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Tech my dad banned in our house when I was a kid

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Re: Tech my dad banned in our house when I was a kid

#141

Post by austhrow743 »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #131
formercoder wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the internet is a different place now but if these restrictions were placed on me as a kid I never would have grown up to be who I am today.

The internet didn't exist when I was a kid and I became a software engineer. "porn" on my computer consisted of a random sentence generator loaded from cassette tape on my Commodore and given profanity as input. Turns out constant surveillance is not a necessity for learning.

>Turns out constant surveillance is not a necessity for learning.

Didn't you just make a post above this one about how much you surveil your households tech usage?

Re: Tech my dad banned in our house when I was a kid

#142

Post by II2II »

Wow, what a bizarre world to grow up in.

I can understand avoiding certain products because other products are better or because of something that contradicts one's values. Yet the author's father seems to be doing so because he held grudges and had a weird sense of brand loyalty.

Gateway, of all companies! Then again, I grew up in a family that went to computer dealers and had systems built. There was no real brand loyalty there, not even loyalty to a particular dealer, but it taught me the value in a custom built PC.

That upbringing reflects how I choose products today. I would much rather spend an hour shopping for components and an hour putting them together than spending several hours shopping for a computer.

My recent experience trying to find an acceptable laptop has driven me to the point where I probably won't buy a laptop in the years to come. I'm the type of person who won't touch a laptop unless the RAM and storage can be upgraded, as well as knowing what type of CPU and GPU it has. Having to dig around support sites or even third party sites to get such information does not impress me. Granted, finding the information often reveals why vendors are so hesitant to provide it. (The performance of your $800 laptop is worse than my middle-of-the pack eight year old PC?! Yeah, that's comparing desktops to laptops, but it's an eight year old desktop!)

But that's different. It's based upon my wants and (perceived) needs as well as the information currently available. If things change in a few years time, the decision will change with it. It's not because of a problem that was fixed several years prior. It's not driven by a misguided sense of brand loyalty.

Edit: missed word, extra word. Sigh.

Re: Tech my dad banned in our house when I was a kid

#143

Post by mixmastamyk »

austhrow743 wrote: post #141
mixmastamyk wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet didn't exist when I was a kid and I became a software engineer. "porn" on my computer consisted of a random sentence generator loaded from cassette tape on my Commodore and given profanity as input. Turns out constant surveillance is not a necessity for learning.

>Turns out constant surveillance is not a necessity for learning. Didn't you just make a post above this one about how much you surveil your households tech usage?

No, the problematic stuff is blocked automatically. There is no manual tracking done by me, that's the point.

Besides, you know I'm talking about government and corporate actors. Although I have assigned screen-time to myself. ;-)

Re: Tech my dad banned in our house when I was a kid

#144

Post by narag »

sukilot wrote: post #120
aaomidi wrote: post #104

Rules for my kids: If you're over 10 years of age you should know what your limits are. I'm always going to be here for advice and help to get yourself back up from an accident or something that went wrong. I won't block content. I won't demand access to their phones. I won't shame them in any way. I'm also planning on being sex and body positive. Nudity isn't inherently sexual and shame is a social construct. Nothin…

That's putting your children in grave danger from all manner of criminals online.

When my kid started playing Minecraft, he told a lot of funny stories about the chat and joking about how people asking for personal details were pedophiles.

Ten years old kids are not stupid.

Re: Tech my dad banned in our house when I was a kid

#145

Post by toomanybeersies »

sukilot wrote: post #120
aaomidi wrote: post #104

Rules for my kids: If you're over 10 years of age you should know what your limits are. I'm always going to be here for advice and help to get yourself back up from an accident or something that went wrong. I won't block content. I won't demand access to their phones. I won't shame them in any way. I'm also planning on being sex and body positive. Nudity isn't inherently sexual and shame is a social construct. Nothin…

That's putting your children in grave danger from all manner of criminals online.

Only if GP doesn't teach their child about the dangers of strangers online.

Re: Tech my dad banned in our house when I was a kid

#146

Post by totetsu »

aaomidi wrote: post #104

Rules for my kids: If you're over 10 years of age you should know what your limits are. I'm always going to be here for advice and help to get yourself back up from an accident or something that went wrong. I won't block content. I won't demand access to their phones. I won't shame them in any way. I'm also planning on being sex and body positive. Nudity isn't inherently sexual and shame is a social construct. Nothin…

Just keep them off reddit 50/50. Kids don't know their limits to being exposed to images of violence. It's no immediately obvious that consuming those kind of images can have long term effects. Kids don't know how to contextualize sexualised representations. It' not immediately obvious that those images are produced to show things in a certain way to fit into a certain market, and don't represent life as it really is. I agree that it's impossible to try and just shield them from everything, it's better to give them the tools to process it themselves. But with the internet being weaponized by anti-social zealots trying to bring on ww3, who purposefully publish in channels used by young people... I wonder what is the value of letting young people lose in all of it..

Re: Tech my dad banned in our house when I was a kid

#147

Post by abraxas »

wisty wrote: post #115
formercoder wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the internet is a different place now but if these restrictions were placed on me as a kid I never would have grown up to be who I am today.

1. "Back in the day" people actually were forced to work on computers to get anything to work (much like boomers had to work on cars to have them run). Now for many kids it's a passive learning experience, they can just say "Siri give me Youtube" and then hit whatever recommendations it has. They don't even need to learn how to spell, let alone configure a modem. 2. More broadly, while children (and young adults) res…

Thanks. Finally a voice of reason drowned by the cacophony of "I roamed the internet as a baby and look at me now!" bozos. Facebook, YouTube and whatever SnapCrap of the week is in vogue these days employ hordes of PhD's whose sole job is to ensure you get addicted to their pulp feed as much as humanly possible. Stories of internet addiction among kids involving serious sleep deprivation and complete social withdrawal are everywhere to be found. Yet the people who grew up with Geocities as the biggest site on the web think they understand the magnetic pull of the modern sites highly tuned for stickyness.

Re: Tech my dad banned in our house when I was a kid

#148

Post by jasoneckert »

When I was growing up, my parents adhered to Douglas Adams' rules of technology (and I think many still do today):

1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

2. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

Re: Tech my dad banned in our house when I was a kid

#149

Post by tjr225 »

elliekelly wrote: post #138
sukilot wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's putting your children in grave danger from all manner of criminals online.

Grave danger? Of what? I suspect most of HN had free rein of the internet in their formative years. I’m sure I did a lot of stuff my parents wouldn’t have been thrilled about but I was never in grave danger (or any danger really) and I learned a ton. I’d be far more concerned with the potential lasting damage from a kid’s dumb social media posts than crime.

You can’t seriously compare the internet of even 10 years ago to the internet of today.

You can go to reddit right now and find a video of some right wing whacko shooting someone to death on the front page.

That content was available then, sure. It wasn’t blasted right at you though.

Re: Tech my dad banned in our house when I was a kid

#150

Post by viraptor »

CyberRabbi wrote: post #139
aaomidi wrote: post #104

Rules for my kids: If you're over 10 years of age you should know what your limits are. I'm always going to be here for advice and help to get yourself back up from an accident or something that went wrong. I won't block content. I won't demand access to their phones. I won't shame them in any way. I'm also planning on being sex and body positive. Nudity isn't inherently sexual and shame is a social construct. Nothin…

There are pedophiles online who specialize in preying on kids that have parents like you

Ok. They also prey on kids with access to safe social networks, kids accessing games with chat, kids with access to anything that has any kind of communication enabled.

"Pedophiles exist" is a cheap response that can be used to bring anyone's idea down. Roblox? Pedophiles. YouTube? Pedophiles. Going out of the house? Pedophiles. What's your proposed solution? We already had the time where we obsessed a lot about "stranger danger" which turns out... isn't that dangerous compared to abusive family members, teachers, and other trusted/familiar people.

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