I was just talking about this with my partner the other day. We have an amazing retro games shop/arcade not far from our house, so I think for probably my kiddo's 5th birthday I'm going to take him to buy a Gameboy Advance SP and a couple of games He's already shown interest in video games and I think this is a great way to introduce him without overwhelming him. I'm sure the whole package will be We aren't a fully screen free family. Our kiddo watches probably 1/2 hour to 45 minutes of TV a day and we aren't so naive as to think plane trips and long car rides will be screen free, so we bring an old iPad loaded up with shows and movies he likes. We review the list beforehand and make sure it has what he wants (subject to our approval). But the night and day difference between a moderated amount of screen time and his peers who are full on iPad kids is just astounding. I just hope we can keep up the low screen time for as long as possible.
Retro-Tech Parenting
81–90 of 257 posts
Re: Retro-Tech Parenting
#82Some 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…
these are great, thanks for sharing. ive found the tonibox for my youngest (3rd go round) really has helped deescalate tv watching and given us an alternative when they want to watch cartoons. one question for you; any plans on what you might do when the kids are 15, in highschool and all their friends have iphones?
My oldest just turned 15. Here's what I've done:
Gave her a slightly older iPhone and added it to my prepaid plan with AT&T. It's supervised via Apple Configurator, has a password-protected profile created with iMazing Profile Editor.
That profile disables a lot of things - primarily Safari and adding apps. I also have Screen Time set up to block people not in her contacts list - if she wants to add someone, she asks me. I haven't said "no" yet (not that I wouldn't ever).
The idea is less to be restrictive (although that's part of it, for now) and more to give her plausible excuse not to join Instagram/TikTok/whatever - "my dad locked my phone, but you can text or call me". She hates social media, if only from having watched teenagers glued to their phones when she was younger.
I started it in extreme lockdown a couple years ago, and recently lifted a few restrictions. I plan to finally arrive at "no restrictions" by the time she's 17 or so.
It's helped that her mom has zero social media use - she texts, calls, and hangs out in person with people, that's it. I obviously hang out on HN sometimes. (I was on Twitter for a few weeks one time, and my kids complained "dad, what are you doing, get off of social media" :) They also think LLMs are evil, haha
Also -- I told her "you can buy your own laptop if you want" -- and she did. I helped her choose a used MacBook from Swappa.com. It has no internet access, but I gave her a bunch of apps, particularly Scrivener. She is becoming quite a writer (I think up to 15 books now, 2 or 3 are finished). It's quite common to see her tapping away in the living room :)
Re: Retro-Tech Parenting
#83This 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?
Pick-ups and drop-offs? You walked yourself home, used your bike, or took the bus. This getting driven around is most ridiculous.
Re: Retro-Tech Parenting
#84I 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…
CenturyLink started on somebody's porch.
The original party line was tied together with barbed wire fencing between farms.
I also run a PBX.
and a PBX behind a VPN firewall.
Re: Retro-Tech Parenting
#85Some 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…
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Re: Retro-Tech Parenting
#86This 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.
This is a symptom of not encouraging children into extracurricular activities. If all you have to bond over is social media, your friendship is empty. That's how you create terminally-online, mentally ill people. Everyone needs third spaces like sports, scouts, music, church, clubs, and the like. They get you out of your house and head and surround you with people who share similar interests.
Re: Retro-Tech Parenting
#87I’ve just set up some old phones between my daughter and her school friends. I also looked at tincan but it’s quite expensive for each device + high monthly cost.
Using voipfone I have them all on a separate network with 3 digit phone numbers for £2 a month each and all connected with a grandstream voip controller + an old landline phone that I got on eBay / donated from neighbours.
It’s been so nice to see them all calling each other up and chatting. Retro tech is so good because it’s single purpose. No distractions.
Re: Retro-Tech Parenting
#88Some 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…
Great list! So far I’ve done phones and DVDs but I’m gonna try some of these too.
I would like to also suggest letting them play old adventure games with no audio - my 8yo is deep into Monkey Island 2 original pixelated version
Re: Retro-Tech Parenting
#89I too built a landline phone inspired by tincan. It runs off of an old macbook I repurposed as an ubuntu server, and routes through voip.ms. I used a pap2t linksys adapter so we could use a cool old analog phone. it mostly works, but for my youngish kid, its amazing and she loves it.
one nice thing about it is that i can set up call hours and a whitelist of allowed phone numbers, so she doesn't yet have to deal with strangers calling.
Re: Retro-Tech Parenting
#90In 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?
My parents did, and they were right. I had limited tv, games, and computer time. They kicked me out of the house after school, only to return for supper. I am eternally grateful for that decision. I have rich friendships that continue thirty years later.
Today, the tech is even worse for children. Playing too much Nintendo might isolate you and hurt your schoolwork, but iPad toddlers are fundamentally damaged.