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

Have you really sat down and discussed why these are in place? What's the issue with Minecraft and Terraria videos that make it a Constant. Battle? That seems quite harmless.

I would hate having you as my parent, to be completely honest.

I believe the key there is the fact that my parents made it clear why I was being grounded and spent the time explaining it to me.

By default, minimum limits. I want them to build habit and willpower themselves so they don't indulge as adults like many of my friends did in college.

No limit on TV. But I remind them there's a cost. Sometimes we play outside and leave the TV watcher. Sometimes we go upstairs and play in the bedroom. The family has fun without devices, but if you want to watch the same movie again, it's up to you.

Phone has tougher limits. Screen time before 5 PM on a weekday, 6 on a weekend. The earlier you wake up, the more screen time you have. The TV rules still apply: if you're on your phone in your bed all day and we had an awesome breakfast together, it's your fault for missing out.

No devices before a shower. My kids all get showered by 8 AM now, without any fighting. We had a lot of arguing and dragging them to the bathroom before this rule.

If your homework isn't done, stricter phone restrictions, or TV only. Homework causes stress and TV is a great cure, so I think it's fine. Gaming causes stress though, so they have to watch out.

YouTube has a lot of great stuff. My eldest learned every flag and capital city all on her own from YouTube, by 8 years old. My 3 year old knows her alphabet, and the 1 year old can recognize letters and numbers. But it only works if you let them.

The real restrictions are on what they watch and now when.

Kids imitate things a lot. So they can pick up really bad habits from a lot of popular YouTubers like screaming and panicking. Or sometimes even Peppa Pig can be a bit too sassy.

Pay to win games are also a problem. They purposely build addiction and then charge you later. They tend to not sleep, eat, etc and quit the game feeling miserable. You still want to expose the kids to them a little so they build immunity to that crap, but keep a safety valve on.

I couldn't ask for a better son as he has been on the Straight A or A/B honor roll from Kindergarten to present day with very little help from us or supervision. He is also pretty active with soccer at age 5 and baseball from 7+ (heck of a player and currently is playing in two leagues as his choice) as well as joining us for bike rides/hikes once in while.

Me, I went through the typical route of Atari 2600, Commodore, Intellivision, Nintendo. Got my first IBM PC at around age 12 and spent countless hours on all those without parents ever limiting me whatsoever (well did get my IBM taken away for two weeks when I racked up a $200 phone bill with my first modem - not knowing it was by the minute back then). Sure I wasted a lot of time on those with games but I also had a huge interest in how they worked by taking them apart, learning DOS, BBS's, hacking/phreaking etc etc. Made me who I am and my career in IT. We didn't have the filth/addiction stuff like Tik-tok, Instagram, blah.

Anyway, From 1st to end of 5th grade he has had an xBox and iPad, and any restrictions to either have been on an as-needed basis - which we have had to do very little over the years (few cases of 1-2 day grounding from devices, etc). During this time he was all about Fortnite/Minecraft/Roblox with friends (sometimes a whole Saturday spent on the headset with friends) and Youtube.

When he started 6th grade recently (Middle school here) we got him his own iphone, which he has asked for a year prior. More to be able to call/text him as Discord was getting tiring and he was staying home alone more often. The pressure put on by all the other parents having given their kids phones by now (Some of his friends have had phones since 2 years ago at age 9) also mounted so we didn't want him to feel left out socially at middle school. Plus he got his own gaming PC to leave the limits of console gaming as well as for his remote learning all during covid.

With the phone and his older social circle the inevitable has started to happen - Social Media (youtube channel), short videos junk Tik-Tok, hits/likes etc. I hate this part personally as I have none of it myself so I've put in screen-time on his phone to limit Tik-Tok to an hour a day and his phone games to 2hrs. Plus phone is disabledfrom 10:30p to 8:30a. He hates the restriction and I'm having to extend it a few hours a week or he just goes on his PC/Ipad to "extend" his time himself. I really don't want to spend all the time locking all these down as I feel it is futile anyway. Youtube is impossible to block without blocking his Google Apps for remote learning. I can block the tik-tok app on his phone but he just then goes in the browser or his PC browser. On and on. I don't have the time NOR the need/desire to go full network guardian mode on him, knowing he will just out-flank me anyway somehow when he learns of VPN's or that our neighbor has an open wifi (need to talk to them about that). I'm sure he knows about porn from friends but I have seen zero evidence on his devices for now, but realize that will be next in few years. Ugh.

I just wish I could get him to be more like I was at that age and tinker/learn more rather than just consume like the majority of other kids. I'd spend a weekend trying to get my BBS setup or newest DOS installed he doesn't have similar interest. I tried to get him to build a PC with me for work and he just watched for 10 minutes and made bathroom excuse never to come back. The videos him and friends watch is just complete mindless junk and idiots doing stupid memes and stuff. Nothing creative or constructive. It is a very hard thing to get them away from once drawn in.

Games are hard (she is 3),will either get very frustrated or bored. Otherwise she has fun and it's slowly making progress.

It's really hard to find well-suited videogames. All of them expect you to read.

I do have to pull her away occasionally when SHE doesn't want to be there anymore and it's extra tired/bored. This is thankfully rare and it's usually connected to me neglecting her for the day (harsh truth), so I just try to just make a point of playing with her once throughout the day and it just doesn't happen. God it's hard though. Some days you are just so drained you want to be braindead but you can't, you have kids!