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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?

#61

Post by 9rx »

Desafinado wrote: post #6

A good start is to avoid giving them a smartphone until they're in high school. And once they have a smartphone require them to get permission from you before installing any social media apps, with consequences if they don't follow the rules (take the phone away). Make the consequences known up front, rather than reactive so they know the guidelines regarding their phone use. And whatever you do DO NOT give your chil…

> I are seeing parents give their two year olds a tablet which is absolutely detrimental to their development.

My kid couldn't care less about using a tablet or other device if there is any other activity on the table. In other words, for them to reach the point of using, I have to be completely ignoring them.

Is it really the device that leads to developmental detriment, or parents who aren't involved in their childrens' lives?

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

#62

Post by ozim »

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.

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

#63

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

tokioyoyo wrote: post #50
Carrok wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you implying that children need social media to develop competency and communication skills?

If all of your peers are talking about the stuff they saw on YouTube, but you’re not allowed to, this will naturally make you an outcast in that topic. Now, if almost everything they talk about in the internet, and you cannot relate to it at all, it will hinder your interpersonal skills, because you just don’t talk to your peers. I hate how we got here, but watching my nephews go through this stuff made me realize yo…

>I hate how we got here, but watching my nephews go through this stuff made me realize you can’t cut the kids off completely.

Mine are turning out fine. I don't want them to be like those other children, and I've kept them away from those children. Doesn't seem to have been a problem.

>Ideally, you would live in a community where all parents have agreed on the social media limits,

This is a matter of who you choose to socialize/fraternize with, not one of geography. But if you opt for public school, then you have no real choice in the matter.

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

#64

Post by ceejayoz »

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.

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.

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

#65

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

more_corn wrote: post #10
Desafinado wrote: post #6

A good start is to avoid giving them a smartphone until they're in high school. And once they have a smartphone require them to get permission from you before installing any social media apps, with consequences if they don't follow the rules (take the phone away). Make the consequences known up front, rather than reactive so they know the guidelines regarding their phone use. And whatever you do DO NOT give your chil…

I’ve got a friend who did this. His 13yr old daughter craved instagram and snuck access. The story sounded like parents of the previous generation catching their kids smoking and drinking. I’m pretty sure the prohibition didn’t work and added the spice of forbidden. I don’t know the answer, but I suspect full prohibition isn’t it.

>Ideally, you would live in a community where all parents have agreed on the social media limits,

At least on the iPhone, the parental controls are pretty fine-grained. Even if there was a way to have a web-only account on an Apple device, you can block those too (never used that feature though).

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

#66

Post by ikiris »

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.

“Devices or accounts they should not have”

Just because you think your kids should be limited to the Bible or no phones or no social media or no d&d or whatever arbitrary limits / moral panic you impose, does not extend those limits to other kids in any moral fashion. Those kids have full rights to have whatever they have and you are indeed the bad guy for your arbitrary limits if they are not common or inhibiting socially.

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

#68

Post by TacticalCoder »

I can already see a big difference between "kids" that are now 20 and those that are 10: parents are now way more aware of how nasty and exploitative social media are.

Ten years ago parents had zero issue handing their used phone to their kid when buying a new one. Now many parents have a "no phone whatsover until at least 13 years old" (some even pick an older age).

Schools too: it's very common now to have school with a very strict "phone stays in the locker or you get disciplined" policy.

I did buy my 10 y/o a "phonewatch" (I'm not calling it a "smartwatch" for it's really dumb). A real one, with its own SIM card (funnily enough it's a real, physical, SIM card, not an eSIM). So she can do what a phone what supposed to allow: give and receive phonecalls. Some people shall buy a dumbphone I guess. Works too. That watch's screen is so tiny and pathetic that it's impossible to anything with it: no TikTok. No Instagram. No nothing. (we're in control anyway, with an app on our phones, of what goes on the "phonewatch").

Kid knows that she won't have a phone before at least 13. Maybe 15. That's the deal.

The thing is: as a parent, you are the boss and you set up the rules. A kid is not the boss.

We're no luddite: she's also one hour of Nintendo Switch play per day. She can have fun solving "code monkey" coding puzzles on a computer. She's allowed to watch a few Minecraft vids.

But mindless media consumerism no a smartphone at 10 y/o, like some of the other kids at school are doing as soon as they're not at school? No way. We simply don't allow that.

> How do you prevent the impact of social media on your children?

By being the boss.

P.S: as a sidenote good luck bypassing the DNS blocker I put in place without an admin account. On my LAN, I'm the boss too. No SIM: no SIM to put somewhere else. SIM subscriptions with monthly allowed data usage set to 0 bytes works darn well too (we've got one such SIM).

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

#69

Post by nineplay »

I don't think this is a good place to go in with hard and fast rules. Every kid is different, everything change. What your kid wants and needs may be different from everyone else.

Having said that, my broad rule is to keep my kid from any social media where their peers rank them and give feedback. No FB, no Instagram, they can't host their own youtube channel, etc. That is where self-esteem goes to die.

I don't think I allow real-name accounts. I'm hyper-sensitive to online predators since a girl I know got assaulted by someone she met on 'words with friends'. My kids are lectured to boredom about personal identifying information and what not to reveal on the internet.

They are allowed Roblox and they spend a lot of time playing with their friends there. I'm happy with that, we do Roblox game night here ourselves.

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

#70

Post by webdood90 »

qwerpy wrote: post #60
strix_varius wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 squ…

Man, if you don't want to deal with the challenges of children, why have kids? I don't lie to myself, I know I couldn't do it and I didn't.

Maybe you just don't get to go out for dinner or ride on planes until they don't need to be hypnotized with a screen? You know it's bad for them but you're putting your comforts and freedoms above theirs and everybody else's.

I can't help but feel like the next generation has been completely fucked.

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