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When I was a young boy in the 90s, my libertarian aligned father let me use the computer and access the internet. He explained to me that I shouldn't visit cer

When I was a young boy in the 90s, my libertarian aligned father let me use the computer and access the internet. He explained to me that I shouldn't visit certain type of sites, I should never give out my name or address and that he had software installed to monitor what happened on the computer. He explained that this wasn't a breach of trust between us as I was using his equipment and that I had to abide by his rules. He stated that at any time I was free to get a job or find a way to earn my own cash and purchase my own computer.

erispoe 9y ago
It's not so much about the breach of trust than about raising independent, well-functioning individuals. There's good evidence than sheltering kids and not allowing them to experiment on their own terms, including by experiencing the consequences of their own actions, does not create well adapted adults. Parents who install monitoring systems are prioritizing their own short-term well-being and peace of mind at the expense of their child's future. They're eating their marshmallow right away. "My house, my rules" arguments are absurd when it comes to raising kids, and totally disregards the end goal of raising independent individuals.
- knd775 9y ago
  Exactly! Not quite the same thing, but related: When I was growing up, my parents would make me do all of my homework on their schedule and under their supervision. They reasoned that I wouldn't do it otherwise. That ended up being a self-fulfilling prophecy and now I struggle with time management issues and procrastination.
  - michaelgrafl 9y ago
    I can relate to that, but it's very possible that your parents wanted you to do your homework on their schedule because they realized you'd fail in school otherwise. I also struggle with time management and focus and always have. If my parents hadn't put a lot of energy into my doing my homework, I wouldn't have made it past elementary school. It was a mess really, and I'm thankful that I have a lot more resources to look up how to deal with such a thing than my parents, and I hope I can navigate my children through school with less pain.
- sathackr 9y ago
  What consequences could you imagine a parent should allow a 10 year old to experience? The consequences of an abnormal sexual development or an unhealthy attitude towards females due to stumbling across hardcore porn and becoming addicted to it at a young age? The consequences of mistaking someone on the internet as a friend and giving them your full address and name so they could bring you ice cream? There are things on the internet that a young mind is not sufficiently developed to handle, and the consequences of exposure can last a lifetime. Hell, there are things on the internet that most adult minds are not capable of handling. Some things cannot be 'unseen'. By installing a monitoring and filtering system and informing my child of this and developing in him an idea of what is acceptable and appropriate and what is not and protecting him from potentially life-altering harm.
  - jackvalentine 9y ago
    > By installing a monitoring and filtering system and informing my child of this and developing in him an idea of what is acceptable and appropriate and what is not and protecting him from potentially life-altering harm. I think OP's point though is at what cost? It's a given that protecting kids from harm is good, but to be convincing in your case I want to see that you can enumerate the downsides and state why they're good tradeoffs. Too often do I see courses of action being advocated for because they're short term "obviously" right.
    - sathackr 9y ago
      I don't conduct a fully peer-reviewed study for each parenting decision I make. It seems to me, for my particular situation and this particular child, that this is the best course of action. Obviously it may not be the best course for every situation or every child. Hopefully each parent can make their own decisions based upon their knowledge and values. Nobody can say 'all kids won't be harmed if they watch porn' or 'every kid who watches porn will have developmental issues'. That's what makes a parent. You apply your best judgement to the situation and try to effect the best outcome.
      - jackvalentine 9y ago
- weego 9y ago
  My house my rules is perfectly fine. Any policy is bad if you're a parent with trust and empathy issues
XCabbage 9y ago
Except that (assuming you define "young boy" anything like I do, and you live in the developed world) you were not free to get a job, due to child labor laws and mandatory schooling. I can't be too annoyed at your father, since most people don't even see the need to justify parents or teachers exercising authority over children, but if you ARE going to try to philosophically justify it, pretending that a child is just a member of the market economy with the same economic freedom as an adult strikes me as an obviously bullshit way to do so.
- Mononokay 9y ago
  Child labor laws and mandatory schooling are draconian - there really needs to be a fast-laned way for kids to test out of it.
  - moate 9y ago
    Draconian is defined as a law that is "overly harsh or sever". It comes from a Greek legal scribe to tied severe punishments to minor offenses. No. That is not what those laws are. Mostly because you can "home school" a kid in the U.S. as a way around the mandatory schooling (there's just mandatory testing...which is what you want, a way to test out of the system)
    - Mononokay 9y ago
      HiSets and GEDs both require the test taker to be 16 or over in the majority of states, with a few (primarily Midwestern, granted) states not having ways to test out.
- nickthegreek 9y ago
  I could of babysat, asked neighbors for help with yard work, shovel snow or asked my parents if there were things that I could do on our property to earn an income. I got my first job when I was 15. I do want to point out that my father never filtered my internet. He just let me know that any site I visited was being tracked and that I should take that into consideration when being online. I maintained complete autonomy online and my parents did not lie or obscure what they were doing. I would say that this prepared me well for what would become 'social media' over a decade later. This parental tracking actually became a game of cat and mouse and I learned more about computers because of this. I was intrigued about how things could be monitored, how the OS and file systems worked. I ended up going to a vocational school for computer networking.
Raphmedia 9y ago
That's all very reasonable. What I hear from parent around me come straight out of a dystopian novel. 24/7 GPS tracking, Webcam monitoring at random moments of the day, silent alarms when the child visits certain websites, silent alarms when the child enter certain stores and locations, etc. That's 16-18 years old teens I'm talking about. By that time, the child should be well on its way to becoming an adult. They should be teaching their kids about freedom, the cost of mistakes and the weight of their actions. Instead, we have kids growing up a bubble. Once they reach legal age, they rip them out of that bubble and throw them into a strange world they learned nothing about. No wonder you then end up with people that are not very mature or have issues.
HarryHirsch 9y ago
that he had software installed to monitor what happened on the computer. He explained that this wasn't a breach of trust between us as I was using his equipment and that I had to abide by his rules. You do wonder: if the kid was 12 or 14 and bought himself a cheap smartphone from his own money to get away from the parental monitoring apps, would the "libertarian aligned father" be OK with that?
- kps 9y ago
  Nah, it just reverts to “you live in my house so do what I say” — the standard pseudo-‘libertarian’ justification for feudalism.
- nickthegreek 9y ago
  My older brother had 2 kids and he changed the WiFi password weekly and his kids only got the new passwordifnthey did their chores/homework the previous week. I think that if you have a kid who puts that much value on a device, saves up and buys said device, than that kid is already on the road to responsible behavior.

erispoe 9y ago

It's not so much about the breach of trust than about raising independent, well-functioning individuals. There's good evidence than sheltering kids and not allowing them to experiment on their own terms, including by experiencing the consequences of their own actions, does not create well adapted adults. Parents who install monitoring systems are prioritizing their own short-term well-being and peace of mind at the expense of their child's future. They're eating their marshmallow right away. "My house, my rules" arguments are absurd when it comes to raising kids, and totally disregards the end goal of raising independent individuals.

knd775 9y ago
Exactly! Not quite the same thing, but related: When I was growing up, my parents would make me do all of my homework on their schedule and under their supervision. They reasoned that I wouldn't do it otherwise. That ended up being a self-fulfilling prophecy and now I struggle with time management issues and procrastination.
- michaelgrafl 9y ago
  I can relate to that, but it's very possible that your parents wanted you to do your homework on their schedule because they realized you'd fail in school otherwise. I also struggle with time management and focus and always have. If my parents hadn't put a lot of energy into my doing my homework, I wouldn't have made it past elementary school. It was a mess really, and I'm thankful that I have a lot more resources to look up how to deal with such a thing than my parents, and I hope I can navigate my children through school with less pain.
sathackr 9y ago
What consequences could you imagine a parent should allow a 10 year old to experience? The consequences of an abnormal sexual development or an unhealthy attitude towards females due to stumbling across hardcore porn and becoming addicted to it at a young age? The consequences of mistaking someone on the internet as a friend and giving them your full address and name so they could bring you ice cream? There are things on the internet that a young mind is not sufficiently developed to handle, and the consequences of exposure can last a lifetime. Hell, there are things on the internet that most adult minds are not capable of handling. Some things cannot be 'unseen'. By installing a monitoring and filtering system and informing my child of this and developing in him an idea of what is acceptable and appropriate and what is not and protecting him from potentially life-altering harm.
- jackvalentine 9y ago
  > By installing a monitoring and filtering system and informing my child of this and developing in him an idea of what is acceptable and appropriate and what is not and protecting him from potentially life-altering harm. I think OP's point though is at what cost? It's a given that protecting kids from harm is good, but to be convincing in your case I want to see that you can enumerate the downsides and state why they're good tradeoffs. Too often do I see courses of action being advocated for because they're short term "obviously" right.
  - sathackr 9y ago
    I don't conduct a fully peer-reviewed study for each parenting decision I make. It seems to me, for my particular situation and this particular child, that this is the best course of action. Obviously it may not be the best course for every situation or every child. Hopefully each parent can make their own decisions based upon their knowledge and values. Nobody can say 'all kids won't be harmed if they watch porn' or 'every kid who watches porn will have developmental issues'. That's what makes a parent. You apply your best judgement to the situation and try to effect the best outcome.
    - jackvalentine 9y ago
weego 9y ago
My house my rules is perfectly fine. Any policy is bad if you're a parent with trust and empathy issues

XCabbage 9y ago

Except that (assuming you define "young boy" anything like I do, and you live in the developed world) you were not free to get a job, due to child labor laws and mandatory schooling. I can't be too annoyed at your father, since most people don't even see the need to justify parents or teachers exercising authority over children, but if you ARE going to try to philosophically justify it, pretending that a child is just a member of the market economy with the same economic freedom as an adult strikes me as an obviously bullshit way to do so.

Mononokay 9y ago
Child labor laws and mandatory schooling are draconian - there really needs to be a fast-laned way for kids to test out of it.
- moate 9y ago
  Draconian is defined as a law that is "overly harsh or sever". It comes from a Greek legal scribe to tied severe punishments to minor offenses. No. That is not what those laws are. Mostly because you can "home school" a kid in the U.S. as a way around the mandatory schooling (there's just mandatory testing...which is what you want, a way to test out of the system)
  - Mononokay 9y ago
    HiSets and GEDs both require the test taker to be 16 or over in the majority of states, with a few (primarily Midwestern, granted) states not having ways to test out.
nickthegreek 9y ago
I could of babysat, asked neighbors for help with yard work, shovel snow or asked my parents if there were things that I could do on our property to earn an income. I got my first job when I was 15. I do want to point out that my father never filtered my internet. He just let me know that any site I visited was being tracked and that I should take that into consideration when being online. I maintained complete autonomy online and my parents did not lie or obscure what they were doing. I would say that this prepared me well for what would become 'social media' over a decade later. This parental tracking actually became a game of cat and mouse and I learned more about computers because of this. I was intrigued about how things could be monitored, how the OS and file systems worked. I ended up going to a vocational school for computer networking.

Raphmedia 9y ago

That's all very reasonable. What I hear from parent around me come straight out of a dystopian novel. 24/7 GPS tracking, Webcam monitoring at random moments of the day, silent alarms when the child visits certain websites, silent alarms when the child enter certain stores and locations, etc. That's 16-18 years old teens I'm talking about. By that time, the child should be well on its way to becoming an adult. They should be teaching their kids about freedom, the cost of mistakes and the weight of their actions. Instead, we have kids growing up a bubble. Once they reach legal age, they rip them out of that bubble and throw them into a strange world they learned nothing about. No wonder you then end up with people that are not very mature or have issues.

HarryHirsch 9y ago

that he had software installed to monitor what happened on the computer. He explained that this wasn't a breach of trust between us as I was using his equipment and that I had to abide by his rules. You do wonder: if the kid was 12 or 14 and bought himself a cheap smartphone from his own money to get away from the parental monitoring apps, would the "libertarian aligned father" be OK with that?

kps 9y ago
Nah, it just reverts to “you live in my house so do what I say” — the standard pseudo-‘libertarian’ justification for feudalism.
nickthegreek 9y ago
My older brother had 2 kids and he changed the WiFi password weekly and his kids only got the new passwordifnthey did their chores/homework the previous week. I think that if you have a kid who puts that much value on a device, saves up and buys said device, than that kid is already on the road to responsible behavior.