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Ask HN: How do you prevent the impact of social media on your children?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you prevent the impact of social media on your children?

#331

Post by rsanek »

idermoth wrote: post #27

Our kids? Hell, my wife and I don't use social media, except in very limited doses for work reasons. Our kids have zero access to it and never will. Their device usage is kept at a minimum and used for mostly educational or quality conversational purposes. I hate how many people now, whenever we're around them everyone has their phones out scrolling through 30 sec videos. They want to show you things which aren't fun…

>my wife and I don't use social media, except in very limited doses for work reasons

do you not consider HN to be social media?

Re: Ask HN: How do you prevent the impact of social media on your children?

#332

Post by RhysU »

codingdave wrote: post #5

We don't micromanage their online access, but we do try to encourage being online in healthy ways: We did no smartphones before high school. (Have had zero problems with that in terms of their social acceptance) Also, no computers in their rooms - everything is done in more shared space, with monitors facing the rest of the room. We talk about what kinds of content to watch out for, how to think critically about it,…

> Also, no computers in their rooms - everything is done in more shared space, with monitors facing the rest of the room.

Seconded.

I saw an older friend have a dedicated computer room for the desktops of everyone in his family. It was a family space where any family member could plunk down at any time.

We approach the same via a communal laptop in the kitchen.

Re: Ask HN: How do you prevent the impact of social media on your children?

#333

Post by rsanek »

rsync wrote: post #297
lacker wrote: post #260

As a parent of an 11-year-old, messaging is the hardest thing to handle. If you allow kids to message their friends, their friends will send all sorts of inappropriate content, exposing them to essentially everything bad on the internet. If you don't allow kids to message their friends, then they will miss out on fun events that all of their friends are doing. At least at our local public school, when I talk with par…

We have an iMessages WiFi AP that only allows iMessage and FaceTime. Very easy to set up and you can then turn off general purpose internet without ostracizing them from their friends.

how do you prevent images / videos from being sent via iMessage?

Re: Ask HN: How do you prevent the impact of social media on your children?

#334

Post by garrickvanburen »

giarc wrote: post #294
garrickvanburen wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VR/AR won't take off. It'll get better, if only in that our moral panic about it will evaporate as it did for comic books and video games. Kids prefer being IRL with other kids w/ or w/o screens.

Grab any teenager from the street and ask to see their screen time usage on the phone. I bet when you subtract sleeping and school hours (assuming their school has banned phones in classrooms) it will still be nearly double digit hours.

So? There was a time when all the phone-based activities were separate objects and devices. But today, conveniently they’re all in a single device. Aggregate screen time is a useless measure and discrete screen time only matters to help diagnose when something has done wrong. If the kid is wildly successful what doors screen time matter?

Re: Ask HN: How do you prevent the impact of social media on your children?

#335

Post by theoryaway »

lolinder wrote: post #150
ozim wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gorilla in the room are other f*ng parents. You can prevent as much as you want but then kids go to school nd everyone else has accounts they should not have or devices they should not have and your kids are angry at you because now you are the bad guy.

The best thing my parents ever did for me was cultivate a sense of familial superiority. Other families had the TV on all the time, but we read books instead because we were 'better'. Other kids did drugs and drank, but we were better than that. Peer pressure didn't have much of an impact on me because I was raised to believe that I was better than 'that' for most values of 'that'. And my parents never had to force m…

Same experience for me

For my case though, they refused to give smartphone access to me(despite multiple requests).They instead encouraged me to use laptop, while my friends were buying new smartphone while joining college.

Re: Ask HN: How do you prevent the impact of social media on your children?

#336

Post by gosub100 »

ropable wrote: post #244
lolinder wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best thing my parents ever did for me was cultivate a sense of familial superiority. Other families had the TV on all the time, but we read books instead because we were 'better'. Other kids did drugs and drank, but we were better than that. Peer pressure didn't have much of an impact on me because I was raised to believe that I was better than 'that' for most values of 'that'. And my parents never had to force m…

Nothing beats "othering" the out-group members to really pull the tribe together!

Politics 101

Re: Ask HN: How do you prevent the impact of social media on your children?

#337

Post by gosub100 »

jaapz wrote: post #326
lolinder wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best thing my parents ever did for me was cultivate a sense of familial superiority. Other families had the TV on all the time, but we read books instead because we were 'better'. Other kids did drugs and drank, but we were better than that. Peer pressure didn't have much of an impact on me because I was raised to believe that I was better than 'that' for most values of 'that'. And my parents never had to force m…

That's one way to make everyone around your kids hate them. You don't have to put yourself arrogantly above others to still teach your kids values. IMHO, not doing that probably breeds a better moral value system...

Agreed. There's a certain age where kids will parrot back whatever you tell them, to whoever they feel like telling. "My parents say you don't value your kids because you let them play video games all day" is a very efficient way to lose friends and alienate people.

Re: Ask HN: How do you prevent the impact of social media on your children?

#338

Post by kylecazar »

Fwiw, I don't have kids but my two nephews went to a Waldorf school K-12 (graduating this year).

They are by far the most well-adjusted young men I'm around. Excelling academically, sports, volunteering, lots of interest in the outdoors, part-time jobs, all of their own volition. Barely ever catch them on a cell phone, despite having their own with unrestricted access for a while now at this point. It might be worth looking into some of that school's principles around gradual introduction of technology specifically (I know there is some other controversial stuff you can ignore).

Although... I do think the benefit in their case is in part due to everyone in their grade having had the same rules in years prior. So, it may be difficult to replicate in an environment where phones are ubiquitous by middle school.

Re: Ask HN: How do you prevent the impact of social media on your children?

#339

Post by giarc »

garrickvanburen wrote: post #334
giarc wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grab any teenager from the street and ask to see their screen time usage on the phone. I bet when you subtract sleeping and school hours (assuming their school has banned phones in classrooms) it will still be nearly double digit hours.

So? There was a time when all the phone-based activities were separate objects and devices. But today, conveniently they’re all in a single device. Aggregate screen time is a useless measure and discrete screen time only matters to help diagnose when something has done wrong. If the kid is wildly successful what doors screen time matter?

That's looking at it with rose coloured glasses. And please don't come back with "maybe they are watching educational content on tik tok" because we all know that's not true.

>22% of US teenagers spend 2-3 hours a day on TikTok [1]

1. https://explodingtopics.com/blog/time-spent-on-tiktok

Re: Ask HN: How do you prevent the impact of social media on your children?

#340

Post by palata »

ozim wrote: post #62
scop wrote: post #29

Four thoughts: 1. I've developed a analog->digital path for my kids. Before they can get a music player, they get a CD player. Before they get video games, they get board games. And then, for video games, before they get Super Mario Odyssey they get the original Super Mario Bros. Each of these "first they get" is a long period. Years long. Give them something that has limitations so they can truly explore it. Find th…

Gorilla in the room are other f*ng parents. You can prevent as much as you want but then kids go to school nd everyone else has accounts they should not have or devices they should not have and your kids are angry at you because now you are the bad guy.

Agreed, you can't prevent them from having access to social media.

What you can do, though, is show them that there are tons of better things to do than swiping on their phone for hours. I don't know many kids who would rather watch videos than actually do something cool.

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