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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?

#371

Post by Dweller1622 »

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…

What does it mean to "handle online media?" How is it you would say "most adults" fall short of this?

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

#372

Post by asoneth »

aczerepinski wrote: post #170
asoneth wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everyone else has accounts they should not have or devices they should not have You can start the conversation with other parents at kindergarten pickup. Each grade at our school has a pledge that kids & parents can sign to wait until eighth grade to let them have a smartphone. This can be as simple as a shared spreadsheet or a dedicated site like https://www.waituntil8th.org My kids are still young but from what I…

All of my kid’s sixth grade friends have smartphones. No exceptions. If I excluded those families my kid wouldn’t be allowed to have friends. Best I can do is take the other kids phones away after a certain number of screen hours at my house. Limiting screen time is an exceptionally challenging task because of the many loopholes and bugs in parental controls, and my lack of direct control over the chromebooks the sch…

> All of my kid’s sixth grade friends have smartphones

My condolences. I agree that it's too late once you hit a tipping point and a critical mass of their friends have smartphones. At that point you have to fall back to weaker backup defenses like parental controls and limiting screen time. The point of Wait Until 8th is to provide a little more time to let them form their own self-image and build up their ability to manage their attention and information diet.

> Do you really think you can predict your kids future friends correctly and lobby the correct set of parents during kindergarten years?

Instead of trying to predict the "correct" set you can just lobby everyone. Our public school has about a hundred kids per grade from K through 8th. Parents bring it up not just at school pickup but on playdates, the local listserv, the PTO newsletter, when new families move to the neighborhood, etc.

Apparently several older grades have managed to hold the line such that most kids in that grade didn't have smartphones until high school, and many didn't even have smartwatches or dumbphones.

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

#373

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#374

Post by mitchellst »

(Father of children ages 7, 5, and 2.)

3 thoughts, ordered from most concrete and practical to most speculative.

Concretely, how do I do this? My kids go to a Waldorf school. (waldorfeducation.org) Is it expensive? Yeah. But, among many other benefits, you're automatically joining a conspiracy of parents dead set against tech-ified childhood. (A HUGE number of whom, you know, _work in technology,_ which tells you something.)

Second, and more reflective: I find that as a general matter, I spend more time thinking about how to call my kids toward things rather than away from things. Yes, social media and TV and video games will fill attention voids. But only if there are voids. The stereotype is that a parent will try to keep kids from doing 12 million things, but really you spend your best parenting effort trying to get them to love or value about 4 things. If you succeed, avoiding destructive habits and behaviors is much easier.

Third, and most speculative but most optimistic: I think we have hit peak social media for teens. It feels a lot like that point with cigarettes where everyone was still addicted to nicotine but nobody was pretending it was cool or sexy anymore. If you don't have kids yet, then society has 10-15 years to get its act together on this stuff before your kid is in the really dangerous age range for bad mental health outcomes from being drowned in tech. Could it remain this bad? Sure. But it's (literally) a generation from now in every respect: culturally, technically, politically, and socially. There is momentum for reform at many levels: legislative, private, school-level, and social. You have time for several of those reforms to fail and iterate. Someone will have figured it out by then. You may have to move—or join a cult—but I promise your kid will be worth enough to you to go find those people and live among them.

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

#375

Post by mitchellst »

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!

I know this is a flip dismissal.

But it illustrates one of my deeply held beliefs pretty well: there are things that are virtuous at small scale that are disastrous at large scale, and vise versa.

In society "othering" out-groups leads to many wrongs. But it's hard to argue there's much evil in cultivating a sense of family pride. The vice turns to virtue at very small scale.

I believe in giving more help to those who need it. But does that mean I should skip Christmas presents for my kids because there are people starving in [insert poor country or war zone]? The virtue becomes vice at small scale.

A unified theory of moral behavior is actually hard to come by.

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

#376

Post by dyingkneepad »

ceejayoz wrote: post #64
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.

Yup. "Why didn't my kid get invited to that birthday? Oh, it was organized on Snapchat..." We have a no phones in the bedroom and no phones past a certain time rule, but disconnecting entirely makes one a social pariah.

The one I heard was: "Dad, can you show me Minecraft? All my friends keep talking about Minecraft, but I don't understand it. I want to know more about Minecraft".

If you don't give the stuff to your kids, they get socially excluded.

The best we can do is to teach them how to use stuff in moderation. Show them how excessive usage can go bad: there are plenty of examples around, all the time.

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

#377

Post by snowwrestler »

iforgot22 wrote: post #242
snowwrestler wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one participating in a moral panic thinks it is a moral panic. They all think they are addressing a real pressing issue. That is why moral panics work. The easiest key is the focus. Am I worried about my kid? Not a moral panic, that is literally my job as a parent. Am I worried about society in general because of all the shoddy parenting about screen time? (Or risky play, or being home alone, or riding public tran…

So you're telling me that by going against social media, I'm actually participating in some big witch hunt to delete it? That's even better, sign me up.

I’m telling you that a lot of people believe they are on one of various missions to Save The Children, by which they justify harassing parents about random moments they observe.

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

#378

Post by BriggyDwiggs42 »

devsda wrote: post #295
BriggyDwiggs42 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like a YouTube channel is different. They might learn to create stuff and be self directed

The problem with posting to YT is kids might seek validation of their content from peers or strangers and that always comes with risks.

I seriously disagree that that is likely, and I think as a parent you could monitor the channel to make sure there’s no signs of that.

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

#379

Post by worik »

jacobgkau wrote: post #273
superfrank wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I think cultivating a sense of superiority is the wrong approach and could lead to other unhealthy behaviors. Cultivating a sense of self esteem and self acceptance is a better approach, IMO. "I don't drink because I'm better than you" seems like a problematic mindset. "I don't drink because I don't want to and I'm comfortable with that choice, but it's okay if you want to do something different" seems like a m…

> "I don't drink because I don't want to and I'm comfortable with that choice, but it's okay if you want to do something different" That was basically my high-horse libertarian mindset in high school when I saw other kids using cannabis-- I straight-up said to at least one, "I'm not going to do that, but I don't mind if you do." I thought I was being socially liberal and polite. Spoiler alert, everyone else "wanted t…

> Today, I'm much more vocally negative towards cannabis users.

Why? That is bigotry I believe

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

#380

Post by lacker »

pj_mukh wrote: post #268
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…

I do wonder what the dumb hammer of a blanket school ban is going to do. A bunch of states are trying that.

Most "school bans" that I have seen so far are actually things like, "A teacher-enforced official policy of no using phones during class." In other words, usually the same as the status quo, because what teacher says, "yes go ahead and use your phone while I'm talking to you".

The local public high school makes students put their phones in pouches during classes. It seems good at preventing distraction but doesn't really do much about kids wasting lots of time on social media, sharing terrible material on social media, communicating between classes, or after classes. Probably better than nothing.

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