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What I really wanted when I was a kid was for my father to find out what porn I liked looking at and come to discuss it with me! Cut your kids a break. If you

by Latty 9y ago

What I really wanted when I was a kid was for my father to find out what porn I liked looking at and come to discuss it with me! Cut your kids a break. If you are going to monitor their usage, at the very least tell them about it first. I get the urge - when your kids are very young you have to protect them and do everything for them. At some point you have to accept they are people, however young and inexperienced, and you have to teach them to look after themselves, not invade their privacy. Or maybe I've misunderstood you and you meant older as in, they are 6 or something. Even then, I'd argue that you should be up-front about the fact you monitor it. Hiding it is just going to feel like entrapment.

lifeisstillgood 9y ago
There never was any intention to hide this - this is a show everyone on a web page and discuss it idea. and the porn issue ... fair enough i guess i have a handful of years yet however before they hit puberty. but my main point still stands - we live in a surveillance society that works against us, so i want to use it to start working for us. and that to my mind means starting with metrics. will it help to know daddy spends x hours a day on HN? will it be harder to complain about my kids watching cartoons if i spend 12 hours a day on netflix?
- pnutjam 9y ago
  Everyone I've ever worked with who has an 11 year old son, comes into work one day complaining about finding a bunch of porn on the family PC. 11 is the magic age.
- Latty 9y ago
  Yeah, but there are still going to be things your children are insecure about, embarrassed about, and want to find out about without you knowing. In my experience, ignorance is responsible for a lot more harm than "seeing too much". Going off hear-say, or just remaining ignorant is not a good thing. Having some room for privacy is important for development as people and for learning. Yes, there is room for insight and lessons from data, but without an opt-out switch, it'll also be something that limits them. It's not just porn, there is a lot of stuff I'd want to learn about that I wouldn't want my family to know I'm learning about, if I was a child all over again. I was fortunate in that I got to look up that stuff without fear of being discovered, and otherwise I know I'd have gone around believing playground rumours and the like. It's easy to say "but I want them to be able to talk to me about that stuff" - it's easy to say that, but it's harder for it to be true, especially from the point of view of your child. You can't pre-empt every fear, question and insecurity, and some things will just always be embarrassing enough they'll stay ignorant rather than ask you. I had a friend who didn't know basic (important) things about her own anatomy that caused health issues during university just because she was too embarrassed to ask her (non-judgemental, lovely) parents about it as a child. She didn't have a computer in her home then, but I'm sure if she had, knowing she couldn't have privacy would have stopped her as well. It's not the worst thing in the world or anything, but I think many parents don't start giving their children privacy early enough. I get it's scary and hard to judge when it's perfect, but I think it's important. On a side note, I just watched the ultimate "turned up to 11" version of this in Black Mirror S04E02 - ArkAngel, where a parent gets a monitoring device implanted in their child after a scare with them getting lost. Good series about the potential dangers of tech as it evolves, if you haven't already seen it.
  - lifeisstillgood 9y ago
    I see the point about privacy, and like the idea of the off switch. good idea
qznc 9y ago
I'm a dad myself. When my kids are old enough to own their own devices, I will seriously expand our router config. However, monitoring is not my focus. I want to disable social media at night, for example. That would even be good for us adults.
pnutjam 9y ago
Pfsense supports this, as does "Merlin" on Asus ( an Asus specific build of openwrt). I usually turn off the internet for problem children at night. I don't really do monitoring other then bandwidth usage. For monitoring of site's and ad blocking, you should check out pi-hole, https://pi-hole.net/ https://pi-hole.net/.

by Latty 9y ago

lifeisstillgood 9y ago

There never was any intention to hide this - this is a show everyone on a web page and discuss it idea. and the porn issue ... fair enough i guess i have a handful of years yet however before they hit puberty. but my main point still stands - we live in a surveillance society that works against us, so i want to use it to start working for us. and that to my mind means starting with metrics. will it help to know daddy spends x hours a day on HN? will it be harder to complain about my kids watching cartoons if i spend 12 hours a day on netflix?

pnutjam 9y ago
Everyone I've ever worked with who has an 11 year old son, comes into work one day complaining about finding a bunch of porn on the family PC. 11 is the magic age.
Latty 9y ago
Yeah, but there are still going to be things your children are insecure about, embarrassed about, and want to find out about without you knowing. In my experience, ignorance is responsible for a lot more harm than "seeing too much". Going off hear-say, or just remaining ignorant is not a good thing. Having some room for privacy is important for development as people and for learning. Yes, there is room for insight and lessons from data, but without an opt-out switch, it'll also be something that limits them. It's not just porn, there is a lot of stuff I'd want to learn about that I wouldn't want my family to know I'm learning about, if I was a child all over again. I was fortunate in that I got to look up that stuff without fear of being discovered, and otherwise I know I'd have gone around believing playground rumours and the like. It's easy to say "but I want them to be able to talk to me about that stuff" - it's easy to say that, but it's harder for it to be true, especially from the point of view of your child. You can't pre-empt every fear, question and insecurity, and some things will just always be embarrassing enough they'll stay ignorant rather than ask you. I had a friend who didn't know basic (important) things about her own anatomy that caused health issues during university just because she was too embarrassed to ask her (non-judgemental, lovely) parents about it as a child. She didn't have a computer in her home then, but I'm sure if she had, knowing she couldn't have privacy would have stopped her as well. It's not the worst thing in the world or anything, but I think many parents don't start giving their children privacy early enough. I get it's scary and hard to judge when it's perfect, but I think it's important. On a side note, I just watched the ultimate "turned up to 11" version of this in Black Mirror S04E02 - ArkAngel, where a parent gets a monitoring device implanted in their child after a scare with them getting lost. Good series about the potential dangers of tech as it evolves, if you haven't already seen it.
- lifeisstillgood 9y ago
  I see the point about privacy, and like the idea of the off switch. good idea

qznc 9y ago

I'm a dad myself. When my kids are old enough to own their own devices, I will seriously expand our router config. However, monitoring is not my focus. I want to disable social media at night, for example. That would even be good for us adults.

pnutjam 9y ago

Pfsense supports this, as does "Merlin" on Asus ( an Asus specific build of openwrt). I usually turn off the internet for problem children at night. I don't really do monitoring other then bandwidth usage. For monitoring of site's and ad blocking, you should check out pi-hole, https://pi-hole.net/ https://pi-hole.net/.