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

lof.flounder.online

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

#161

Post by Broken_Hippo »

grapeskin wrote: post #147
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I'm seriously hoping you corrected her romantic view of the past. 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.

I think young people today wish we could be back in the days of AIDS panic instead of covid panic.

So, back to telling folks that if gay men weren't sinning and sleeping with other men, there wouldn't be a disease god sent to wipe out the gay folks? Ignoring that folks were dying because they only saw it with drug users and gay men?

Because that's what the AIDS epidemic was in the 80's.

Edit: I'd add that folks would rather have AIDS from the 80's instead of COVID because for most folks, AIDS wasn't something they thought could affect them.

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

#162

Post by vegai_ »

One way would be to get a smart device that has extensive parental surveillance support, and use all of those features. At least Apple has fine support via its Screen Time and Family features.

Check what your kid does online and how much they do it. You would be naturally inclined to do the exactly same thing in real life if real life contained as much stuff and different kinds of people as the internet does.

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

#163

Post by giraffe_lady »

hans1729 wrote: post #34
PeterBarrett wrote: post #10

I don't have kids yet but it is something that has been discussed about my nieces and nephews. As you say, you don't want your kids to become social pariahs but you also don't want to give them smart phones, in this day and age it looks like the two are intrinsically linked, which is disappointing. I would like to say that we can teach kids to have a healthy relationship with the internet and social media but sites l…

> I would like to say that we can teach kids to have a healthy relationship with the internet and social media but sites like TicTok are engineered to be as addictive as possible so that would be naïve of me to say. I don't think so. Don't underestimate the intelligence of kids. If your kid actually understands the way dopamine works (on a sufficient level), they will cultivate their own way of attention-management.…

I truly do not have a settled opinion on the correct course here.

But the idea that mere education can disarm these tools is incredibly naive. It's not powerless against it but not sufficient alone.

Intelligent people who are deeply knowledgeable about the physiology and psychology of addiction still get addicted to drugs, for example. Or. We all know how advertising works, and yet it still works. Do you think it doesn't work on you?

Intelligence and knowledge can be part of a defensive strategy but they're not a complete one. And even the best strategies executed flawlessly will fail sometimes or against some opponents.

This is not a matter of intelligence, and I find that framing chilling. It carries an implicit judgement that those who find themselves captive to these powers were merely too weak, undisciplined, or unintelligent to prevent that through their own agency. It's not the agency of individuals that is the problem here though.

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

#164

Post by lrvick »

2000UltraDeluxe wrote: post #118
rglullis wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, it is not an either/or situation. If teachers want to use WhatsApp for their personal communications, fine by me. What parents are perfectly entitled to do is to go to the school board and say "*We don't want to use WhatsApp. There needs to be a proper messaging platform for school communication"

There is one. It's just crap and both teachers and pupils avoid it when they can. Government IT is funny that way. Not to mention the fact that if I somehow managed to get them to ditch Whatsapp, I would be held responsible for it. I'd like to keep my business running rather than be known as the local tosser -- being famous for being a technophobe won't attract new customers. And yes, that's what being against Big Te…

No one has ever accused me of being a technophobe.

I run a security and privacy consulting company counting some of the world's largest companies as clients. I have many friends at FAANG and have had engless direct and indirect dealings with data privacy and data breaches at major companies.

I am also the guy that will teach their kids to program, and to solder.

When I am -also- the one to say I don't carry a smartphone and that I strondly recommend against TikTok and FAAANG, they at least hear me out. If anything it has gotten me -more- business because they know I take privacy seriously, which means they know I will take the privacy of their company seriously.

Don't be afraid to use your position of influence to be polite but firm in your convictions. People often will respect you for challenging toxic norms even if they don't choose to do the same. I think your fear of being "out" as a privacy advocate is unwarranted.

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

#165

Post by Broken_Hippo »

Thorentis wrote: post #151
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I'm seriously hoping you corrected her romantic view of the past. 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.

It's possible to long for one aspect of the past, without actually wanting to live in the past. If my kid decides that society is better without smartphones, I'm going to be quite proud, and saying "yeah but AIDS" will be the last thing on my mind.

I don't expect everyone to think of AIDS specifically, but we all should be immediately reminding ourselves that the past was full of issues and injustices, some of which we do not have today. Long for x or y all you want - they come with the downsides. Were some things better? Sure, possibly. But at what cost?

My comment isn't really about smartphones, but the dangers of rose-colored glasses that tint the past in ways that obscure the downsides and make the positives rosier than they really were.

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

#166

Post by watwut »

lrvick wrote: post #69
lelanthran wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm curious about this peer group in which failure to have a cellphone results in "complete and utter exclusion". Well the article in question has the kids blocked from google search. Such a radical block will almost certainly block everything else that their friends are using. So, sure, they may not need their own phone, but at ages 10-13, blocking the child from all popular tech makes them more or less unable to…

When all my peers were using AIM, and Yahoo instant messenger on Windows, I was on Linux communicating via online forums and IRC learning from mostly adults willing to mentor me as an anonymous username on the internet. 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…

> Stop worrying about making kids popular and making them conform in ways beyond basic manners and respect.

They dont worry about them being "popular". They worry about them being excluded.

> 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.

How do you show latest anime without device? Where did you met kids willing to go to your house first time they met you?

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

#167

Post by watwut »

lelanthran wrote: post #38
cjbgkagh wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t forget that those peers are also being damaged and may not make the best friends. From my observation children are increasingly dysfunctional.

> From my observation children are increasingly dysfunctional. Hasn't every generation complained about this? We forget that we were children once too, and pushed at the boundaries as we matured into teens. This is what children do.

Some generations are worst then others. Some are more violent then others for example. Tho, afaik, children of our generations were way more dysfunctional then we are willing to accept in these debates.

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

#168

Post by giraffe_lady »

bsenftner wrote: post #156
Thorentis wrote: post #154

The easiest way to achieve something like this, is to embed yourself within a community of like minded people. If you don't give your kid a smartphone, but you send them to a school where everybody has smartphones, you're just setting them up to be an outcast. You need to find a school with parents who are like minded. That way, they will make friends with people who do not have smartphones, etc. Most capital cities…

I don't have kids myself, but every child I've met from a Waldorf School has been a captivating budding intelligence https://www.waldorfeducation.org/ They teach from a creativity standpoint, without technology. I'm a bad advocate, but every interaction with a Waldorf student sticks in my mind as "that kid's going somewhere".

They are probably coming from, and going to, the same place as most students whose parents can afford $20k/year tuition for them.

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

#169

Post by anaisbetts »

lrvick wrote: post #103
anaisbetts wrote: post #32

This reads like prepper content - there are many legitimately scary reasons to control kids' access to the Internet, and "kids might be targeted by ads" is on like page 83. Think like a security dev and focus on threat modeling, kids falling into the right-wing / white supremacy pipeline and being exposed to predatory adults online are far more worrying.

I had a private investigator for a father, was once a professional magician, and am currently a full time security engineer, so I am pretty sure I think like one. All of this exposure has convinced me it is generally easier to hack a human mind than a computer, and modern social media is designed to do exactly that. You spend a few extra seconds viewing a white supremacist rant by an uncle on Facebook, and next thing…

Aren't we agreeing?

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

#170

Post by soco »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #98
soco wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can land in shady internet places very well also unwillingly, so it's less about "trust" and more about plain "protection". And the OP made it clear it's not a covert operation, the kids know it's the rule of the game.

Helicopter parenting has been shown to be orders of magnitude more damaging than any potential "dangers" out there.

Any sources for this?
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