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Retro-Tech Parenting

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Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#41

Post by stronglikedan »

scrappyjoe wrote: post #28

I set up a little neighbourhood pbx this year on an oracle cloud always free instance. Took a couple of days. Any family can buy a WiFi-enabled office phone and I’ll set up an extension for them. It’s working great! My six year old had a 15 minute chat with classmate while we were making dinner today; they have arranged a play date for next Monday. A couple of weeks ago a 5 year old invented prank calls. Every now an…

Sadly, all the busybodies in my community would make this unbearable, since they'd have direct lines to people instead of having to wait to see them outside to complain to them.

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#42

Post by bitwize »

scrappyjoe wrote: post #28

I set up a little neighbourhood pbx this year on an oracle cloud always free instance. Took a couple of days. Any family can buy a WiFi-enabled office phone and I’ll set up an extension for them. It’s working great! My six year old had a 15 minute chat with classmate while we were making dinner today; they have arranged a play date for next Monday. A couple of weeks ago a 5 year old invented prank calls. Every now an…

Well it beats asking for Amanda Hugankiss.

That's really cool. Recently I had the fantasy of setting up a PBX here in the house and bringing back "dial up internet" for me and my wife, as a doomscrolling mitigation measure. Probably won't work though, as we each have smartphones plus she wants her streamers to play back full-fat 4K.

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#43

Post by toast0 »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #14
EmiliaStar wrote: post #2

Useful reframe: it's not old vs. new tech, it's tools you command vs. media that commands you. "Retro" correlates with "good for kids" mostly because old tools aren't engagement-optimized — they sit there until the kid acts. A modern non-algorithmic tool can be just as good. What a dumbphone doesn't solve is the social tax — opting a kid out of the addictive layer can also opt them out of the group chat. That's the a…

Yeah-- the group chat is / was the damned problem. My daughter's sports teams, since moving up to 12U, have had group chats. She was absolutely getting left behind in the social interaction. It was painful to watch. It's still a pain point because we've been limiting her SMS to known contacts. We're probably coming to have to capitulate on that because other parents don't seem to grok what we are trying to do and don…

Ugh, group chats. Even if I want my kiddo to participate which I'm not 100% sure I do, there's nothing that works for all the kids. Some of the kids don't have a phone number, so SMS and other things that require a phone number don't work. iMessage doesn't work because 50% of the kids don't have iPhones. email doesn't work, because it's email.

There's team apps for the parents to use (which are universally terrible, but it is what it is), but not for the kids, because it's better to pretend it doesn't happen than acknowledge it does and deal with the necessary issues of abuse and privacy.

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#44

Post by alephnerd »

I'm not sure if a landline phone or physical media is needed (a shared family computer is a good idea until HS), but both those as well as a family computer imply parents being actively involved and reviewing media that their kids are consuming.

That is probably the most important factor.

Like having your own managed digital media server and some personal MDM would give you the ability to continue to use and engage with the current zeitgeist but with controls.

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#45

Post by japhyr »

This is great, but it's also easy to go too far in this direction. This can work through elementary school and into middle school, but I don't think it works in high school.

It's really hard to be a high school student without your own phone. I know some people who have kept their kids from having phones into high school. It avoids some of the addictive and distracting issues that come from having phones at a young age, but it's way more isolating than people realize. You might have a landline, but if no other high school age people are making voice calls to communicate, no one's going to call that landline. And the landline at home doesn't help you coordinate pickups and drop-offs as people start to do a wider variety of activities.

We have plenty of conflict in our home around devices, so I don't criticize any particular approaches. I'd just say that if you're taking this approach, it's probably a good idea to figure out how you're going to transition to kids having devices as they get into their high school years.

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#46

Post by EvanAnderson »

actionfromafar wrote: post #37
EvanAnderson wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah-- the group chat is / was the damned problem. My daughter's sports teams, since moving up to 12U, have had group chats. She was absolutely getting left behind in the social interaction. It was painful to watch. It's still a pain point because we've been limiting her SMS to known contacts. We're probably coming to have to capitulate on that because other parents don't seem to grok what we are trying to do and don…

It's a heavy approach, but I think with Claude Code you could set something up that mirrors between whatever groupchat they use and her SMS.

It's an SMS group chat and iPhone parental controls. Basically if somebody not in her contact list joins the chat she's locked out of that chat until we vet the contact and add them.

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#47

Post by Swizec »

smokel wrote: post #22
themanmaran wrote: post #19

As someone who grew up in the 90's, I think seeing the live progression of tech was really helpful for my own understanding. For instance we saw: - CDs moving to Mp3s moving to the ipod and finally streaming - Games moving from 8bit to early 3d graphics to where they are today - Family computer moving to laptops and eventually to ipads - Landlines to early cell phones to the iphone today All of these experiences help…

Most kids that grew up during the timeline you described had no interest in computer architecture. The small minority that did care is probably the same size now. The other 99% who were into yoyo-ing back then are now into TikTok, that's all.

> The other 99% who were into yoyo-ing back then are now into TikTok, that's all.

Hey dude, some of us were yo-yoing while waiting for Gentoo to build from stage 0. Compiling an OS on a single-core Athlon takes time.

For the 3 days it takes to build all the way up to KDE, you have no computer. Hope you didn’t forget something

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#48

Post by jrmg »

jumpkick wrote: post #6

Ironic, the picture on this article appears to be AI generated. I thought the Sony CD player looked neat, and I'd never seen one like it before. I thought I might try to buy one on eBay, that's how cool I thought it was. But Google says "Digital fingerprints embedded within the file verify that this is an artificially generated rendering."

I (genuinely) want to try the mouse with a giant scroll ball inside its single button.

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#49

Post by jjulius »

japhyr wrote: post #45

This is great, but it's also easy to go too far in this direction. This can work through elementary school and into middle school, but I don't think it works in high school. It's really hard to be a high school student without your own phone. I know some people who have kept their kids from having phones into high school. It avoids some of the addictive and distracting issues that come from having phones at a young a…

>And the landline at home doesn't help you coordinate pickups and drop-offs as people start to do a wider variety of activities.

How did people coordinate these before even email became widespread?

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#50

Post by guizzy »

I really like the idea conceptually, but I have two issues with it.

1. I sympathise a lot with the impulse here, as I do also feel personally that the way I grew up had the right balance of convenience and dangers, but I suspect all generations feel the same, and I'd be afraid that this is just imposing my nostalgia on my kids. I know, I know, kids seem scarily hypnotized by screens and social media, and trashy online content, but... My parents were also alarmed that when I was growing up that unchecked I could spend an entire weekend on the computer, with only reluctant breaks for food and sleep. Yet I think I grew up to be a reasonably well adjusted adult. I'd be also wary here that by imposing "my nostalgia" on my kids, I'd robbing them of building meaningful shared cultural bagage with their peers.

2. I'm afraid that by sheltering kids from the current state of technology, they will be poorly equipped to deal with it when they leave this protective bubble. No matter how much genie bottling we try, it's never going back in. The only way to a healthy relationship with technology, internet, etc... is through, not around or backwards. Create healthy tech, online habits, not by creating an environment where they cannot see the issues, but through good old parenting: setting a boundary when they're young, explaining it, and when you relax it as they get older confirm that they understood the reason for the boundaries and are placing healthy ones on their own.

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