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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?

#51

Post by garrickvanburen »

I've 4 kids, the youngest is 11.

The rule in the house is; 1) no social media accounts until 13 and 2) one of your parents will be your 'friend' on that account.

This is actually a pretty great expression of "kids keep you young."

But, right now is right now and how kids communicate with each other is constantly changing - social media or not.

So, if you're not a parent to a tween or teens now - I'd say you have little to actually worry about as the landscape will be completely different in a decade.

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

#52

Post by cbeach »

cbeach wrote: post #37

At my kids' school (UK, ages 5-11), many parents have signed an online pact to agree not to give smartphones to their children: https://smartphonefreechildhood.co.uk/ The website lists the number of pacts, broken down by school and year group. My kid is in year 1 (age 5) and the website received pacts on behalf of 42 out of approx 60 children in this year group. Hopefully with a little more publicity, the remainder w…

Given the website shows all the data for pacts by school, I ran it past ChatGPT o1 to look for any correlations.

https://chatgpt.com/share/6786bc74-9e18-800d-b474-d57ef2c107...

“Large, well-attended primary schools in more populous or affluent areas tend to have higher numbers [of pacts], whereas small primaries, grammar/secondary schools, or independent schools with fewer total pupils often appear with lower numbers.”

I definitely see a relationship in the data whereby affluent areas have a higher number of pacts. I wonder if this is due to stronger societal cohesion / shared norms in affluent areas?

Whereas in deprived areas in the UK there's more unassimilated immigration from cultural groups that self-segregate.

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

#54

Post by ta1243 »

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…

How far along this path are your kids?

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

#55

Post by ta1243 »

noufalibrahim wrote: post #28

No phones or SM accounts for kids till they turn 18. Yes, there's a "fear" of being an outcast but they work their way around that quickly and if they have other things to spend time on, they'll be fine. The "need" for social media is mostly FOMO.

Do you have kids in double digits?

Our senior schools (from age 11, "6th grade" in US term) literally mandate a phone (not a computer, an actual phone) for school, both to use in class and to receive homework assignments.

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

#56

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

>However, it's undeniable that at that age it's all about fitting in and it would likely make them feel like a bit of an outcast if I were to limit them from being a part of it, l

Should homeschool. The elimination of peer pressure makes alot of these choices dead simple. "But all the other 11 yr olds are going to the 3am tattoo orgy" just isn't a counter-argument I'll ever hear in my household.

The real trouble is that you're constantly running around playing whackamole with the router, there must be 3 or 4 dozen social media platforms I have to police. And Youtube, like it or not, is probably essential, so it can't be blocked really... my daughter is using it today to learn to sharpen knives (wasn't a boy scout, never learned it myself). Though, last week I expected that she'd want to use it for cheesemaking, but she worked from a written-word recipe (was kind of proud of that). Best advice for Youtube is to just try to keep an eye on what they gravitate to when watching and steer them away from the garbage.

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

#57

Post by [deleted] »

strix_varius wrote: post #43
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…

Every week since she was about six months old, I've taken my daughter with me to get groceries. She's absolutely fascinated by the grocery store: the rolling cart, the colors and textures of produce ("ta-to!"), the other shoppers, the illustrations on packaging ("bear!"). I hand her items and give her their names. She shakes them, rotates them, repeats their names back to me. But every time we go, I see at least one…

[deleted]

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

#58

Post by ta1243 »

paulcole wrote: post #18
more_corn wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol, take a quick peek at your home’s Internet access logs. You’ll almost certainly find opportunities for some parenting / teaching moments.

Isn’t the teachable moment to realize your kids are going to see those things no matter what I do? Kids on the internet see all sorts of stuff and almost all of them end up fine.

Teachable moments is things learning about things like DNS, vpns elsewhere, man in the middle attacks, etc.

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

#59

Post by nofunphil »

Going thru this now with an 11 yo and 14 yo.

It’s a non-stop, swash-buckling battle to get them to put down their phones and do literally anything IRL. Their attention has been completely hijacked, their childhood robbed from them, and I feel like it’s pretty much a total parent fail on my part. But it’s the same with all their friends too. Shameful and sad and just wrong

At the risk of ridicule, I think we need to incentivize kids/people to use social media less. Think, “Touch grass. Earn points.”

Faroff dot fun

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

#60

Post by qwerpy »

strix_varius wrote: post #43
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…

Every week since she was about six months old, I've taken my daughter with me to get groceries. She's absolutely fascinated by the grocery store: the rolling cart, the colors and textures of produce ("ta-to!"), the other shoppers, the illustrations on packaging ("bear!"). I hand her items and give her their names. She shakes them, rotates them, repeats their names back to me. But every time we go, I see at least one…

I used to judge parents who resorted to tablets to keep their children quiet. I don't really anymore. You don't know how exhausted the parents might be or how many hours they've already spent trying to entertain their kids in a more wholesome manner.

I've taken a 2 year old on vacation and some of that time is spent going to unique restaurants that take a couple of hours for a meal. My toddler would get bored and squirmy and would quickly ruin dinner for the entire restaurant. Same thing for airplanes. Of course I don't resort to it immediately but if talking, interacting, and other toys don't do the trick, iPad is a very useful tool in the arsenal. A carefully curated list of educational, offline content is acceptable in my opinion.

Grocery store, or any other short errand? Sure, that's too much.

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