Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

111–120 of 232 posts

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

#111
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The solution to that isn't tapping your boy's IM and chat history though. It's having a relationship with him where he feels comfortable mentioning he's talking to someone new.

And the opposition is doing everything they can to

1) make that communication remain innocuous long enough to fall into background ignore status

2) escalate in a way that will either avoid communicatong with you or even better seem fine to the child but not to you and so invoke the "my parent isn't fair" response and stop consulting you wholesale

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

#112
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The solution to that isn't tapping your boy's IM and chat history though. It's having a relationship with him where he feels comfortable mentioning he's talking to someone new.

The "girl" doesn't want him to mention her, because her dad's possessive and abusive and if he finds out, she's dead meat. Your kid now has a selfless, noble reason to be uncomfortable sharing that information.

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

#113

>you are likely to understand my concern for privacy and personal integrity, I've given up on the high ideals I used to hold about (online) privacy (and anonymity). There's an argument that they, in some circumstances, are the antithesis of personal and public responsibility. My current plan is that my kids will get tech when they can afford it themselves. I'm also dreading it, as more parents bow to the pressure and…

Can you talk more about giving up smartphones? That's a pretty radical move.

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

#114

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…

I'd be more flexible.

There are kid safe quality sites and apps like Khan Academy, Youtube Kids , SplashLearn, the local library and more

Its possible to allow list only specific URls and apps and set time limits and that works well with my 5 year old.

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

#115
post #110

I kind of don’t understand all the crazy concern around kids and tech. Was like every current parent negatively impacted by their computer and internet use when they were younger? Is this simply a concern around social media usage which has ballooned in the past 10 years? I sometimes feel like I’m in the minority here when I’m going to give me children wide latitude in their tech/internet usage. And only intervene if…

I had a strange epiphany around age 16 when I realized that, thanks to 4chan, I had probably seen more ghastly shit within the past few months than my parents had in the entire lives -- and that I was already completely desensitized to it.

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

#117
post #112
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution to that isn't tapping your boy's IM and chat history though. It's having a relationship with him where he feels comfortable mentioning he's talking to someone new.

The "girl" doesn't want him to mention her, because her dad's possessive and abusive and if he finds out, she's dead meat. Your kid now has a selfless, noble reason to be uncomfortable sharing that information.

Do you have children?

If they trust a stranger they just met on the internet more than a parent, that's the problem.

No amount of technological redress is going to fix that.

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

#118
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution to that isn't tapping your boy's IM and chat history though. It's having a relationship with him where he feels comfortable mentioning he's talking to someone new.

And the opposition is doing everything they can to 1) make that communication remain innocuous long enough to fall into background ignore status 2) escalate in a way that will either avoid communicatong with you or even better seem fine to the child but not to you and so invoke the "my parent isn't fair" response and stop consulting you wholesale

Yes. And why is your teen so desperate for attention that they're willing to get it from a random stranger on the internet? Instead of their friends or someone they know in real life?

Jesus, this thread of an exercise of people making more and more convoluted excuses to treat their own children like criminals.

Is this the HN that was against warrantless wiretapping, or did I mistakenly fall through into another forum?

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

#119
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, playing online has pretty much become critical competency-training for life, replacing playing outside which used to be the same.

I'd hazard playing outside is still critical competency-training for a mentally well-adjusted life. From personal observation of {plays outside some of the time} vs {never plays outside}, the latter definitely have more neuroses.

But be aware that the opposite causation may also play a part: neurotic traits/predispositions/parents are likely to affect how and where you play

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

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The norm used to be that as bad as hate speech is, bad speech is the most important type of speech to protect because no one tries to ban speech that they like.

This was recognized as important because invariably the powers that be change hands and then people with very different rules on what speech is bad get to use the same tools to suppress speech.

That is why you had the ACLU defending the rights of nazis to hold rallies: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_... which would likely not happen today

Post reply on HN