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Ask HN: Tech-savvy parents, what are the gadget rules for your kids?

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51–60 of 159 posts

Re: Ask HN: Tech-savvy parents, what are the gadget rules for your kids?

#51
I'm not a parent, but I was somewhat recently parented.

Consider holding yourself to the same standard you set for your kid. My parents are mental health professionals and did this with me. I think it was incredibly valuable and I respect them a lot for it now that I'm older.

I don't think its wise to restrict usage, watch over their shoulder, or block websites if you aren't willing to submit to the same restrictions or naturally limit your usage.

You risk sending your kids some messages I'm not sure parents realize they are sending. Worst of all: "do as I say not as I do" and "I don't trust or expect you to act as responsibly as I do."

Re: Ask HN: Tech-savvy parents, what are the gadget rules for your kids?

#52
5, 4, and almost 2.

TV – They'll watch Netfix in the morning if they're up early (0–30m) and for 20-30m to "wind down" before bedtime. We haven't done any parental controls or anything, and it hasn't been an issue. They know what they want to watch, and know how to navigate to it (Xbox or Apple TV).

Tablets/Laptops – The older two have Fire tablets and play educational apps/games: PBS or Starfall. No Netflix or "TV" apps. This is sort of "on-demand", mostly during their quiet time mid-afternoon. Maybe an hour? I enabled the "kid mode" on one tablet, but it is a giant PITA to manage, and really isn't an issue. They don't have the knowledge of the internet yet, do haven't really communicated that.

Re: Ask HN: Tech-savvy parents, what are the gadget rules for your kids?

#53
post #23

This topic makes me glad I'm not a kid anymore and strengthens my antinatalism - if the world is so fucked that you need to watch your kids all the time and restrict them then what’s the point of bringing them here. Most of my psychological harms come from going to public school, I don’t think that unsupervised screen time harmed me that much.

kids will be okay either way

Re: Ask HN: Tech-savvy parents, what are the gadget rules for your kids?

#54

Constant. Battle. Over time they just learn how to wear you down. When they were younger we could set limits and keep it enforced, but as they get older they just kept find ways to get around them. We tried Google's Family Link (poor quality and mostly useless with ChromeOS), per-device time limits on the wifi router, whatever, but there's always some new battle and COVID just threw a wrench in everything. In the ear…

We tried taking the phone from our teenager as punishment for something and it was like taking a needle from a heroin addict.

Wouldn't the same apply to adults though? "Phone" can be used for a lot of different things, including some that are harmful, but basic communication with his peers is IMO essential and denying that is a significant problem (especially now in a pandemic).

Re: Ask HN: Tech-savvy parents, what are the gadget rules for your kids?

#55
post #19

We have three kids, aged 6, 3, and 10 months. The six-year-old gets ~30 minutes of Switch play a week (mostly driving circles in Rocket League), and the whole family watches an episode of Lego Masters on Sunday. That's the only screen time they get. When our oldest was ~3, he had been potty trained for awhile. We were on vacation and he was on the iPad we had brought for the plane. He was so engrossed in the game tha…

Word of caution - my parents strictly controlled screen time until I was a young adult - at which point they just stopped. At the same time I moved to a room they couldn't supervise. I lacked the self discipline tools to control my own bed times and screen time, and failed to manage either, impacting my grades. That was an important lesson for sure, but I do think if we'd done something more phased earlier on, it wou…

A friend of mine had his son (14) playing sometimes all night.

He thought, as his son is (really) smart, that he will realise by himself it was stupid.

Well, he didn't, his grades fall and now he doesn't even live with my friend, as his mother (ex-wife of my friend) let him do whatever he wants, so he decides to move with her.

We all cross finger that he will at a time have an epiphany and go back on track...

Re: Ask HN: Tech-savvy parents, what are the gadget rules for your kids?

#56

Constant. Battle. Over time they just learn how to wear you down. When they were younger we could set limits and keep it enforced, but as they get older they just kept find ways to get around them. We tried Google's Family Link (poor quality and mostly useless with ChromeOS), per-device time limits on the wifi router, whatever, but there's always some new battle and COVID just threw a wrench in everything. In the ear…

We tried taking the phone from our teenager as punishment for something and it was like taking a needle from a heroin addict.

At least you know it's an effective incentive.

Re: Ask HN: Tech-savvy parents, what are the gadget rules for your kids?

#57
post #39

4,5,15 15 year old does his own thing, not a lot can be done there, but he's not stupid with it. Mainly just playing xbox with his friends, watching other people play games on youtube. Younger ones have a Fire tablet each, 1 hour a day limit (unless they ask for more) - mostly seems to be learning games/lego cartoons. Browser disabled, can only use stuff in their age range. They aren't allowed to watch youTube unless…

Why do you block minors from accessing content designed for miners?

I think we are past the era of sending the minors down the mines and it is past time to leave the mining to the miners.

Re: Ask HN: Tech-savvy parents, what are the gadget rules for your kids?

#58

10yo girl 30 minutes of social media per day (tiktok, insta, snapchat), all accounts are private, and we meet once per week to look together at the feed and moderate it. (e.g. follow more things like https://www.tiktok.com/@zippycode and less things like Charlie whatever) Unlimited whatsapp, but we still look at it from time to time to see there is no bullying going on. Using 1.1.1.1 family (1.1.1.3) always connected…

> During dinner phones go in a bucket, and we avoid phones until bed time (as a family).

Oh, I like this one. Making it a sort of ritual sounds like something that I could actually hold to.

Re: Ask HN: Tech-savvy parents, what are the gadget rules for your kids?

#59
6 & 4

Friday night is media night. The kids usually watch their dad play Legend of Zelda for an hour, and they decide what Link should do. After that, we watch 1 hour of a movie with each of us taking turns who picks the movie. Other than that, it's just occasional use of Facetime to talk to family or ask Siri to play a song.

I wasn't thrilled with how my then 5 year old handled her Kindergarten iPad last year. She had access to PBS Kids videos on her school iPad and would watch them when she was the least bit bored. We did decide that the iPad should only be used during school time. But now her iPad is at school, so we don't have that issue.

I'm interested in reading what other parents are doing. Even though we're in a hippy, educated community, our kids consume less media than their peers.

Re: Ask HN: Tech-savvy parents, what are the gadget rules for your kids?

#60
post #38

7,12,14. I find that rules and firewalls and schedules and blocking are a fools errand - it is a cat-and-mouse game that you can't win. So we just turn off the Internet. We have a different wifi network for the children that has a very restrictive schedule. Basically just Fri/Sat night and 15 mins on weekday evenings to send messages to friends and check school assignments. The 7 year old gets his Nintendo Switch on…

I don't mean to judge, but this sounds like a great way to make sure your kids become experts at circumventing your limitations. Take it from a kid whose parents didn't let him play RuneScape because it had witchcraft in it, and whose playtime of neopets was limited to 1 hr per day. I quickly became unusually good at both sneaking around the house at night to use the computer at 2am and also was surprisingly good at navigating Windows. We didn't have laptops or WiFi back then so that wasn't a relevant aspect, though.

In your household, I suspect I would be chatting with friends in the dead of night. I also suspect that I would, one way or another, manage to come by the WiFi password that you presumably use for your own devices.

If you're trying to raise kids who regard you as an adversary to overcome, I suppose you're on the right track.

I don't know, my kids are 1 and 2 so maybe I'll change my mind when I get there, but as someone who has made a career out of looking at a screen and spent most of the fun parts of his youth doing so as well, I plan to teach my kids how to self-manage screen time. My parents limiting my screen time just made me try to do everything in my power to maximize it, and I do think that made me quite a bit of an addict when I was a teenager (playing wow 6 hours a day every day on top of school and sleep). I only really learned to manage my enjoyment of screen time with my enjoyment of non-screen-time when I got to my last year of high school and college.

My wife, on the other hand, was never really constrained beyond her parents sanity-checking things now and then to make sure she wasn't getting into trouble. And she has always had healthier screen time management habits than me.

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