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Retro-Tech Parenting

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Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#71

Post by kraquepype »

We do this with my kids, but really it's only a side effect of my love of archaic technology and isn't really forced.

My boys have their own walk-man cassette players, and I've made a bunch of mix tapes both for them and myself to play in the car.

My daughter had my ancient JVC receiver that I got from my parents as a stereo - handed down to one her brothers.

We pick out DVDs, VHS and Laser discs to watch sometimes, sometimes on old CRT TVs as well.

I have all my game consoles in good working order so there's a ton of options for stuff to play that isn't cutting edge.

My daughter loves that there is a CD player in her car, so she learned how to burn mix CDs.

This is all alongside modern tech so they get a good mix. Hopefully it gives them a bit of perspective.

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#72

Post by bitwize »

jdhawk wrote: post #40
beowulfey wrote: post #33

There's definitely something to this idea. Our toddler absolutely loves her Yoto player, which is kind of like a tiny Walkman with cards instead of tapes. It's new but has that same old-tech feeling, IMO. She loves to pick out her favorite "albums" (some of which are stories) and listen to them. We have them all where she can easily grab them and swap them out. Have definitely lost a few cards but they're cheap enoug…

+1 for Yoto, our kids (5-7) have abused them for years. The Make Your Own cards let me create full length audiobooks, playlists, etc.. super stuff

The concept is super cute, and it'd be nice if there were content actually on the cards. But it's 2026 and the rightsholders would never actually allow that. As soon as Yoto's servers go dark, there goes any content not already cached on your machine. (And maybe the stuff that is, due to licensing arrangements.) Fuck that shit so hard.

If I had kids, they're getting a cassette player. Bonus: it'll double as data storage for the C64 I'd buy them.

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#73

Post by bitwize »

myky22 wrote: post #32

Glad to see this. As an Child and Adolescent Psychiatric, expert in screen time and soon to be father. I found myself thinking more and more about this. I thought about resurrecting my old game boy advance to introduce my little boy to the tech world. The long loading times, no auto-save, no in game purchases... I think It Will help him develop a healthier relationship with the machine in his more vulnerable youth.

Long loading times? On a GBA? I'm calling bot

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#74

Post by mystifyingpoi »

Bratmon wrote: post #54
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…

I don't think enough parents have internalized that if they're the "I don't let my teenager have a phone" parent in 2026, that also means they're the "I don't let my teenager have friends" parent.

My gut reaction was "well, you can give them a phone, just lock down tiktok and other crap" but then I was thinking "well, in the end that doesn't matter in practice, they can buy a used device from a friend for pocket money and hiding it from me will be trivial", so... it all comes down to my relationship with the kid. Nothing else will work.

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#75

Post by picofarad »

Swizec wrote: post #47
smokel wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

distcc-pump And, I forget what the toolchain setup is called, but on gentoo its literally just `emerge -1av distcc` on machine with beef and just `emerge -1 distcc` on athlon...

I found out how to do it consistently in 2010 and its like black magic knowing how to target a real OS at BS hardware.

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#76

Post by fuzzzerd »

jjulius wrote: post #49
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?

The issue isn't that it couldn't be done without technology. The problem is when everyone else has moved on to the technology based solution (mobile phones) if you don't you're just out of luck.

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#77

Post by ericd »

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…

Yep, with video games, we started with SNES and have been slowly moving higher fidelity. We've got a VOIP landline for the kids, as well as a CD player. It's been working pretty well. For computing, they have a desktop Raspberry Pi 400 running Raspbian, terminal-centric setup.

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#78

Post by nkrisc »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #18

Some of the things my wife and I have provided for our kids: - lots of bookcases with probably >1500 books (including lots of kids/picture books) - what we've collected over the years - a family laptop (2012 MacBook Pro) with no internet connection, pre-loaded with Pages, Sheets, Affinity Photo/Designer, a few small games, and some coding tools (Python, Ruby, VSCode, Scratch, etc.). - Lego Spike and Spike Prime robot…

> an old-school landline phone connected to a VoIP box, served by UniFi Talk ($10/month).

That sounds interesting, going to look into it. My son is old enough to be home alone but I don’t want to get him a cell phone yet, but I don’t want to leave him alone without a phone in case of an emergency. Traditional home phone plans from the usual telecoms are way more expensive than I thought they’d be.

What should I be looking for with regards to a VoIP box? Not even sure what to search for specifically,

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#79

Post by picofarad »

sghiassy wrote: post #52

In 30 years, won’t today’s tech be retro tech Did the parents of 30 years ago, think the tech you’re giving today had gone too far?

You do raise a valid point. 30 years ago was 1996. So, a Nintendo 64 would be overkill, but a Super Nintendo would be fine, right? And a palm pilot would be overkill, but something like a Texas Instruments TI49/A would be fine, right? so you would say if you wanted to use 30 year old tech you should really use 35 year old tech or so, perhaps.

Re: Retro-Tech Parenting

#80

Post by pendenthistory »

sghiassy wrote: post #52

In 30 years, won’t today’s tech be retro tech Did the parents of 30 years ago, think the tech you’re giving today had gone too far?

Yeah, the double standard... We are here on hacker news probably because our parents let us freely explore computers and the internet. "Screen time" wasn't even a concept. Most friends I talked to had really off-hands parents as well, parents were rarely involved or interested in what the kids were doing. Glad I didn't have overbearing parents who limited my technology use to the radio and LPs.
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