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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?

#91

Post by multjoy »

waynesonfire wrote: post #86
Balgair wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What does being a brand manager for a dog mean? What dog? What brand? Where does social media fit in? Who are the followers?

It means that rather than posting about themselves, they're posting about the pet. Nobody is going to bully a cat or dog, so they can get used to SM without any of the drama that might be aimed at them by their peers.

It's a clever solution.

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

#92

Post by Balgair »

waynesonfire wrote: post #86
Balgair wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What does being a brand manager for a dog mean? What dog? What brand? Where does social media fit in? Who are the followers?

AFAIK, the kids can only take pics/vids of the pet and the kids post as the pet. There's not a lot of DMs and the like, as it's in the 'voice' of the pet.

Their own pets

The kids are making the pet into a 'brand'

The kids use tiktok and insta as their social media outlets. FB is, as I am told, 'for old people'.

They have followers like any influencer does. Mostly these seem to be bots to me, but of the 'real' humans, they seem to be people that are into cute animals and dumb pet tricks. Especially with the dog, the one kid has gotten it into Frisbee tricks and that seems to have gotten a bit of traction online.

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

#93

Post by Balgair »

multjoy wrote: post #91
waynesonfire wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does being a brand manager for a dog mean? What dog? What brand? Where does social media fit in? Who are the followers?

It means that rather than posting about themselves, they're posting about the pet. Nobody is going to bully a cat or dog, so they can get used to SM without any of the drama that might be aimed at them by their peers. It's a clever solution.

I thought so too! I imagine there are a lot of ways to dip your toes into SM without all the drama. Things like model trains, art, metalworking, 4H, or other 'creative' pursuits where the focus is not on the poster but rather what the poster has created/done. Less documenting your own life and more documenting your efforts. The pet thing seems to work well as it has the kids do chores surreptitiously.

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

#94

Post by rj111 »

guidedlight wrote: post #6

I have some pre-teen children that have access to an iPad, Xbox, and an Apple TV. My #1 recommendation is NO YOUTUBE, unless it's for education purposes. I don't have the App installed on any of my kids devices (they can access it via the website, but they don't do that). It's just a cesspool of garbage for kids. Even YouTube Kids is bad. Occasionally, they will complain about not having the YouTube app... but I neve…

YouTube is really bad and hard to stop. When kids get curious about something on the fringe, the algorithm pushes them further and further into the rat hole until they are practically brainwashed by the craziest YouTubers. Unfortunately Google has chosen profit over allowing controls that are effective for parents.

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

#95

Post by kart23 »

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…

"Be the adults that you want your kids to become" is the best advice. My parents would just pull the wifi plug, I think that works well since its a rule that applies to everyone. kids sports that are uber-competitive suck. stuff like little league can be good, it all depends on the coach and the community.

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

#96

Post by waynesonfire »

Balgair wrote: post #93
multjoy wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It means that rather than posting about themselves, they're posting about the pet. Nobody is going to bully a cat or dog, so they can get used to SM without any of the drama that might be aimed at them by their peers. It's a clever solution.

I thought so too! I imagine there are a lot of ways to dip your toes into SM without all the drama. Things like model trains, art, metalworking, 4H, or other 'creative' pursuits where the focus is not on the poster but rather what the poster has created/done. Less documenting your own life and more documenting your efforts. The pet thing seems to work well as it has the kids do chores surreptitiously.

such a great idea.

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

#97

Post by ffhhj »

sam0x17 wrote: post #83
turtleyacht wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

I will say, YouTube killed my nephew’s interest in programming and tinkering. He started out with all sorts of interests and teaching himself how to code. Now he just watches YouTube and TikTok like all the other sheep and does nothing interesting.

I optimized my life to build projects, and I avoid youtube and tutorials unless I can't really guess how to achieve something. Tutorials, and especially video tutorials that are less easy to quickly examine just deplede your "creativity moment". Why make something if someone already did? The goal that was "magical and special" for me is now a consumerism's image in the Desert of the Real.

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

#98

Post by woojoo666 »

ethbr0 wrote: post #84
Misdicorl wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The central problem here is trust: either your kid trusts you enough to discuss things with you, or they don't. If that doesn't exist, implementing a technical panopticon is a way to paper over its worst effects, but it's not a solution to the root problem.

> The central problem here is trust: either your kid trusts you enough to discuss things with you, or they don't.

I don't think it's that simple. A predator can catfish as a high school girl, send raunchy texts and images to the boy, and the boy might be tempted to engage but wouldn't tell their parents out of embarassment (just like how a teenage boy isn't going to tell their parents about their porn watching habits)

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

#99

Post by darthrupert »

Ideally, this should not be the responsibility of the parent. Mainly because it’s practically impossible to protect every kid in a household-by-household basis. Ideally, the government should have strict restrictions on what content providers are allowed to show children.

I’ve seen two kids practically destroyed by these devices, by the inaction of myself and my society. I thought that because I handled computers and later Internet just fine, that they could do it just as well. I think I underestimated the level of the danger by a huge margin.

I have two more kids who are yet mostly unharmed, and due to this experience, I will clamp down on their device use in a much more drastic manner.

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

#100

Post by tmaly »

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…

What does your friend use for monitoring?
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