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

Post by Balgair » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 4:17 PM UTC

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…

Post by ethbr0 » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 4:19 PM UTC

Misdicorl wrote: post #69

ethbr0 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a 13 year old is that inexperienced and much of a target... it's probably time to have a conversation about sexuality and the perils of sharing sexual pictures of oneself with random people on the internet. I swear, most of the "But what if?!"isms boil down to "I don't want to have an uncomfortable conversation with my child to teach them about the world." (Said as the father of a 14 year old)

I think you underestimate the problem space. Think of it like security issues where the attackers/researchers are constantly evolving and generating novel ways to hack a system. Your solution is telling fresh out of school developers to be really careful about use after free bugs and spear phishing. Obviously a good start. But it's not enough in a lot of cases.

Post by waynesonfire » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 4:30 PM UTC

Balgair wrote: post #82

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…

Friends of ours have a pretty okay-ish implementation for social media for their kids. They make the kid the 'brand manager' for a pet first. The kid gets the interaction of social media and their friends, but they have to do it for their dog/cat for a year first, then they can get their own account. The kids have gotten some low level brand sponsorships for the pets, something that the other kids at school are jealo…

Post by wngr » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 4:43 PM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #81

bjt2n3904 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tik Tok for her would be a necessary evil. [...] While not productive, they are harmless. I think it is a mistake to view something like viral TikTok videos as "harmless". Wasn't it a few weeks ago that we had a front page article on a child that died during a "pass out challenge"? But you raise a good point. Other parents giving their children unsupervised access to the internet creates a massive problem. A collea…

I haven’t got the discipline to keep a minimum of screen time and I notice a massive difference between kids that do have very little unsupervised access (i.e many hours of TikTok and YouTube): the screen kids in my non-English speaking country speak fluent English at age 9 or 10. The non screen kids might never catch up. So while I’m sure it’s toxic as hell at least there is some benefit. If I was in an English spea…

Post by wngr » Sun, Jul 17, 2022, 4:57 PM UTC

hiptobecubic wrote: post #42

Thorentis wrote: post #13

My opinion: children don't need access to the internet, period. There are plenty of ways to let them explore, learn, and play, without giving them any access to the internet. I plan to host an entirely off-line copy of Wikipedia, a bunch of other resources, video games, programming tutorials and libraries. Basically a whole bunch of content that will let them learn about computers and the world, without having access…

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.