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Ask HN: Tech-savvy parents, what are the gadget rules for your kids?

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Re: Ask HN: Tech-savvy parents, what are the gadget rules for your kids?

#31

Post by anm89 »

shubb wrote: post #19
ndnichols wrote: post #8

We have three kids, aged 6, 3, and 10 months. The six-year-old gets ~30 minutes of Switch play a week (mostly driving circles in Rocket League), and the whole family watches an episode of Lego Masters on Sunday. That's the only screen time they get. When our oldest was ~3, he had been potty trained for awhile. We were on vacation and he was on the iPad we had brought for the plane. He was so engrossed in the game tha…

Word of caution - my parents strictly controlled screen time until I was a young adult - at which point they just stopped. At the same time I moved to a room they couldn't supervise. I lacked the self discipline tools to control my own bed times and screen time, and failed to manage either, impacting my grades. That was an important lesson for sure, but I do think if we'd done something more phased earlier on, it wou…

Yeah I have a cousin who I belive is permanently emotionally stunted because of this. Her whole life revolved around getting more screen time for the first 15 years.

Re: Ask HN: Tech-savvy parents, what are the gadget rules for your kids?

#32

Post by tompagenet2 »

8 year old and 5 year old.

Same for both of them. No TV. 25 mins each of video games every other day. We occasionally (maybe once every 6 weeks) watch a film together at the weekend. No tablets. Perhaps once a week they might ask to use the (Windows) laptop to go to a website they use at school, such as Mathletics. We'd normally let them use this. 8 year old has a Kindle (not a Fire but the eReader type) that is used just for reading books from the Kindle Kids subscription that is age limited.

Perhaps once a week we might watch a YouTube video about something vaguely educational, so for example a Tom Scott video.

Re: Ask HN: Tech-savvy parents, what are the gadget rules for your kids?

#34

Post by ndnichols »

anm89 wrote: post #31
shubb wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Word of caution - my parents strictly controlled screen time until I was a young adult - at which point they just stopped. At the same time I moved to a room they couldn't supervise. I lacked the self discipline tools to control my own bed times and screen time, and failed to manage either, impacting my grades. That was an important lesson for sure, but I do think if we'd done something more phased earlier on, it wou…

Yeah I have a cousin who I belive is permanently emotionally stunted because of this. Her whole life revolved around getting more screen time for the first 15 years.

Haha, yes, I had the same cousin! We would go play hide and seek while he played Legend of Zelda on his own in the corner :-/

Re: Ask HN: Tech-savvy parents, what are the gadget rules for your kids?

#35

Post by dsr_ »

The kids are now high-school or later and have no general restrictions.

For many years, the rule was simply that the computers were in the living room.

For about a decade, all accounts and passwords were setup by parents. When a kid could successfully keep a password secret from a parent's social engineering attack, they were allowed to maintain those accounts themselves.

Discussion at meals and during homework frequently visited topics like "the school is tracking and censoring your use of their network", "seventy million email addresses and passwords leaked, thanks for letting us know", and "this is why XKCD is funny".

Re: Ask HN: Tech-savvy parents, what are the gadget rules for your kids?

#36

Post by 6sG2C54md377Rxi »

Just one 13 year old.

No limits on browser usage, but all devices run through a mandatory VPN which blocks all ads as well as particular sites at the DNS level: TikTok, Snapchat, a few chat apps. No limits on screen time. App installs on iOS devices are disallowed.

Re: Ask HN: Tech-savvy parents, what are the gadget rules for your kids?

#37

Post by cmrdporcupine »

joshuaheard wrote: post #29
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #25

Constant. Battle. Over time they just learn how to wear you down. When they were younger we could set limits and keep it enforced, but as they get older they just kept find ways to get around them. We tried Google's Family Link (poor quality and mostly useless with ChromeOS), per-device time limits on the wifi router, whatever, but there's always some new battle and COVID just threw a wrench in everything. In the ear…

We tried taking the phone from our teenager as punishment for something and it was like taking a needle from a heroin addict.

Absolutely. This happened just last week and it was the worst -- door locked and barricaded shut, would not eat dinner, wouldn't talk to us for hours, just the worst. Terrifying parent moment and all we did was put our foot down. So hard to set the limits and enforce them.

Re: Ask HN: Tech-savvy parents, what are the gadget rules for your kids?

#38

Post by rsync »

7,12,14.

I find that rules and firewalls and schedules and blocking are a fools errand - it is a cat-and-mouse game that you can't win.

So we just turn off the Internet.

We have a different wifi network for the children that has a very restrictive schedule. Basically just Fri/Sat night and 15 mins on weekday evenings to send messages to friends and check school assignments.

The 7 year old gets his Nintendo Switch on Saturday and Sunday mornings. The older two have their ipods/iphones and can use them anytime they want. They are just offline.

The reason this works so well is that we live in a place that has zero cellular signal. If they need to do homework, they plug into an Ethernet switch and sit at the dining room table with a laptop.

The other reason this works so well is that our children are not our friends. We don't have a peer relationship with them and we don't owe them explanations as to why our family is different from other families or blah blah blah.

Complaining is expensive and they know not to waste that energy.

Re: Ask HN: Tech-savvy parents, what are the gadget rules for your kids?

#39

Post by sneak »

bennyp101 wrote: post #18

4,5,15 15 year old does his own thing, not a lot can be done there, but he's not stupid with it. Mainly just playing xbox with his friends, watching other people play games on youtube. Younger ones have a Fire tablet each, 1 hour a day limit (unless they ask for more) - mostly seems to be learning games/lego cartoons. Browser disabled, can only use stuff in their age range. They aren't allowed to watch youTube unless…

Why do you block minors from accessing content designed for miners?

Re: Ask HN: Tech-savvy parents, what are the gadget rules for your kids?

#40

Post by Aeolun »

Mine is 3 years old.

He used to watch 15m of youtube every night (together with me), but he started going mental when he didn’t get his Youtube, so we cut down on that completely.

The only time he sees Youtube now is if we are out for dinner, but ideally we get him to stop that too.

Other than that, there’s TV (educational, or disney channel) in the morning. And sometimes in the evening, depending on the day.

TV is projected by a beamer, and I feel like this cuts down on the intensity of the whole thing.

He finds my Switch and DS around the house and plays with them for a bit, but he doesn’t really get the concept of playing a game yet.

My main worry is that he sees his mom and dad busy with their phone way too much.

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