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Parental controls aren't for parents

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Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#141

Post by mystraline »

mjg2 wrote: post #114
fn-mote wrote: post #63

Dear All, As you post, please be clear what age range child you are discussing. There are a lot of posts here advocating strategies that make sense for a 10 year old but are ridiculous for a 15 year old. Remember: once the children have friends with unrestricted cell phones (essentially all 14+ year olds in the us), there are many many more options for them to go online. Also, I got my start as a “hacker” gaming, che…

With due respect, this comment conveys a position of privilege and surviver's bias. I, like you, eschewed online rules as a minor and I luckily benefitted from this time in my expertise. I was lucky. I didn't run into predators when using TF2, Runescape, or MySpace, but that doesn't mean the threat wasn't validated on with persons (children at the time) that fell through the cracks. The story outlined, one of a child…

In reality, the whole "stranger danger" is way overblown and always has been. Most of the time, sexual predators are going to be either family or friends.

https://rainn.org/facts-statistics-the-scope-of-the-problem/...

93% of victims under 18 know their abuser.

Sure there's 7% thats not, but a significant supermajority is family/friends. 59% were acquaintances, and 34% are family.

Edit: seriously, -1 cause I link to actual facts, rather than shitty emotional outbursts? Family and friends of family have always been the major list of suspects for child sex abuse. They're the ones who have time and access.

But somehow linking to cited facts is -1 central. Sigh.

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#142

Post by throwway120385 »

mothballed wrote: post #113
cevn wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You were loose with a gun at age 7?!

Absolutely, I would also walk down the public roads also to get from one field to another, nobody said anything. It was quite normal in the rural Midwest. You'll probably find lots of true stories online as well about kids arriving to school and checking their rifle with the principal at the beginning of class and then getting them back at the end of the day.

We did that stuff too in rural Washington. The vast vast majority of people don't mess with anyone, let alone children.

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#143

Post by JeremyNT »

Aurornis wrote: post #31
hnlmorg wrote: post #26

I really want to sympathise with the author but this feels more like a one-sided rant piece than a constructive article. For example, in one paragraph they complain that “I don’t want my son to get online” then literally the following paragraph they complain that they need a Switch Online membership to get their son online. If you want your Nintendo Switch to “behave like a Gameboy” then don’t get the online membersh…

I agree. As a parent it feels hard to sympathize with someone who outsourced their child’s app usage selection to another company and didn’t even bother to check what apps were allowed first. I visited the Gabb site they linked to and “Communication with strangers” is clearly listed as one of the tags they put on apps allowed on the phone. You’re supposed to review them as a parent, not just assume that 100% of the n…

My daughter has always used a normal low end Android phone with the default parental controls. She only installs what I whitelist. It's really not that much effort.

Honestly, maybe the Gabb Phone marketing is lulling users into a false sense of security. If you still have to do the same legwork as the default Android experience, what's the point of their devices?

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#144

Post by throwway120385 »

immibis wrote: post #68
dosman33 wrote: post #29

It's not an accident that its so hard to get this stuff right, I've heard countless stories like this from friends who are parents. If the market wanted parents to be able to figure this out it would be getting it right. It's obviously a dark pattern that benefits everyone but the parents and their children. If more people stopped to think deeper about this they would and should be very disturbed by what this means.

And yet whenever the idea of changing this stuff at a societal level comes up, HN is filled with thought-deleting cries of "parents just need to be more responsible"

Yeah -- alongside cries of "why isn't anyone having children anymore?"

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#146

Post by mjg2 »

michaelmrose wrote: post #134
mjg2 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With due respect, this comment conveys a position of privilege and surviver's bias. I, like you, eschewed online rules as a minor and I luckily benefitted from this time in my expertise. I was lucky. I didn't run into predators when using TF2, Runescape, or MySpace, but that doesn't mean the threat wasn't validated on with persons (children at the time) that fell through the cracks. The story outlined, one of a child…

If your kid lies you might not get a truthful answer to that question in person or online. You are actually expecting a lot from devices that you never had in the real world in the first place in order to mitigate a risk that is very scary but less likely to kill them than drugs and alcohol, swimming, bad driving, biking, getting hit by a car whilst walking, getting shot, or suicide. People are freaking out over stra…

First, I'm responding the more (politely) trivial remarks.

> drugs and alcohol, swimming, bad driving, biking, getting hit by a car whilst walking, getting shot, or suicide.

These are false equivalences-- when has a pool try to groom a child over the span of 3 years?

> What if I started Bikesafe an always online dash cam / coach for your rider where AI would identify unsafe behaviour and coach your kid and virtually eliminate bike deaths. Would you feel more safe?

This is wholesale the wrong approach. This is the parent absconding responsibility, which is my driving point of the problem.

Now to the main point:

> You are actually expecting a lot from devices that you never had in the real world in the first place ...

I'm not expecting anything from my devices because machines cannot be held accountable for human choices; a gun cannot be held accountable for being misused. The internet is a powerful tool and users should understand the ramifications of certain actions.

> If your kid lies you might not get a truthful answer to that question in person or online.

That's a parenting moment that one should relish retrospectively. To teach them good morals and values, to remind them that you love them, and that lying about safety processes can be very dangerous.

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#147

Post by throwway120385 »

GaryBluto wrote: post #87
eYrKEC2 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's essentially the rule in our house. No screens not visible to other members of the family. In US, we restrict alcohol kids until they're 21. Pornography is poison.

It's so bizarre to me that in "The Land of the Free", 18 year olds, who are considered old enough to go to war, are not allowed to drink. Especially because this isn't some archaic law from the 18th or 19th centuries but instead from 1984 and only came about after the federal government withheld funds to force the states' hands over a period of 4 years.

I thought you could go into a store on post and buy alcohol at 18.

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#148

Post by shevy-java »

> A single setting that says "this child cannot go online, communicate with strangers, spend money, or download anything without my explicit permission."

I understand the problem domain - some people try to exploit and take advantage of kids. That's a problem, I get it.

At the same time, I still think children should not be assumed to be idiots. I remember we oldschool people, when we were young, we played Quake at university campus (we could only play on holidays because one friend had the key to the room, it was a side room though; on saturday other students were not there, so we had a full room with about 30 computers in the 1990s era). We were about 15 years old, so granted, no more young kids. And the technology wasn't quite as advanced, so I am not saying this is 1:1 comparable. But young kids today often have smartphones. They have the internet non-stop. I don't think parental censorship works as a model here. Again, I get it that too young kids are too trusting, and there are creeps - but there is not really an alternative to having kids go through thought processes and understand the issues here. In warcraft 3, young gamers were quite competitive and good. So if they can learn to be better than older people, they will have no real difficulty understanding predators. (Again, it depends on the age; but if your kid is 6 years old, why can there only be games that are played online? Plus it is just chatting right? I remember playing games at the yahoo website, we chatted too. I don't think that was a problem per se. The website makes it sound as if everyone and everything has that problem. I don't think this is the case.)

Edit: Others pointed out the age range problem. I agree. So, which age range are we talking about? Is the age even mentioned on the website?

Edit2: Ah yes, 12 years old. Sorry but at 12 years old, I am having a hard time buying into the "predators exploit him every time". That seems to be ... strange. His son would probably object to the claim he made on the website here aka slandering - perhaps.

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#149

Post by armchairhacker »

alembic_fumes wrote: post #69

This pervasive desire to block, protect, monitor, and control your children's online activities through nebulous supervision tools seems like a particularly American solution to a particularly American problem. Much like how little Timmy simply can't go out to play without a GPS anklet and an air tag behind each ear, so too can't he go online without a supervised account on a supervised device on a supervised connect…

Some kids only need the honor system, but others, especially younger ones, need hard restrictions. If the parent is reasonable and the kid grows up smart, they’ll be thankful later, which is why kids also get restricted offline.

Rough analogies:

- Not letting kids buy unlimited candy ~ not giving them unlimited screen time

- Preventing your kid from interacting with “bad” kids or going into unsafe neighborhoods ~ blocking “bad” websites

- Not letting your kid watch adult shows or go to adult places ~ automatically hiding NSWF content

On the last point: if you’re not careful and your kid is unlucky, they may find shocking and traumatizing content accidentally. This is true in real life but the internet moreso (vs safe neighborhoods), even today. e.g. I regularly hear reports about Instagram recommending gore seemingly out of nowhere, such as https://www.cbsnews.com/news/instagram-violence/ (Instagram seems particularly notorious for some reason).

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#150

Post by theshrike79 »

sneak wrote: post #102
fn-mote wrote: post #63

Dear All, As you post, please be clear what age range child you are discussing. There are a lot of posts here advocating strategies that make sense for a 10 year old but are ridiculous for a 15 year old. Remember: once the children have friends with unrestricted cell phones (essentially all 14+ year olds in the us), there are many many more options for them to go online. Also, I got my start as a “hacker” gaming, che…

Why would a 15 year old warrant a mobile phone, much less an unrestricted one?

Not having a phone will most likely make your child a social pariah.

They MIGHT be one of the few hyper-social ones that thrives despite being left out of online circles but they are the exception.

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