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If children having lack of access to digital devices is psychological torture, our grandparents truly were monsters. Children have rights but they do not have

• Kenji 10y ago
  You don't understand. Imagine that some of your best friends are in another country and your contact to them is cut by means of removing your digital devices. Since children also cannot be allowed outside alone anymore, because the world is dangerous, this is truly like solitary confinement. Also, to reduce your argument ad absurdum: Would you take away the shoes of your kid because well, our ancestors once walked around without shoes so it seems like an appropriate punishment. Relative differences are the keywords here. Taking away something one is accustomed to causes pain.
  • darkstar999 10y ago
    Have you ever heard of "being grounded"? A punishment where parents restrict actions of the kid including toys and social interaction? This is a concept regardless of technology.
    • Kenji 10y ago
      Yes. And it, too, is psychological torture. I know, people call it educating and raising a kid. Hackernews users don't understand my point because it is too progressive and subtle to understand. I stand firmly for children's rights not to be harmed, all the way through. All the way.
      • jasonkolb 10y ago
        I am curious to know how you would prevent a child from running into the road given that said child isn't yet mentally developed enough to understand the risk. And they will do it over and over regardless of how well or in how many different ways you try to explain the risk to them.
        • DanBC 10y ago
          Just checking, but are you saying it's okay to hit a child in that situation?
          • icebraining 10y ago
            Who said anything about hitting a child? We were talking about grounding them.
            • DanBC 10y ago
              Kenji said here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13901382 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13901382 > Kids used to get a slap when they misbehaved. [...] I'd take the slap over the other things any time of the day. And when this specific instance (child runs into road) has come up before there are always people saying they'd hit the child. So, I'm just checking if that's what jasonkolb meant or not.
        • carapace 10y ago
          Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parenting#In_indigenous_American_cultures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parenting#In_indigenous_Americ...
      • sgift 10y ago
        > Hackernews users don't understand my point because it is too progressive and subtle to understand. Or they just disagree with it. Your point is not that hard to understand, but without providing any alternative course of action it doesn't sound very practical.
      • carapace 10y ago
        As you can see many people reading your comments are evidently literally unable to imagine the kind of parenting you're talking about. It stirs up a lot of emotions that most adults have put to rest and forgotten. You start poking those old sore points and suddenly out comes the poop-flinging (downvotes in this case.) I can remember my bewilderment: once when I was a little child my mom was scolding me for something and then the phone rang and when she answered it she wasn't mad. I understood that her being mad at me was a choice she was making, but I couldn't understand why she would do that. Why was she being mean when she could just turn it off? Our society is very neurotic, the evidence being that people will justify physical and psychological torture of children and get very upset when you dare to point out that it's stupid, cruel, and unnecessary. It's a memetic disease, anchored with trans-generational trauma, and rationalized to normalcy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parenting#In_indigenous_American_cultures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parenting#In_indigenous_Americ...
        • Kenji 10y ago
          I greatly appreciate your comment. I often feel alone with my opinions on hackernews. You are completely right, what you are describing is a case of emotional manipulation (using anger as a tool to increase compliance) and bad parenting can even go all the way to emotional terrorism (causing intense feelings of guilt if one does not do what the parents want). Whether it's physical or psychological harm - the usage of such methods displays lack of emotional maturity and patience in parents.
          • carapace 10y ago
            Cheers :-) Yeah, and my parents weren't even that bad (among my friends in high school, for instance, they were pretty well-regarded.)
    • DanBC 10y ago
      Yes, most people massively over-extend the duration of timeouts. For most children under the age of about 16 a ten minute time out is just as, probably more, effective as a week long time out. 10 minutes is discipline. One week is incompetence or cruelty.
    • mnm1 10y ago
      I think what the parent post is referring to is the perpetual "grounding" of children until they become adults that has come into fashion lately in the US (last few decades) and that is quite cruel and horrific. It's one thing to ground a child for a week or two. It's another to ground them for their whole childhood as has become commonplace in the US to the point where these idiotic parenting ideas are enforced by police and taken out of the parents' hands completely. In addition to the immense suffering imposed on children, society too suffers from creating neurotic adults that act like children, have no life skills, and complain about micro aggressions and other nonsense when they're living the most comfortable lives in the history of humanity.