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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?

#391

Post by n00b_heal »

iforgot22 wrote: post #227
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…

People talk about kids being addicted, but I had to deal with my dad constantly showing me some Instagram video. Not necessarily a dumb video, but still not something I cared to watch.

let's not forget the parents addicted to tv shows yes they still exist

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

#392

Post by crocowhile »

I am in my late 40s and my two boys are 11 and 15. They make great use of the internet, especially youtube. One is a big fan of all the STEM channels on youtube and he is getting an education through those that, when I was at his age, I could only dream about: Matt Parker, 3B1B, Mark Rober, Steve Mould, and so on. He watches hours of those videos every week. The younger is in the VR/Gorilla Tag phase and has created his own youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@MagicianTheMonkey-p1f He taught himself how to install Mods, how to script and create contents in capcut, how to advertise his channel.

The internet can be an amazing opportunity for kids. We should be careful about policing it too much. My recommendation is: keep a close eye on how their behaviour changes (the output) but do not worry too much on what inputs they choose and receive. They have to build their own filters after all.

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

#394

Post by aczerepinski »

asoneth wrote: post #372
aczerepinski wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I moved from the east coast to the Midwest during the pandemic. Any lobbying I would have done during early elementary years would have gone to waste.

And even if I hadn’t moved I would have had to lobby at not just my elementary school but the other two schools that feed into the same middle school.

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

#395

Post by efitz »

At 18, I went to see the movie "RoboCop" in the theater and walked out because I had never been exposed to such gratuitous violence before. This was long before the internet, cell phones, or social media.

Would I have been as shocked/traumatized if I had previously been even a little bit exposed to something much less intense? Now that kind of stuff is passe.

I don't want my children traumatized; obviously I'm going to do whatever I can to prevent them from premature exposure to lots of extreme content.

But we live in a different world than I grew up in, and I'm worried that kids need SOME exposure, especially to positive experiences but also just a little to mild bad experiences, in order to build up life skills like getting along and interacting with others, even with people who aren't nice to you.

I'm struggling with how to do that and where to draw the line but it definitely involves limits (that change over time), supervision, and communication.

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

#396

Post by mixmastamyk »

rachofsunshine wrote: post #209
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…

My family did this too. It did make me a condescending asshole, but worse than that, it taught me to be paralyzingly afraid of doing The Wrong Thing. Did it protect me from driving drunk when I was in college? Yeah, but it also "protected" me from having a healthy social life because I couldn't engage with any sort of normal behavior. Did it protect me from getting on drugs? Yeah, but it also "protected" me from gett…

Maybe you’re expecting too much from pithy life advice to avoid bad habits? It’s not a silver bullet guaranteed to solve serious problems such as mental illness.

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

#398

Post by junto »

Try to make sure they know how they stay safe online as best as possible.

No phones until high school. Limit phone usage via parental controls. No posting photos of themselves online. Closed social media accounts in their teens. WhatsApp contacts limited to people they know in person.

We play the game of pragmatic averages. We aren’t the first of the parents in their friends group to allow their kids to have access to , but we also aren’t the last.

Honestly though, it’s a minefield.

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

#399

Post by spacechild1 »

dchichkov wrote: post #203
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.

Another Gorilla is the schools, teachers and state-approved recommendations, that extend their reach even into private schools. Imagine my frustration one day, when I've discovered that my kindergartner has full access to a brand-new, shiny iPad during class. Despite complaints from parents, the teacher refused to reduce iPad usage (or even activate Screen Distance and Screen Time controls on the iPad, or share usage…

> The only thing that I've learned, this is all in line with California’s state-approved computer literacy recommendations.

That's seriously fucked up!

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

#400

Post by datavirtue »

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.

It's not that simple. Had I cut my daughter off and not allowed a phone, she would never have made the connections with the good friends she has. I am convinced these phones are troubling our youth but cutting them off is not advised.
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