Maybe it's just the mood I'm in this morning, but this article just made me feel that the author's father had some serious mental health issues.
If anything, I would say it was more about that than the tech bans.
Tech my dad banned in our house when I was a kid
171–180 of 278 posts
Re: Tech my dad banned in our house when I was a kid
#172Rules for my kids: If you're over 10 years of age you should know what your limits are. I'm always going to be here for advice and help to get yourself back up from an accident or something that went wrong. I won't block content. I won't demand access to their phones. I won't shame them in any way. I'm also planning on being sex and body positive. Nudity isn't inherently sexual and shame is a social construct. Nothin…
Children at any age, from baby through adolescence, have developing brains, and obeying rules, testing rules, struggling against rules, and accomodating rules, both from society and your parents, is a critical part of development.
Don't try to short circuit it, the implied "wrong way to do it" that you are trying to short cut is how the world works and has worked from hunter gatherer days.
I have a lot of experience with this type of stuff from my own upbringing with a number of siblings (very liberal as in too liberal) and to give an example from the real world, I suspect (not claiming I know) that Aaron Swartz was given lots of freedom, and not a lot of stricture, and he wound up an admirable kid but RIP. Again, I don't know that for a fact, but you don't know my siblings so you can't see what happened to them.
Re: Tech my dad banned in our house when I was a kid
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
> applied to an adult. I agree. But this was for his kids when they were kids living at his house. If he want's to maintain the no consoles rule at his house later on, meh whatever. That's his business. Edit: Also, what makes it reasonable to enforce this while his kids were young was that he actively encouraged learning about PC's, not just consumption through a different "Magic Box".
My children also learned to type very well at a young age because we did not have consoles.
AIM did more for my typing skills than any of my middle school “keyboarding” classes.
a s d f j k l ;
Re: Tech my dad banned in our house when I was a kid
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are pedophiles online who specialize in preying on kids that have parents like you
Ok. They also prey on kids with access to safe social networks, kids accessing games with chat, kids with access to anything that has any kind of communication enabled. "Pedophiles exist" is a cheap response that can be used to bring anyone's idea down. Roblox? Pedophiles. YouTube? Pedophiles. Going out of the house? Pedophiles. What's your proposed solution? We already had the time where we obsessed a lot about "str…
Nah. Telling your kids they are free to do whatever they want online without having to consult you and promoting “sex positivity” to them Is not the same as monitoring their roblox or YouTube usage, and giving them a stark warning. Very bad strawman. Pedophiles online are a real danger and there is no way family members pose a likelier or more severe threat than online pedophiles. Saying otherwise is either ignorant or malicious.
Re: Tech my dad banned in our house when I was a kid
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
All of those existed 9 years ago, there are adults today who grew up with them.
I don't think you can compare the addictiveness of sites today to those of a decade ago. The algorithms are very different. It should be unsurprising that in the last decade that they have gotten better at engineering ~~addiction~~engagement.
okay but have you ever played elf bowling? snood? chip’s challenge??
Re: Tech my dad banned in our house when I was a kid
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
Grave danger? Of what? I suspect most of HN had free rein of the internet in their formative years. I’m sure I did a lot of stuff my parents wouldn’t have been thrilled about but I was never in grave danger (or any danger really) and I learned a ton. I’d be far more concerned with the potential lasting damage from a kid’s dumb social media posts than crime.
You can’t seriously compare the internet of even 10 years ago to the internet of today. You can go to reddit right now and find a video of some right wing whacko shooting someone to death on the front page. That content was available then, sure. It wasn’t blasted right at you though.
>You can go to reddit right now and find a video of some right wing whacko shooting someone to death on the front page.
when I was growing up it wasn't just right-wing whackos glorying violence, it was Bill Gates himself dressed up in a trench coat advocating to 'clean up the neighbourhood'
https://youtu.be/KN0K58EfJSg?t=120
You may be underestimating the weirdness of the internet and the culture around it in the 90s, reddit looks harmless compared to what I saw when I was young when kids on the schoolyard were talking about rotten com
Re: Tech my dad banned in our house when I was a kid
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ok. They also prey on kids with access to safe social networks, kids accessing games with chat, kids with access to anything that has any kind of communication enabled. "Pedophiles exist" is a cheap response that can be used to bring anyone's idea down. Roblox? Pedophiles. YouTube? Pedophiles. Going out of the house? Pedophiles. What's your proposed solution? We already had the time where we obsessed a lot about "str…
Nah. Telling your kids they are free to do whatever they want online without having to consult you and promoting “sex positivity” to them Is not the same as monitoring their roblox or YouTube usage, and giving them a stark warning. Very bad strawman. Pedophiles online are a real danger and there is no way family members pose a likelier or more severe threat than online pedophiles. Saying otherwise is either ignorant…
> Pedophiles online are a real danger and there is no way family members pose a likelier or more severe threat than online pedophiles.
Sorry to spoil your day, but we live in a pretty terrible world:
https://www.rainn.org/statistics/children-and-teens
34% family, 59% familiar people, 7% strangers.
Re: Tech my dad banned in our house when I was a kid
#178As someone who had a child later in life, I like to pretend that being a dad isn’t a fundamental part of my identity. That, mostly, I’m the same person I always was, except now I just happen to have a 19-month-old.
But then I read pieces like this and find myself deeply, almost inexplicably, moved and realize that no, I’m definitely a dad.
Re: Tech my dad banned in our house when I was a kid
#179When I was growing up, my parents adhered to Douglas Adams' rules of technology (and I think many still do today): 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after…
I think that's a clever bit by Douglas Adams, and there's some truth to it in some contexts, but I hate to see it voted to the top on HN specifically.
The reason is that our industry right now doesn't make a secret about widespread, accepted ageism. And a common talking-point defense of it is "not learning new technologies".
Re: Tech my dad banned in our house when I was a kid
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
> you don't see tradesmen getting all pissy about people buying DeWalt power drills. Tribalism is everywhere. Dodge vs Chevy vs Ford is one that certain tradesmen might be inclined to take part in. Certainly even tool brands like DeWalt vs Makita. I don't see a problem with it. This is like complaining that people have opinions and that they might argue about them. It's 100% human nature. Arguing against it is like a…
Indeed from what I've heard it seems that DeWalt is despised by many professionals, while some feel that Makita is only one step up.
DeWalt is just another brand owned by Stanley Black & Decker https://www.stanleyblackanddecker.com/
Makita is a standalone company that doesn't have a stable of brands (although potentially some OEM?).
See https://pressurewashr.com/tool-industry-behemoths/ for lists of brands owned by parent companies.
Not saying that you can't judge by the "brand"; just saying that many people are unaware that many brands are somewhat cosmetic...