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Teen monitoring apps don't work, and drive a wedge between teens and parents

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Re: Teen monitoring apps don't work, and drive a wedge between teens and parents

#101
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Child labor laws and mandatory schooling are draconian - there really needs to be a fast-laned way for kids to test out of it.

Draconian is defined as a law that is "overly harsh or sever". It comes from a Greek legal scribe to tied severe punishments to minor offenses. No. That is not what those laws are. Mostly because you can "home school" a kid in the U.S. as a way around the mandatory schooling (there's just mandatory testing...which is what you want, a way to test out of the system)

HiSets and GEDs both require the test taker to be 16 or over in the majority of states, with a few (primarily Midwestern, granted) states not having ways to test out.

Re: Teen monitoring apps don't work, and drive a wedge between teens and parents

#102
Some parents don't realize that after certain age, you have to start treating teens are pre-adults and not kids anymore. This depends on the kids maturity, but is generally around 13, 14 or 15.

It is not about do as I say, but do as I do. Lead by example and not by strength.

I build parenting-control systems (via DNS) and I often see parents trying to force it on older kids (and even college students) to try to control them. My response is that strict restrictions only work for younger kids that are not mature enough to make good decisions. As they get older, they will find a way to bypass them and will hate their parents for it.

I don't blame them as they generally want the best for their kids. Being a parent is not easy.

Re: Teen monitoring apps don't work, and drive a wedge between teens and parents

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't really decided yet. Right now I'm leaning toward 15. Hopefully by then we have mapped out a vast majority of the sites she actually uses and it's not much of a transition.

I would think that is way too late unless she turns out to be an idiot without any interest in anything. You cannot reasonably research anything with a whitelist.

I disagree. Wikipedia has a lot of information.

Re: Teen monitoring apps don't work, and drive a wedge between teens and parents

#105
post #94

When I was coming up in the early 2000's, I met a girl at a concert that I liked. We started talking online, and she told me at the beginning that her parents had a keystroke monitor on her computer. Being a little baby hacker, I went online to find the best ways to circumvent the software she had. I told her how to do it, and one saturday while I was still in bed I got a phone call from her dad about how she was no…

Nearly identical experience.

Met a girl at a Rocky Horror, we were maybe 17 at the time. I didn't even show her how to break her parental controls, only found out that her parents were monitoring everything she did when they called my cell phone and threatened to call the police on me if I ever talked to her again.

I was still close with some other friends of hers, so over the next few years I could say with conviction "this didn't turn out well/the way her parents want."

My own parents were oddly contradictory as well. Huge amounts of parental controls at home, despite being very supportive in getting me into novel social experiences. I got into computers largely to find ways around the "AOL for Kids", and got my first tastes of "social engineering" by working around the passwords they'd set on anything from the TV to the PC to cell phone apps.

Given TFA (and all research I've seen about porn blocking outcomes in the past) aligning with my own experiences, the most surprising thing about this thread is the amount of "yes, BUT " responses. I'd go so far as to say that from among my (very large public highschool) peergroup, over the last 20~ years, the correlation has been _stark_ between those who grew up more sheltered vs those with less, that the former group often gained some very strange pathologies with respect to social interactions or "adult" content (even as an adult later in life).

I honestly wonder if my experiences were unique, and others saw large numbers of kids "heavily impacted" by lack-of-oversight? (To try and explain how many parents support more restrictive parenting) Or if parents "forget" or "Reassess" the rebellion they may have felt as a kid when it becomes their turn to parent? Obviously I can't judge, since I haven't had a child yet, but having had long conversations about the hypothetical with the wife, both of us still have our stances well-crystallized from our own upbringings, after a good handful of decades.

Restriction made porn fascinating to me. Restriction made video games so much more valuable(So much that I'd sell contraband at school and bike to an inner-city target to re-buy the ones my parents confiscated). Restriction only meant that I binged harder when I was finally could, or went through more risky channels to circumvent it.

Re: Teen monitoring apps don't work, and drive a wedge between teens and parents

#106

Speaking as a father of a large family ranging from 1 year to 14 years, to understand the child and their weaknesses and exposing them to the child at the appropriate time is paramount. When a toddler looks in the cabinet for toys and finds poison, we find that as an issue. So, we put the poison up, and/or install a lock. The same goes for the dangers of teens. They aren't ready for some things of internet, including…

> We don't need a formalized study to see what access to porn can do to a person. It's been documented many times. That's extremely dubious. Teenagers aren't being harmed by seing people having sex, they're mostly being harmed from being sheltered from it.

Explain to me why they are harmed by not seeing people having sex?

Also, explain to me what benefit do they gain by seeing people having sex?

Re: Teen monitoring apps don't work, and drive a wedge between teens and parents

#107

When I was a young boy in the 90s, my libertarian aligned father let me use the computer and access the internet. He explained to me that I shouldn't visit certain type of sites, I should never give out my name or address and that he had software installed to monitor what happened on the computer. He explained that this wasn't a breach of trust between us as I was using his equipment and that I had to abide by his ru…

that he had software installed to monitor what happened on the computer. He explained that this wasn't a breach of trust between us as I was using his equipment and that I had to abide by his rules. You do wonder: if the kid was 12 or 14 and bought himself a cheap smartphone from his own money to get away from the parental monitoring apps, would the "libertarian aligned father" be OK with that?

Nah, it just reverts to “you live in my house so do what I say” — the standard pseudo-‘libertarian’ justification for feudalism.

Re: Teen monitoring apps don't work, and drive a wedge between teens and parents

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A proactive approach might get better results than a prohibitive one. Minecraft modding and making Minecraft videos seems like an obvious route for this given the interest.

I take it you are not a parent. Or at least a parent of a more compliant child.

>> I take it you are not a parent. Or at least a parent of a more compliant child.

There are too many awful parents out there for me to believe having kids makes one uniquely qualified to make suggestions. Dismissing ideas with a variation on "you must not have kids" is a huge red flag. It's usually done by people who see kids as things to be controlled and made subservient instead of as adults in progress.

We were all kids once. We all had friends whose parents had different styles, and often we got to see how that turned out. We all have a set of relevant experiences to pull from on the subject. Maybe it won't work for you. That's fine, but maybe you could actually say something about what's wrong with the suggestion instead of issuing a blanket dismissal. Or do the polite thing and ignore it.

You can spare me the condescending "so you don't have kids" that always follows this and just move on if you have nothing better to say.

Re: Teen monitoring apps don't work, and drive a wedge between teens and parents

#109
post #94

When I was coming up in the early 2000's, I met a girl at a concert that I liked. We started talking online, and she told me at the beginning that her parents had a keystroke monitor on her computer. Being a little baby hacker, I went online to find the best ways to circumvent the software she had. I told her how to do it, and one saturday while I was still in bed I got a phone call from her dad about how she was no…

Nearly identical experience. Met a girl at a Rocky Horror, we were maybe 17 at the time. I didn't even show her how to break her parental controls, only found out that her parents were monitoring everything she did when they called my cell phone and threatened to call the police on me if I ever talked to her again. I was still close with some other friends of hers, so over the next few years I could say with convicti…

I understand why parental controls exist (8 year-olds think that butts are funny, but I really do not want them searching for butts on the internet) but treating teenagers like stupid babies is...stupid.

We, the people on HN, represent a uniquely tech-savy segment of the population, and can (probably? usually?) say that we're better with software than our kids so we actually COULD put restrictions in place that they wouldn't be able to circumvent. But why? You're going to creating a security battle with your kids. Isn't one possible, logical conclusion that your smart and annoyed teenager who hates you (justly or unjustly) just SWATS you at work? Or finds a way to cancel your internet entirely so NOBODY can search for things?

You're going to have plenty of conflicts with your kids already. They're going to think you're stupid and annoying and trying to make their decisions for them based on your stupid old brain that doesn't understand their life. Don't you think it's better to build a relationship of trust where they're willing to listen to you is better than trying to build a relationship where they're FORCED to listen to you in the long term?

Re: Teen monitoring apps don't work, and drive a wedge between teens and parents

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think that is way too late unless she turns out to be an idiot without any interest in anything. You cannot reasonably research anything with a whitelist.

I disagree. Wikipedia has a lot of information.

Erm ... mind naming one hobby where Wikipedia has more than 1% of what there is to know about that hobby?
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