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No smartphones or unrestricted access to the internet. No social media. Have a computer in a common space like the living room for when they want to be online.
by sn9 7y ago
No smartphones or unrestricted access to the internet. No social media.
Have a computer in a common space like the living room for when they want to be online. You don't have to be watching over their shoulder.
You could try to keep up with all the shit you have to be wary of your kids encountering online (e.g., age-inappropriate pornography, political extremism, social media "influencers", games with microtransactions, etc.) or you could be proactive and intentional and just nip it in the bud with how and when and where they have access to the online world at the access point.
There's a reason we wait until kids are 16 to give the freedom to drive a heavy hunk of metal at speeds that can kill themselves or other people. We should seriously re-evaluate when we give them the freedom to encounter the worst of humanity. The internet of the 90s and early 2000s is a distant memory; we live in a world of carefully engineered experiences designed to exploit our minds' flaws, online social environments our minds never evolved to navigate, and a host of other things I could mention that suggest that we should focus on providing childhoods in which they're engaged in things we know to be relatively safe, if not beneficial (e.g., play outside, read books, watch movies, play video games that aren't connected to the internet, etc.).
- m0zg 7y agoAnd also: no Windows. My kid somehow gets Admin access on his Windows laptop. He's 14 years old, from which I conclude that anyone with basic Google search skills can elevate their local privileges to Administrator and do whatever the hell they want, including VPN install, at which point your firewall and parental controls become useless.
- snowwrestler 7y agoSingle user mode on a Mac will let anyone with physical access to the machine create a new admin account. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201573 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201573
- m0zg 7y agoNo Mac then, as well. I'm pretty sure I could lock down a Linux laptop to not be vulnerable to teenage shenanigans, though.
- cpach 7y agoWatch out for the evil maid attack ;-)
- SanderSantema 7y agoNot if you use a firmware password. Which you can enable from recovery mode (accessible by pressing cmd-r at startup), you can find the option in one of the menu bar items. Remember that you’ll have a very hard time recovering your Mac if you lose your firmare and admin password.
- mayniac 7y agoThis is kind of a moot point. Unless the parents are security professionals it doesn't really matter what OS they use. A teenage boy will learn how to bruteforce /etc/shadow to bypass a porn filter if they're desperate. Source: that's basically how I got into cybersecurity
- yread 7y agoExactly, my parents put BIOS passwords to stop me from using the computer. Over the years I've cracked 4 through literal dictionary attacks (sitting at the computer with an encyclopedia and trying every word) and ~10 by looking when they were typing it. They've also tried unseating the graphical card so that it had to be reseated every time before starting the computer. That took me a bit longer to figure out
- senectus1 7y agochrist. how much free time did you have as a kid?
- 8bitrebellion 7y agoThe "also no windows" part is rather pointless. Will every kid manage to get admin privileges? No.