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Ask HN: How to deal with children's online habits?

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Re: Ask HN: How to deal with children's online habits?

#71

Post by synergy20 »

patrickdavey wrote: post #60
synergy20 wrote: post #57

My way is to block the internet at study times and only let education-related site be available, block the porn sites at all times for them, with a wifi router. as long as the internet is on for kids, it's really hard for them to get off-hooked without some strict (technical) rules in house, talking with them did not work for us after many trying, wifi is the only thing works when it is needed(e.g. study time, or no-…

? How did you pull that off? Can they not just set their own DNS so you can't block them finding sites, and then if they're communicating over tor how do you even know what they're looking at? Most impressive!

it took me 3 years to figure out(as one of my kids kept finding ways to bypass it, who was a game addict, that forced me to improve the design), it's a combination of different approaches to make the whole thing work at low cost, my kids said it is much more 'clean' comparing to their school wifi network, where they can bypass easily with some free VPN software and proxy server, and kids exchange their findings, so campus-network to them is pretty much fully open.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with children's online habits?

#72

Post by jimnotgym »

Before covid each child had a certain amount of time they could go online each day, enforced by the router. During lockdown I took the limit away and we were all basically glued to it.

Now the router turns the Internet off at a certain time each night for the whole house, forcing me to go to bed.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with children's online habits?

#73

Post by enumjorge »

rajin444 wrote: post #46
fleddr wrote: post #10

I have friends with children in the age of 12-14, one of which excessively monitors his son's online behavior. He's shown me results of his monitoring and it pretty much ended the debate. Weird old guys contacting his son, excessive cyberbullying, swearing (fine by me, but still), being drawn to the wrong kind of "friends", hate speech, general addiction and obsession with games and in-game items, the list goes on. D…

> Your trust is misplaced. Could you provide some explicit examples to what you linked above? > Weird old guys contacting his son This one sounds a little weird, but the rest could just be the kid isn’t following modern western progressive values (and being obsessed with games depending on how much is just being a kid). > swearing (fine by me, but still), being drawn to the wrong kind of "friends", hate speech I’d ne…

It’s sad that being against hate speech is considered modern, western and progressive. It seemed like the norm not too long ago.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with children's online habits?

#74

Post by turtleyacht »

ksec wrote: post #43

One thing I noticed that is often missing in these discussions, sometimes it isn't up to the parents to decide at all. Imagine your 8 - 11 years old daughter's social circle, and the school she is at where her classmate were allowed very little Internet at home or school. Then you wouldn't have a problem enforcing whatever internet rules. Now imagine everyone of her classmate were playing Minecraft, and she is the on…

I swear it will be like, OpenBSD only, custom router, firewall everything, no Windows...

If you can break out, good on you. If you can write your own tools, even better.

"I was traumatized from computing because my dad never let me see a GUI outside of X11."

I hope they'll be bored enough to wander over to books--"old" programming and math books--and just start working through those. Who knows.

There were at least three groups of folks with unlimited access to computers and Internet in school: smart gamers, smarter tinkerers, and me. What I'd like to encourage, if I could control some portion of it, is to funnel activity to the second of the three. And that based on constraints, because I don't know any better than utter abstinence.

Any complaints about Minecraft will get them pointed to the book on Foley, gcc, and the promise of my time to help...

In the end, they'll figure out everything anyway. But at least in the beginning, I tried to have them focus on first principles.

Did I mention the Great Books? I have to put those somewhere.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with children's online habits?

#75

Post by killjoywashere »

ksec wrote: post #43

One thing I noticed that is often missing in these discussions, sometimes it isn't up to the parents to decide at all. Imagine your 8 - 11 years old daughter's social circle, and the school she is at where her classmate were allowed very little Internet at home or school. Then you wouldn't have a problem enforcing whatever internet rules. Now imagine everyone of her classmate were playing Minecraft, and she is the on…

> most of the Internet stuff are entertainment only. So stuff like Pop Music, Anime, Viral Videos etc. While not productive, they are harmless

You are so obviously not the parent of a teen girl. The viral videos have created a crisis of self harm the world has not yet come to terms with.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with children's online habits?

#76

Post by Macha »

thoms_a wrote: post #68

Expose your kids to activities that are more compelling than screens. Trust me, once you take a kid go-karting, they aren't going to be as excited playing a video game. Do cool shit with your kids. Go skiing, camping, fishing, go-karting, flying (small plane tours), drone racing, etc. I know most of us here are nerds, but the jocks really do have life figured out when it comes to fun stuff.

I realise HN has a disproportionate amount of software engineers, but I know my parents would struggle to afford the likes of skiing, flying, go-karting as regular activities, never mind in sufficient quantities to displace video games and the internet. Even a trip to the bowling alley was a rare treat when I was growing up.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with children's online habits?

#77

Post by killjoywashere »

hotpotamus wrote: post #67
killjoywashere wrote: post #63

My wife is a pediatric occupational therapist who works with children in Silicon Valley, including the some of the uberwealthy (Los Altos Hills, Portola Valley ranch wealthy, "would you just come with us on the jet this week" wealthy). She has also worked in pre- and post Katrina New Orleans, college towns, east coast, west coast. tropical islands. She's been around, seen kids at the absolute top and some versions of…

I see posts like this about all the rules and pitfalls or raising (functional?) children these days, and I just wonder - why are people doing it? What do they want for their children to do in the world? I couldn't enforce this level of discipline on myself, let alone a child. I suppose I'm happy someone is raising the future laborers and tax payers that I might rely upon someday, but the whole thing just looks very d…

Having kids was the best decision of my life. They are wonderful beyond compare and will lead the world. My wife, the kids, and I are all thriving. But we are just starting to exit the shitshow of teenage years and let me tell you, the internet has made childhood insane. Like Meow Wolf with live ammunition, stripers, and cocaine.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with children's online habits?

#78

Post by Macha »

42e6e8c8-f7b8-4 wrote: post #47
hiptobecubic wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint, if your child grows up and isn't "internet native" they will be like people who "don't get computers" over the last decade. It's very limiting.

I grew up without access to computers at all until I was 12. I thought I would break my uncle's computer by moving the mouse. I've had a career ranging from telecom and supercomputer chips to mobile, desktop, and web dev. I do not think my lack of exposure to the internet at a young age has limited me.

One person in my CS degree (which started in 2008) had his first time using a computer a few weeks before said degree which was interesting. He managed it fine.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with children's online habits?

#79

Post by bitwize »

No internet before age 13 at least.

1) Touching grass is super important at this phase of their development. We were given brains to move our bodies; kids need practice at running around and playing in a physically active manner.

2) Aside from the usual risks (exposure to porn, Elsagate material, child abusers, etc.) there's the fact that even innocuous kids' apps encourage addictive behavior. I made the acquaintance of a delightful six-year-old girl, the child of a family friend. She was eager to show me the games she played on her Kindle Fire, and some of them were the Skinner-boxiest things imaginable. Feed the animals ice cream by tapping the indicated thing and get a visual and sound reward. I flat out told her her favorite tablet games were boring, intended for toddlers and not big girls like her, and she needed something that would challenge her brain. She is rather smart and creative given the opportunity; she makes her own maps and such for Little Big Planet. But she is quite prone to being satisfied with the familiar and not seeking the challenge and advancement she needs (for that matter, so am I), and the internet -- even at its best, before actively harmful material enters the picture -- is only too happy to supply that stagnant comfort, to drive up engagement metrics.

By all means, get your kid a computer! Do not connect it to wifi or ethernet. Tell them if they want a game for it they will have to write it themselves, and in response to their frustrated "HOW?!" open the discussion about how to program. Get them a Raspberry Pi autonomous car kit or something. All of this at appropriate ages of course. If they need to look something up online, do it for them or supervise their internet use. Require beforehand that they ask to look up something specific and once they have it, have them save it for future reference.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with children's online habits?

#80

Post by smugma »

mecanicox wrote: post #64

Never allow a children below 12 access to internet, a not give to they cellphones until the 14 or until they needed, in my experience as father, I give him 4 or 5 hour in videogames or videos in the computer monday-saturday, sunday is for family time, everytime he ask for buy something, I tell him that he must work for obtain that as reward or compensation, not let them take the monitor outside of your range, even in…

Does watching PBS Kids or Disney+ count? What about YouTube Kids or YouTube?

The point being that almost all content is on the Internet now.

I guess your reply can be seen as a good faith response because if you block everything, there’s no need to monitor. It’s just very extreme to disallow content if provided over the Internet, rather than building trust and nuance, which I think is more along the lines of the original question.

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