
| tv menu. It's like playin whack a mole.
| damontal wrote:
| You can block the YouTube domains on pie hole or with
| something like OpenDNS.
| antics9 wrote:
| What we should be doing as a sort of collective parenting is
| curating Youtube playlists and categorize them with good,
| informational, fun and inspiring videos. Then we limit the
| children's access to that curated material only.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Short answer: we don't know. This technology is too new on a
| human sociological timeline.
|
| Our strategy is explicit in categorizing digital activity as
| reading literature, gaming, content consumption, and creation.
|
| We will sometimes tell the kids that they are only allowed to
| play games on the iPad, and if they are in a ' I only want to
| drone out and watch shows'-Mode, then they will actually choose
| to do something else in the real world many times.
|
| Shows are super useful for road trips, road trips have never been
| easier. But download good movies to their device to limit
| choices.
| viraptor wrote:
| One thing about screen time i haven't seen mentioned yet, is it
| doesn't have to be the same for everything. I know a parent
| basically saying: you have a limit on playing games, but not on
| being creative. So drawing, reading, coding, etc. are not
| limited. Works for them, but requires some supervision of course.
| kaoD wrote:
| Other replies already addressed the screen time/hanging out
| together aspect, so I will comment on being unsupervised.
|
| I was a kid on the early-ish internet and I was free to "surf the
| interwebs" unsupervised. The internet is not the same anymore but
| I think the general rules still apply. This was a very valuable
| learning experience for me.
|
| Based on my own experience (anecdata, I know) what I found really
| helped me is grownups around me explaining things clearly and
| hammering a few facts into my brain:
|
| 1. Don't put anything about your real self on the internet (this
| is increasingly harder due to social media, I'm glad I was just
| on IRC back in the day).
|
| 1a. What goes in the internet will stay in the internet forever.
| Mind the info you get out there, even if it's supposed to be a
| private message. Leaks happen.
|
| 1b. Encourage them not to use their real name and address, to be
| pseudonymous at the least (or better, completely anonymous). Help
| them set up accounts that don't link to their identity (specially
| email which is the center of your online identity nowadays).
|
| 2. Not everyone on the internet is who they say they are. On the
| internet nobody knows you're a dog.
|
| 2a. Be clear on what grooming and pedos are and that they're out
| there to catch you off-guard.
|
| 2b. Show them what spam, scams, malicious sites, phishing, etc.
| look like and how to prevent damage.
|
| 3. No matter what happens or how deep in shit they are they can
| come to you for help. You won't approve the ugly things they do,
| but you will forgive them and help them clean up the mess. If in
| doubt, come get help. The earlier you ask for help, the faster
| the cleanup.
|
| Make all of this real by showing them what could happen. Show
| them real cases (there's plenty on the news) and the
| consequences. Show them how easy it is to trick the other side of
| the conversation. E.g. it was eye-opening for me to watch a
| friend of my brother pretend he was an MD from a completely
| different city on the IRC. He was just a horny teen looking to
| meet women. He often joked about how we were probably chatting
| with other men lying about their identity too.
|
| Once your kids are old enough to understand this then they can go
| on the internet 100% unsupervised (it was around 8-9 y/o for me
| but everyone is different).
|
| This will take a while given your kids' age, but we all know time
| flies. Better get them ready before the time comes!
| walthamstow wrote:
| Great advice. I'm not a parent (yet) but reading your comment
| it strikes me that playing outdoors is safer than it was when I
| was a kid in the 90s, but is more discouraged. Playing online
| is actually more dangerous than it was in the 90s/00s but is
| more encouraged.
| hiptobecubic wrote:
| Unfortunately, playing online has pretty much become critical
| competency-training for life, replacing playing outside which
| used to be the same.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I'd hazard playing outside is still critical competency-
| training for a mentally well-adjusted life.
|
| From personal observation of {plays outside some of the
| time} vs {never plays outside}, the latter definitely have
| more neuroses.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| Crime is down everywhere relative to when we were kids. Throw
| the kids outside and lock the door behind them.
| feet wrote:
| I think this is some great advice. Educate rather than restrict
|
| I also grew up on the early internet and my sentiments are the
| same, education and awareness is required but once you know how
| to interact, things are safer
| chrisco255 wrote:
| This pretty much mirrors my experience as a kid on the early
| web. Ultimately there's nothing new under the sun that wasn't
| there in the 90s. It's pretty easy to avoid being roped in to a
| scam or ill-intentioned person's orbit if you teach your kids
| to be skeptical and stay alert. Biggest difference perhaps
| about today's net is that a decent amount of online
| communication is done over video/audio nowadays.
| kaoD wrote:
| The greatest difference is probably on predatory practices by
| companies. Even adults are vulnerable to loot boxes, gachas,
| addiction mechanics and other shady skinnerboxy traps.
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| > I have this preconceived notion that I don't want to violate my
| children's privacy.
|
| If you have a preconceived notion that frames these questions in
| terms of privacy, then you will have a preconceived solution. Why
| is this discussion being framed in terms of "privacy"?
|
| There is a large and growing advocacy for "children's privacy"
| that I am quite hostile to. The advocacy largely seems to be
| focused around allowing children to "experiment" and try things
| for themselves without feeling pressure from their parents to
| respond in a particular way, or fear repercussions. The stated
| goal is to let the child become their own person.
|
| But by and large, these "experiments" are around topics like
| drugs, sexuality, politics, and religion -- and at increasingly
| younger and younger ages. All of these are extremely hot button
| issues, so I'll choose the last to make an example of. I've
| worked extensively through my church with our youth ministry. How
| would you feel if I wanted to have a "private" conversation with
| your grade school child about their sin, and necessity of
| repentance? If I responded to your objections by framing you as
| the unreasonable one, and asking why you wanted to invade your
| child's privacy? They need to become their own person, and be
| free to make choices for themselves!
|
| You would be right to have a legitimate fear that your child
| would not be "becoming their own person" (as advertised), but
| being indoctrinated (or even brainwashed) into a certain way of
| thinking when their minds are too young to know how to
| appropriately think about these things independently. As a
| parent, no one should want to have "private" access to your
| children -- and even unsupervised access to your children should
| be completely transparent.
|
| Freedom and privacy are important values to teach your children.
| But this is the privacy that should be taught: there are certain
| things that you should not expose to the world, and others have
| no right to ask of you. But the "privacy" that I see being
| discussed is an inversion of that. "We want privacy with _your_
| children, and _you_ cannot violate that privacy! "
|
| To close with an example of how I'd frame this issue:
| YouTube/TikTok wants unfettered access to my children, to sit
| them infront of a non-stop roll of advertisements, content that
| has been engineered to be addictive, and has the potential to
| create harmful feedback loops. To supervise, monitor, and
| restrict the quantity and quality of what my child watches (or
| even searches for) is not an invasion of my child's "privacy" or
| "freedom".
| sgt wrote:
| 0.2 years old. Congratulations, by the way! Mine is 1.5 years
| old. He has 2 iPhones, 1 iPad and one MacBook Air. All
| "inherited" stuff. Luckily he is not really interested in the
| screens and more of how they feel like physically. I will need to
| plan how to avoid him spending too much time on devices. Luckily
| we have a huge yard with lots of outside activities, so that
| mitigates the risk a little.
| ksec wrote:
| One thing I noticed that is often missing in these discussions,
| sometimes it isn't up to the parents to decide at all.
|
| Imagine your 8 - 11 years old daughter's social circle, and the
| school she is at where her classmate were allowed very little
| Internet at home or school. Then you wouldn't have a problem
| enforcing whatever internet rules.
|
| Now imagine everyone of her classmate were playing Minecraft, and
| she is the only one being left out.
|
| The point is, if everyone at her school is spending time on god
| damn stupid Chinese TikTok, then a 10 - 15 minutes Tik Tok for
| her would be a necessary evil.
|
| So far most of the Internet stuff are entertainment only. So
| stuff like Pop Music, Anime, Viral Videos etc. While not
| productive, they are harmless. And educating them not to use real
| names and talk to strangers on the internet seems to have worked
| so far. And only keep track of topics they looked into. ( At
| least before the age of 12 or 14 ) Generally speaking the
| internet is still fairly safe under some guidance.
|
| But I have witness teenagers ( son of my close friend ) wondered
| into politics and culture war at the age of 14+. And it is
| absolutely _destructive_. The age where they start doing things
| without telling you, and going on to Reddit or whatever Internet
| forums. I dont have a good solution to that.
|
| Part of the reason why I have been thinking about Age restricted
| participation on web forums. You could only reply if you are over
| the age of X.
| Balgair wrote:
| Friends of ours have a pretty okay-ish implementation for
| social media for their kids. They make the kid the 'brand
| manager' for a pet first. The kid gets the interaction of
| social media and their friends, but they have to do it for
| their dog/cat for a year first, then they can get their own
| account. The kids have gotten some low level brand sponsorships
| for the pets, something that the other kids at school are
| jealous of, or so I am told. The kiddos know the ins and outs
| of social media from the business side a bit more, though I am
| skeptical of that. Also, the pets are eating and getting toys
| at a discount, kinda. Seems like not the worst of ideas and
| allows for a soft entry into that hellscape.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| What does being a brand manager for a dog mean? What dog?
| What brand? Where does social media fit in? Who are the
| followers?
| multjoy wrote:
| It means that rather than posting about themselves, they're
| posting about the pet. Nobody is going to bully a cat or
| dog, so they can get used to SM without any of the drama
| that might be aimed at them by their peers.
|
| It's a clever solution.
| Balgair wrote:
| I thought so too! I imagine there are a lot of ways to
| dip your toes into SM without all the drama. Things like
| model trains, art, metalworking, 4H, or other 'creative'
| pursuits where the focus is not on the poster but rather
| what the poster has created/done. Less documenting your
| own life and more documenting your efforts. The pet thing
| seems to work well as it has the kids do chores
| surreptitiously.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| such a great idea.
| Balgair wrote:
| It reminds me of the old bit of advice for newly arrived
| starlets to Hollywood:
|
| "If you have something to say, better to be behind the
| camera than in front of it"
| Balgair wrote:
| AFAIK, the kids can only take pics/vids of the pet and the
| kids post as the pet. There's not a lot of DMs and the
| like, as it's in the 'voice' of the pet.
|
| Their own pets
|
| The kids are making the pet into a 'brand'
|
| The kids use tiktok and insta as their social media
| outlets. FB is, as I am told, 'for old people'.
|
| They have followers like any influencer does. Mostly these
| seem to be bots to me, but of the 'real' humans, they seem
| to be people that are into cute animals and dumb pet
| tricks. Especially with the dog, the one kid has gotten it
| into Frisbee tricks and that seems to have gotten a bit of
| traction online.
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| > Tik Tok for her would be a necessary evil. [...] While not
| productive, they are harmless.
|
| I think it is a mistake to view something like viral TikTok
| videos as "harmless". Wasn't it a few weeks ago that we had a
| front page article on a child that died during a "pass out
| challenge"?
|
| But you raise a good point. Other parents giving their children
| unsupervised access to the internet creates a massive problem.
| A colleague of mine started with a hard and fast "no internet"
| rule. That absolutely broke when all his son's friends were
| playing minecraft.
| alkonaut wrote:
| I haven't got the discipline to keep a minimum of screen time
| and I notice a massive difference between kids that do have
| very little unsupervised access (i.e many hours of TikTok and
| YouTube): the screen kids in my non-English speaking country
| speak fluent English at age 9 or 10. The non screen kids
| might never catch up. So while I'm sure it's toxic as hell at
| least there is some benefit.
|
| If I was in an English speaking country I'd set my kids'
| TikTok to e.g Spanish ;)
| wngr wrote:
| Of course they will catch up, if they're motivated at some
| point to do so. And the others will lose it as soon as they
| stop using it.
| turtleyacht wrote:
| I swear it will be like, OpenBSD only, custom router, firewall
| everything, no Windows...
|
| If you can break out, good on you. If you can write your own
| tools, even better.
|
| "I was traumatized from computing because my dad never let me
| see a GUI outside of X11."
|
| I hope they'll be bored enough to wander over to books--"old"
| programming and math books--and just start working through
| those. Who knows.
|
| There were at least three groups of folks with unlimited access
| to computers and Internet in school: smart gamers, smarter
| tinkerers, and me. What I'd like to encourage, if I could
| control some portion of it, is to funnel activity to the second
| of the three. And that based on constraints, because I don't
| know any better than utter abstinence.
|
| Any complaints about Minecraft will get them pointed to the
| book on Foley, gcc, and the promise of my time to help...
|
| In the end, they'll figure out everything anyway. But at least
| in the beginning, I tried to have them focus on first
| principles.
|
| Did I mention the Great Books? I have to put those somewhere.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| I will say, YouTube killed my nephew's interest in
| programming and tinkering. He started out with all sorts of
| interests and teaching himself how to code. Now he just
| watches YouTube and TikTok like all the other sheep and does
| nothing interesting.
| ffhhj wrote:
| I optimized my life to build projects, and I avoid youtube
| and tutorials unless I can't really guess how to achieve
| something. Tutorials, and especially video tutorials that
| are less easy to quickly examine just deplede your
| "creativity moment". Why make something if someone already
| did? The goal that was "magical and special" for me is now
| a consumerism's image in the Desert of the Real.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| I get so annoyed these days when I google "how to X" and
| the top 20 results are youtube videos like I don't want
| to make noise or put headphones on sheesh.
| rnd0 wrote:
| I get angry because they're largely bullshit filler to
| begin with, and even that aside I can skim a lot faster
| than I can read. They're an intentional waste of my time
| soley for the sake of draining my wallet.
|
| The placement of videos over text tutorials is a literal
| scam, and I resent it strongly.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| > most of the Internet stuff are entertainment only. So stuff
| like Pop Music, Anime, Viral Videos etc. While not productive,
| they are harmless
|
| You are so obviously not the parent of a teen girl. The viral
| videos have created a crisis of self harm the world has not yet
| come to terms with.
| jawns wrote:
| I have 3 kids between 7 and 12.
|
| Both PCs and Chromebooks have parental controls that are okay but
| not stellar.
|
| For PCs, Microsoft lets you set up profiles for your kids where
| you can specify what apps they can access, and for web access you
| can either go with a Microsoft-selected whitelist or build your
| own white/blacklists.
|
| We as parents get a weekly activity report showing what sites
| they spent the most time on and what disallowed sites they tried
| to access. Obviously, this doesn't align with your privacy
| objective, but frankly, until my kids are able to keep themselves
| safe online without parental supervision, the slight infringement
| on their privacy is a reasonable trade-off.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| Whatever you do, don't give them free access to devices or the
| internet before a certain age. Some parents give their kids iPads
| as early as two and you can see the behavioral challenges and
| addiction they struggle with as they get older.
|
| All of the answers to your questions are personal to you and your
| beliefs. The only considerations are to set some ground rules for
| using these things, moderate how long they can be on them a day,
| and have a trusting relationship about what they are doing on it
| by asking them regularly and caring without being too protective.
|
| You may benefit from reading "The Self-Driven Child".
| csisnett wrote:
| Your first responsibility is to protect your children from
| external threats, if you give them all the privacy in the world
| you won't be able to do that, so you need to somehow know what
| they're doing which means either an internet blocker or little
| privacy, both of which I'm fine with.
|
| For kids as small as yours the internet would not even be a
| choice if they were my kids
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Before covid each child had a certain amount of time they could
| go online each day, enforced by the router. During lockdown I
| took the limit away and we were all basically glued to it.
|
| Now the router turns the Internet off at a certain time each
| night for the whole house, forcing me to go to bed.
| bitlax wrote:
| My kids are under 10.
|
| 1. No internet access 2. A tablet with a few select apps and no
| games. 3. A tv with a Raspberry Pi running xbmc with a few videos
| I've curated.
|
| Access to the tablet and tv are limited to certain times, say
| when we're driving or when my wife's cooking. At some point I'll
| probably use a PiHole or something like that to give them
| whitelisted access to a few sites. Not sure where I'll go after
| that. I don't plan to secretly monitor any conversations but I
| think I'll stress that I don't consider online and messaging
| communications to be private and they will be monitored.
|
| As for the money, I'd address the goals separately. Have
| investment accounts which aren't touched and a performance-based
| allowance which they can spend completely. I think the Dave
| Ramsey "when the money's gone it's gone" lesson is something
| that's supremely important to learn early. And if they need some
| more money they can always make an appeal to the local VC (you).
| krisoft wrote:
| > I think I'll stress that I don't consider online and
| messaging communications to be private and they will be
| monitored.
|
| What a wonderfull dystopia we are building here together. And
| then we wonder why the average people don't care about privacy.
| Perhaps because they were conditioned from a young age to
| expect none?
| bitlax wrote:
| Maybe my wording wasn't precise enough. My kids have a
| reasonable amount of privacy which is less than the amount of
| privacy I expect them to be granted by other people. The
| internet grants access to literally every type of content and
| image if you try hard enough and there are obvious things I
| don't want my children exposed to. My idea of a dystopia
| involves children being exposed to rotten.com, porn, and
| communicating with pederasts in any way. And honestly it
| doesn't seem like people are building much of anything, just
| abdicating responsibility for the most part.
| kleene_op wrote:
| > I don't plan to secretly monitor any conversations but I
| think I'll stress that I don't consider online and messaging
| communications to be private and they will be monitored.
|
| So you'll be lying to your kids?
| bitlax wrote:
| No I'll tell them up front I'll be monitoring their usage.
| senectus1 wrote:
| a few pro tips from me with two kids now 12F and 14M.
|
| Subscribe to youtube premium. you _do NOT_ want those adverts on
| your kids devices. get them an account each (lie about what their
| ages are), periodically log in to your kids accounts and look at
| their watch history and deal with as desired. But more
| importantly subscribe to the channels you feel they should be
| seeing and unsubscribe what they should not. You can do this
| quietly for years and they wont have any idea... its helpful to
| guide their viewing.
|
| one issue here is youtube shorts.. its viral trash like tiktok
| and gods dammit I wish I could ban my daughter from it. there is
| just no way to block it.
|
| Keep computers in the "family area" not in their bedrooms.
|
| keep phones and tablets etc in the family area not in bedrooms
|
| put a pihole in your home network, its free, and very simple to
| setup on a rPi or synology nas or pretty much anything.
|
| Setup a minecraft server for kids old enough for it. host it
| yourself and if you can let their friends play on it.
|
| Teach them to lie on the internet. they should not be using their
| real names and addresses.
|
| teach them to use a PW manager.
|
| Dont allow consoles. Consoles are zombie inducing machines. They
| want to play games then its computers all the way because
| computers are multifaceted tools not just dedicated gaming
| machines. you never know what they will self educate themselves
| on a computer. on a console they only have one choice... play
| games.
|
| My son has taught himself C# programing in Unity just by watching
| youtube videos and self exploration. its a marvel to see him
| accelerate his learning way past what the school can teach him at
| the moment. He and his sister are also teaching themselves
| modelling in blender
| themodelplumber wrote:
| Ah, those are good questions. It really strikes me as a search
| for nuance and forethought that you're sharing, too. If so, one
| natural blind spot here is going to be the dichotomy of 1) an
| abscence of clearly-drawn lines and 2) a tendency to draw lines
| too firmly, too late or in a poorly calibrated way. It can be
| helpful to be aware of that, so you can more easily avoid swingy
| behaviors and positions that feel less authentic or even less
| loving.
|
| One of the transcendant superpowers of nuance is not just that
| it's deep and considerate of all sorts of factors and outcomes,
| but that it also helps people understand better where and how to
| draw lines in given situations. This is really cool and helpful,
| even if it has to be used kinda faster than people may be aware,
| and in little prospective doses.
|
| So, perhaps one of the best nuanced things you could do to pass
| along this gift of yours is to share with your children why you
| draw a line at outright snooping, and ask them what they think
| about how they use the internet for example (or their money,
| or...). What you'll be doing here is passing on a subjective
| perceptual quality factor in your inquiries and personal
| development, not just a lesson on inappropriate behavior, or
| whatever. This is pretty huge by itself! Developmental vitamins
| for your kids, basically. (A lot of what's inappropriate on the
| internet also has a side that would then naturally feel jarring
| or somehow off to a kid raised with those vitamins, IMO.)
|
| You'll also have a lot of other opportunities to take in relevant
| hints as your kids continue to develop, so this is more like a
| set of questions to revisit over time, and you'll likely observe
| changes to the set of questions. For that reason I would
| recommend organizing your own approach digitally or on paper,
| keeping your personoal philosophy and technique in this area
| working & developing.
|
| A danger point in this kind of consideration is the dichotomy of
| thought: "Do I X, or don't I X," for example. These questions are
| always begging for some rephrasing or new vocabulary. Sometimes
| it helps to first define the terms and the problems in depth, and
| second (mentioned briefly above as well) to involve the children
| in what is effectively you educating yourself. Do they see it as
| a problem? How would they phrase it? What does that teach you
| about how they learn best? What insights might it give you about
| their gifts?
|
| "Aww that's nuthin dad" vs. "That's really scary to think about"
| can indicate two completely different sets of cognitive gifts at
| work.
|
| Personally I grew up with a parental dichotomy of sorts. I had
| one snoopy parent and another who was very lax. To me as someone
| with kind of ridiculously high personal ethical standards, even
| as a kid, the snoopy parent made things so much worse. I realized
| that I could be an absolute angel, and that parent would _still_
| find something to pin on me anyway. For example when I was 9
| years old, they found a trash bag full of very-adult magazines at
| a construction site a couple blocks from our house, brought the
| whole huge muddy bag home, and accused me of hiding my stash over
| there! (Makes me laugh to this day, but it was also extremely
| hurtful)
|
| However, this same parent could spot some things that other
| people just couldn't see--they had an amazing general perceptual
| ability even if it was overused when it came to some guessing
| games close to home. And so they actually intervened in some
| pretty amazing moments, like when our family doctor was really
| struggling in life, this parent was one of the only one of his
| friends to notice the signs and intervened to help him out before
| things got really bad.
|
| Anyway, just some examples of how a parenting gift can also be a
| huge liability, especially when it turns things into this
| dichotomy, like "did you or didn't you" vs "hey look, what do you
| think of this situation, here's why I struggle". Everything we
| think is so great about ourselves, as parents, our kids have ways
| of demonstrating is just a fail in other ways. Even or especially
| if they have the diversity of mind to disagree with us, chances
| are they have a different set of natural tools, approaches,
| thought patterns, or other solutions that could also be really
| effective.
|
| I'm assuming you feel like you have adequate access to swaths of
| professionals who can help you out along the road as well. Good
| luck.
| bitwize wrote:
| No internet before age 13 at least.
|
| 1) Touching grass is _super_ important at this phase of their
| development. We were given brains to move our bodies; kids need
| practice at running around and playing in a physically active
| manner.
|
| 2) Aside from the usual risks (exposure to porn, Elsagate
| material, child abusers, etc.) there's the fact that even
| innocuous kids' apps encourage addictive behavior. I made the
| acquaintance of a delightful six-year-old girl, the child of a
| family friend. She was eager to show me the games she played on
| her Kindle Fire, and some of them were the Skinner-boxiest things
| imaginable. Feed the animals ice cream by tapping the indicated
| thing and get a visual and sound reward. I flat out told her her
| favorite tablet games were boring, intended for toddlers and not
| big girls like her, and she needed something that would challenge
| her brain. She is rather smart and creative given the
| opportunity; she makes her own maps and such for Little Big
| Planet. But she is quite prone to being satisfied with the
| familiar and not seeking the challenge and advancement she needs
| (for that matter, so am I), and the internet -- even at its best,
| before actively harmful material enters the picture -- is only
| too happy to supply that stagnant comfort, to drive up engagement
| metrics.
|
| By all means, get your kid a computer! Do not connect it to wifi
| or ethernet. Tell them if they want a game for it they will have
| to write it themselves, and in response to their frustrated
| "HOW?!" open the discussion about how to program. Get them a
| Raspberry Pi autonomous car kit or something. All of this at
| appropriate ages of course. If they need to look something up
| online, do it for them or supervise their internet use. Require
| beforehand that they ask to look up something _specific_ and once
| they have it, have them save it for future reference.
| mgz wrote:
| When my kids were small, I was fighting with crazy Youtube
| videos. Kids started with something innocent and soon were
| watching sick and disturbing pieces.
|
| So I built an app to control their Youtube consumption, which
| later turned to a cool small business
| https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1431645198
| kaoD wrote:
| I'm curious, can you elaborate what kind of disturbing pieces
| popped up?
| mgz wrote:
| Giant plastic spiders chasing kids. Momo. Kids behaving silly
| in front of camera and playing silly games. Kids with masks
| of superheroes. Something about SCP.
| hiptobecubic wrote:
| This was (is) Elsa-gate. It was a whole big thing.
|
| Honestly they looked like cartoon shorts that belong on
| adultswim or something. It's hilarious that they were
| unironically being watched by kids, but also not.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| The relevant search term here is "Elsagate".
| [deleted]
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