[HN Gopher] Parental controls aren't for parents
___________________________________________________________________
Parental controls aren't for parents
Author : beasthacker
Score : 321 points
Date : 2026-01-02 13:42 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (beasthacker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (beasthacker.com)
| GaryBluto wrote:
| It says, on the Gabb app directory the author linked,
| "Communication with Strangers" in a warning bubble directly below
| the "GroupMe" listing title. Not to forget the giant box saying
| "However, some apps allow user-shared content or access to mature
| material. Apps enabling contact with strangers also pose risks.
| Families should discuss app usage regularly." right below the app
| search bar.
|
| Regarding the games console, his problem seems to mainly be the
| two conflicting account systems offered by two separate vendors,
| not the parental controls themselves (although I agree the
| situation in that circumstance is unfortunate). A quick Google
| search also directed me to an easy step by step guide to doing
| many of the things (such as the restriction of purchases and free
| downloads on the Nintendo game store) that he claimed to be
| impossible.[2]
|
| This is written in a very dramatic manner*, especially with the
| whole "You're supposed to be so beaten down, so utterly depleted
| of will, that you just cave. You sign up for Nintendo Online. You
| disable a bunch of parental controls you don't really understand.
| You let your kid play his damn game. You become the ideal
| customer." paragraph, that it feels almost like it's purely
| written to goad legislation.
|
| [1] https://gabb.com/app-guide/
|
| [2] https://industrywired.com/gaming/how-to-set-up-parental-
| cont...
|
| * I _do_ empathize with his situation, but much of it seems to be
| brought upon by his own ignorance and unwillingness to research.
| whythough1234 wrote:
| Beasthacker is a hilarious identity to assume for someone so
| keen on using tech that does the parenting for them.
| rolymath wrote:
| Hardly a comment worth singing up to HN to post.
| zaphar wrote:
| I don't know if this works for anyone other than our family but
| when we were raising our kids we solved this by the simple of
| expedient that gaming and computer use was done with us as
| parents present. Full stop.
|
| It was not a solo activity for our kids. We could directly view
| everything they were doing online the entire time.
| GuestFAUniverse wrote:
| Congratulations that you had that luxury.
|
| Sounds barely realistic, when school are using iPads, education
| is one URL away from entertainment crack and parental controls
| on iOS are a joke.
| zaphar wrote:
| I'm sorry you feel like it's out of reach of so many. We
| definitely had to sacrifice a number of things to make it
| happen. It's not like it was necessarily easy. Unless you are
| in the unfortunate position of being an only parent this can
| be an area where you have choice. You can:
|
| 1. Ask your school to change their policies. Coordinate with
| other parents. Make it clear to the school that if they don't
| start to enforce these policies then you will hold the school
| directly responsible for any harm that comes to your child in
| the environment they create.
|
| 2. Pick different schools. (Home School, Private school) if
| you can afford it. Charter schools may be an option.
|
| Both of these require sacrifice on your part and neither are
| easy. But no one should ever think parenting is easy.
| miroljub wrote:
| And then, we pretend we are surprised why the majority of
| adults don't care about privacy.
|
| Why would they? They grew up being 100% controlled with 0
| privacy. They don't even know it doesn't have to be like that.
| Then, it was their parents violating their privacy, now it's
| government and corporations.
| zaphar wrote:
| A five year old is not prepared to engage online with
| privacy. They have not had the necessary training yet. They
| will not get that training unless you are there to show them
| how to negotiate that world. They will not magically learn
| how to protect themselves if you just leave them to figure it
| out themselves.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| That description of "100%" means the lack of privacy
| they're objecting to is one going a lot lot past five years
| old.
|
| Your first comment didn't mention age, so they made a
| comment about a broader interpretation of the idea.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Privacy is a privilege granted relative to age and maturity.
|
| Most 5-year olds should be allowed to close the bathroom door
| while doing their business, they should not be permitted to
| access the internet privately.
| f1shy wrote:
| I was never controlled in any way that may remotely violate
| my privacy. In fact, glad that nothing ever happened to me,
| because it could have. But for a long time I was not worried
| about my online visibility...
|
| I do not agree at all with this conclusion.
| sylens wrote:
| When I was a kid, my Sega Genesis was connected to the TV in my
| parents bedroom. It made it impossible to play without their
| knowledge or when they were asleep.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Advice like this only works for specific age ranges.
|
| When I was a kid I had a friend whose parents, or mom rather,
| went to similar lengths to ensure all gaming was monitored
| closely by her. She would turn the game console off if she saw
| anything she decided was not to her liking.
|
| This was all fair when we were 7-8, but she insisted on doing
| it well into his teenage years. This level of extreme control
| and micromanagement was not good for their relationship or his
| personal development, to put it mildly.
|
| Every time I read HN comments from parents declaring their
| child will not have a phone until they turn 16 (another comment
| in this thread) or how they'll lock their kids out of games and
| social media completely I think back to my friend whose mom was
| extremely controlling in the same way.
|
| Young kids need tight controls, but this needs to be loosened
| as they age. Parenting discussions really need to come with age
| ranges because what's appropriate changes so fast from year to
| year.
| f1shy wrote:
| I frankly would prefer just not gaming at all, than being
| ashamed in front of all my friends.
|
| Also you have to consider the ramifications of such behavior
| if that gets public, I mean could possibly be the source of
| bullying and what not.
|
| As a child we were de incentivized to playing games with the
| computer. The schema was:
|
| A) computer you can have, because is useful beyond playing,
| consoles, no way. Forget it "that is stupidizing BS"
|
| B) No money for games. Other SW would be bought, but rarely
| games.
|
| That moved us to start spending time with other things in the
| computer, like programming our own games.
|
| Of course today that is all difficult to impossible, by
| design, without ostracizing the kids.
| zaphar wrote:
| I agree, the point of making usage monitored early on is so
| that you can train your child in what to do when they
| encounter stuff online. As that training has occured then you
| can begin to loosen the restriction and give them more
| freedom. This is the job of parenting. You are teaching your
| child how to safely and productively engage with the world
| and the younger they are the more of your time and attention
| this requires. If you don't teach them someone else might and
| that lesson may haunt them for the rest of their life.
| eYrKEC2 wrote:
| That's essentially the rule in our house. No screens not
| visible to other members of the family.
|
| In US, we restrict alcohol kids until they're 21. Pornography
| is poison.
| johanvts wrote:
| So no smartphones?
| eYrKEC2 wrote:
| Neutered smartphone with zero internet access and apps
| locked down like North Korea.
|
| We also lock up our alcohol, as many parents have chosen to
| do for generations.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Nope. More people should be like this.
| GaryBluto wrote:
| It's so bizarre to me that in "The Land of the Free", 18 year
| olds, who are considered old enough to go to war, are not
| allowed to drink. Especially because this isn't some archaic
| law from the 18th or 19th centuries but instead from 1984 and
| only came about after the federal government withheld funds
| to force the states' hands over a period of 4 years.
| mothballed wrote:
| It's not a federal law, you can buy and drink alcohol at 18
| in the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico for instance, so
| definitely possible to drinking at 18 legally in the USA. I
| don't know if there is a federal drinking age but it's
| definitely not above 18.
|
| Also in I want to say about half the states (could be wrong
| here, but at least a few), it is legal to drink well below
| 18 in a private home.
|
| -------------
|
| Example, wisconsin:
|
| >Can an underage person possess and consume alcohol
| beverages on licensed premises? Yes. Persons under age 21
| may possess and consume alcohol beverages if they are with
| their parents, guardians or spouses of legal drinking age;
| but this is at the discretion of the licensee. The licensed
| premises may choose to prohibit consumption and possession
| of alcohol beverages by underage persons. (Sec. 125.07(1),
| Wis. Stats.)
|
| The drinking laws in at least ~half the USA are a lot
| looser than most people think. If the parents are ok with
| it the kid can generally drink somehow.
|
| https://www.revenue.wi.gov/Pages/FAQS/ise-
| atundrg.aspx#undrg...
| gbear605 wrote:
| It's essentially a federal law - if a state wants to get
| full federal funding for highways, they have to have a
| law restricting alcohol purchase and public consumption
| to 21+. It's from the National Minimum Drinking Age Act
| of 1984.
| linksnapzz wrote:
| The issue isn't drinking; if the motor vehicle operator age
| was 21, then the drinking age could be 16. But it isn't.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| I thought you could go into a store on post and buy alcohol
| at 18.
| mystraline wrote:
| And they can have sex legally when they are 16. But oh noes
| if 2 16 year olds send nudes to each other. Then, somehow,
| is "child" sexual assault images.
|
| Frankly, these half-assed laws disenfranchise an already
| not-permitted-to-vote populace. But somehow these "kids"
| can be declared as adults if they are 16 and having sex or
| courts deem them 'adults', but simultaneously find them to
| be parental property.
|
| Glad I dont have children. The situation is a toxic
| cesspool.
| axus wrote:
| Encourage voice chat, so you can hear what they are saying too
| :)
| adeelk93 wrote:
| Your son is talking to his friends in this book chat, and playing
| Minecraft with them. How do other parents go about governing
| this?
|
| Sounds like either they've figured out these parental controls,
| and might have some tips for you. Or they trust their kids with
| fewer controls.
| whythough1234 wrote:
| You're getting downvoted but I agree that this person has a
| communication problem with their child. And it isn't because
| the kid figured out how to use the device.
| epiccoleman wrote:
| Do you have kids? I'm guessing you don't, because the answer is
| pretty obvious to those of us who do - the vast majority of
| parents seem to give not one single fuck about what their kids
| do with technology. I've known families who have a cell phone -
| a _dedicated device_ - for their _four year old_.
|
| My armchair diagnosis is that parents who are just a little bit
| older than me (I'm 34) and especially parents who didn't grow
| up as nerds just don't see the problem. Among the class of
| people who spend their time on Substack or Hacker News the
| horror of the modern net and its affect on childhood are well
| understood at this point. Among "normal people" you will
| definitely get weird looks if you suggest that this stuff is
| terrible for your kids.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| My kids (4 and 6) have a "dedictated" iPhone, a iPad with the
| pencil, and a MacBook Air. But they were just hand me downs.
| They don't get to use them unless we let them, but we mostly
| use them to learn how to type, write, draw, play learning
| games, Khan Academy, and to mess around in general.
|
| They also call or text aunts/uncles/cousins/grandparents. I
| feel like it has helped them with reading and just the
| exercise of trial and error to figure out how it works is
| beneficial.
|
| Haven't needed to delve into parental controls yet though.
| epiccoleman wrote:
| > They don't get to use them unless we let them, but we
| mostly use them to learn how to type, write, draw, play
| learning games, Khan Academy, and to mess around in
| general.
|
| That seems fine to me. What I'm referring to above is that
| the kid literally just has an iPhone with, as far as I can
| see, virtually no restriction. I imagine you would not let
| your kids use their device to scroll through Youtube Shorts
| for an unsupervised 2 hours, for example.
|
| Just like it's hard for me to find the right balance of
| benefit to downside in technology for my kids, it's also
| hard to strike a balanced tone when discussing my feelings
| on this stuff. Every time I write something about this
| problem online I feel like I'm coming off as some
| authoritarian luddite - which I'm definitely not. I _want_
| my kids to get the benefits of technology. Any bright
| future for them is almost sure to include the need to
| engage with the net.
|
| Instilling the values that allow for that is the hard part.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > That seems fine to me. What I'm referring to above is
| that the kid literally just has an iPhone with, as far as
| I can see, virtually no restriction. I imagine you would
| not let your kids use their device to scroll through
| Youtube Shorts for an unsupervised 2 hours, for example.
|
| Yes, they aren't allowed to watch youtube shorts at all
| (nor do either of the parents), but we'll look up nature
| or physics videos, and if they want to watch a video on
| repeat, we use yt-dlp to download and they watch via
| infuse. But again, not of their own accord. When it's
| time to play outside or elsewhere, it's time to do that.
| And no devices at meal time, even if they see other kids
| at the same table with them.
|
| I guess my point was that the devices are immensely
| powerful tools for learning and communication, so I try
| to teach them how. But they also play games with non
| gambling mechanics (thank god for Apple Arcade).
| epiccoleman wrote:
| > (nor do either of the parents)
|
| This is key, in my experience. I've told my kids that if
| they catch me scrolling shorts or reddit, they have the
| right to confiscate my phone. A big part of instilling
| the values I referenced above is embodying them myself.
| (obviously, but it bears repeating).
|
| > But they also play games with non gambling mechanics
|
| This is important too. There's so much genuinely great
| media out there - TV shows, video games, movies, books.
| It's not that I don't want my kids to experience that
| stuff - I just want them to learn how to focus on the
| stuff that's quality rather than the stuff that is slop.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| There is enough general public concern about minors having
| access to online pornography that jurisdictions all over the
| world are passing age restrictions but I think the HN
| discussion is one sided.
|
| That is, HN users see the costs, the difficulty, the privacy
| concerns, etc. But they're also dismissive of the harm, which
| in terms of the young Gen Z men that I know personally is
| real. I can't attribute online pornography 100% but the
| damage includes criminal convictions, falling victim to
| "blackpill" ideology and other false answers to gendered
| problems and frequently people giving up on work and love.
|
| I collect ero images and restrictions would personally be a
| hassle for me, I can't say I am against pornography in
| general, but I've got some concerns about pornography today.
| I think advocates are stuck in the 1970s when it was tamer
| and much less prevalent than it is today -- it's entirely
| different for a teen to have a few issues of _Penthouse_ or
| _Hustler_ than it is today.
|
| I think the story of how it relates to relationship
| satisfaction is nuanced. Personally I think OnlyFans is a
| cancer. I want to feel special in a fantasy, and not as the
| biggest simp in a room full of hundreds of simps. (And this
| is healthy narcissism [1], not pathological narcissism. In
| good sex or sex with love, _somebody thinks you are special_
| )
|
| I'm not sure what the answer is but I can see it both ways
| and that seems rare on HN.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthy_narcissism
| epiccoleman wrote:
| Yeah, I think this is a sort of similar issue to the kind
| of thing I describe above, where parents of a certain
| generation / certain technical background might not be
| fully aware of the sorts of harm that can come in through
| technological channels.
|
| I would never actually do this, but there's a part of me
| that would like to just give my kids a magazine to hide
| under their bed, or even some sort of curated private video
| site on the LAN, just to allow for some expression of
| natural puberty urges in a way that is ... if not
| "healthy," per se, then at least "harm reduced?" Obviously
| that idea in practice would be way too weird to consider,
| lol.
|
| But this comes back to the balance thing I was talking
| about on my other post in this topic. Full abstinence is
| probably practically impossible and I'm not sure it's even
| the right approach. The other end of the spectrum -
| throwing the kids into the waters of Pornhub, OnlyFans, and
| whatever the TikTok equivalent of porn is (surely that
| exists, right?) - that seems pretty fraught too. The taboo
| nature of this discussion makes things harder - but I have
| tried to overcome the weird feeling and have fairly frank
| discussions about these sorts of things with my oldest.
| GuestFAUniverse wrote:
| People who decide to implement such bad tech are probably
| childless, or so much into their company, instead of their
| family, that they barely see their own children.
|
| The same people who joke about the uselessness of "moral".
| zpeti wrote:
| Last time I checked disney plus doesn't have any option to hide
| specific shows. None. You either let your child watch everything,
| or nothing.
|
| At least netflix allows me to hide certain shows...
| GaryBluto wrote:
| You can block by age rating quite easily it seems.
|
| https://help.disneyplus.com/en-GB/article/disneyplus-parenta...
|
| If you don't want your child watching specific shows despite an
| appropriate age rating, have you considered only letting them
| watch it while you're with them?
| juliangoldsmith wrote:
| Blocking by age rating takes out the majority of the classic
| Disney movies and shows. They only consider the newer CGI
| stuff "child-friendly".
| zpeti wrote:
| age rating is not how I would categorise shows.
|
| It's also extremely hard saying no to certain shows to my
| kids, and it would be much easier to just not have them
| there.
|
| I'm pretty sure the politically oriented people at Disney
| want this to your kids watch as much of the content as
| possible, and especially the new ones.
| GaryBluto wrote:
| Although it's a lot more effort, if you care a lot about
| _specific_ things being shown to your children, you could
| set up your own media server.
|
| You could digitize an existing BluRay or DVD collection and
| allow your kids to view films and TV using a streaming
| service-like interface. These days most of the solutions
| don't even require you to transcode the films, you just RIP
| them to an ISO and put them on an accessible Samba share
| and as long as you rename the files to something
| approximate to the title of the film it'll fetch the
| metadata for you.
| fenwick67 wrote:
| Allow me to give my anecdotal experience.
|
| When my child was three, he really liked to watch 'spidey and
| his amazing friends'. But unfortunately, when he watched it
| he would emulate some of the bad behaviors from the show,
| pretend to be one of the bad guys and act out. Easy solution
| right, we just won't watch the show anymore, we don't leave
| him alone to watch TV by himself anyways.
|
| Well, on Disney plus, you can't simply hide the show. Even if
| you remove it from your "recently watched" or whatever, it
| will show up in preview cards and search results and I'm
| categories. It became a big friction point, whatever he would
| see it he would want to watch it. And when Grandma would come
| over and babysit him, he would ask for it and she'd put it on
| for him despite our wishes.
|
| So, since then, I've spun up a jellyfin server and ditched
| Disney plus. If we don't like a show we just remove it, and
| then it's simply not an option.
| fnordlord wrote:
| It's even worse if your subscription is packaged with Hulu.
| Then all the Hulu kids stuff gets pulled in automatically,
| which includes all kinds of garbage that I very much do not
| want my daughter watching. All the YouTube-based influencer kid
| shows with little kids who show off new toys and extravagant
| vacations each episode. My only solution was to unsubscribe
| from Hulu, which stinks because they do have some good stuff.
| It really is the epitome of enshitification considering how
| easy it would be to implement a block button at the very least.
| jameskilton wrote:
| My daughter will not get a phone at all until she's at least 16
| and probably finally actually needs one.
|
| As for the Switch and Nintendo Online, I didn't find it confusing
| or difficult at all to set up a child's account, make sure they
| can't buy anything without my permission, and then I make sure my
| daughter knows what she can and can't do, and I keep an eye on it
| to make sure she follows my rules. I don't trust parental
| controls to do everything for me.
|
| Now that said, Minecraft on the Switch is one gawd-awful
| frankenstein amalgamation of permissions and accounts run by
| Nintendo _and_ Microsoft. I got that working but it 's by far the
| worst experience I've ever dealt with to play a game, even single
| player.
| nicoburns wrote:
| My parents did the no phone until 16 rule, and it was awful.
| Completely cut me off socially.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| The "socially" part is the problem though. A lot of bullying
| occurs via those social media platforms that teenagers are
| using.
| squigz wrote:
| A lot of bullying occurs in any environment teenagers exist
| en masse.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Right; which is why allowing teenagers to be safe at home
| instead of exposed to it 24/7 is a smart choice.
| squigz wrote:
| Allowing these teenagers who are being bullied to explore
| spaces where they feel safe and comfortable seems like a
| good idea too though. As someone who was bullied in
| school, being online did not make that issue any worse,
| and allowed me to find friends I couldn't otherwise have.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Yet in the broader sense online bullying targeting other
| teenagers is a commonly cited problem, including in
| incidents of teen suicide. "It didn't make it worse for
| me" doesn't counteract what we provably know is
| occurring[0][1][2].
|
| Young Teen suicide (10 to 14) has increased from roughly
| 1 per 100K in the early 2000s to now nearly 3 per 100K in
| the last five years. Older teen suicide (15-19) has
| increased from 6 per 100K to 11 per 100K over the same
| time period[3].
|
| [0] https://www.jmir.org/2018/4/e129/
|
| [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12230417/
|
| [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32017089/
|
| [3]
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db471.htm
| squigz wrote:
| 1 and 2 do not seem to suggest that cyberbullying is more
| harmful in this regard than other forms of bullying - and
| in fact only 3 seems to contrast these concepts at all.
|
| > Sensitivity analyses suggested that cybervictimization
| only and both cyber- and face-to-face victimization were
| associated with a higher risk of suicidal
| ideation/attempt compared to face-to-face victimization
| only and no victimization; however, analyses were based
| on small n. In prospective analyses, cybervictimization
| was not associated with suicidal ideation/attempt 2 years
| later after accounting for baseline suicidal
| ideation/attempt and other confounders. In contrast,
| face-to-face victimization was associated with suicidal
| ideation/attempt 2 years later in the fully adjusted
| model, including cybervictimization.
|
| In fact, reading 3, it looks like the highest prevalence
| of cyberbullying capped out at a whopping.... 16% of 15
| year olds, with a sharp drop down to 7% just 2 years
| later.
|
| I have to say, there's lots of things to worry about with
| kids going online. I just don't think bullying in
| particular is one of them.
| stackskipton wrote:
| As someone who was not popular and got bullied some in
| school, I think cyberbullying would have been worse since
| it comes home with you. I was in school when SMS was
| finally becoming widespread and something of the bullying
| happened through it, it sucked since I'm at home and
| getting reminded of shit at school.
|
| I can't imagine today with 24/7 social media apps on the
| phone.
| nicoburns wrote:
| It's true, and it can definitely be a problem. But I wasn't
| getting invited to in-person events because I wasn't
| contactable. Kids don't ring doorbells in 2025, they text
| people if they want to meet up.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| Social media is not the same thing as social communication.
| mothballed wrote:
| This is going to show how naive I am. Because I am middle
| aged, do not have a cell phone, and still to this day just
| show up at people's houses unannounced if I want a social
| experience.
|
| This still is possible for me, surely it is possible for
| kids.
| Angostura wrote:
| > My daughter will not get a phone at all until she's at least
| 16 and probably finally actually needs one.
|
| It's all fine and dandy, until (i) you find that they've
| actually just saved up their pocket money and gifts for the
| last year and a half to buy the phone (age 11 in my daughter's
| case) and that all the after school and weekend activities are
| being arranged on phones. Seeing your kids excluded from real-
| world activities is tough.
|
| In our case, a combination of talking to the kids plus Apple
| parental controls offered a reasonable approach.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| I had a cell phone before my parents. Paid cash for a
| TracFone when I was 16 or 17 and used that to sell weed.
| Where there's a will, there's a way.
| Bluecobra wrote:
| Heh. When I was in high school, cell phones and pagers were
| banned based on the assumption that only drug dealers could
| afford them.
| adastra22 wrote:
| My daughter is 14. Still no phone. You can make this work.
| ecshafer wrote:
| My daughters are younger than that, but A lot of the neighbor
| girls in who are in that age range got apple watches before
| phones. Which kind of makes sense, because it allows them to
| text, but keeps them off of apps and such.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| Yep. Even 20 years ago, phones were basically necessary to
| have a social life in high school. It's where everything got
| planned.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| 16 is too late. You can't teach your kids good maturity with
| communication devices through abstinence. You just have to
| watch what they do online. Which means reading their WhatsApp
| et al messages after they've gone to bed.
|
| Yes there will be some problems created from them having
| devices, but parenting isn't supposed to be easy, it's supposed
| to be educational and supportive for the children. Which forced
| abstinence is not.
| squigz wrote:
| > Which means reading their WhatsApp et al messages after
| they've gone to bed.
|
| Do they know you do this? Otherwise this seems like a very
| effective way to create trust issues in your kids.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Of course they do. You should be open and honest.
|
| For us, it's a system that's worked well. So well, in fact,
| that our kids have felt comfortable coming to us when they
| see something concerning in a group chat rather than
| waiting for us to find it. And in return, we've learned to
| trust their judgement a lot more because they've
| demonstrated mature behaviour online.
| RandomDistort wrote:
| Are you sure the kids aren't learning to delete the
| messages?
| adastra22 wrote:
| Yeah I'm pretty sure invading your kids privacy like that is
| setting you up for worse trouble.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| A better way to frame this is supervised vs unsupervised
| access. And it depends on their age.
|
| At 11 I wouldnt expect them to have unsupervised internet
| access. At 16 I might, but by the time they're 16 I
| wouldn't need to monitor their online activity so closely
| because they'll have several years of trust and experience
| built up.
| linksnapzz wrote:
| If they're 10, tell them that _literally anything_ they
| type into their device is being stored for parental review.
| No expectation of privacy.
|
| Obviously, this'll have to change at around 16, but those
| conversations need to happen anyway.
| dwb wrote:
| I feel sorry for your daughter. 16 was very late to get one as
| far back as the late 90s - I was very glad to get one at 14 as
| it meant I wasn't quite such a weirdo outcast.
| kotaKat wrote:
| > ...It also unlocks access to the Nintendo eShop, which I cannot
| disable. I can set his eShop spending limit to zero, sure. But I
| can't block free downloads. So to let my son play online
| Minecraft with his friends, I have to open him up to an unrelated
| store full of content I can't possibly evaluate. That's the deal.
| Take it or leave it.
|
| Hoooooboy you're in for a treat once you see the deals on all the
| weird "hentai" and "ecchi" softcore games on eShop that Nintendo
| let past the lotcheck process.
| yunnpp wrote:
| And remember that this is the brand historically known for
| curating its game library.
| losthobbies wrote:
| The Roblox ones are a bit of a minefield too.
|
| I age restrict, block chat with everyone and monitor friend
| requests weekly. They are not allowed to play in their rooms.
|
| Education is the biggest thing. They come to me if someone asks
| to be their friend. They don't accept gifts from strangers and I
| explain that it's the same as real world.
|
| It's a constant process that is always changing. Same as any
| other parenting job I suppose
| AdamN wrote:
| Roblox is hostile to these controls - best not to even enter
| the ecosystem.
| f1shy wrote:
| Ideally (in the broad sense, meaning not realistic) is to not
| enter any "ecosystem".
|
| But yeah... easier said than done.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| The issues with the Nintendo Switch are, I think, just Nintendo
| being perennially bad at anything involving the internet.
| Remember Friend Codes?
|
| They've definitely gotten better, but they're still kind of
| living in 2008. I'm not sure why a company full of software
| engineers can't figure this out.
|
| I do find it odd there's no option to outright disable the
| internet (except for software updates). Perhaps the best solution
| is to not give your child the wifi password? Or for a more
| technical solution, block the Switch's MAC address in the router.
| Macha wrote:
| > I'm not sure why a company full of hardware and software
| engineers still can't figure this out.
|
| Seeing other Japanese companies account systems (Square Enix
| and Rakuten, for example), the only conclusion I can draw is
| that the Japanese dev industry does not consider clear account
| management to be important.
| floundy wrote:
| Nintendo really has no incentive to improve. They make money
| hand over fist selling half-baked titles to their combined
| market of actual undiscerning children, and rabid fanboy
| manchildren who will praise any first party Nintendo title as a
| 10/10 every single time.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| ...I mean. I would argue the reason they make money hand over
| fist is because (most!) of their games _aren 't_ half baked,
| at all.
| floundy wrote:
| They're phoning it in, coasting on old IP and goodwill
| earned decades ago. Animal Crossing had less dialogue
| options than the Gamecube version that preceded it by two
| decades. Smash at mid-high levels is still plagued by lag
| switching cheaters. BOTW was _okay_ , but clearly overrated
| by people who had never played any sort of open world game
| before. TOTK being lauded as a 10/10 (fine, 9.5/10 on
| MetaCritic) was laughable given how empty the game world
| was, how janky the construction mechanics were for those
| silly machines, and how boring and childish the puzzles
| were. I stopped playing Pokemon 15+ years ago but come on,
| the graphics of the Switch games looking worse than some of
| the DS editions...
|
| TOTK was the final nail for me, I vowed to never purchase
| another Nintendo game or piece of hardware and I haven't. I
| just couldn't square my actual player experience of a
| janky, boring game with the rabid fanboys crowing about
| Nintendo doing it again.
| datajanko wrote:
| I'm stuck with my son not able to play minecraft from his
| nintendo account anymore though it used to work. I'm just getting
| an unhelpful error message and all permissions should be enough.
| Parental control is a joke. Deezer has kids accounts but you can
| just switch to another account. Spotify kids was a joke when I
| used it, poor discoverability, poor cataloge specifically if you
| care about childrens audio books.
|
| Google family link is also kinda weird. As a parent I don't want
| to restrict the time per app or total usage time. I want to limit
| usage of a group of apps. E.g. i don't want to limit spotify but
| I want to limit the total play time of certain games.
|
| So I agree with the sentiment of the post. But maybe I should
| consider the route from my child hood: unrestricted access. At
| least I know, in contrast to my parents, what is out there.
| alasdairking wrote:
| Try the XBox app on your phone, I managed to find settings
| there once that unlocked Minecraft.
|
| I'd like a flag for messaging apps called "turn off images and
| video". Sure, my kid might get called nasty names in plain
| text, but would not get beheading or bestiality videos or
| underage schoolmate pics.
| awakeasleep wrote:
| God that would be sweet. Especially if it was controlled at
| the OS level.
| spicyusername wrote:
| This is such a sore spot for me.
|
| Technology is amazing and I want to raise my children in such a
| way that they learn to use it to improve and enrich their lives.
|
| Video games are amazing. Art has never been easier to create.
| Being able to spend time with your friends when they are not
| physically present is incredible. There are so many great
| podcasts for children.
|
| But silicon valley seems directly opposed to enabling the best
| technology uses without also requiring exposure to the worst.
|
| Please, can I just let my son listen to music when he goes to bed
| without also being forced to expose him to some off-brand tiktok
| hamfisted haphazardly into the app with no way to disable.
|
| Can I let him watch great YouTube channels without the feed
| automatically funneling him towards absolute garbage.
|
| Something as simple as per app time limits are seemingly
| impossible for Google or Apple to implement.
|
| It's exhausting to navigate when you don't want to be draconian
| and just ban everything out right, as if that's even realistic.
| veonik wrote:
| Not sure about Google but Apple has per-app time limits, per-
| app type time limits, overall screen time limits, time of day
| limits, parental review before app install, parental review
| before purchases can be made, etc. I've found it to be quite
| robust in managing my kids' access to the internet.
| jopsen wrote:
| As a kid I always hated it when parents/schools locked things
| down. Getting free of the parental controls becomes a game.
|
| So I've never imagined myself wanting to do parental controls.
| But I might change my mind when my kid is old enough to play
| with screens.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| I really want to sympathise with the author but this feels more
| like a one-sided rant piece than a constructive article.
|
| For example, in one paragraph they complain that "I don't want my
| son to get online" then literally the following paragraph they
| complain that they need a Switch Online membership to get their
| son online. If you want your Nintendo Switch to "behave like a
| Gameboy" then don't get the online membership. It's really that
| simple. But don't complain that one is required to do this other
| thing than you literally just said you didn't want to do.
|
| I do agree that managing parental controls are painful. But the
| author clearly wrote their blog in a moment of rage and as a
| result of that, any useful messaging that could have been shared
| was lost.
| Aurornis wrote:
| I agree. As a parent it feels hard to sympathize with someone
| who outsourced their child's app usage selection to another
| company and didn't even bother to check what apps were allowed
| first. I visited the Gabb site they linked to and
| "Communication with strangers" is clearly listed as one of the
| tags they put on apps allowed on the phone. You're supposed to
| review them as a parent, not just assume that 100% of the
| nearly 1000 apps they allow are exactly to your preferences.
| mjg2 wrote:
| I agree. Parents in the 21st century need to realize the call
| is coming from inside the house: it's _their_ obligation to
| protect their child. Unsupervised usage without full due-
| diligence will lead to incidents like what the blog author
| describes.
|
| The dilemma of online protection is a false crisis because
| parents would rather let their children play with fire than
| nurture their babies.
| mothballed wrote:
| It's the parents obligation to educate their child.
|
| It's the child's obligation to use that education wisely.
|
| There were no trackers on cars when I started driving at 15
| so my parents drove with me for a few months and after that
| I was on my own. There were no gun laws against kids having
| guns when I was 7 so my dad showed me how to use one safely
| and after that I was set loose upon the countryside armed
| on my own. There were no ridiculous negligent
| standards/laws on the book when I was young about it being
| wrong for a kid to spend all day going up/down a creek so
| my dad showed me what all the venomous snakes looked like
| and how to use a compass and after that I was on my own.
|
| I find disagreement with this new standard on parents. No,
| it's not the parents obligation to keep their child from
| ever making a horrible mistake. It's their obligation to
| educate them well and then set them loose with very few
| safeguards so they can actually slowly learn to be an
| adult. I am very much for showing kids how to use the
| internet responsibly, but I'm not of the opinion that
| parental controls are particularly desirable beyond an
| initial learning period.
| ipython wrote:
| Thank you. I couldn't have said it better.
| mjg2 wrote:
| > It's the child's obligation to use that education
| wisely.
|
| I disagree because children, despite how precocious and
| "old-soul"ed, are not wise compared to online predators.
|
| I appreciate your POV on allowing children to make their
| own mistakes; life is the best teacher. Yet, to make an
| analogy, a gun owner keeps their collection locked up not
| just for their protection but for their family's
| protection. Some lessons in life have steep prices and
| are one-way doors, and we should pass that hard-earned
| wisdom to the next generation without those costs.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Children are not wise compared to online predators, but
| they _will_ notice when things are getting fishy. Maybe
| that 's after they've made their first few silly mistakes
| (maybe they've given the predator their home address,
| several photographs, all their friends' contact details,
| and the one password they use for everything), but they
| will notice before anything _seriously_ bad happens. But
| just because they 'll notice, that doesn't mean they'll
| take an appropriate action; and it doesn't mean they
| won't be convinced that actually, it's fine. The child
| _needs_ to know that they can come to you for advice, and
| that there will be no repercussions if the situation is
| benign, even if they 've broken the rules: the concrete
| threat of (even mild) parental punishment for rule-
| breaking _will_ be more salient than a mild situational
| suspicion.
|
| "These are the rules, you _are_ to follow the rules,
| breaking them would be foolish and breaking them in
| _secret_ would be even more foolish, but they are always
| up for discussion, and if you _do_ break them you can
| still come to me for advice without getting in trouble,
| and I 'd much rather you tell me than that I find out on
| my own" is a principle that can be imparted to a child.
| You do actually have to _tell_ it to them, though, in
| several different ways over a period of time, and you
| have to be _consistent_ about it. Children aren 't wise,
| but they are clever, they can spot patterns, and they'll
| tend to believe your actions over your words if the two
| conflict.
|
| You do not want to set up a situation where a predator
| can blackmail a child using the threat of _your_
| punishment. Parent, yes, but parent consistently enough
| and well enough that such threats are an _obvious_ bluff
| that the child knows to ignore (and report to you:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46465829), and going
| online can be as safe for your child as playing in the
| local neighbourhood.
|
| The rules for young children safely using the internet
| unsupervised would be _extremely_ absurd for an adult:
| they include things like "do not use any search engines
| (ask me if you want a new website)" and "do not create
| accounts on services (without permission)". Young
| children must also be kept away from content aggregators,
| or anything with an automatic recommendation system (e.g.
| Pinterest, YouTube, modern news sites, Reddit, HN). But
| hyperlinks on proper webpages are perfectly safe: a child
| isn't going to end up anywhere they shouldn't by clicking
| on hyperlinks _if_ they check the URLs first and avoid
| the places they aren 't allowed, just like a child isn't
| going to end up anywhere they shouldn't, wandering the
| high street, if they know to avoid roads and building
| sites. You don't need to tell a 6-year-old "stay away
| from porn sites", just like you don't need to tell them
| "don't go in that sex shop", because (a) they won't
| _find_ it; and (b) even if they _do_ , there are more
| general rules ("never tell a computer system that you're
| over 13 if you're not, and ideally not even if you are")
| that'll prevent any harm from occurring.
|
| And just as you'd have conversations with a child about
| "where have you been?", and have them show you their
| favourite spots occasionally, you should also do so with
| unsupervised internet activity. Unsupervised does not
| mean _ignored_ , after all.
| cevn wrote:
| You were loose with a gun at age 7?!
| mothballed wrote:
| Absolutely, I would also walk down the public roads also
| to get from one field to another, nobody said anything.
| It was quite normal in the rural Midwest. You'll probably
| find lots of true stories online as well about kids
| arriving to school and checking their rifle with the
| principal at the beginning of class and then getting them
| back at the end of the day.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| We did that stuff too in rural Washington. The vast vast
| majority of people don't mess with anyone, let alone
| children.
| mikestew wrote:
| Check the gun with the principal?! No, you leave it on
| the gun rack in the back of the pickup, and lock the
| truck door like normal people at my high school. :-)
|
| (Also rural Midwest, and a long time ago).
| cevn wrote:
| Dang, seems like a completely different world than the
| one I live in. Honestly I would prefer it if we were able
| to teach our kids personal responsibility to this level,
| I actually believe people can be that mature by age 7 and
| you know whether a kid is a rule breaker or not by that
| point.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| One of my uncles was asked to stop bringing his rifle to
| highschool because him and one of the teachers kept
| talking about hunting in the parking lot and getting to
| class late. The principle felt they were likely to at
| least make it in the building on time if they weren't
| chatting in the parking lot about their rifles/hunts/etc.
|
| People used to have an insane amount of freedom and
| things generally went better.
| Bluecobra wrote:
| I was in Cub Scouts in the early 90s and got a Swiss Army
| knife. I thought it would be cool to show it off to the
| kids on the bus. It got confiscated by the principal and
| I was suspended for one day. I think I got off light. I
| can't imagine what would happen these days.
| iamnothere wrote:
| Some kids grow up in families who hunt. It's not super
| common but also isn't unheard of.
| sojsurf wrote:
| Well written, and I agree with you on everything you
| wrote.
|
| That said, "the internet" is a large place, and I think
| parents would find more clarity thinking of it the way
| they think of a physical place. In my mind, letting my
| son loose on the internet is not like letting him run
| around the woods unsupervised (which he does). It is more
| like dropping him off in a large city every night.
|
| As you said, guidance is imperative, and in the real
| world we would not give only verbal guidance. We would,
| if we lived in the city, walk our kid to the library, the
| museum, the coffee shop, the park. We would talk about
| what parts of town to avoid. We would talk about what
| "free" means and about not trusting strangers and not
| just going into any door.
|
| That last part is tricky. On the internet, every link is
| a door into a neighborhood, and there are a lot of
| neighborhoods even adults are not well prepared for.
| xg15 wrote:
| Ah yeah, it's the parent's responsibility, the child's
| and probably the pet's as well, the only one who has no
| responsibility is the tech industry.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| I would add that it's society's responsibility to handle
| a child's transgressions with grace and humility, and to
| try to remember what it means to be "tried as an adult."
| Forgiveness isn't easy.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > It's the parents obligation to educate their child.
|
| > It's the child's obligation to use that education
| wisely.
|
| In the real world, it's the parents obligation to make an
| effort to protect their children. In extreme cases,
| parents can be found negligent if they don't demonstrate
| that they're taking reasonable steps to protect children
| and something bad happens as a result.
|
| This doesn't mean that extreme, draconian parenting is
| mandatory. It does, however, mean that some level of
| parental control is necessary on an age-adjusted basis.
| It's not enough to say "I told them not to do that" and
| then wash your hands of the consequences when we're
| talking about a pre-teen like in this article.
| baq wrote:
| Laws disagree. Parents are at least in some cases legally
| and financially responsible for their children doings.
| Parental controls are necessary for children who don't
| want to or cannot control themselves regardless of the
| level of education they receive.
| dap wrote:
| There is important truth in your post, yet you seem to
| miss the really important pieces that make this hard.
|
| > It's the parents obligation to educate their child.
|
| > It's the child's obligation to use that education
| wisely.
|
| Two obvious things complicate this:
|
| - You weren't taught how to use a real gun at 6 months
| old, right?
|
| - Would it not follow from what you said above that if
| you had accidentally shot and killed yourself at age 7,
| then it would be your own fault and nobody else's? That
| seems (to me, at least) like an absurd conclusion.
|
| I think about it like this: as a parent, my jobs include
| identifying when my child is capable of learning about
| something new, providing the guidance they need to learn
| it (which is probably not all up front, but involves some
| supervision, since it's usually an iterative process),
| allowing them to make mistakes, accepting some acceptable
| risks of injury, _and_ preventing catastrophe. I 'll use
| cooking as an example. My kids got a "toddler knife" very
| young (basically a wooden wedge that's not very sharp).
| We showed them how to cut up avocados (already split) and
| other soft things. As they get older, we give them
| sharper knives and trickier tasks. We watch to see if
| they're understanding what we've told them. We give more
| guidance as needed. It's okay if they nick themselves
| along the way. But we haven't given them a sharpened
| chef's knife yet! And if they'd taken that toddler knife
| and repeatedly tried to jam it into their sibling's eye
| despite "educating" them several times, while I wouldn't
| regret having made the choice to see if they were ready,
| I would certainly conclude that they _weren 't_ yet
| ready. That's on me, not them.
|
| You allude to this when you say:
|
| > I am very much for showing kids how to use the internet
| responsibly, but I'm not of the opinion that parental
| controls are particularly desirable beyond an initial
| learning period.
|
| Yes, the goal should be to teach kids how to operate
| safely, not keep them from all the dangerous things. But
| I'd say that devices and the internet are more like "the
| kitchen". There are lots of different risks there and
| it's going to take many years to become competent (or
| even safe). Giving them an ordinary device would be like
| teaching my 2-year-old their first knife skills next to a
| hot stove in a restaurant kitchen with chefs flying
| around with sharp knives and hot pots. By contrast,
| without doing any particular child-proofing, our home
| kitchen is a much more controlled environment where I can
| decide which risks they're exposed to when. This allows
| me to supervise without watching every moment to see if
| they're about to stab themselves -- which also gives them
| the autonomy they need to really learn. The OP, like
| other parents, wants something similar from their device
| and the internet: to gradually expose elements of these
| things as the parents are able to usefully guide the
| children, all while avoiding catastrophe.
| freehorse wrote:
| There is a survivor bias here. It ignores cases where
| parents or kids failed to be 100% wise. When we are
| talking about a whole population, we are gonna have
| unwise or unluck cases when we "set kids loose".
|
| Which may be fine, I don't know whether the tightened
| control of both parenting and kids nowadays is better.
| But we have to recognise the cost that comes with doing
| something like that. There is less risk-taking right now,
| and bad consequences seem to be taken harder, in a way
| human life is valued more, which imo part of the reason
| of the shift. The mentality "let kids make their own
| mistakes" can be fine, but that comes with accepting the
| possibilities of negative consequences these mistakes may
| cause, and I feel that the main issue is that we frown
| upon these consequences as society much more.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| No, we've always had effective societal gatekeeping on what
| kids can access.
|
| Cigarettes, liquor, porn, R-rated movies, all had general
| barriers to access for kids in the pre-internet world.
| Parents could rely on most store clerks not selling
| alcohol, tobacco, or adult magazines to a child. Parents
| did not have to hover over everything their child did. Was
| it perfect, of course not, but it worked fairly well and
| didn't require constant monitoring. You could let your kids
| go to the mall and be fairly sure that they would not be
| let in to an R-rated movie. They could ride their bikes to
| a convenience store and the worst thing they could buy was
| candy.
|
| With online accounts and apps, everything needs review and
| permission. Every. Single. Thing. That is the main
| complaint in TFA. He wants a single device level setting so
| that he doesn't have to constantly vet everything.
|
| This is precisely why many parents support age verification
| laws for social media and adult sites. Tech companies could
| have solved this on their terms but they just punted it to
| "parents" with an insane level of complexity, and the
| parents don't like it.
| soperj wrote:
| and then they reset the settings regularly and you have
| to redo it.
| eikenberry wrote:
| > No, we've always had effective societal gatekeeping on
| what kids can access.
|
| Isn't there still a very simple one, hardware access. If
| the child doesn't have a smart phone of their own or
| computer in their bedroom then they cannot use them to
| get online unsupervised. This is about as simple on/off
| as you can get and very easy to moderate.
| Yossarrian22 wrote:
| Until the school assigns online homework, homework that
| takes 3 hours a night
| eikenberry wrote:
| I didn't say no computer/internet access. They could do
| their homework on a computer in a common room.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| In my analogy that would be like forbidding your child
| from having a bike because they might go somewhere that
| would sell them beer, rather than simply a general,
| mostly-reliable prohibition on selling beer to kids.
|
| Or, if you do let them have a bike, it requires you to
| follow them around everywhere to be sure they don't go to
| a liquor store.
|
| It's a completely over the top level of control. Yes it
| would work but also do as much harm as good.
| eikenberry wrote:
| The bike analogy depends a lot on where you live. There
| are places where you would not let your kids ride
| anywhere they wanted without supervision and there are
| places where the opposite is true. The internet is one
| "place" and you'd need to adapt your bike analogy to that
| place.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| My daughter has always used a normal low end Android phone
| with the default parental controls. She only installs what I
| whitelist. It's really not that much effort.
|
| Honestly, maybe the Gabb Phone marketing is lulling users
| into a false sense of security. If you still have to do the
| same legwork as the default Android experience, what's the
| point of their devices?
| stackskipton wrote:
| It is, they denied WhatsApp and Discord in their app stores
| for good reason but allowed GroupMe? That's a choice and
| not what I would call a good one.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| The issue is that the kid wants to play a game with his
| friends.
|
| So that is "online" in the sense that it uses the internet..
| but it isn't the same as a web browser, or an open store of
| every online app.
|
| I run game servers for my nephew. I know he only adds his
| friends and I can keep a loose eye on them. I don't care if his
| friends talk about boobs or make penis jokes (they're 14), I
| only care that there aren't any predators.
|
| This is a clear and meaningful distinction and it doesn't sound
| supported.
| Ukv wrote:
| > The issue is that the kid wants to play a game with his
| friends [...] This is a clear and meaningful distinction and
| it doesn't sound supported.
|
| Clear how it could restrict to friends-only when connecting
| directly to another Nintendo Switch user, but a bit murky how
| it'd make that determination in cases like Minecraft where
| the client is connecting to a cross-platform user-hosted game
| server that is not associated with any Nintendo/Microsoft
| account.
|
| Could work if you have the parents manually whitelist
| specific server IPs, as they could with router/firewall,
| though not sure if "could you whitelist 209.216.230.207
| please?" would present a meaningful choice in most cases.
| andrewaylett wrote:
| Specifically for Minecraft, Realms works for this: I
| subscribe, I allow my children and friends to access our
| instance via gamer tag.
|
| Users on the same network can access each others' worlds,
| at least between XBox and Android, so multi-device in the
| same building works too.
| awakeasleep wrote:
| Console minecraft does not allow connecting to self hosted
| 3rd party servers
| beasthacker wrote:
| Yes, this is exactly the distinction I was struggling to
| articulate.
|
| "Online" has collapsed into a single bucket that includes
| friends-only play, strangers, stores, chat, downloads, etc.
| What I want (and what you're describing with running servers)
| is a way to scope online access: friends-only communication,
| no discovery, no stores, no strangers.
|
| The frustrating part is that many platforms either (a) force
| these things to come as a bundle, so saying "yes" to playing
| with friends implicitly says "yes" to a much larger surface
| area; or (b) make the unbundling process so complex that
| well-meaning parents fail and exhausted parents give up.
|
| jonathaneunice put the incentives behind this more sharply
| than I did here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46465547
| floundy wrote:
| I'm assuming the author was thinking Minecraft with the kid's
| friends would be Peer2Peer or something. I doubt Switch has the
| power to host a Minecraft server, but I might be wrong.
|
| See Smash, which is entirely Peer2Peer for the main gameplay,
| but requires a Switch Online membership to play for... what
| exactly? Hosting a database of player ratings and using it for
| matchmaking? There's probably one server rack on each continent
| running the entirety of Smash online.
| xg15 wrote:
| Not a child, but I have a Switch myself and I held off for a
| long time getting a membership. Of course you can do it, but
| the Switch will put up lots of passive aggressive roadblocks
| where it will let you know that you _could_ use this additional
| feature in the game now if you just had a membership.
|
| There are also unreasonable restrictions, like not being able
| to play user-created maps in Mario Maker unless you have a
| membership.
| natnatenathan wrote:
| Part of the point is that you cannot use it without it being
| online. This is a big difference between the Switch and Switch
| 2.
| exitb wrote:
| In what sense? I have a Switch 2 without NSO and it does not
| allow online play. It also, in the default configuration,
| needs to authenticate before even entering the online shop.
| In that scope, it doesn't even need to have any parental
| controls.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Generally I worry about online gaming.
|
| I played a lot of _Titanfall_ back in the day and had a lot of
| reservations about talking with other people 's kids. Nothing
| really bad happened, and I had a lot of fun, but it was creepy.
|
| I kinda enjoy that the matchmaker rooms in _Beat Saber_ only
| allow you to emote with large body gestures and not say
| anything or even make hand gestures. I enjoy acting like a
| cartoon character to honor and recognize the other players
| (like choosing the song that I really hate because another
| player has asked for it five times in a row) and not getting
| involved in the mean bullshit you get in games like _League of
| Legends_. (It 's fun to be in a private room with 2 or more
| players too where you can chat but then you are talking with
| people you picked which in my case are nice people)
|
| My son and his friend created a new game called "the kick game"
| inside a certain online game where the _real_ game was to trick
| the other players into kicking out other players that they didn
| 't like or wanted to bully -- frequently the victims didn't
| understand the rules of this game at all. On Roblox they would
| find racist games where you cut down thousands of Zulu, just
| awful stuff.
|
| Not to say I haven't had a good time with serious _League_
| players who communicate on Discord and have a positive team but
| I think communication features and UGC are often a disaster in
| games.
| iamnothere wrote:
| Yes, this parent seems to assume that all parents want the same
| restrictions. The reason that managing this stuff is
| complicated is that you actually have to think about what
| restrictions you want (if any), understand the implications,
| and then set options to achieve those restrictions. A
| surprising number of people aren't willing to do that! They
| would rather tell companies "parent my children correctly" and
| then sue as soon as the company's vision of "safety" doesn't
| line up with their own.
|
| In a country where you have parents with _wildly_ different
| ideas about what constitutes "safety", I have no idea why
| anyone thinks it is possible to set a single standard for this.
| dosman33 wrote:
| It's not an accident that its so hard to get this stuff right,
| I've heard countless stories like this from friends who are
| parents.
|
| If the market wanted parents to be able to figure this out it
| would be getting it right. It's obviously a dark pattern that
| benefits everyone but the parents and their children. If more
| people stopped to think deeper about this they would and should
| be very disturbed by what this means.
| immibis wrote:
| And yet whenever the idea of changing this stuff at a societal
| level comes up, HN is filled with thought-deleting cries of
| "parents just need to be more responsible"
| squigz wrote:
| Usually when those discussions come up, there are plenty of
| people recognizing both that 1) parents _do_ need to be more
| responsible, but also that 2) we need _sane_ parental control
| systems. What we don 't need is more bandaids that make it
| appear as if something is being done.
| watwut wrote:
| Parents are already plenty responsible. Societal
| expectation on parents are sky high and ever increasing.
| Meanwhile, the same people refuse to accept anything that
| would make parental responsibility easier.
| istjohn wrote:
| A supporting citation:
|
| > In 1965, mothers spent a daily average of 54 minutes on
| child care activities, while moms in 2012 averaged almost
| twice that at 104 minutes per day. Fathers' time with
| children nearly quadrupled - 1965 dads spent a daily
| average of just 16 minutes with their kids, while today's
| fathers spend about 59 minutes a day caring for them.
|
| https://news.uci.edu/2016/09/28/todays-parents-spend-
| more-ti...
| squigz wrote:
| 1-2 hours a day? That does seem sky-high...
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Usually when those discussions come up, there are plenty
| of people recognizing both that 1) parents do need to be
| more responsible, but also that 2) we need sane parental
| control systems.
|
| Dunno. My generation grew up to be generally fine people,
| without parental control software crap (and the poor sods
| who had parents insisting on it only became better hackers
| for it). Back then, there was things such as rottencom,
| 4chan or its various predecessors... there were countless
| instructions on how to make explosives or whatever readily
| available, hoards of porn (ever been to a LAN party and
| came home with _less_ porn on your HDD than before?). And
| yes there were also alll the creeps.
|
| The only thing that wasn't anywhere near as prevalent as
| today is all the gambling/mtx crap and AI slop. Hell even
| brainrot was a thing, half of the chan boards consisted of
| utterly weird memes that make "skibidi toilet" blush in
| comparison.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >My generation grew up to be generally fine people,
|
| [Look at current voters in the US]
|
| Ya sure about that?
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Yeah -- alongside cries of "why isn't anyone having children
| anymore?"
| toss1 wrote:
| Exactly
|
| >>"Here's what I want: an off switch. A single setting that
| says "this child cannot go online, communicate with strangers,
| spend money, or download anything without my explicit
| permission." Instead I get a maze, complex enough that when
| something goes wrong, I'm at fault for a tooltip I didn't hover
| over, a blog post I didn't read, a submenu I didn't find. Maybe
| that's by design. Maybe it's neglect. I don't know. "
|
| When it happens only a few times, it might be neglect. This is
| absolutely by design.
|
| And think again if you think any large corporation (beyond a
| few isolated individuals who will not be employed there for
| long) has any actual concern for your safety, or to get
| anything right beyond an _appearance_ of safety and plausible
| deniability for the inevitable harm caused by their dark
| patterns.
|
| The only winning move is not to play. Don't play and write
| about how awful it is. Send them the _only_ message that they
| will hear. Stop giving them your money.
| unloader6118 wrote:
| > When it happens only a few times, it might be neglect. This
| is absolutely by design.
|
| Not sure if I want to call it by design.
|
| It is not a dark pattern, it is just "what is the minimum we
| can do to sell this without doing the curation work?"
| toss1 wrote:
| Building 29 separate settings with confusing and
| overlapping effects is less work than making a single
| setting of: [Local Only]?
|
| Seems to be a much larger amount of work to design,
| implement, and support a more-or-less dozen-step customer
| journey that does _NOT_ work than just implementing a few
| switches. And that goes even if the switch must be
| designed-in from the beginning by designing operation for
| local-only operation.
|
| Surely, implementing a simple block-all-strangers to send-
| to-bitbucket all communications attempts by accounts not
| already on the whitelist is easier than all these
| overlapping settings described?
|
| Unless it is explained how building a much more complex
| system is easier and lower-cost than a simpler system with
| fewer controls, the default conclusion is it is
| intentional.
|
| >>It is not a dark pattern, it is just "what is the minimum
| we can do to sell this without doing the curation work?"
|
| Even if for the sake of discussion we treat it as laziness,
| a dark pattern created by accident is still a dark pattern.
| The customer is no less screwed into doing something they
| do not want and the company does want.
| pwg wrote:
| > Building 29 separate settings with confusing and
| overlapping effects is less work than making a single
| setting of: [Local Only]?
|
| The 29 separate confusing overlapping effects is by
| design. A single "local only" switch would (so long as
| that switch is enabled) lock out all manner of potential
| future revenue and recurring rents, which these companies
| very much want to see hit the balance sheet.
|
| So the 29 separate confusing overlapping settings is
| designed to frustrate you to the point that you allow
| what they want from the start, the ability of the device
| to generate future revenue (via both of one time sales
| and recurring rents on rental sales).
| toss1 wrote:
| YES, Thank you!
|
| >>The 29 separate confusing overlapping effects is by
| design
|
| >>designed to frustrate you to the point that you allow
| what they want from the start, the ability of the device
| to generate future revenue
|
| And this explains why they are willing to do all the
| extra work to do it.
|
| It is not even close to accidental or lazy -- there is
| nothing accidental about the intention or going to the
| extra cost to build those dark patterns to screw the
| customers.
| pixl97 wrote:
| At the end of the day if the MTX group says no, it
| doesn't happen. Sales is always the most powerful group
| in an organization, sometimes even overriding compliance
| if they can get away with it.
| quirkot wrote:
| >> Building 29 separate settings with confusing and
| overlapping effects is less work than making a single
| setting of: [Local Only]?
|
| Yes, absolutely. 29 separate overlapping settings likely
| match up precisely to arguments in various APIs that are
| used. On the other hand, what does local only even mean?
| No wifi? No hardwired connection? LAN only? Connection to
| the internet for system updates but not marketplace?
| Something else? All with a specified outcome that
| requires different implementation depending on hardware
| version and needs to be tweaked everytime dependencies
| change.
| zzo38computer wrote:
| Having a separate setting for unconditionally disabling
| all wireless communication would be helpful. The other
| stuff you mention can be separate settings if it is
| useful to have them. (A setting to unconditionally all
| disable wired connections is less important since you can
| just avoid connecting it.)
| toss1 wrote:
| >>what does local only even mean?
|
| Let's start with this: Design the architecture so the
| core system works fine locally. Features requiring
| Internet connection are in separate modules, so they can
| be easily turned on/off, and designed so they are still
| primarily local.
|
| E.g., store all current status locally and _if requested_
| another module sends it to the cloud, instead of cloud-
| first.
|
| E.g.2, install updates by making a pull of all resources
| and then doing the update instead of requiring continuous
| communication.
|
| Allow user control with options to completely shut off,
| whitelist, blacklist, etc.
|
| Simple design decisions up front to make a software
| package meeting the user's local needs first, THEN
| allowing controlled access to the internet, under the
| _USERS '_ control, instead of designing every feature to
| contact your servers first and compromising both
| usability and control at every step.
| gukov wrote:
| I'm not sure why some are struggling to understand this. A
| single "godmode" checkbox would only be possible if every
| element, the marketplace, the hardware, and the payment
| rails, were inside one ecosystem. The Switch is Nintendo,
| Minecraft is Microsoft, the credit card is Visa, and so on.
| There are simply too many moving parts, making a single
| killswitch nearly impossible to orchestrate.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| That, or an open standard.
| baq wrote:
| > Send them the only message that they will hear. Stop giving
| them your money.
|
| Second order effects of this solution are not great either -
| being outside of the smartphone world means you're...
| outside. Network effects quickly push you out of social
| groups without neither you nor the group doing anything mean,
| it's just group dynamics.
|
| The real issue is the device and services come in a package
| which cannot be separated or compartmentalized. It's
| basically impossible to say 'this device cannot access
| youtube/pornhub/...' because there's a million ways to get
| around restrictions.
| alex-moon wrote:
| I should guess it is about liability more than anything else.
| They want to advertise and sell to children, but they don't
| want to be taken to court about it. Makes a tonne of sense from
| a profit perspective, especially as people under ~25 years of
| age are more susceptible to impulsivity and addiction due to
| the developing prefrontal cortex. From a sales perspective, the
| younger the better (as any parent can confirm).
| basket_horse wrote:
| I disagree. I think it is an "accident" that stems from
| organizations rather than anything sinister.
|
| Companies generally want good parental controls, but let's face
| it, it's not the cash cow or particularly interesting.
|
| This leads to understaffed teams of b-list developers with high
| churn, hence the overly confusing and half-baked features.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I would easily believe that Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc.,
| explicitly staff these teams with childless adults.
| baq wrote:
| Given how easy it is for my 13yo daughter to get around
| screen time restrictions on iOS in ways I wouldn't believe
| are possible I'm not sure these people are even adults.
| selectively wrote:
| Apple has an engineering base that includes people who
| were recently children.
|
| Think about it that way: why would they make things
| harder for who they were in the very recent past.
| lovich wrote:
| > Apple has an engineering base that includes people who
| were recently children.
|
| What?
|
| I didn't realize Apple with in the habit of hiring people
| straight out of high school instead of after going
| through enough university education that ends up with
| candidates in their early to mid 20s
| selectively wrote:
| Yep. They hire talent. University grads will work
| alongside red team folks that are maybe 22 years old and
| have been at Apple for two years. It's a thing.
|
| I personally know more than one person who has a
| background along those lines.
| lovich wrote:
| I was more pointing out that 22+ year olds aren't people
| who were "recently children" unless we're continuing the
| trend of infantilizing adults farther into their 20s.
|
| I was also under the impression that the faangs hired a
| larger % of post docs into their first industry job than
| most companies, so you're also getting 27+ year olds as
| entry level engineers and scientists
| selectively wrote:
| I think someone who is 22 was 17 in the not that distant
| past.
|
| Apple hires talent, they don't care about anything else.
| Again, I am speaking to things I know from my actual life
| and people I know in the physical world.
| lovich wrote:
| > Apple hires talent, they don't care about anything
| else. Again, I am speaking to things I know from my
| actual life and people I know in the physical world.
|
| How many people do they hire without college degrees?
|
| I am legitimately asking. I understand that was a thing
| in the tech world decades ago but my understanding was
| that big tech's idea of "talent" has evolved to include
| mandatory education credentials like at least a
| bachelor's degree if not further education.
|
| 18 is recently a kid
|
| 22 is someone whose been an adult for an entire
| Presidential term. I might be splitting hairs but I
| struggle to view that as "recent"
|
| Edit: removed an unnecessarily aggressive paragraph that
| added nothing to the conversation
| selectively wrote:
| I am not going to engage with your reply guy stuff any
| longer.
|
| No, tech companies _still_ don 't care about degrees.
| They care about the skills, period, the end. If you are
| seeking a role that relates to tech and you actually have
| the skills, that's all they care about.
|
| 22 is recently a kid. We have nothing further to discuss;
| you are unreasonable.
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| All those companies are, or used to be, based in the US.
| Those 22 year olds have only been allowed to drink for a
| year so by one measure they were recently children.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Parental controls and accessibility both suffer from the fact
| that they are good features to add but fundamentally do not
| drive revenue. They only exist in the average as much as is
| required by regulation.
|
| No business would build wheelchair ramps unless they were
| made to, that's why we make them. There's no reason to not do
| the same for parental controls.
| rafaelmn wrote:
| It's nearly impossible to block YouTube on a smart TV without
| third party apps, even worse on non-android ones. And the app
| is not uninstallable. I don't think this is b-tier devs,
| feels like intentionall neglect.
| hulitu wrote:
| > Companies generally want good parental controls
|
| Yeah, like Microsoft requesting that Firefox shall be
| (parentally) reviewed, while Edge happilly could connect to
| internet. Fixed by creating a local account.
| fpauser wrote:
| > Companies generally want good parental controls
|
| Nope, parental controls are fucked up since ages. And this is
| by design, and not because of some "b-list developers".
| x0x0 wrote:
| Well, this is the company that builds Teams.
|
| One axis is if they even want to make parental controls work,
| which they may well not want to but rather wish to just check
| some checkboxes.
|
| But the company that builds Teams and Windows 11: I think it's
| entirely plausible they _can 't_.
| tempodox wrote:
| In the absence of consumer protection laws, this kind of abuse
| is to be expected.
| epiccoleman wrote:
| I identify with so much of what's in this article - especially
| the rage that has the author giving serious, coldblooded thought
| to just destroying the Switch.
|
| The Minecraft stuff in particular reads like some kind of standup
| comedy bit where the joke is that the joke goes on way too long.
| It is genuinely insane what it takes to get a kid online these
| days, to the point where I honestly don't know how families
| without some poor technical sadsap can even manage to get it
| done.
|
| I find it particularly infuriating that Nintendo - who are
| supposed to be the "family friendly" gaming company, and who lock
| down a _lot_ of things in variously annoying ways, seems to offer
| no way to block or disable the Youtube app.
|
| The way this stuff is handled in my house (and let me be clear
| that this is extremely imperfect) is that I block Youtube and
| various other sites at the network level. This is really not a
| total solution - there are many good reasons for the kids to get
| on Youtube and so I'm often asked to open the gates for a while.
| Threading the needle in a manner that allows my kids to get the
| benefits of the net without the huge number of downsides is
| virtually impossible.
| krosaen wrote:
| Assuming you go down the path of allowing online anything, seems
| like, after doing your best with parental controls, the most
| effective thing is time boxing screen usage. Only so much can
| happen in, say, 2-3 30 minute sessions throughout the day, and
| the chances of a kid deciding to blow their precious minutes
| responding to some random person seems much lower than if bored
| and checking messages idly. Being nearby during a healthy sample
| of sessions to have a pulse on what's going on helps too -
| usually pretty obvious what they are doing.
|
| But I share the frustration of the author with how unreliable the
| controls are. Apple screen time controls routinely stop working -
| especially the one that only allows access to a finite list of
| websites. I need to check the browser history every week or so to
| confirm it is still working, and do some dance where I turn off
| controls, reboot, then turn back on every once in a while. The
| reason this particular control is important to me is that, even
| starting with something as pure as neil.fun, ads on that site
| have proven to be a few clicks away from semi-pornographic sites
| - it's terrible! And yet, turning off all internet access is such
| a coarse decision that limits access to things that are generally
| informational / fun / good (like neil.fun, or sports facts
| sites).
| Descon wrote:
| neil.fun is porn ads
|
| neal.fun is what I think you meant to link
| antonymoose wrote:
| Well that's a bit ironic in regards to the pro-Parental
| Controls argument. Pornography is just a typo away...
| krosaen wrote:
| Ha whoops. But yes, the ads on the neal site I meant to link
| to had the aforementioned problem
| jonathaneunice wrote:
| The complexity and frustration are in no way accidental. A
| carefully designed, obfuscated, and Byzantined process designed
| for exactly this effect.
|
| > You're supposed to be so beaten down, so utterly depleted of
| will, that you just cave. [...] You disable a bunch of parental
| controls you don't really understand. You let your kid play his
| damn game. You become the ideal customer.
|
| Exactly so. Parental controls, privacy settings, permission to
| show ads and collect infinite tracking data... The machine is
| working exactly as intended. Maybe there are sentiments that "the
| parents should have some control" and maybe there are some laws
| about protecting children or protecting consumer privacy. But
| hey, what if actually using any of those mechanisms was mind-
| bendingly difficult and annoying? What if your control were only
| available downstairs, in the unlighted cellar, at the bottom of a
| locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on
| the door saying "Beware of the Leopard." We'd still be in
| compliance, right? Heh heh. Yeah. That's the ticket!
| f1shy wrote:
| Reminds me when Facebook added "privacy" controls, that were
| virtually impossible to find, difficult to understand, and
| confusing to give a false sense of security.
| atoav wrote:
| When I grew up my parents literally had no understanding of what
| the internet was, nor what I was doing on it. That wasn't a
| problem because all the rest of the upbringing they did prepared
| me well to handle every situation I encountered there. There
| approach was to let me and my brothers learn early how to judge
| situations and risk ourselves and trusted us to set those
| boundaries ourselves.
|
| This meant while other kids were constantly insecure how to
| handle a specific situation, we knew quite well (in comparison)
| what was totally harmless and where you had to get careful. Thus
| we were the only kids who jumped into water from bridges, but
| also the only kids in my village who never broke any bone during
| our entire childhood.
|
| If you want your kid to be safe, isn't the best way to do it to
| teach your kid how to make the decision what is safe themselves?
| Otherwise they have to always rely on a parents (or other figures
| of authority) to make that judgment for them. But the parents
| aren't always around and if they call everything unsafe,
| potentially nothing is.
| weli wrote:
| I agree with you so much. Great parenting is education, not
| restriction. I don't want my kid to not talk to strangers
| because I told him its something bad that you shouldn't do. He
| won't talk to strangers because he _understands_ the
| implications and what can happen.
|
| A kid with no education and restricted access will just find a
| way to do whatever he wants to do. A kid with good education
| and unrestricted access will know to steer away from bad stuff
| and talk to adults when he finds something strange.
|
| One of the proudest moments of my grandfather (in my household,
| he was the most tech savy) was when I found a way to "bypass"
| an restriction program around age 11. From then on he decided I
| "outgrew" this kind of limits and just gave me unlimited access
| to the family computer and the internet.
|
| But years later he confessed, the "click" moment for him was
| not that I could bypass the restriction, but that I trusted him
| enough to show him and that I self-reported the situation. And
| this is pure education and has nothing to do with restrictions.
|
| I read so many parents here that want to "educate" their
| children but want to offload that work to some service or
| program instead of putting the work in. You prefer spending 5
| hours configuring your child's nintendo switch rather than
| sitting down with him for 1 hour to explain to him what he can
| encounter on the internet, how he should behave and react and
| building the bond needed for him to trust you enough to come to
| you when needed.
| atoav wrote:
| The thing many parents get wrong about education is to think
| that the kid learns what you tell it. You tell the kid X is
| dangerous, so now the kid learned X is dangerous. That is not
| how it works _at all_. What the kid learns is that it can 't
| be trusted to judge danger itself, since always when it tries
| to do something itself found okay a panicked adult will tell
| it this was dangerous.
|
| The lesson isn't the meaning of the words you say to your
| kids, the lesson is how what you say relates to _them_ and
| what they observe _you doing_. And this isn 't just about
| this example of traching them to make a sound judgement, this
| can be expanded to nearly every educational problem one could
| have with their kid.
|
| E.g. extremely commonly you will find kids who develop bad
| behavior despite their parents "telling them not to" will not
| only witness the bad behavior by their parents, but will be
| ignored, ridiculed, disrespected or mistrusted whenever they
| do in fact behave well.
|
| And it all boils down to the simple notion that you can't
| just tell your kid a thing and expect that to be the lesson.
| kgwxd wrote:
| My 17 yo, and me, are still suffering for poor account choices I
| made when he was young. My 10 yo will only ever have to remember
| his birth year is the same as mine when asked in regards to any
| of his accounts created by me.
| lucumo wrote:
| Family Link is kind of funny like that as well. As a parent you
| can limit which apps your child can use, and even how long they
| can use them. My child is above the age we can monitor their
| every move, but they're below the age where we can trust they
| won't spend all day playing games when they need to study. So
| that feature is nice.
|
| Except you have to allow the Google app. And you have to allow it
| unrestricted time. That's not all that bad yet, though not great.
| The annoying thing is that Google loves their little easter eggs.
| So the child is procrastinating by playing Pacman, Snake, that
| stupid Dino run game, and what not. Courtesy of the makers of the
| parental controls.
| mfld wrote:
| Similarly, the Play Store cannot be limited and so for a kid
| it's easy to spend time on promotional app videos there. So the
| app limits are mostly useless, since you have to fully lock the
| phone to disable this.
| fn-mote wrote:
| Dear All,
|
| As you post, please be clear what age range child you are
| discussing.
|
| There are a lot of posts here advocating strategies that make
| sense for a 10 year old but are ridiculous for a 15 year old.
|
| Remember: once the children have friends with unrestricted cell
| phones (essentially all 14+ year olds in the us), there are many
| many more options for them to go online.
|
| Also, I got my start as a "hacker" gaming, cheating, and doing
| less legal stuff ... nothing like getting level 99 equipment to
| incentivize learning how to read/edit a hex dump. Be aware of
| unintended consequences when you (try to) cut a child off from
| computer use.
|
| Having been involved with a reasonable number of problems, I'd
| say in the teen years negotiating and enforcing some kind of no-
| device sleep schedule is the most critical.
|
| If I had an answer to the rest of the addictive behavior, I
| wouldn't be here making this post.
| darkwater wrote:
| > Also, I got my start as a "hacker" gaming, cheating, and
| doing less legal stuff ... nothing like getting level 99
| equipment to incentivize learning how to read/edit a hex dump.
| Be aware of unintended consequences when you (try to) cut a
| child off from computer use.
|
| Yes, but no. I used to think the same, coming from the same
| background, and sometimes I still do but back in the day there
| was a big filter already (not everyone wanted or liked
| videogames or a PC), and we were not terminally online. Plus,
| for the average HNer there is a big survivorship bias on these
| topics because "I went earning 6 figures thanks to my
| experiences with computers back in the day".
|
| Nowadays almost everyone has access to an Internet connected
| smartphone, owning it is not a feature in itself anymore and
| the vast majority are not entertained trying to hack it. So it
| becomes something just like any other thing relates to
| children/teenagers: use common sense, adapt to your kids
| behavior, strengths and weaknesses and don't stick to rigid
| rules proposed by someone else that doesn't know you, but keep
| those rules in mind as an inspiration.
| sneak wrote:
| Why would a 15 year old warrant a mobile phone, much less an
| unrestricted one?
| LanceH wrote:
| By high school there is definitely an expectation that
| everyone has a phone. They will literally miss out on a
| normal method of communication between friends and
| classmates.
|
| They miss out on the social group and then fade away from it
| and just become "that one guy in our class."
|
| The last time I mentioned this several people argued that,
| "true friends would stick together" or some such. Well, if
| you already have those friends. But if you're in high school
| and finding yourself, you probably haven't met all of them
| yet.
|
| A lot of both communication and organizing of social events
| happen through the phone. Kids without a phone (or some
| online method) will just be forgotten. This is just the
| reality.
|
| Unrestricted access? That depends on the kid. We had them
| charge in the living room (no overnight use), and their
| computers were actual desktops in a single office in the
| house.
|
| We never used filtering or tracking software. The one
| exception was blocking youtube (through /etc/hosts) for my
| youngest during covid when it was too big a distraction.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| This is just generally true even as an adult. A lot of
| social events used to start out on text threads in the
| early 2000's and then moved on to Facebook Calendar by the
| mid 2000's and then Instagram and I don't even know how it
| would work now. But if you wanted to be in any particular
| social group you probably had to deal with the icky
| features of all of these social media apps just to do that.
| We needed a public square for our little villages
| everywhere and instead we got a man screaming at clouds and
| occasionally handing out invitations.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Not having a phone will most likely make your child a social
| pariah.
|
| They MIGHT be one of the few hyper-social ones that thrives
| despite being left out of online circles but they are the
| exception.
| watwut wrote:
| Cause practically speaking, school requires that. They will
| pointificate about devices, but simultaneously create rules
| that make them necessary.
| iamnothere wrote:
| While I agree that being this age doesn't automatically
| warrant having a smartphone, any kid who has an allowance can
| buy a bargain-basement Android phone to use over wifi. And
| smartphones are very concealable.
|
| (IMHO, once a kid has figured out how to do this, they have
| earned the privilege. It's part of growing up.)
|
| A responsible and forward-thinking parent could provide a
| Graphene OS smartphone if the kid absolutely insists on
| having one, to limit the privacy damage.
| patmorgan23 wrote:
| You think a high school freshman shouldn't have a cell phone?
| Their friends a year older are driving and they may want to
| do activities with them, and it's a good idea they have a
| reliable means of communication to their parents in case they
| need to come pick them up.
| mjg2 wrote:
| With due respect, this comment conveys a position of privilege
| and surviver's bias. I, like you, eschewed online rules as a
| minor and I luckily benefitted from this time in my expertise.
| I was lucky. I didn't run into predators when using TF2,
| Runescape, or MySpace, but that doesn't mean the threat wasn't
| validated on with persons (children at the time) that fell
| through the cracks.
|
| The story outlined, one of a child prodigy solo-navigating the
| gritty online world of pre-2000's, is old and tired. An
| _active_ parent can support a child at all ages safely in these
| "hacker" moments that are described without giving them un-
| reined access to tools. A parent should be able to ask "how was
| your day today?" and get a truthful answer about online
| activity, just like the same question being asked at the end of
| the school day. It's out of curiosity and protection, and from
| a nurtured relationship.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| If your kid lies you might not get a truthful answer to that
| question in person or online.
|
| You are actually expecting a lot from devices that you never
| had in the real world in the first place in order to mitigate
| a risk that is very scary but less likely to kill them than
| drugs and alcohol, swimming, bad driving, biking, getting hit
| by a car whilst walking, getting shot, or suicide.
|
| People are freaking out over stranger danger not because it
| is by the numbers prevalent but because they feel like they
| can control it then find out the controls suck.
|
| What if I started Bikesafe an always online dash cam / coach
| for your rider where AI would identify unsafe behaviour and
| coach your kid and virtually eliminate bike deaths. Would you
| feel more safe?
|
| What if you read again and again that it didn't work because
| of how many accidents are caused by drivers or momentary
| mistakes.
|
| Would you feel only as unsafe as before or worse?
| mjg2 wrote:
| First, I'm responding the more (politely) trivial remarks.
|
| > drugs and alcohol, swimming, bad driving, biking, getting
| hit by a car whilst walking, getting shot, or suicide.
|
| These are false equivalences-- when has a pool try to groom
| a child over the span of 3 years?
|
| > What if I started Bikesafe an always online dash cam /
| coach for your rider where AI would identify unsafe
| behaviour and coach your kid and virtually eliminate bike
| deaths. Would you feel more safe?
|
| This is wholesale the wrong approach. This is the parent
| absconding responsibility, which is my driving point of the
| problem.
|
| Now to the main point:
|
| > You are actually expecting a lot from devices that you
| never had in the real world in the first place ...
|
| I'm not expecting anything from my devices because machines
| cannot be held accountable for human choices; a gun cannot
| be held accountable for being misused. The internet is a
| powerful tool and users should understand the ramifications
| of certain actions.
|
| > If your kid lies you might not get a truthful answer to
| that question in person or online.
|
| That's a parenting moment that one should relish
| retrospectively. To teach them good morals and values, to
| remind them that you love them, and that lying about safety
| processes can be very dangerous.
| margalabargala wrote:
| Arguably this can increase the risk of death by suicide,
| quite a bit.
| mystraline wrote:
| In reality, the whole "stranger danger" is way overblown and
| always has been. Most of the time, sexual predators are going
| to be either family or friends.
|
| https://rainn.org/facts-statistics-the-scope-of-the-
| problem/...
|
| 93% of victims under 18 know their abuser.
|
| Sure there's 7% thats not, but a significant supermajority is
| family/friends. 59% were acquaintances, and 34% are family.
|
| Edit: seriously, -1 cause I link to actual facts, rather than
| shitty emotional outbursts? Family and friends of family have
| always been the major list of suspects for child sex abuse.
| They're the ones who have time and access.
|
| But somehow linking to cited facts is -1 central. Sigh.
| hamdingers wrote:
| First, that statistic sources a study from 2000, a time
| when zero children had smartphones and approximately zero
| children played online games.
|
| Second, even if the statistic wasn't obsolete, a groomed
| kid knows their abuser by definition.
|
| I understand what you're trying to get at and suspect
| you're right, but the comment does not make your case well.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| Keep in mind, this study is only physical sexual abuse.
|
| Internet has opened up an entire world of virtual sexual
| abuse.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I was one of those kids. I got a 300 baud modem the year
| after _Wargames_ came out. It was a whole different world.
|
| My wife and I disagreed about letting my son have my old
| desktop replacement laptop at a young age. Of course I said
| yes, based on my own experience, but my wife turned out to be
| right in the end. He got into some pretty dark places and the
| toxic relationships he developed with other people his age
| were bad enough and the trouble he got into was real and not
| hypothetical.
|
| He's turned it around and is getting the support to do well
| relative to his Gen Z peers, but it took some harrowing
| experiences to get there.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| My wife was right too. My kids ended up being unable to
| manage their device use at all, they developed seriously
| bad habits, lied and deceived extensively to gain access to
| devices, and repeatedly sacrificed relationships and trust
| for more screen time. There were years there where I
| thought surely they'd click with it and develop better
| habits, make better choices (with our guidance), and so on.
| Abstinence could be worse, right? Some exposure would be
| helpful and lead to useful conversations and so on.
|
| The Internet, Internet access, and apps have changed since
| I was a kid. Despite their time on digital devices along
| with my efforts to teach them, my kids have no idea how
| computers work or how to use them very effectively. The
| skills they have developed to gain access to them were
| largely social engineering and lying. They exclusively
| waste time and brain cells when they're on screens.
|
| One of my kids essentially can't have access to devices
| because he'll burn hours into the night playing really,
| really stupid games and watching porn. This is ALL he wants
| to do on phones or computers. Sometimes he will window
| shop.
|
| You might think this is largely due to my failure to have
| insight into what my kids are doing and limiting access
| correctly, but that isn't the case. At first we were
| somewhat lenient and figured if they accessed things they
| shouldn't, we'd see it and have conversations. That was
| very early on. The conversations did nothing. I began
| putting severe restrictions on devices quite quickly
| because problems became evident quickly. I was a bit naive
| about it at first, my wife was not. We clashed a bit, but
| then device theft and social engineering started and I
| quickly aligned with her. Since then, many years ago, very
| little access has been on account of us not protecting
| devices properly. He is extremely good at gaining access
| when he's not supposed to, and extremely good at hiding it.
| It's like having an addict in the house.
|
| He has no future in computers. He doesn't care about
| computers at all. He is incredibly compulsive, self-
| harming, and freely harms his relationships to get what he
| wants. This has been going on for about 5 years; he's 16
| now, and I'm pretty scared for when he's out on his own and
| doesn't have anyone to protect him from himself. I think
| there will be some brutal lessons. Lost jobs, lost
| relationships, lost confidence and self esteem. I'm not
| looking forward to it.
|
| I have no idea why I turned sneaking onto computers into a
| career rather than rotted away like they do. I wanted to
| learn to program. I was curious. My kids want to play NBA
| 2k and watch porn. That's about it.
| anothereng wrote:
| You were born in an era where the internet wasn't as
| addictive as it is nowadays.
| selectively wrote:
| Heroin is addictive. Physical compulsion is addiction.
| What you are talking about is not addiction. It shares
| some elements, but no one is breaking into cars so they
| can scroll Instagram.
| ronsor wrote:
| The Internet now mostly consists of short-form garbage
| and dark patterns.
|
| Also,
|
| > He is incredibly compulsive, self-harming, and freely
| harms his relationships to get what he wants.
|
| This probably indicates deeper psychological issues that
| aren't solely related to Internet addiction.
| xg15 wrote:
| Parent: All I want is an off switch!
|
| HN: No no no let me stop you right there
| hexbin010 wrote:
| Why are you addressing HN like a headmaster addressing
| schoolchildren?
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| The main point of childhood is to develop a solid basic
| humanity with good habits and a good moral compass. That means
| moral, intellectual, spiritual, and physical development. Good
| parenting and a good social environment support these. As such,
| these goods should be prioritized.
|
| We know that children and teenagers are vulnerable to all sorts
| of filth that the internet makes available very easily, and
| indeed even inflicts without consent onto users. Porn, for
| example, was something that was more difficult to encounter
| before the internet, and when you did encounter it, it was in
| smaller amounts. Today, you are a URL away from an unlimited
| sea of it, and the ubiquity of mobile devices means restricting
| access is difficult. This makes parenting more challenging. And
| that's a more pernicious even if common problem. Social media
| and SFV cause all sorts of developmental harm without suffering
| the same stigmas as pornography or violence, and so its use
| continue with the full approval of the social environment.
|
| (And age range here is not so important to discuss; pornography
| consumption and social media/SFV use is bad for everyone,
| including adults.)
|
| > Be aware of unintended consequences when you (try to) cut a
| child off from computer use.
|
| A corollary of what I wrote about is that you have to
| understand what matters. Becoming a "hacker" isn't the priority
| of childhood, and it's odd to prioritize that. It isn't worth
| anything if you are left screwed up by consuming bad content.
| (Nor does most of the most fruitful experimentation require
| constant and unfettered internet access. Without maturity and
| discipline, the internet easily becomes an enabler of shallow
| and superficial engagement. Deeper exploration is often best
| facilitated by disconnecting.) It's also senseless to appeal to
| exceptions.
|
| However, I do think that the most important factor isn't
| parental controls, but the family environment, what parents
| teach their children, and the social groups your family and
| your children move around in. If parents are relying on
| technology as a substitute for their job as parents, then
| children will easily fall prey to all sorts of trash. But if
| children have parents who communicate clearly what they should
| and should not be doing, maintain a healthy and active family
| life, and model good behavior by example while penalizing bad
| behavior, then children will generally stick to good behaviors.
|
| I think law has an important role to play. The former should
| support the latter. And more fundamentally, this requires a
| certain backtracking from the anything goes/do what feels good
| ethos of the contemporary moral landscape. Moral confusion is
| the biggest factor. Law is effectively a determination of
| general moral principles within certain socially and culturally
| concrete circumstances. As the old expression goes, _lex
| iniusta non est lex_ (an unjust law is not a law). The point of
| the law is to guard the common good (which is what makes a
| society) and help steer people away from the bad and toward the
| good. We all need these to live good lives, and we need to
| finally put to rest the pernicious notion that the law is not
| about moral guidance and that all it exists for is to secure
| our "rights" to whatever we want, where the understanding of
| rights entails a destructive _do what thou wilt_ relativism.
| True freedom is not the ability to do whatever you damn well
| please. It is the ability to do what is good, and to be able to
| do the good, one must be virtuous - a proper formation - that
| enables you to be good. Vice cripples our ability to be. A
| legal system and a society that is supportive of virtue and the
| good is good for its individual members. One that embraces a
| bullshit "neutrality" is an easy target for predatory
| exploitation. There is a great deal of money to be made from
| vice and stupidity. We become morally defenseless in the face
| of the wolves. Might becomes right, and in a culture of moral
| relativism, we internalize this tyrannical false principle.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| and I was groomed and raped at age 13 because I had unfettered
| access to AOL chat rooms
|
| caution is necessary and kids can learn plenty without
| unrestricted access
|
| I personally would have been better off without internet
| access, no knowledge of hex dumps would have been worth it.
| It's a little upsetting that you're using that as an example of
| why kids should have more permissive access.
| DebugDruid wrote:
| You blame unfettered access to AOL chat, I blame your parents
| for giving you internet access and not teaching you to never
| share your real name or real address online. Mine taught me
| that early on. Later, I learned about proxies so I could
| further hide my approximate IP location from danger.
| Bluecobra wrote:
| > Be aware of unintended consequences when you (try to) cut a
| child off from computer use.
|
| In the mid 90's I got my first PC when I was 13 but my parents
| would not let me online. I ended up finding a way via nefarious
| means. I bought a 25' telephone cord from Radio Shack and when
| my parents weren't home I would unplug their bedroom phone. I
| discovered that if I ran the Prodigy installer it would connect
| to the Internet briefly to download the latest phone numbers in
| my area. I found that I could alt-tab out of the full screen
| installer and use the lnternet unfiltered for about 10 minutes
| or so before they kicked me off. This worked for about a year
| or so.
|
| I then had to resort to stealing my parent's credit card and
| signing up for free trials and cancelling them before the
| charges incurred. I eventually screwed up big time. I
| downloaded a "free porn" BBS dialer and it made an
| international call to South America and ran up the phone bill
| $300 or so. I lost my computer privileges for a couple of
| months. I guess the silver lining was when I turned 16, I
| immediately got a job and my drivers license so I could pay for
| my own phone line. I kept my grades up to maintain privileges
| and was a straight arrow since.
| tolerance wrote:
| This was a tough read. On one end I want to hold this parent
| accountable...and he should be held accountable for any
| negligence on his part. As noted, Gabb does indicate that GroupMe
| facilitates communication with strangers. Because, well, it's a
| messaging app like any other.
|
| I don't want to digress too far, but you know what I had when I
| was young and wanted to talk about books? Libraries. That's
| beside the point but somewhere is a point to be made and I don't
| want to pry into this man's personal life beyond what he's
| already shared about this ugly experience. But I imagine that few
| things can deter a predator like a swarm of librarians.
|
| " _I could almost hear the crack. Could almost see that OLED
| display splintering into a thousand pieces. The little Joy-Cons
| skittering across the floor. My son 's face. My wife's face. The
| stunned silence._"
|
| He should've broken the Switch. Anyone who's ever destroyed
| electronics knows how cathartic it is. Men are only afforded so
| many opportunities to display healthy acts of aggression in front
| of their wives and children. Of course never _towards_ them.
|
| " _What I did was announce, in a voice louder than necessary,
| that nobody was to ask me about anything Minecraft-related on the
| Nintendo Switch for a minimum of two weeks._ "
|
| I suppose that'll do.
|
| " _Here 's what I want: an off switch. A single setting that says
| "this child cannot go online, communicate with strangers, spend
| money, or download anything without my explicit permission."
| Instead I get a maze, complex enough that when something goes
| wrong, I'm at fault for a tooltip I didn't hover over, a blog
| post I didn't read, a submenu I didn't find. Maybe that's by
| design. Maybe it's neglect. I don't know._
|
| _What I know is this. My son just wants to play video games and
| talk to his friends. I just want to keep him safe. Somewhere
| between those two things, I 'm supposed to become an expert in
| the convoluted parental control schemes of Gabb, Nintendo,
| Microsoft, and Xbox, while a stranger's Christmas morning texts
| sit in my son's phone history._"
|
| Again. It's easy for me to blame this dude because I live in a
| world where this sort of scenario is wholly unlikely and to a
| great degree his experience explains why that is the case for me.
| But this story was too well put together. I never thought that a
| curl one liner and a bash script could emote a form of anger that
| I empathize with so readily.
|
| I hope this inspires him to question the extent to which he's
| relegated parental controls in other areas, if it's at all the
| case elsewhere. Either destroy them or set firmer boundaries and
| raise your expectations for yourself and whatever third parties
| he sees fit to be held responsible for his household and their
| affairs. It may take another 12 years or so...but your sons
| should thank you if you're successful.
| martin-t wrote:
| I don't mean to sound like the stereotypical "I did X and turned
| out fine" but...
|
| I grew up with an internet access on my computer in my room
| without anybody watching over my back and without any
| restrictions and nothing bad really happened. Meanwhile these
| days some people around me with children around the 10-15 range
| seem think their children cannot be trusted and restrictions are
| absolutely essential.
|
| Has the internet really changed that much in the last decade or
| two? Or are people and media just talking about the dangers more?
|
| ---
|
| Also, what happens to these kids when they reach adulthood and
| the guard rails come off?
|
| Has anybody tried an alternative like teaching children about the
| actual dangers, how to recognize manipulation, etc? I have a
| feeling many people (including children) don't really learn
| unless they get hurt so the best we can do it making sure they do
| get hurt but only a little.
|
| E.g. let them get scammed in a game instead of real life. Or
| pretend to be a stranger and try to befriend them, seeing if they
| fall for it?
| immibis wrote:
| The internet has changed incredibly in the last two decades,
| and has almost nothing in common with the internet of two
| decades ago. Predators of all varieties are everywhere; many of
| them are billion-dollar companies. Scams are everywhere.
|
| Getting scammed in RuneScape is probably a good learning
| experience, but is RuneScape still the _only_ game that 's like
| the old experience of RuneScape? That and Minecraft I suppose,
| but you can't really filter out servers in Minecraft.
| eYrKEC2 wrote:
| I think the difference is that the parents of today are _you_.
| _They_ grew up with unrestricted internet access, because their
| parents didn't.
|
| I think that pornography is poison and my parents didn't know
| that I had access to it. "Not my kid!", they said. But my
| generation says, "It's every. single. kid."
|
| > Has anybody tried an alternative like teaching children about
| the actual dangers, how to recognize manipulation, etc?
|
| Another poison is alcohol. Some people think that letting their
| kids access alcohol in their house is reasonable. I think it is
| better to wait until your brain is more developed before trying
| alcohol. First experiences with alcohol at a later age tends to
| enable people to have a less worse relationship with alcohol.
| ball_of_lint wrote:
| Yes, the internet has changed that much.
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/youtube-for-kids-videos-problems...
|
| Lots of people are in this thread saying "ah, just tell your
| children not to get groomed / not to watch disturbing content".
| They're kids. They are going to disobey their parents. There's
| no one here arguing we don't need to teach kids these things.
| But, like how when you're learning to drive you start in a
| parking lot with a crappy car, we need a way to make a
| relatively safe place for them to learn. Parental controls are
| currently failing to do that.
|
| Furthermore, where you and I and median commenter on HN might
| be an engaged, attentive parent, there's lots of parents out
| there who are not. Having a good, easy-to-setup version of
| these controls that a less engaged parent will actually turn on
| would make a positive impact on those children who aren't
| receiving the teaching you suggest.
| ball_of_lint wrote:
| > Or pretend to be a stranger and try to befriend them, seeing
| if they fall for it?
|
| That seems like a great way to destroy any trust in you your
| child might have.
| alembic_fumes wrote:
| This pervasive desire to block, protect, monitor, and control
| your children's online activities through nebulous supervision
| tools seems like a particularly American solution to a
| particularly American problem. Much like how little Timmy simply
| can't go out to play without a GPS anklet and an air tag behind
| each ear, so too can't he go online without a supervised account
| on a supervised device on a supervised connection.
|
| Take an earnest interest in your child's activities, both online
| and offline. Guide them how to behave in strange, even weird and
| scary situations with strangers. Be the reliable adult in their
| life to whom they can tell when they encounter something
| unpleasant, online or offline. Under the guidance of a parent
| your children will be safer than behind any amount of protective
| layers that these so called child-safety apps provide, and they
| will also know how to help their friends to navigate risk and
| avoid danger.
|
| Or put another way, if your child must eventually swim in the
| sea, would rather that they know how to swim, or strap a fifth
| flotation device onto their back?
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| Europeans have trouble understanding in part because social
| trust is still high in many parts of Europe due to regional
| monoculturalism.
| logicchains wrote:
| >social trust is still high in many parts of Europe due to
| regional monoculturalism
|
| Online predators aren't a multiculturalism problem; an
| entirely white community is still capable of producing an
| abundance of paedophiles.
| krapp wrote:
| Why did you edit out the part about being "as racist as
| they come?"
|
| Come now, stand behind your principles.
| jjulius wrote:
| >Come now, stand behind your principles.
|
| Are we 100% sure that the edit wasn't a result of a
| reevaluation of "principles"?
| logicchains wrote:
| I realised that I didn't need my racism credentials to
| argue that white people have no shortage of paedophiles.
|
| Fun fact: in spite of only comprising about 60% of the US
| population, whites account for over 80% of federal child
| pornography offenders.
| bluGill wrote:
| White covers a large varity of different cultures. Even
| something smaller like German covers many different
| cultures.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| "Horrific betrayal..."
|
| Online grooming happens on a gigantic scale in Europe. It
| just doesn't get the headlines it should. And parents don't
| care to protect their children. They're busy.
| amtamt wrote:
| While this is a sound theoritical advice, the real world has
| changed a lot. Parents and elder siblings are not the only
| people kids interact with. For every parent mindful of dangers
| of unsupervised internet access, there are many parents who
| give unrestricted access to tiktok (and rest of the internet)
| because everyone other person does that, and then kids share.
|
| Businesses don't care for the careful minority when they know
| such advices will be shared, silencing those who really care.
|
| Even the feature name "parental control" is chosen to induce
| guilt in parents.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > to a particularly American problem
|
| The Internet and mobile phones are not a particularly American
| problem. They're literally everywhere.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| Some kids only need the honor system, but others, especially
| younger ones, need hard restrictions. If the parent is
| reasonable and the kid grows up smart, they'll be thankful
| later, which is why kids also get restricted offline.
|
| Rough analogies:
|
| - Not letting kids buy unlimited candy ~ not giving them
| unlimited screen time
|
| - Preventing your kid from interacting with "bad" kids or going
| into unsafe neighborhoods ~ blocking "bad" websites
|
| - Not letting your kid watch adult shows or go to adult places
| ~ automatically hiding NSWF content
|
| On the last point: if you're not careful and your kid is
| unlucky, they may find shocking and traumatizing content
| accidentally. This is true in real life but the internet moreso
| (vs safe neighborhoods), even today. e.g. I regularly hear
| reports about Instagram recommending gore seemingly out of
| nowhere, such as https://www.cbsnews.com/news/instagram-
| violence/ (Instagram seems particularly notorious for some
| reason).
| danaris wrote:
| This _is_ good advice.
|
| However, it doesn't work for families where both parents have
| to work 2-3 jobs just to keep food on the table and the heat on
| all winter.
|
| And no; poor families neither do nor _should_ "just keep the
| kids from getting cellphones" or something (not that you would
| necessarily make that argument, but I've seen its like too many
| times on HN...).
|
| Poor parents can certainly still "take an earnest interest",
| but they're much less likely to be able to _be there_...and,
| frankly, due to the stresses and pressures of Living While
| Poor, they 're less likely to have the emotional bandwidth to
| communicate clearly and productively about these things, too.
|
| Now, what _is_ the answer? ...hell if I know. Being poor sucks,
| and there aren 't always good ways around that.
| cameldrv wrote:
| You shouldn't constantly be hovering over your kids. Still, you
| don't want them to get in serious trouble. As a parent, you can
| curate the options they have without knowing exactly what they
| are doing. You can fill bookshelves with appropriate books, and
| if you see them reading on the couch, you don't need to know
| exactly what they're reading. Some people also are able to
| control where they live, what schools their kids go to, what
| friends you invite over to your house, etc.
|
| One day your kid might have the friend over that you suspect
| might be trouble. You check in a little more often. Online is
| harder. You see them with the device, and without controls,
| what's going on could be almost anything.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Because I want a device for my kids to play games.
|
| Not communicate.
|
| Not buy stuff.
|
| Just play (local) games.
|
| Stuff like online communications will come at a later age.
| Absolutely no reason to start explaining that to a 5 year old.
|
| And absolutely no reason to have all 3 bundled in one.
|
| > Take an earnest interest in your child's activities, both
| online and offline. Guide them how to behave in strange, even
| weird and scary situations with strangers. Be the reliable
| adult in their life to whom they can tell when they encounter
| something unpleasant, online or offline. Under the guidance of
| a parent your children will be safer than behind any amount of
| protective layers that these so called child-safety apps
| provide, and they will also know how to help their friends to
| navigate risk and avoid danger.
|
| Everything you just said is true for gun ownership as well!
| elros wrote:
| On a certain level, it's also a question of different
| parenting philosophy.
|
| > Stuff like online communications will come at a later age.
| Absolutely no reason to start explaining that to a 5 year
| old.
|
| I agree, but I also see absolutely no reason why 5 years old
| children would have access to a gaming device. Pretty much
| any other activity I can imagine is better for them.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > I agree, but I also see absolutely no reason why 5 years
| old children would have access to a gaming device. Pretty
| much any other activity I can imagine is better for them.
|
| I suggest expanding your imagination skills. There are
| definitely worse activities, like watching TV.
|
| And there's physical limit to how much physical activity
| one can be doing. There's definitely a point of diminishing
| returns there.
|
| And the skills one can develop with carefully curated games
| are hard to reproduce in any entertaining manner.
|
| I mean, sure, I could have him do math but it's a lot more
| boring.
|
| Playing games is definitely an "and", not an "exclusive or"
| proposition.
|
| I was given access to computer games at that age and I'm
| definitely appreciative for it. I only realized the value
| when I was well into my 30s.
| soperj wrote:
| > And there's physical limit to how much physical
| activity one can be doing
|
| Do you hang out with many 5 year olds? They're made of
| energy.
|
| > I could have him do math but it's a lot more boring
|
| I did Math all the time with my 5 year old and he loved
| it, but then I also love math, and it's easy to make fun.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Fair points, but understand that this is a
| multidimensional issue, with each dimension being a
| continuum.
|
| I know plenty of people using the exact same arguments to
| argue that kids should not waste time with Lego. There
| are better physical activities.
| soperj wrote:
| people are definitely crazy.
| krupan wrote:
| We got an Atari computer when I was 5. I was allowed to
| play Pac-Man and Donkey Kong for as long as I wanted. Turns
| out, those games were not designed by the same people who
| make slot machines, and they got frustrating pretty quickly
| and I chose to go do other things. This scenario not even
| being an option today is what most people are complaining
| about here.
| squibonpig wrote:
| Gun ownership isn't a terrible example honestly. I would have
| been probably 8 or so when I was allowed to traipse around in
| the woods near my dad's house with a BB gun, following
| extensive safety teaching of course. We would go out in the
| yard and shoot a shotgun and a rifle around that same age.
| People are probably not careful enough with guns right now in
| America given the stats, but it's not at all unreasonable in
| a rural context for a relatively young kid to be trusted with
| use of a firearm, even for short unsupervised periods. The
| real thing that a parent has to do (beyond still waiting
| until an appropriate age) is to extensively drill in the
| safety habits and proper use and know their kid well enough
| to determine whether they're ready for that responsibility.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Sure, but do you understand that it's perfectly reasonable
| to be able to buy a toy gun and _not_ have to explain gun
| safety to them?
|
| Or would you recommend that all toy guns have the ability
| to be dangerous and all parents should train them because
| of the prevalence of guns in society?
| sojsurf wrote:
| A few thoughts:
|
| - Perhaps we have different ideas of the appropriate age
| to wean kids off of toys and teach them to use real (and
| sometimes dangerous) things. Today's discussion is about
| guns, but the same could be said for boats, motorcycles,
| woodworking equipment, etc. I would like my children to
| be well rounded and well equipped when they become
| adults. However, I acknowledge that this may not be
| normal anymore: Many families seem to be content with
| their teenagers playing games all day long (ironically,
| games with guns!)
|
| - It sounds like you have the gun in a "toy" category.
| For my kids, guns are absolutely not in the toy category.
| They are tools, used for hunting and protection, and
| access to these tools comes with guard rails and
| significant responsibility. I would rather my kids never
| get used to guns as toys.
|
| - This is bigger than just personal decisions: In my
| state, teenagers used to be allowed to work on
| construction sites in the summers. By the time they
| graduated, many of these guys had real skills they could
| support their family with. In our rush to protect kids,
| this kind of work is no longer taught in classes or
| available as summer work for young people. We have made
| it increasingly hard for young people to "grow up"!
| BeetleB wrote:
| > For my kids, guns are absolutely not in the toy
| category. They are tools, used for hunting and
| protection, and access to these tools comes with guard
| rails and significant responsibility.
|
| The same is true for cars. Are you also against toy cars?
|
| > By the time they graduated, many of these guys had real
| skills they could support their family with. In our rush
| to protect kids, this kind of work is no longer taught in
| classes or available as summer work for young people. We
| have made it increasingly hard for young people to "grow
| up"!
|
| This is a totally different issue from access to games.
| Why couple the two? Are you implying one cannot be taught
| those skills if they have access to games?
| sojsurf wrote:
| > Are you implying one cannot be taught those skills if
| they have access to games?
|
| Nah, I think games can be very valuable, especially
| communal, in-person games. I don't mind access to games
| at all... I think I look at the various forces around
| children and teens today, and it feels like we've taken
| away a lot of the things that were very valuable for
| development because they might be dangerous, and replaced
| them with replicas that are safe but lack some of the
| value and experience that came with the dangerous thing.
|
| As an example, hunting games are safer than hunting, but
| hunting games do not teach you to be patient and still
| for hours, they do not teach gun safety, they do not
| teach you to stick it out when things get cold and
| uncomfortable. They do not teach you how to do something
| useful with the animal after you shot it, and there is no
| real cost to being sloppy and injuring but not killing an
| animal that is now suffering in the woods.
|
| I'm sure you've heard people talk about the
| "infantilization" of young adults. What factors do you
| see behind this? How would you suggest we teach young
| people how to do hard things?
| crusty wrote:
| How big are your feet? Because the shoe horn you just
| used to squeeze your barely veiled disdain for parentting
| "choices" that aren't like yours into this thread about
| user-adversarial parental settings by major game system
| manufacturers was massive.
| sojsurf wrote:
| This thread was a follow-up to squibonpig's comment about
| the parental responsibility and the value of giving young
| people access to things that are dangerous when it's done
| with proper guidance. I agree with him, with the caveat
| that "the internet" is dangerous more like a city at
| night than a gun.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Unsupervised access to most dangerous tools can wait
| until they're teenagers. Dangerous tools shouldn't be the
| only option.
| ip26 wrote:
| Maybe the analogy here is you can buy only one kind of gun.
| That gun can load any ammunition. It's easy for children to
| get their hands on anything from bb's to BMG50. The gun has
| parental controls to allow selecting which ammunition the
| gun will accept. It's up to the parents to decipher the
| difference between all the types, and the out-of-box
| default is all types are allowed.
|
| Some commenters admonish parents for trying to use these
| parental controls at all. _"Just be good parents and
| instruct your 6 year old not to use hollow point, 7.62mm,
| or fmj"_
| Groxx wrote:
| Meanwhile in the EU: growing effort to simply outright ban
| social media for under-16s.
|
| It's really not unique. America might be high on the list and a
| bit weird about it, but it is most definitely not alone.
| ares623 wrote:
| Because the situation is not symmetrical. The corporations and
| strangers have direct access to the child's online presence and
| are constantly monitoring and hovering over them. If the
| corporations don't want to lose that constant access then the
| parents react by being vigilant on their end. It _is_ the
| social contract set by the corporations.
| guelo wrote:
| Particularly American? What does that mean? That parents in
| other countries are better than us? That they have more time,
| more know how, more wisdom? Sorry but that's stupid and
| insulting, which I suspect was your intent.
| oytis wrote:
| Not necessarily better, just less controlling. E.g. in
| Germany there exists an imperative to give children freedom
| despite dangers. Parents don't expect from themselves to be
| able to shield their chidren from all possible dangers
| either. Not sure if it's better, but it's a different
| parenting culture for sure.
|
| It mostly extends to interactions in the physical world
| though - restricting children's use of digital devices is
| socially acceptable and expected
| mjh2539 wrote:
| In Germany, the state intentionally put children in the
| custody of pedophiles:
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/07/26/the-german-
| exp...
|
| I have absolutely no faith in German intuitions regarding
| what is appropriate or inappropriate about the care of
| children. Ask me again in a century and I will reevaluate
| my opinion.
| nine_k wrote:
| Honest question: are you a parent?
|
| My daughter, when she was 6 or 7, was terrified by certain
| things she accidentally found on YouTube, and _asked_ me to
| have them filtered out. At 13, she already didn 't need that,
| of course, but the notion of "kids" includes _" small kids"_,
| who definitely should not be exposed to everything the Internet
| has to offer, or let to go out unsupervised.
| fpauser wrote:
| Young kids exposed to overly attracting games cannot limit
| these activities by themselves. This has nothing to do with a
| lack of explanation, but rather with how the brains of young
| kids function. Thus, accessible parental controls with a simple
| mechanism that limits the access to games, blocks ads, disables
| marketplace access and sets a maximum gaming time per day are a
| much-needed tool that parents should have in their hands.
| trinix912 wrote:
| Young kids are usually also too young to get a phone or buy
| games themselves, so it's mostly the parents who let them
| play on their devices. By this I mean parents who hand their
| 3 year old a phone with YouTube at the dinner table.
|
| It's also parents who get them their first phone and choose
| what kind of a phone to get them (it's not all that unusual
| to see kids with dumbphones anymore).
|
| Of course there should be a way to limit things like
| transactions and screen time but it doesn't have to be this
| whole surveillance tech with GPS tracking, granular
| permissions, and revealing what the kid texted his friends on
| a given day.
| americantrash wrote:
| I made the mistake of giving my child access to Roblox when he
| was 7, assuming that they did some sort of moderation. Luckily,
| the worst thing he found was a game that told him he was going
| to die that night. It scared the hell out of him. After doing a
| bit more research on Roblox, I decided to ban it from the
| household. I'm happy that I did, considering it seems that it's
| just a cesspool of predators.
|
| It's fine and well to say the solution is to just be around
| more or take an interest in what they're doing, but that is
| hard to do with full time jobs, multiple kids, etc. Parental
| controls are supposed to exist to let the parents let their
| kids explore in a safe space. It's not about constant
| supervision or tracking, its more akin to hiring a babysitter
| rather than leave your children home alone.
| denkmoon wrote:
| Do you reject bicycle helmets and other safety apparatus
| because you take an interest in your child's activities?
| They're gonna have to learn to ride without falling off
| eventually anyway
| ball_of_lint wrote:
| Yes, people should be good parents.
|
| But still, there's going to be many who are not. I would rather
| good parental controls existed to make it easier for people to
| be better parents. Yes, maybe parental controls don't make the
| difference from bad to good, but they do make a positive
| difference for many.
| alexpotato wrote:
| Of all of the uses for AI/LLMs, setting parental controls feels
| like it would be such a massive net win for everyone involved.
|
| Instead, LLMs are being used to replace support people at the
| larger platforms (e.g. X Box) with the clear goal of "make it
| HARDER to get support" (or as patio11 would say "their goal is to
| get you off the phone as quickly as possible ")
| knallfrosch wrote:
| > Hey Gemini, I don't want my kid to chat with strangers on the
| internet. He needs to be online to play Fortnite on his Switch.
| How do I do this?
|
| Seems simple enough to me
| voidUpdate wrote:
| > " and no easy way to make this thing function like an old-
| school Game Boy and just let a kid have fun with a game
| cartridge"
|
| Have you considered buying them an old-school gameboy?
| singpolyma3 wrote:
| Controls can never replace parenting, no matter how good they
| make them.
| jdlyga wrote:
| If you don't want your kid to go online, don't buy them a
| Nintendo Switch Online membership. Or give them a handheld like a
| Miyoo Mini without WiFi.
| sneak wrote:
| This post makes it clear to me that you should not be giving
| devices such as the Switch to children.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| The issue is, and always will be, 3rd party trust. You cannot
| assume your child is safe using XYZ until you thoroughly audit
| the app/game/device and enumerate all their loopholes, plug-ins,
| and rushed updates. The sensical method would be a device-wide
| deny all firewall rule, where no TCP connection is allowed in or
| out without explicit parental consent. E.g. Alice wants to chat
| with Bob via chatmonkey. Approve this one time connection? Good
| luck finding anything on the market that supports and enforces
| this very sane level of parental control.
| eYrKEC2 wrote:
| To concur, the principle with guarding your children is the
| same as the principle of guarding your software systems.
|
| Defense in depth. Multiple layers. Calender reminders to audit
| devices, usage, and look at router logs. Check in with your
| kids.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| What was the punishment for the 12 year old? This will tell us
| everything we need to know about this story.
| artyom wrote:
| I'm kind of with you on this one. 12yo is old enough to
| understand the rules (assuming they were _clearly set_ ) and if
| he/she was willingly communicating with a stranger, that phone
| should get the hammer with no replacement whatsoever. I've seen
| this done, it works.
| polotics wrote:
| Kids make mistakes. You do not want predators to use the
| threat of your punishment as a lever on your kid.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| If you apply this concept broadly you will see this isnt a
| great philosophy.
| ceayo wrote:
| What I believe the author did was instead of teaching their
| child that they may not talk to strangers, they believed
| there just is a magic button to have these strangers not
| exist.
| GaryBluto wrote:
| > that phone should get the hammer with no replacement
| whatsoever.
|
| Trying to scare children into following rules does not and
| will not end well.
|
| > I've seen this done, it works.
|
| You think it works because the child has realized that they
| will need to be better at hiding their actions in the future.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| user: GaryBluto created: 3 months ago
| mystraline wrote:
| Or instead of turning parental controls on, instead teach your
| children how to identify bad stuff online. That way, they can
| catch people (peers OR adults) doing or asking really bad stuff.
| And teaching also has great benefits of lasting a lifetime.
|
| Well, except for doing parental controls on your boomer parents
| TV, blocking Fox news. Thats a good usage of it. You're not going
| to defeat propaganda believability with boomers. So blocking is
| best bet.
| knallfrosch wrote:
| "I'm a cute girl of your age. Here are some nudes. Wanna send
| me some too?"
|
| Bam, lost.
| GaryBluto wrote:
| > Well, except for doing parental controls on your boomer
| parents TV, blocking Fox news. Thats a good usage of it. You're
| not going to defeat propaganda believability with boomers. So
| blocking is best bet.
|
| What an odd viewpoint. "It's bad to use limit your children's
| access to the internet in any way, but trying to stop other
| adults from accessing things I deem to be wrong are good!"
| bryan_w wrote:
| One thing you can do: glue the device into a dock, hook it up to
| the family TV then set the expectations that they can only use it
| when an adult is around (or take the power adaptor when you leave
| if you need to be strict about it).
|
| But the author is right, it should be easy to set appropriate
| limits out of the box.
| mjg2 wrote:
| This HN post fits into the category of "Pithy blog title with
| casually anecdotal content."
|
| Software companies will never earnestly attempt to protect
| children because that action ("acknowledging children are in
| danger by using our product") acknowledges risk and introduces
| liability. (VCs hate that shit, especially Silicon Valley VCs.)
| In the United States, decades ago, laws were introduced to induce
| accountability of online platforms in regard to IP and child
| protection laws in the context of user generated content (forums,
| markets, chatrooms). Basically, these websites/corporations
| bulked at the weight of accountability ("how are we to monitor
| every user's action all the time?", "We'll be sued immediately by
| trolls.", etc.). The parties involved eventually came to a
| resolution that there's a "notice period" that organizations use
| to enforce this behavior on its communities.
|
| If I were to write a blog titled "Parent Controls Aren't for
| Parents", my opening salvo would be "They are minimal-effort
| guardrails to protect corporations from being sued by negligent
| parents for post-incident harm."
| knallfrosch wrote:
| A GameBoy would have been cheaper, offline and worked without
| an account. Yet the author chose to spend his money on the
| Switch2.
|
| What's the market to learn from this? You're saying one thing
| but voting with your wallet.
| Rohansi wrote:
| I agree with you but you can't just go out and buy a Gameboy
| anymore. And gaming is more of a social activity now where
| you'll need internet access.
| hosh wrote:
| The author of article seems under the impression that parental
| controls allows parents to stop having to assess risk for
| themselves.
| shevy-java wrote:
| > A single setting that says "this child cannot go online,
| communicate with strangers, spend money, or download anything
| without my explicit permission."
|
| I understand the problem domain - some people try to exploit and
| take advantage of kids. That's a problem, I get it.
|
| At the same time, I still think children should not be assumed to
| be idiots. I remember we oldschool people, when we were young, we
| played Quake at university campus (we could only play on holidays
| because one friend had the key to the room, it was a side room
| though; on saturday other students were not there, so we had a
| full room with about 30 computers in the 1990s era). We were
| about 15 years old, so granted, no more young kids. And the
| technology wasn't quite as advanced, so I am not saying this is
| 1:1 comparable. But young kids today often have smartphones. They
| have the internet non-stop. I don't think parental censorship
| works as a model here. Again, I get it that too young kids are
| too trusting, and there are creeps - but there is not really an
| alternative to having kids go through thought processes and
| understand the issues here. In warcraft 3, young gamers were
| quite competitive and good. So if they can learn to be better
| than older people, they will have no real difficulty
| understanding predators. (Again, it depends on the age; but if
| your kid is 6 years old, why can there only be games that are
| played online? Plus it is just chatting right? I remember playing
| games at the yahoo website, we chatted too. I don't think that
| was a problem per se. The website makes it sound as if everyone
| and everything has that problem. I don't think this is the case.)
|
| Edit: Others pointed out the age range problem. I agree. So,
| which age range are we talking about? Is the age even mentioned
| on the website?
|
| Edit2: Ah yes, 12 years old. Sorry but at 12 years old, I am
| having a hard time buying into the "predators exploit him every
| time". That seems to be ... strange. His son would probably
| object to the claim he made on the website here aka slandering -
| perhaps.
| mrbluecoat wrote:
| I completely empathize with the author. I had that same reaction
| years ago when I discovered strangers were sending unsolicited
| pictures to my nine year old through DuoLingo! Made me sick.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Just recently did this with XBox.
|
| I cannot prevent the kid from seeing the marketplace.
|
| I cannot prevent the kid from seeing installed games that are
| rated Mature. It won't let them play it, but it lists all the
| games installed in the XBox.
|
| I cannot prevent them from downloading free stuff.
|
| It was frustrating and clear to me that this wasn't designed for
| the benefits of parents.
|
| I just want it to act like a console with a fixed set of games
| installed and no marketplace access.
| rsync wrote:
| These are not mistakes.
|
| These are not implementation errors or miscommunication between
| different business units.
|
| What you are witnessing is an intentional setting of a revenue
| dial to the maximum allowable setting that still permits the
| original sale.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Well, the sale was to me. The kid came later. :-)
| like_any_other wrote:
| A console is a computer controlled by a corporation. No other
| result could be expected.
| wojciii wrote:
| > These are not implementation errors or miscommunication
| between different business units.
|
| I don't think the companies such as Google*, Microsoft, Valve
| or Nintendo** have a Child Safety business unit.
|
| If they did, the software they produce would work and I would
| be able set some sane settings once when creating a group of
| users which contain children.
|
| What I am experiencing is user hostility when trying to limit
| who can chat or influence my children. The UI is usually
| horrible and some devices have no way of limiting or
| whitelisting what games can be played by children.
|
| * Fuck you for not requiring TVs to implement the features
| required to use child users on TVs.
|
| ** Fuck you for making the of doing anything on the switch
| related to child-profiles a horrible experience.
| chaps wrote:
| Question: why do you give the device access to the internet?
| techjamie wrote:
| Based on another comment parent made, the Xbox was there
| before the kid, so presumably they don't want to handicap
| their own experience using it, just limit their kid's. Which
| should, by all respects, be a reasonable thing to want.
| chaps wrote:
| Microsoft really needs to let parents have their cake, too.
| topikk wrote:
| Sounds like the parent(s) use it as well
|
| > I cannot prevent the kid from seeing installed games that
| are rated Mature.
| DebugDruid wrote:
| Can someone explain the problem with 'mature' rated games?
| As kids (under 10), we played Mortal Kombat and GTA III,
| laughing when we _interacted_ with hookers in GTA. It was
| fun, and we had a great time playing these games. What 's
| the issue? It's no different from playing with a wooden
| sword and shield.
| explorigin wrote:
| Go type this into perplexity: "Are there any health
| studies about what exposure to pornography does to
| childhood development?"
|
| Here's another good one: "Are there any health studies
| about what exposure to violence or horror does to
| childhood development?"
|
| There is a reason that rating systems exist and that we
| shelter children from these things.
|
| The pre-rebuttal that you posted "this was common in my
| childhood" is no indicator that this was a healthy
| behavior for you or the masses.
| pnt12 wrote:
| That's an even weaker argument: AI and ratings.
|
| Ratings are very criticized by artists, eg as being
| fueled by conservative moms. For example, in the USA,
| movies with guns and explosion can be shown to younger
| audiences than nudity - seems very illogical.
|
| Also, some anecdotes: lots of my friends were into GTA as
| kids, ie early teens, and turned out fine. Comparing to
| kids who didn't do so well, I consider the most important
| factors to br family, education, and finances, not
| violent multimedia.
|
| With that being said, I'm sympathetic to limiting
| internet access due to communication with strangers, and
| extreme content (eg violent rethorics that appeal to
| action, not fantasy violence).
| ccppurcell wrote:
| My dad says the same thing about seatbelts.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| I was against mandatory seatbelt laws at first because I
| disliked the intrusion.
|
| That was it. My entire argument was (and I emphasize WAS)
| that I didn't like no gubment tell me what to do. If I
| wanted to be a damn fool and kill myself why would they
| care? It's a stupid act to try to outlaw stupidity.
|
| Then I found out that seatbelt laws are actually about
| decreasing the financial burden of underinsured accident
| victims. The "gubment" doesn't care if you die, but they
| do care if they have to fund weeks of medical support
| before you die despite the treatment, or if you survive
| but are disabled and wind up on social security.
|
| That realization made me give up.
|
| It was always about saving money, not lives. With
| seatbelts and airbags you are more likely to either walk
| away uninjured or at least not so injured that you spend
| more than a few hours in the hospital.
| DebugDruid wrote:
| So you're trying to say it's a survivorship bias? Well, I
| did turn right, and everyone I know from childhood has
| turned out alright as well, except for a few who had
| problematic parents. So games did not cause harm, but
| rather irresponsible parents (or, to be fair, parents
| with mental problems...).
| BeetleB wrote:
| We can quibble about the actual age but in principle I
| agree about GTA. That's because it's a game designed to
| be fun for kids.
|
| Let me tell you about elements of games I'm thinking
| about:
|
| A girl is bullied at school to the point of committing
| suicide. This isn't a game of vindication. Justice isn't
| served. Things aren't set right. It's just how things
| are.
|
| Your brother committed suicide a year ago. As part of the
| game you have to deal with someone who blames you for it.
|
| A couple has to deal with the grief of their baby
| drowning in the bathtub. It's not an abstract thing. You
| as the player have to ensure the baby drowns and set the
| conditions for it to happen, knowing full well this will
| be the outcome.
|
| You're a scientist stuck in a weird dimension and trying
| to figure out how you got here. Well, you got here
| because you murdered your wife and kid and then killed
| yourself but before you did that you made a copy of
| yourself and your family in a virtual world. That plan
| didn't work out well.
| mcherm wrote:
| It's been a long time since I kept current on games.
|
| Reading these descriptions, I have only one comment:
|
| What the *HELL*?!!?!!!
| BeetleB wrote:
| Because I too use the XBox.
|
| And because there are definitely benefits of Internet access.
| Saved games, for example.
|
| But yeah, fair point. I should configure router to
| selectively enable/disable access to that device while the
| kid uses it to see how usable it is. It may just be good
| enough for his games
| dTal wrote:
| You can't even save games without an internet connection?
| sheesh...
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| people can't even listen to music without internet, so
| this isn't surprising xD
| schwartzworld wrote:
| You can. The same devices that run Spotify will happily
| play your mp3 collection.
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| I can. You can. Spotify users though?
|
| Too dumb
| soulofmischief wrote:
| An increasing number of games are requiring always-online or
| online-on-boot validation, so this option is becoming less
| reasonable.
| Lammy wrote:
| "Fortunately, we have a product for people who aren't able to
| stay connected; it's called Xbox 360" -- Don Mattrick
| pixl97 wrote:
| Don't worry, next gen devices will come with a 5G device
| embedded that will always allow access to the market place
| and online gambling store.
| lacoolj wrote:
| Reading this reminds me how much parenting must suck in 2026.
| pwarner wrote:
| Leaving a link to Common Sense Media which has been helpful for
| me to understand some of these new fangled things I don't use...
|
| https://www.commonsensemedia.org/
| artyom wrote:
| The comment section seems to be divided between "don't police
| your children" and "absolutely police everything your children
| do".
|
| Parental controls are absolutely necessary, yet they won't be
| enough by themselves. Payment systems are really robust but
| there's still fraud. If there's prey, there will be predators.
|
| Education and clear rules are absolutely necessary, yet they
| won't be enough by themselves. There's people that's very evil
| and also very clever. You can educate and trust your 12yo to
| understand 80% of it, yet for the remaining 20% you have to be
| there.
|
| And, oh boy, the issue about parental controls being incredibly
| complicated is 100% _by design_. Simple and sensible parental
| controls would make exploitative business models like Roblox go
| bankrupt overnight.
| ceayo wrote:
| > yet for the remaining 20% you have to be there.
|
| Shouldn't you trust your children, to _come_ to you in that
| 20%?
| knallfrosch wrote:
| There's just no market for parental controls.
|
| > I want to limit time spent > I want to limit money spent >
| After 8 years it's an adult account anyway (10 -> 18)
| badc0ffee wrote:
| I went through some of this myself.
|
| > Nintendo Switch Online (not really another account, mind you,
| but a membership) involves a recurring fee. It also unlocks
| access to the Nintendo eShop, which I cannot disable. I can set
| his eShop spending limit to zero, sure. But I can't block free
| downloads. So to let my son play online Minecraft with his
| friends, I have to open him up to an unrelated store full of
| content I can't possibly evaluate. That's the deal. Take it or
| leave it.
|
| You don't need to pay for Nintendo Switch Online to get access to
| the eShop, you just need a Nintendo Account. I made one for
| myself and one for my son, and neither stays logged in. My wife
| and I have the passwords for both, and will not give him his
| password until he's older. Meaning one of us needs to be there
| for any purchases, free or otherwise.
|
| He has access to the Minecraft marketplace, but can't add funds
| to it without us. We did not use our MS accounts, and didn't make
| one for him, so he can't play Minecraft online. But you know
| what, I'm totally ok with that. He can still invite a friend over
| and play together in person (which he does do).
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| Parental controls aren't a good substitution for awareness, deep
| meaningful connection with your child, giving them a rich and
| fulfilling offline life, teaching them how to navigate dangers
| rather than isolating them from reality.
|
| Hold on to your kids[1] and instead of having to spy on them you
| will know them.
|
| Yes, Parental controls could, in theory, provide many many more
| protections. But given the trajectory of tech, capitalism, and
| the USA at large (and the culture it exports), I do not see that
| pragmatically happening to a relevant degree by the time I have
| children.
|
| [1] - https://www.amazon.com/Hold-Your-Kids-Parents-
| Matter/dp/0375...
| selectively wrote:
| The Gabb thing is the fault of the parent.
|
| By buying a child a locked down device - a hostile device that
| few would have accepted for themselves as a child - they marked
| them as 'being a child' rather than blending in with the rest of
| the people on the Internet.
|
| By marking them this way, they advertise the child to the
| predators of the world.
|
| This is someone who is twelve. They aren't six. Life involves
| risk. Stop playing with account controls and let the person play
| Minecraft. This really isn't that hard.
|
| Having thoughts about physically breaking a child's holiday gifts
| - of doing that in front of them - is suggestive of being a
| pretty awful person. You can't figure out something that the
| child does not want, so you want to break their stuff?
|
| How much longer do you intend to keep this routine up? Is your
| objective for them to go no contact? What are you seeking here?
| sowbug wrote:
| It's easy to say "oh, this is just enterprise controls, and your
| family is an enterprise."
|
| But then I remember every time I've had to delve into actual
| enterprise administration, and yeah that's its own full-time job.
|
| Side rant: when will businesses acknowledge that an account might
| be owned by two people (spouses, for example) and allow separate
| logins for the same account? Their terms of service almost always
| prohibit sharing passwords, and because the lost password flow
| would require sharing an email address, you didn't want to do
| that anyway.
| squibonpig wrote:
| My overall response with this stuff is to think about the lax
| parenting typical in the 80s or so and compare it. Kids much
| younger were allowed to run amok outside, and crime rates are
| much lower today. Are the same instincts that perhaps rightly
| perhaps wrongly compel people to keep a closer eye on their kids
| in the real world being applied to the digital one?
| dizlexic wrote:
| It's almost like connected infrastructure is inherently unsafe. I
| stand by "your kid, your problem". I don't want any kid to be
| "unsafe", but commonsense went out the window when schools
| started to require the internet.
|
| The true "safe" option is not allowing any of this until your
| child is old enough to understand the risks... so 18? 25?
|
| All I'm saying is there is no route to prevent all bad things (or
| even most) and people who say otherwise are generally selling you
| something.
| swivelmaster wrote:
| Here's what I think is happening:
|
| Market research says "Parents want control."
|
| In the journey from CEO mandate "build a product that gives
| parents control" to developer implementation, "parents want
| control" somehow turns into "What parents want is extremely fine-
| grained controls," which isn't the same thing.
|
| So a bunch of product managers brainstorm a huge list of ways
| that parents might want "control," hand that off to some
| developers, and voila: Everything becomes way too complicated for
| everybody and the company is able to say they offer "control"
| while abdicating their stated obligation of giving parents the
| "safe" product that the parents expect.
| stackskipton wrote:
| No, I think CEO mandate goes "Build parental controls" and PMs
| all shake their heads and go "No problem". It hits the
| developers, they go _Too long to do it properly_ and PM goes
| "Nah, we just prefer MVP only so we can say we have it and move
| on". it's also never really touched again so as features get
| added on, Parental Controls is poorly thought about last minute
| implementation.
|
| To fix this, it's going to have to be legislation so financial
| incentives are present.
| Bratmon wrote:
| > And when I finally--finally--tried to test online play,
| Minecraft told me I would need to loosen the parental controls
| (it did not say which) and create a Nintendo Switch Online
| account for my son.
|
| I'm a bit confused by this section. It seems to me that the
| author
|
| 1. Turned off online.
|
| 2. Bought a game that could be played in single-player or online
|
| 3. Got mad that online didn't work because it was turned off
|
| 4. Turned online back on
|
| 5. Got mad that online was turned on.
|
| 6. Dealt with this anger by yelling at his children
|
| I actually don't understand what the author was trying to
| accomplish here
| chaostheory wrote:
| Going on a tangent, didn't realize until recently that Quora has
| publicly accessible porn aka adult content that anyone can view
| without an account.
| hollow-moe wrote:
| When the fix is to buy a SteamDeck and emulate switch
| kdkirsch wrote:
| Seems like a trusted non-profit should spearhead a working group
| to come up with clear requirements and recommendations. This
| parental control spec would be clear for developers to implement
| instead of each team guessing what should and should not be
| allowed. This could then be 3rd party verified and parents could
| rest a little easier. (All of the above has probably been tried
| in previous instantiations of the Matrix.)
| Mathnerd314 wrote:
| I'm wondering if a firewall is a solution here. Don't mess around
| with the stupid device settings. Just block the Xbox store, and
| then presumably Minecraft uses different server IPs, so you can
| let those through.
| camhart wrote:
| The biggest trap parents fall into is they buy devices assuming
| there will be ways to enforce parental controls on them. The
| reality is it's impossible to do on many devices, and extremely
| difficult to get right on the remaining ones. Many of the
| platforms offering "parental controls" just do lip service and
| provide a false sense of security.
| bmandale wrote:
| You could, I dunno, trust your son, communicate with him, and let
| him make decisions for himself? If instead of wasting all your
| time on scam products trying to isolate him from the world, you'd
| spent the same time teaching him to navigate the world, you
| wouldn't have had any problems, and he would be better prepared
| for adult life when he doesn't have someone breathing down his
| shoulder. Just my 2c.
| rsanek wrote:
| I see folks saying no access to phones until 16, and others
| arguing how that will absolutely crush a kid's ability to do
| stuff socially. Why not just have a 'home' phone? you can use the
| phone in shared spaces at home, but cannot take it into your room
| or go to school with it.
| pzo wrote:
| unless you send your child to private school where all parents
| enforce such rule, your kid (that is 12+ year old) is going to
| be ostracize by majority of peers that have such phone. This is
| completely different environment comparing to times when we
| were growing up.
| grugagag wrote:
| I got my son a Miyoo mini, a cheap but decent emulator. I had
| zero headaches and was able to curate the game list as I thought
| fit. There's no online (even thouh the device has wifi) for now
| and worked as expected, kid plays, gets bored and lets the device
| down. I will not let my kid play games online because that's a
| too big of a risk to addiction or priming for this later.
| Minecraft has potential for addiction.
|
| By the way, I got one miyoo mini for myself and enjoy pico-8
| quite a bit that I started making games myself, together with my
| kid and chatgpt assistance. Call me old school but I know what's
| good for my own kid.
| philips wrote:
| Me too! I used the "Five Game Handheld" setup.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2rMB5z9dQw
| SOTGO wrote:
| Not to avoid the point of the article, but GroupMe is sometimes
| used for academic purposes. In the 2010s I used it in school for
| clubs, sports, and group activities, so that may be why it wasn't
| blocked.
| ceayo wrote:
| I am opposed to the whole concept of these "parental controls".
| Instead of a bond of trust, between a parent and their child, the
| surveillance economy has gave us the ability to experience the
| top of the surveillance pyramid ourselves. As Google and Meta spy
| on the world, we spy on little Timmy. In fact, you are a bad
| parent if you _don 't_ spy on little Timmy. I really can't wrap
| my head around how asking "how was your day" has evolved into "I
| saw on your GPS tracker you walked a different route to school
| today... Do you have something to tell me?" If you look at
| everyone who is now joining the work force and all, the coming
| generations, you'll see the thing they lack most is independence.
| a_shoeboy wrote:
| You obviously don't have kids. You can't trust a child's
| judgement because they don't have the experience to exercise
| good judgement. Your job as a parent is to look out for them
| while helping them develop.
| ceayo wrote:
| > You can't trust a child's judgement because they don't have
| the experience to exercise good judgement.
|
| How can a child get any experience, if they are only ever
| exposed to perfect make-believe fairyland?
| philips wrote:
| I have been using (and contributing to) on an open source project
| called Zaparoo[1] that lets my kids (5-8) play retro games, watch
| videos, and listen to music using NFC cards. The whole thing runs
| on a Raspberry Pi running Batocera[2]. I program the cards using
| the mobile app and my kids like cutting and pasting the cover art
| on the cards.
|
| All the media is local to my house- I am the librarian who
| curates the selection of media based on my kids interests,
| maturity, and my comfort. It feels like the only way forward.
|
| That said I feel YouTube Kids does a pretty good job IF you
| change to curate only mode:
| https://abparenting.substack.com/p/effective-youtube-kids
|
| [1]: https://zaparoo.org [2]: https://batocera.org
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| But profits!
| alphazard wrote:
| It seems like the industry is going to be forced to rediscover
| and implement capability based security models and process
| isolation by consumer demand.
|
| It is impossible for the average user to reason about a different
| security model for each app, the only way for anyone to be
| confident about what a program is not doing is to move to a world
| where apps don't work by default, and a list of boxes need to be
| checked which enable network or file access and cause features to
| work. Apple is the closest to the right answer here, but enabled-
| by-default and opt-out has to go away.
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