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The Wait Until 8th pledge

waituntil8th.org

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Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#181

Post by prepend »

lelanthran wrote: post #155
geocar wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Your whole reply appears, to me, to be completely unhinged, but this bit: > They will learn that "slowing down the rate of change" is a dog whistle for denying the rights of a human being because their parents told them they were a girl. does make me ask ... What on earth are you talking about?

I’m not GP, but the post seemed off to me too and there’s likely more going on that is generalized to the entire conversation.

There’s way more kind loving parents working to help their children flourish than denying their human being rights. And stopping the loving ones to also stop the jerks seems like a net negative impact change.

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#182

Post by vultour »

teeray wrote: post #45

> These devices are quickly changing childhood for children. Playing outdoors, spending time with friends, reading books and hanging out with family is happening a lot less to make room for hours of snap chatting, instagramming, and catching up on You Tube. I feel like this rhetoric also existed when I was in middle school, well before smartphones. The villain then was TV and violent video games, and there were simil…

Violent video games have always been the boogeyman, but there never was any real evidence of its effect on children. These days there's constant news of widespread mental health issues in teenagers; I think the current iteration of social media has much worse effects than video games ever had.

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#183

Post by deafpolygon »

autoexec wrote: post #171
deafpolygon wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spoken like someone in a bubble. Most people don't care for any of that - they want their TikTok, YouTube, Facebook dopamine hits. They want to "Like" the latest picture Granny posts of their kids. Not to fiddle with things and learn something new. For the vast majority of people, computers are just very expensive entertainment devices. That's why Smartphones are so successful. Not because they are great at computing…

> Not because they are great at computing, Sounds like you agree with me. Smart phones are poor computers but they sell well because they're designed to be easy to use devices for media consumption and data collection. I've written programs on a cell phone (perhaps that's just a much less popular type of slot machine) but I wouldn't recommend it, or expect a kid to develop a love of coding by handing them a cell phon…

> I think kids naturally want to fiddle with things and learn something new.

I have two kids. I can tell you that it's not necessarily true, and kids spend an ungodly amount of time silently comparing themselves to their peers. It's always "My friend has this", "My friend does that". It takes a special kind of kid to have the patience, attention and time needed to want to fiddle around with a computer. I've tinkered with computers, smartphones, etc, all my life and shared as much as I could about it with my children - they have zero interest.

Of course, they don't know about the data collection and they're growing up in a world that normalizes that kind of behavior. When looking back, they'll go-- well as a kid I had that, so I guess that's ok. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, et. al. wants that- they know it's just a matter of time.

My kids have had cell phones since 12 for 'necessary' purposes, but they were not allowed to use it except for that. Otherwise, kept in the public space, in view and must ask to use it. My oldest is halfway till 17 and hardly uses their phone now. I have been thanked for this because they notice how their friends are addicted. The goal here is to avoid priming your kids' brain to be addicted to phones, not necessarily avoiding tech.

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#184

Post by travisporter »

I feel that all the analogies to our generations (x or z presumably) watching tv and video games growing up is actually not a good parallel. I hated that I watched so much TV and video games. I wish I had read more as a kid.

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#185

Post by prepend »

elzbardico wrote: post #172
debok wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes they do. Lots of people do because they talk to their kids. You are assuming that the kids somehow magically know what would make them happy. > One day, your kids are going to tell you that you are wrong. Totally wrong. Wrong about morality and ethics. Wrong wrong. And you are going to have to believe them, or you will lose access to a part of their life forever. How do you know that? I for one feel that my par…

Sometimes they don't know what WOULD make them happy, but most of the time they are pretty certain about what DID make them happy or unhappy. So, adjust as required. Your goal is not to eliminate all the potential for suffering and frustration in their lives, this is a lame, and impossible goal. Your goal is to enable them to deal with that in a positive and constructive way.

> Sometimes they don't know what WOULD make them happy, but most of the time they are pretty certain about what DID make them happy or unhappy.

I’m not so sure about this. I’m not certain what did make me happy or unhappy. I have some theories and sometimes are really confident, but it’s hard to tell a year later out of all the things done which positively contributed and which didn’t.

Also, I don’t think the goal of parenting is happiness. Not for the parents or kids. Life is more than just being happy and I think it’s reductionist to focus on that as the paramount outcome. Especially to kids where there’s lots of stuff happening that may not pay off until years later- studying, being creative, training, learning, etc. Maybe positive decisions are not going to yield happiness for a long time.

And as a parent, there’s so much sacrifice that we make for kids that don’t involve any happiness for the parent but give more probability of success for our children.

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#186

Post by sokoloff »

geocar wrote: post #176
debok wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes they do. Lots of people do because they talk to their kids. You are assuming that the kids somehow magically know what would make them happy. > One day, your kids are going to tell you that you are wrong. Totally wrong. Wrong about morality and ethics. Wrong wrong. And you are going to have to believe them, or you will lose access to a part of their life forever. How do you know that? I for one feel that my par…

> Also, I wouldn't cut my parents off for disagreeing with me about morality or ethics You must mean something different than what I mean: What about someone who was molested by their parents? Should they keep contact with them? You think those people who would rape a kid should have friends and a social group that accepts them for who they are ? Is there something here you think is okay? Listen, I would judge you if…

If you meant abuse, you certainly could have been a lot more clearer than your original text that GP cited:

> One day, your kids are going to tell you that you are wrong. Totally wrong. Wrong about morality and ethics. Wrong wrong. And you are going to have to believe them, or you will lose access to a part of their life forever.

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#187

Post by prepend »

rob74 wrote: post #163
lelanthran wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because that's the final goal of such movements: start with "voluntary pledges", move into social stigmatization of dissidents, capture organizational rule, and then, finally, the law. This is the first I've heard of voluntary pledges ending in prohibition via law. Do you have any examples?

They gave one - the US Prohibition ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_Stat... )

I think that’s a bad example because it’s 100 years old and was reversed and, hopefully, is the last time the US does this.

There are tons of “virtues” that aren’t resulting in laws- exercise is good, sugar is bad, coke is bad, etc etc

Saying we shouldn’t encourage voluntary pledges to help our kids because it might be mandatory is probably not a good idea. The tangible benefit from the pledge seems more likely than the low risk of some future mandatory regulation.

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#188

Post by mduggles »

I support this movement. I don't think I need to sign a pledge as a parent to do it, but if this makes you feel like you aren't alone making this decision go for it. Reading through these comments, a lot of them miss the forest for the trees. "Kids should have access to all the earths information except for the stuff I don't like which then I have parental controls on (which we all know don't actually work but we'll pretend they work for this sake of this argument)"

Boredom is a powerful force in your life. It forces you to go out and find things to do, people to interact with and activities to enrich yourself. If you can craft a perfect entertainment box with a constant feeling of socialization that exists only for you, you are never bored. You are never going to go out and do those things that I think are critical for children. Being bored and learning what do you like to do to fill that boredom are a big part of being a kid. You invent games, find hobbies, discover how to live with being bored.

We hosted a foreign exchange student from Europe and it was a waste of time. He didn't make friends because he didn't have to make friends, his friends were on his phone. He didn't go out because why bother, he can sit online with his original friends. The entire concept of immersion was lost on him. He got to choose exactly what elements of place A he interacted with and exactly what elements of place B and didn't really grow or change as a result.

Forcing children to adapt to their situation and not giving them an endless dopamine drip of "things they like" is a net positive for the kind of person who you are helping to raise.

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#189

Post by prepend »

myrryr wrote: post #147
npunt wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's cool you, a tech-savvy HN poster, has managed to wield technology to find a high-reward/low-risk way to parent using devices, but perhaps your 'correct' solution may not work in all contexts for all people. Perhaps you just have a kid who has the right temperament to handle devices when young. Perhaps you work few enough hours or have the resources necessary to parent in a way to make this work. Perhaps the ki…

> If there's any truism to parenting (and education) its that there's no one size fits all solution So a pledge to try to enforce a one size fits all solution is dumb as hell yes?

I think it makes sense here because of the peer pressure effect of middle school aged kids. It’s hard when your kid is the only one in 5th grade class who doesn’t have instagram and Snapchat and everything else.

So definitely not dumb as hell. Also, this isn’t one side fits all as there’s lots of room for variability. It’s no more “one size fits all” than not allowing drivers younger than 16.

Re: The Wait Until 8th pledge

#190

Post by throw0101b »

elzbardico wrote: post #72

This is the easy way out of the problem, but I am afraid, not the correct one. My kid has had his own tablet since 6, his own PC since 8, and his own cellular since 9. So far he hasn't turned into a domestic terrorist, and neither is he selling heroin for crypto on the dark web. Also, he has specific times when he can use his devices аnd limits on how much time. All modern OSes have some sort of parental controls bui…

> Just delaying their first contact to the age of 13/14 won't magically guarantee they will be able to navigate it responsibly.

There are no guarantees in life (except death (and taxes?)).

It's about playing the odds/probabilities to achieved the desired outcomes (presumably happiness, or perhaps Aristotle's eudaimonia).

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