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Parental controls aren't for parents

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Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#241

Post by margalabargala »

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…

Arguably this can increase the risk of death by suicide, quite a bit.

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#242

Post by eYrKEC2 »

martin-t wrote: post #67

I don't mean to sound like the stereotypical "I did X and turned out fine" but... I grew up with an internet access on my computer in my room without anybody watching over my back and without any restrictions and nothing bad really happened. Meanwhile these days some people around me with children around the 10-15 range seem think their children cannot be trusted and restrictions are absolutely essential. Has the int…

I think the difference is that the parents of today are _you_. _They_ grew up with unrestricted internet access, because their parents didn't.

I think that pornography is poison and my parents didn't know that I had access to it. "Not my kid!", they said. But my generation says, "It's every. single. kid."

> Has anybody tried an alternative like teaching children about the actual dangers, how to recognize manipulation, etc?

Another poison is alcohol. Some people think that letting their kids access alcohol in their house is reasonable. I think it is better to wait until your brain is more developed before trying alcohol. First experiences with alcohol at a later age tends to enable people to have a less worse relationship with alcohol.

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#243

Post by ToucanLoucan »

basket_horse wrote: post #118
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.

I disagree. I think it is an “accident” that stems from organizations rather than anything sinister. Companies generally want good parental controls, but let’s face it, it’s not the cash cow or particularly interesting. This leads to understaffed teams of b-list developers with high churn, hence the overly confusing and half-baked features.

Parental controls and accessibility both suffer from the fact that they are good features to add but fundamentally do not drive revenue. They only exist in the average as much as is required by regulation.

No business would build wheelchair ramps unless they were made to, that's why we make them. There's no reason to not do the same for parental controls.

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#244

Post by Yossarrian22 »

eikenberry wrote: post #234
SoftTalker wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we've always had effective societal gatekeeping on what kids can access. Cigarettes, liquor, porn, R-rated movies, all had general barriers to access for kids in the pre-internet world. Parents could rely on most store clerks not selling alcohol, tobacco, or adult magazines to a child. Parents did not have to hover over everything their child did. Was it perfect, of course not, but it worked fairly well and didn'…

> No, we've always had effective societal gatekeeping on what kids can access. Isn't there still a very simple one, hardware access. If the child doesn't have a smart phone of their own or computer in their bedroom then they cannot use them to get online unsupervised. This is about as simple on/off as you can get and very easy to moderate.

Until the school assigns online homework, homework that takes 3 hours a night

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#245

Post by patmorgan23 »

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?

You think a high school freshman shouldn't have a cell phone? Their friends a year older are driving and they may want to do activities with them, and it's a good idea they have a reliable means of communication to their parents in case they need to come pick them up.

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#246

Post by rafaelmn »

basket_horse wrote: post #118
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.

I disagree. I think it is an “accident” that stems from organizations rather than anything sinister. Companies generally want good parental controls, but let’s face it, it’s not the cash cow or particularly interesting. This leads to understaffed teams of b-list developers with high churn, hence the overly confusing and half-baked features.

It's nearly impossible to block YouTube on a smart TV without third party apps, even worse on non-android ones. And the app is not uninstallable. I don't think this is b-tier devs, feels like intentionall neglect.

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#247

Post by BeetleB »

sojsurf wrote: post #238
BeetleB wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but do you understand that it's perfectly reasonable to be able to buy a toy gun and not have to explain gun safety to them? Or would you recommend that all toy guns have the ability to be dangerous and all parents should train them because of the prevalence of guns in society?

A few thoughts: - Perhaps we have different ideas of the appropriate age to wean kids off of toys and teach them to use real (and sometimes dangerous) things. Today's discussion is about guns, but the same could be said for boats, motorcycles, woodworking equipment, etc. I would like my children to be well rounded and well equipped when they become adults. However, I acknowledge that this may not be normal anymore: M…

> For my kids, guns are absolutely not in the toy category. They are tools, used for hunting and protection, and access to these tools comes with guard rails and significant responsibility.

The same is true for cars. Are you also against toy cars?

> By the time they graduated, many of these guys had real skills they could support their family with. In our rush to protect kids, this kind of work is no longer taught in classes or available as summer work for young people. We have made it increasingly hard for young people to "grow up"!

This is a totally different issue from access to games. Why couple the two? Are you implying one cannot be taught those skills if they have access to games?

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#248

Post by gukov »

unloader6118 wrote: post #85
toss1 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly >>"Here's what I want: an off switch. A single setting that says "this child cannot go online, communicate with strangers, spend money, or download anything without my explicit permission." Instead I get a maze, complex enough that when something goes wrong, I'm at fault for a tooltip I didn't hover over, a blog post I didn't read, a submenu I didn't find. Maybe that's by design. Maybe it's neglect. I don't k…

> When it happens only a few times, it might be neglect. This is absolutely by design. Not sure if I want to call it by design. It is not a dark pattern, it is just "what is the minimum we can do to sell this without doing the curation work?"

I’m not sure why some are struggling to understand this. A single "godmode" checkbox would only be possible if every element, the marketplace, the hardware, and the payment rails, were inside one ecosystem. The Switch is Nintendo, Minecraft is Microsoft, the credit card is Visa, and so on. There are simply too many moving parts, making a single killswitch nearly impossible to orchestrate.

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#249

Post by SoftTalker »

eikenberry wrote: post #234
SoftTalker wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we've always had effective societal gatekeeping on what kids can access. Cigarettes, liquor, porn, R-rated movies, all had general barriers to access for kids in the pre-internet world. Parents could rely on most store clerks not selling alcohol, tobacco, or adult magazines to a child. Parents did not have to hover over everything their child did. Was it perfect, of course not, but it worked fairly well and didn'…

> No, we've always had effective societal gatekeeping on what kids can access. Isn't there still a very simple one, hardware access. If the child doesn't have a smart phone of their own or computer in their bedroom then they cannot use them to get online unsupervised. This is about as simple on/off as you can get and very easy to moderate.

In my analogy that would be like forbidding your child from having a bike because they might go somewhere that would sell them beer, rather than simply a general, mostly-reliable prohibition on selling beer to kids.

Or, if you do let them have a bike, it requires you to follow them around everywhere to be sure they don't go to a liquor store.

It's a completely over the top level of control. Yes it would work but also do as much harm as good.

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#250

Post by polotics »

artyom wrote: post #197
petermcneeley wrote: post #108

What was the punishment for the 12 year old? This will tell us everything we need to know about this story.

I'm kind of with you on this one. 12yo is old enough to understand the rules (assuming they were clearly set ) and if he/she was willingly communicating with a stranger, that phone should get the hammer with no replacement whatsoever. I've seen this done, it works.

Kids make mistakes. You do not want predators to use the threat of your punishment as a lever on your kid.
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