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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?

#201

Post by creatonez »

kaoD wrote: post #7

Other replies already addressed the screen time/hanging out together aspect, so I will comment on being unsupervised. I was a kid on the early-ish internet and I was free to "surf the interwebs" unsupervised. The internet is not the same anymore but I think the general rules still apply. This was a very valuable learning experience for me. Based on my own experience (anecdata, I know) what I found really helped me is…

> 2b. Show them what spam, scams, malicious sites, phishing, etc. look like and how to prevent damage.

To expand on this, with the $CURRENT_YEAR generation of kids, it is very likely that the first scam they will encounter will be a Discord or Steam related account stealing or malware scam.

These are the specific examples that everyone using Discord should be aware of - https://i.imgur.com/PPni16I.png

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

#202

Post by Wurdan »

brightball wrote: post #185
eatsyourtacos wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what issues you apparently have with your kids, but stop projecting that on the rest of us who have managed a healthy balance.

I don’t know what you think being the parent means that you react so strongly to the idea?

Let me flip that around on you - what do YOU think being a parent means which is mutually exclusive with being a friend?

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

#203

Post by stackbutterflow »

alar44 wrote: post #123
bitlax wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe my wording wasn't precise enough. My kids have a reasonable amount of privacy which is less than the amount of privacy I expect them to be granted by other people. The internet grants access to literally every type of content and image if you try hard enough and there are obvious things I don't want my children exposed to. My idea of a dystopia involves children being exposed to rotten.com, porn, and communicat…

And then when they finally have access they are going to binge like crazy because they haven't learned how to manage that access. It's like the sheltered kids that go off the deep end when they hit college because they have no experience with anything.

Or, it's like the college students who drink water, eat vegetables, and exercise and continue to do so throughout their life because they haven't been exposed to junk food, soda, and flavored sugar disguised as food during their childhood.

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

#204

Post by lrvick »

MobileVet wrote: post #130
antics9 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What we should be doing as a sort of collective parenting is curating Youtube playlists and categorize them with good, informational, fun and inspiring videos. Then we limit the children's access to that curated material only.

How do you limit their access to the curated material?

Try Freetube. No login and no algorithm.

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

#205

Post by lrvick »

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…

Try Freetube. No login and no algorithm.

You can also download folders full of content you want kids to have access to and put it on Kodi or similar.

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

#206

Post by bearmode »

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…

No post body was provided.

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

#207

Post by brightball »

Wurdan wrote: post #202
brightball wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know what you think being the parent means that you react so strongly to the idea?

Let me flip that around on you - what do YOU think being a parent means which is mutually exclusive with being a friend?

Would you ever deny a friend something they wanted to do that you knew wasn’t good for them?

You aren’t responsible for your friends.

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

#208

Post by hndamien »

p1necone wrote: post #143

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 everyt…

I explained memetics to my kids from around 3 and have given free access (and supervision) with education like you have said and its working fine so far up to 7. He even used to turn over the ipad if there was an ad appearing (we pay for no ads mostly). It really can work down young.

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

#209

Post by hjkl0 »

ethbr0 wrote: post #118
Misdicorl wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Is this the HN that was against warrantless wiretapping

I’m pretty sure there are different rules and regulations around issuing warrants for minors.

And that’s the whole point here. They are not adults.

It’s not a relationship between equals. They’re not ready for trust yet. Not in the same that trust can exist between two adults. And they need protection, in a way that adults don’t.

And it’s not a question of parenting either. No amount of parenting will make a person’s brain fully developed at 13.

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

#210

Post by contingencies »

42e6e8c8-f7b8-4 wrote: post #49
contingencies wrote: post #30

Every child is different. As parent only you can make the right decision in context. We select and watch film together unless its clearly kids content. Personally I do not encourage spending. Money is a vile thing.

Every child is different, but surely there are patterns and broad commonalities. Surely you should guard your children from heroin and meth and there are some nasty and destructive content on the internet that couldn't possibly be a good choice for any child to consume. When should your kindergartener start consuming snuff pornography? Answer: they a shouldn't, lest we wish a million serialer killers to bloom.

Every troll is different. Lest none of them starve, feed them all.
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