I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself

Honestly -most- of the time I tell people I don't have a phone they say something like "That is super cool, I wish I could do that. My phone has ruined my life. How would you prefer we keep in touch since you can't use X app?"

Didn't expect to see this take on HN, especially in the age when the library of congress includes hip-hop records and a former president expressed his appreciation towards it openly. Ffs, it is just another form of art. It isn't some vice that they will unfortunately have to eventually be able to work around, like alcohol. There is genuine value in it.

Same with Tiktok. It can be used in a toxic way, but also in a way that can genuinely be great. I saw plenty of great DIY projects on tiktok that were fairly educational to me, as well as plenty of great examples of people teaching or creating amazing things. I am not "coping with toxicity" of tiktok when i use it, i am just using it in a way that is controlled and intentional.

The only thing I can add at this point is, you are just going through the good old "heavy metal/rock music/Dungeons and Dragons turn our children into devil-worshipping heathens" type of thinking.

If you dont have conversations about it and just blanket declare it as evil and ban it in your household, it won't stop your kid from listening to it. It will stop any discussion of it though, which means that they will have to work through it without your guidance on the matter (which has a potential for turning ugly), all while eroding the trust between you all.

Saying that as someone who grew up with very overprotective (at quite a few points) parents, (almost) nothing good came out of it at all. You probably don't want your kid to get a motorcycle license just out of spite for you the second they are fully financially independent and realize that you have zero control over them. And then promptly crash on that bike and break a couple of bones within the same year. I didn't even have an itch to ride a bike that badly, but it felt like some internal obligation to myself. No regrets about it whatsoever, I genuinely enjoy riding it now as intrinsically as possible. But it definitely didn't start off this way at all.

And that personal example was on a very mild side, from what I've personally observed in my peers. As a former RA in college dorms who had a chance to see a lot of those situations play out, you can pretty much always correctly guess what kind of parenting the freshmen kids who got into ER with alcohol poisoning within the first month of college or dropped out due to partying too hard (or playing videogames all day) had. It was almost always the kind of parenting that you are advocating for.

Sure, the movies make it seem simple, but... you know, AIDS. It sucked even more if you were queer. "Crack babies" that weren't (that was just poverty we were seeing). Regan starved people with the 'welfare queen' stuff. Misogyny was so much more open.

It wasn't the same. It wasn't better. It was different.

That's a false dichotomy - you posit that those things are the only alternatives, which is incorrect.

I never did non-stop sex, drugs and alcohol (and ignored sports) in school, and yet I was part of a number of different social groupings in school.

> Ancedotal, but virtually all the nerds I grew up with are very successful now, and many of the popular kids that excluded me are still struggling to pay bills having never developed any specialized skills.

That's funny - I was never a nerd (computer or otherwise), and grew up fairly successful.

I think you might be missing the fact that your exclusions has lead you to believe a number of things that simply aren't true, like your first statement above.

I was homeschooled and moved every 3-6 months growing up and in spite of all these "handicaps" I still learned to make several IRL friends within a week or two of every new city I ended up in. I would say hi, show them a magic trick, do some comedy bits I had been working on, or share the latest anime I was into. Whatever. Making friends is the skill to build in a kid, not technology conformity.

Stop worrying about making kids popular and making them conform in ways beyond basic manners and respect. The roads less traveled are more likely to kelp a kid develop atypical skillsets which will give them an advantage in the job market later.