Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 232 posts

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

#141

Post by mixmastamyk »

s1k3 wrote: 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…

You may not be aware of the full extent of the problem. It's not just the "time wasting" of the old days, just ~15 years ago. Try these documentaries:

- "The Social Dilemma" on Netflix

- "The United States of Secrets" on PBS.

- John Oliver on Data Brokers, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqn3gR1WTcA

There are others I can't remember off the top of my head. You may feel differently when you find out about companies profiting off the current (as in right now) whereabouts of your child.

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

#142

Post by smeej »

brightball wrote: post #127

I’m going to go the other direction…it’s your responsibility to violate your childrens online privacy at least up to a certain age. Block, restrict, monitor. Say no pretty much all the time. They’ll be fine. There’s so much stuff out there where they’ll have no idea what’s going on but you’ll recognize it immediately. NextDNS is great for this stuff. Apple Family Manager too. On a phone or iPad just remove safari ent…

Acknowledging up front that I don't have kids, if I did, it would be extremely important to me to teach them that there is no such thing as privacy on the internet.

If you want them to grow up to be adults who live in the world, drive that lesson home: Every single thing they ever do on the internet is being tracked and monitored and can be shared with anyone, at any time, especially the people they'd least like to see it.

"Online privacy" is an oxymoron. Sure, there are ways to be much more secure about it than others. Teach them to use them. Raise them to be "that kid" who understands why their messages should always be encrypted and self-destructing.

The world will not respect your children's privacy on the internet. They need to know that, and the earlier, the better. Don't Santa Claus them on this. Don't set them up for failure.

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

#143

Post by p1necone »

If you try to control your kids internet/device usage too much they will learn to work around it (at least once they hit the young teens). Try to have open conversations with them and teach them about the dangers of strangers, predatory microtransactions, the permanence of whatever they post on the internet etc.

If you just try to monitor and restrict what they do they will grow to resent you, and they'll hide everything from you (and they'll likely be much better at this than you expect).

Do note this advice is for teenagers though. I suspect you'd be quite successful limiting a 5-10 year olds unsupervised access to the internet, and probably justified in doing so imo.

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

#144

Post by resonious »

When I was a kid (8 or 9 yrs old?) back in the early 2000s, my mom was pretty tech savvy compared to her peers. She actually installed corporate monitoring monitoring software on my machine and told me about it. She said the internet is dangerous and she needs to see what I'm doing to protect me / make sure I'm not up to no good. Once I'm older she'd remove it. It all made sense to me and I didn't mind. I think it also helped deter me from doing anything too stupid.

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

#145

Post by Smithalicious »

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…

Is YouTube really so bad nowadays? I feel like I'm in a weird position as I'm young enough to have grown up with YouTube, having used it regularly since age 11 or 12, and I got a ton out of it, but "The Algorithm" wasn't a thing in the same way back then. I still use YouTube today and still get a lot out of it, but I mainly watch videos from channels I'm subscribed to or through direct recommendation by other people.

Am I living in a weird bubble while the rest of the world experiences a parallel, much worse YouTube?

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

#146

Post by aantix »

MobileVet wrote: post #129
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 horrible. They use it for school occasionally and so it would have to be available during that Covid year of online schooling. My wife actually noticed that around Feb of 2021, the algorithm had won. Our son was hooked. ‘How can a 6 year old boy compete with a bunch of engineers at Google?’ - wife Since that time I have been playing with a YouTube app concept that only allows limited access and doesn’t aut…

You log them in, manage their subscriptions.

Subscribe them to science channels.

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

#147

Post by pneumatic1 »

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…

I grew up in a house with no closed doors and it pushed me to find other, less healthy, ways to distance myself.

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

#148

Post by mixmastamyk »

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…

There's some good info in here, but drowned out by hysteria. Might want to tone it down a notch.

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

#150

Post by kochb »

Smithalicious wrote: post #145
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…

Is YouTube really so bad nowadays? I feel like I'm in a weird position as I'm young enough to have grown up with YouTube, having used it regularly since age 11 or 12, and I got a ton out of it, but "The Algorithm" wasn't a thing in the same way back then. I still use YouTube today and still get a lot out of it, but I mainly watch videos from channels I'm subscribed to or through direct recommendation by other people.…

There’s plenty of quality content on YouTube. But there’s plenty of low quality knockoffs, and even outright dangerous videos like Blippi smashing things with hammers or Peppa Pig murdering her friends and family with a knife.

YouTube has too much crowd generated garbage to leave kids unsupervised.

Post reply on HN