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

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

#151

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…

Have you considered that perhaps your very strong anti-tech views are actually making their "rebellion" stronger? Whenever my parents went to block things, that turned into a "how can I unblock this? how can I get around their limits?" 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 h…

Sounds like you just have a problem with authority. Starting from middle school and through high school my parents frequently sat down and explained things thoroughly with me in such a way that earned my respect. I would be very concerned if my kid immediately tried to hack around my limitations and that would immediately warrant even tighter controls.

That's not a battle your child should win.

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

#152
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is because loss of phone also means social isolation during that period.

Especially with COVID, that pretty much cuts her off from all of her friends, leaving her only able to talk with her parents and her younger brother who she can't relate to instead of venting out to her friend and cooling off. Her school, extracurricular and free time with her social circle were already taken out from her and now the phone? And we all know whatever social life her friend circle has won't stop. She's…

This also assumes that the OP lives in a place with strict COVID restrictions. In plenty of places in the country you can still meet up IRL, and schools are back fully in-person. In those cases, this is little more than just basic grounding.

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

#153
My kids are 5 and 7. First and foremost, with any parenting decision, you should try to be honest with yourself about what your kids are actually like. If your kids are doing well in school , seem to have friends, seem to have interests, and overall seem happy, then you should remember to have license to take it easy on them. The goal is to raise a happy and healthy adult not to impose arbitrary sets of rules. If they are on the path of being happy and healthy then you can relax a little.

We try to keep our kids screen time under around 2 hours a day on weekdays and we don't stress too much about it on the weekends. Being that they're in school all day, it's not too hard to keep it under that time frame during the weekdays. If they were watching TV for more than a few hours straight on the weekends we'd probably kick them off just to encourage a little variety.

To us the important part isn't necessarily the raw hour count, but rather what they're watching and that throughout the week they have a life filled with a diverse range of activities: playing with their friends, playing outside, physical activity, reading, etc. If they're living a diverse life, I don't see including TV as part of that life as an issue.

It's also important to me and my wife that we have time to spend together without the kids throughout the week. Frequently that time is afforded by a couple hours of the kids watching TV. An insignificant price to pay to keep the connection I have with my wife going over the years.

It's really easy to treat screen time as some kind of evil that should be avoided at all cost, but I'm personally not convinced it's all that damaging if consumed in moderation. Realistically it's also just a fact of our modern life and fighting it is going to cause so much more strife than learning to work with it.

YouTube has some of the most interesting and best content around, but you have to be diligent to prune the algorithm periodically to keep suggesting interesting content and not just mindless clickbait or advertisements.

Video games are very stimulating and there are many kid-friendly puzzle games that I think have taught my kids how to properly reason through a problem.

I'm sure this will get much more complicated as my children get older and I have to start worrying about pornography, social media, and other unsavory content, but at this young age I think it's okay to let your kids have a little screen time be a part of their life.

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

#154

I have a 5 year old son. He has access to an iPad and all of my old game consoles (a Switch, my old PS4 Pro, and my Xbox One X), but he mostly prefers using the iPad. The iPad is locked down and has a ton of educational apps on it, but the main thing he does on there is watch Youtube Kids or play Minecraft (using an Xbox controller with a bluetooth connection to the iPad). His Youtube Kids account is locked down to m…

I have a nine year old like that. One moment he's into silly toddler videos, the next he's watching videos about history, astrophysics, math or whatever he fancies at that moment. It's hard to say whether this is good or bad but I don't want to restrict him so I keep an eye out and every now and then suggest a subject.

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

#155
post #62

1) For M-F, they are allowed 1 hour a day. Go to Settings->Screen Time->App Limits. 2) For Sat and Sun, 3 hour limit, but a time window of 6am-9am. So if they're going to use the time, it'd better be in the morning while we're sleeping in. :) Go to Settings->Screen Time->Downtime (enable scheduled). 3) I've always curated their Youtube subscriptions, without their knowledge, unsubscribing from the 100's of Minecraft…

Ah, I also set up a lot of pretty clever iOS screentime rules for the 14 year old. Then I noticed it is ridiculously easy to circumvent a lot of the stuff by changing timezones on the device and Apple STILL has not fixed it :-(

Haven't tried this personally, but found this:

1) Turn on “Content & Privacy Restrictions”

2) Go down and tap on “Location Services”

3) At the bottom you’ll see “System Services”

Enable “Setting Time Zone” and then go back

4) At the top of the “Location Services” screen, toggle on “Don’t Allow Changes” - This should grey out the options in System Services and “Setting Time Zone"

5) Now in Settings > General > Date & Time everything should be greyed out and the kid won’t be able to change anything!

https://setupsynclearn.com/blog/15/11/2019/ios-tip-how-to-st...

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

#156
post #20

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…

Any chance of you doing a write up somewhere of how you set this up, how it all works? This sounds fantastic. I'm 3 months out from becoming a parent. This stuff isn't a big deal yet, but in 3 years or so I'm going to need it. I'd love to learn from you. I know what vlans and pi-holes are, but I've never set them up like that and I want to be able to . And if there's me wanting it, I'll bet there's a lot more parents…

If you don't want to spend the time setting up a pi-hole, you might consider a service like NextDNS. It makes the process extremely simple.

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

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially with COVID, that pretty much cuts her off from all of her friends, leaving her only able to talk with her parents and her younger brother who she can't relate to instead of venting out to her friend and cooling off. Her school, extracurricular and free time with her social circle were already taken out from her and now the phone? And we all know whatever social life her friend circle has won't stop. She's…

This also assumes that the OP lives in a place with strict COVID restrictions. In plenty of places in the country you can still meet up IRL, and schools are back fully in-person. In those cases, this is little more than just basic grounding.

Indeed. She goes to high school every day, is fully vaccinated, and sees her friends all the time. And we were only taking the phone for the night and maybe the next day... if she didn't make her lunch and shower.

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

#158
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah my kids get angry after playing video games, especially if they lose

If their game time is highly restricted then: 1. Losing is hugely disappointing because there's no time to win the next one 2. They can't get very good, so gaming is more frustrating 3. They can't build coping skills because of how little they've won/lost

Solid points. And I agree. I played hours of video games when I was like 10/11.

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

#159
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, I also set up a lot of pretty clever iOS screentime rules for the 14 year old. Then I noticed it is ridiculously easy to circumvent a lot of the stuff by changing timezones on the device and Apple STILL has not fixed it :-(

Haven't tried this personally, but found this: 1) Turn on “Content & Privacy Restrictions” 2) Go down and tap on “Location Services” 3) At the bottom you’ll see “System Services” Enable “Setting Time Zone” and then go back 4) At the top of the “Location Services” screen, toggle on “Don’t Allow Changes” - This should grey out the options in System Services and “Setting Time Zone" 5) Now in Settings > General > Date &…

Yeah, this circulates a lot on the internet. I do not know if it EVER worked in any iOS version, but it does not work right now.

Which seems logical, as the only thing you're disabling is the use of location services to auto-detect the timezone. Nothing prevents a manual change of the timezone. So if it worked at any time, and not just somebody misunderstanding what it does and then everybody copying the tip without verifying it, it probably simply was a bug, which was fixed since then.

Thanks for trying to help, though.

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