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Ask HN: How do you protect your children from internet addiction?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you protect your children from internet addiction?

#91

Post by numpad0 »

I think what isn’t said a lot is how to make better behaviors more attractive - playing with friends, tackling on projects, pursuing professional carriers and making positive impacts to the world - than indulgence in slot machines.

One of quality differences that separate good social behaviors and addictions is that the latter is boring. I personally couldn’t get hooked with TikTok, not for fears of addiction but because it wasn’t much rewarding to me. If someone is stuck repeating actions lacking in diversity or generally boring things, even if it seemed stimulating on surface, maybe there could be some other reasons than that the machine’s just too toxic.

This isn’t to say that parents “failing” to save kids have to feel any sense of guilt or responsibility - addictions are real - but it does seem to me that a lot of internet addicted self-taught flamewars expert people (bad bad thing) have episodes with picky, overly interfering, in-satisfiable, jealousy, or sometimes downright insane parents.

Maybe that plays a role in addiction, maybe having happy and stable parents help in kids growing better.

(I wish I couldn’t recall my then-parent-ish holding chef’s knife at 5 years old me with the door to my back)

Re: Ask HN: How do you protect your children from internet addiction?

#92

Post by mehphp »

adaml_623 wrote: post #21
theonething wrote: post #10

My kid's almost three. From day one, we've implemented a zero screen policy. That means no phones, tablets, computers, TV (don't own one), etc. We've read to her since day one and she loves books now and her spoken/listening language skills are way ahead for her age. Wife speaks to her in her native language so she's growing up bilingual too. Wife takes her to parks, mommy and me classes where they have story time, s…

What do you do with her when you are out with friends? Restaurants, etc?

This question kind of shocks me. We do allow, very limited, screen-time but the concept of having no idea what to do with the kids without a screen is jarring to say the least.

Re: Ask HN: How do you protect your children from internet addiction?

#93

Post by nicoburns »

theonething wrote: post #90
kleiba wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But your child will not be almost three forever. I have one in the same age bracket myself with three older siblings. The little one has practically no interest in screen time anyway, but it's a completely different story with the older ones. At some point, they will get in touch with media one way or the other. In our case, once they get into school, they'll be using ipads anyway. So, I agree that for very little ch…

Zero to three are critical years for child development. The brain grows to 80% of its adult size by then. What happens doing those years has outsized effects on the child the rest of their life. So yes, I won't be able to shield her from screens forever. But I can still do my best to set her up for success and prevent her from being a screen junkie.

You should absolutely continue to protect your kids from screens (and I think some kind of active role is a good thing), but as someone who was raised in a very restrictive household: be careful not too go too far the other way. For example, I was not allowed a mobile phone until I was 16 years old, and this was incredibly socially isolating and made it hard for me to participate in the shared social life of my peer group.

My suggestion would be to listen to your kid when they inevitably ask for access to these things, and while you should acquiesce every request, you shouldn't dismiss them out of hand either, and should take their reasoning into account.

Re: Ask HN: How do you protect your children from internet addiction?

#94

Post by theonething »

factsarelolz wrote: post #32
theonething wrote: post #10

My kid's almost three. From day one, we've implemented a zero screen policy. That means no phones, tablets, computers, TV (don't own one), etc. We've read to her since day one and she loves books now and her spoken/listening language skills are way ahead for her age. Wife speaks to her in her native language so she's growing up bilingual too. Wife takes her to parks, mommy and me classes where they have story time, s…

Interested in your household. Dual income? Single Income w/SAHP? What is your plan for Grandparents, babysitters, childcare, or even the school system to help maintain no screens? No screens seems awfully privileged in a way... maybe you're just Bill Gates

Single income one with wife as SAHM. We live on one software engineer's salary (not FAANG). We make sacrifices with things like size of our house, etc and feel it's worth it to invest that opportunity cost into our children.

I understand that not everyone can live on one income. But more often I see in my circles people that can make it work, but choose not too because they don't want to make that career/financial sacrifice. Instead both parents work and send their kids to daycare. Of course that's totally their choice. I've made a different choice and perhaps this is an unpopular opinion this day and age, but I think it's the best choice if you can make it work financially and are willing to put in the effort that it entails.

Re: Ask HN: How do you protect your children from internet addiction?

#95

Post by rr888 »

shp0ngle wrote: post #37

I don’t know if I will. I was a computer addicted kid since I was about 8, when parents bought me a computer in 1995. When faster internet came, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, I was on the internet nonstop. And later on social media - LiveJournal, Blogger, Flickr, YouTube, but also some local servers that people here won’t know. I don’t think it hurt me that much? Now I am a developer and making more money than m…

I was addicted to computers when I found them in middle school. My parents banned me and I didn't follow my passion at university. Now I'm a programmer with above average social skills and below average computer skills. Not sure it was the right decision.

Re: Ask HN: How do you protect your children from internet addiction?

#96

Post by jmacd »

KerrAvon wrote: post #75
theonething wrote: post #10

My kid's almost three. From day one, we've implemented a zero screen policy. That means no phones, tablets, computers, TV (don't own one), etc. We've read to her since day one and she loves books now and her spoken/listening language skills are way ahead for her age. Wife speaks to her in her native language so she's growing up bilingual too. Wife takes her to parks, mommy and me classes where they have story time, s…

Find a Waldorf school with a strict no-media policy and you have a fighting chance to keep the kid healthy through grade school.

My kids are 6, 7 and 9. We've managed to maintain a screen free upbringing for them and they all have other activities they prefer at this stage. Their school however heavily uses screens and we were pretty shocked to find out they are using them (primarily iPads) for a good portion of their day's classes.

Re: Ask HN: How do you protect your children from internet addiction?

#97

Post by makeitdouble »

qzx_pierri wrote: post #17

The solution to this problem is actively parenting your kids. Take them on hikes, start a hobby with them, bond, etc. Letting the internet babysit your kids is the precursor to internet addiction. If you put in the work, then you won't have to worry.

This is an excelent answer, which makes me itch to push a little further.

I suppose OP (and you) are not "internet addicted", and I'm pretty sure it's not because someone is working hard to keep you from the internet, but because you have other things in your life that you enjoy or understand are critically needed.

Kids aren't that different. We might need to push them first so they discover new things and find what they like, but they'll definitely come back to you to go hiking if it they had a blast the last time.

I'm not sure it's really "put in the work", and I like a lot your "actively parenting" part. The crux is really to have fun with your kid, and if it's fun they'll do it again, and again, and again. And they also have a sense of responsibility, letting them fail and be remorseful when they didn't do their due and watched youtube instead is often a good enough strategy.

Re: Ask HN: How do you protect your children from internet addiction?

#98

Post by sowbug »

Parent of three ranging from tween to college age.

We have never had limits on anything. Screen time/content unrestricted. Probably dozens of times, maybe hundreds, we have had "the talk" about how there's a lot of weird shit in the world, internet included, and it's better to know about that stuff and how to deal with it than to create a temporary secure enclave at home where it doesn't exist.

We especially didn't want to pawn off our responsibility as parents onto their future 18-year-old college-bound selves to learn how to deal with excesses. Since the moment they could point, they've been given the opportunity to make mistakes with excess. They've fallen thousands of times, we've picked them up thousands of times, and now they're pretty good at not falling.

You can guess that I love CI/CD, stable trunk, etc., in my day job. My attitude as an engineer/parent is you'll never make bugs/threats go away. So make sure you and your team/family are experts at dealing with them while they're fresh and small.

Re: Ask HN: How do you protect your children from internet addiction?

#99

Post by aleksiy123 »

shp0ngle wrote: post #37

I don’t know if I will. I was a computer addicted kid since I was about 8, when parents bought me a computer in 1995. When faster internet came, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, I was on the internet nonstop. And later on social media - LiveJournal, Blogger, Flickr, YouTube, but also some local servers that people here won’t know. I don’t think it hurt me that much? Now I am a developer and making more money than m…

I largely agree with you.

Its interesting to see what I believe to be a generational divide in these comments.

I'm 28. My parents limited my internet and gaming time when I was younger and it mostly just caused resentment and anger at what I believed to be their controlling behaviour. I couldn't wait to move out. When I did move out in University the freedom I spent too much time on the things I wasn't allowed to do before and my grades suffered for it.

I think a lot of comments here have very draconian policies that aren't going to work out the way the parents intended it. I think the harder and more desirable way is to somehow teach them to manage their own time but I have no idea how.

Re: Ask HN: How do you protect your children from internet addiction?

#100

Post by aerovistae »

mrexroad wrote: post #63
agentwiggles wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Youtube has been essentially banned in my house after seeing the effect it had on my kids. The problem, in short, was that Youtube continuously feeds them new content. Sadly - especially given the huge amount of actually great content on Youtube - everything that it wants to show my kids is absolutely dogshit garbage. A bunch of Gen Z kids with obviously wealthy families just acting like idiots. I couldn't stand it a…

Several kids in my household. YouTube plays a vastly different role for each, which is frustrating. Oldest goes down rabbit hole of topics of interest - benign useless filler stuff, e.g. mostly pro sports commentary, random things like Disney ride trivia, and other random pop-culture filler. If left unchecked, i wouldn’t be surprised if they spent 8+ hours on YouTube. If moderated, YouTube gives them a fair amount of…

Sounds to me like that younger teen needs an intervention, i.e. more oversight. I wouldn't grit my teeth and bare it on that.
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