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>” I don’t know how I can undo the damage that’s been done to her impressionable mind. Here's an idea: Don't give your children unsupervised access to the inte

>” I don’t know how I can undo the damage that’s been done to her impressionable mind. Here's an idea: Don't give your children unsupervised access to the internet. Yeah she might still access this stuff at school, but when I was in middle and highschool pre-2007 there's no way I'd ever get away with watching videos on a school computer during class. It's hard to imagine teachers are somehow more relaxed about this in 2019 and I'd be amazed if youtube wasn't blocked on school networks anyway. There's nothing a 10 year old NEEDS internet access for on private computer or phone.

hootbootscoot 7y ago
While I agree that parenting would suggest some consideration of the material accessible, perhaps the number one video sharing website could put some effort into what clearly is a funnel towards evil: it's recommendation engine. I routinely get wacko right wing nonsense in my recommendation feed and I'm rather left wing and never once searched for such content. I It's probably time to lean on the Goog a bit and get them to stop feeding Alex Jones and his ilk with unsolicited "recommendations" that run counter to previously viewed videos messaging. I get it. They think that people should leave their filter bubbles, but they equate all points of view as equally educational, when common sense would point out that some points of view on some topics should be considered off-limits. If I say "I want to live" and your point of view is "die mofo die!" do we really need to compromise on merely mutilating me? perhaps your point of view can be entirely dismissed in such a case, as situationally wrongful. Morality has social functionality, gasp. But I reckon that 1) there's likely no state actor with sufficient power to control the goog by now, accumulated dirt being accumulated dirt, pols having browsing histories, money having value, and all... 2) there's likely to be no such reaction here on Hacker News due to this malicious algorithm being considered a form of "free speech" I suppose. Here I always figured on tech being a liberalizing social force, but between FB and the G, it's going downhill rather swiftly...
PhasmaFelis 7y ago
Per the second sentence of the paragraph you pulled that quote from, they are restricting her internet. It's not helping. > I’ve tried to go in and manually delete all recommended videos, put in parental controls, everything (including blocking the app) — but she’s finding ways to log on using browsers and school computers.
- whamlastxmas 7y ago
  I addressed the school part and it sounds like she has access to a computer without supervision at home
  - PhasmaFelis 7y ago
    > I addressed the school part You addressed it by saying she couldn't possibly watch videos at school, which is silly. There's plenty of educational content on YouTube. A lot of school firewalls only block stuff that's been tagged as age-restricted content. Or students may know how to get around the block. Or she may be watching on her friends' phones. (The parent says "school computers", but how would they know for sure?) All this can happen during lunch, or before or after school, or between classes. It is impossible to directly monitor 100% of a school-age child's internet access unless you homeschool them, never let them go to the library or talk to other kids, and sit and watch them while they do their homework.
quickthrower2 7y ago
I'm tempted to block Youtube at the router (at least between specific times) because I find it is far more addictive for kids that I remember the TV used to be. The good thing about old TV with 4 channels is that most of the time it was boring, so you'd turn it off and go do something else. Kids TV would stop at about 6pm for the news (IIRC).
ygjb 7y ago
> Don't give your children unsupervised access to the internet. What phenomenally useless advice, and an utterly uninformed perspective. Who and how do you propose offer this "supervised access" in a meaningful fashion? How do you adapt for the fact that children, when supervised, specifically avoid play that might subject them to additional scrutiny (for example, not using youtube, etc). How do you address the lack of supervision in environments that aren't specifically at home, or when one parent finds different content problematic than another parent? How do you ensure that two parents who are at odds (e.g. divorced couples, etc) coordinate what is permitted or not in an environment where the child has different rules in different environments? Far from children not having internet access at school, the school my children attends recognizes the need to teach children how to think critically about online content, and both my 8 year old and 10 year old have had assignments to use youtube and other media sites to learn more about specific topics. Far better advice would be to periodically review content your children view, and then have meaningful discussions about the content they are consuming, what makes it "good" or "bad", and encourage children to make better choices, and to discuss what they are seeing and learning. As awful as Youtube is, it's not possible to block it out of kids lives, any more than porn magazines and other objectionable content could be kept out of the hands of children 30 years ago.
- true_religion 7y ago
  Blocking YouTube access doesn’t have to be perfectly implement to be useful. As you say in your last sentence, it’s impossible to keep porn magazines out of the hands of children, but yet we as a society are determined to at least try. It’s all that’s suggested here, try to limit access, make it clear that some things aren’t to be watched at a young age. Can you image what society would be like if people just had given up on restricting porn and said they could sell it to 10 year olds and play it in elementary school libraries?
  - ygjb 7y ago
    Unfortunately if you limit access to content, children who are curious will simply bypass those limits. For some children they will do it through social means, for others (puts up hand) they will learn how to bypass technical controls, but in general, if they are curious about it, then parents have a choice: teach them about it, or let someone else is. Most parents hope that it's school that teaches stuff they don't want to, but it might be a friend, or someone worse. I am not arguing for wholesale abandoning of parental controls, but there are relatively innocuous parental controls (for example, my kids tablets don't let them do anything between 10:00 pm and 9:00 am; they don't need it after bed time or before school, and if they do, then I can override it). On the other hand, there is invasive surveillance that copies off all traffic so that parents can review it, keystroke loggers, and other "spouseware" that makes sure that parents can intrude into every interaction. There are no doubt a subset of children who merit this kind of surviellance - children with health issues that need supervision so they don't harm others or themselves. For those edge cases, those tools make sense, but for most children, a more effective strategy is to listen to your children, respect their feelings, agree on boundaries, and have consistent and reasonable consequences for breaking those rules. Anything else says to children that you don't trust them, and that will lead to them developing a habit of keeping secrets and hiding things from parents, and that is a pathway to children not talking to parents when there are unsafe interactions because they are afraid of the consequences of asking for help and admitting that they broke the rules.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

hootbootscoot 7y ago

While I agree that parenting would suggest some consideration of the material accessible, perhaps the number one video sharing website could put some effort into what clearly is a funnel towards evil: it's recommendation engine. I routinely get wacko right wing nonsense in my recommendation feed and I'm rather left wing and never once searched for such content. I It's probably time to lean on the Goog a bit and get them to stop feeding Alex Jones and his ilk with unsolicited "recommendations" that run counter to previously viewed videos messaging. I get it. They think that people should leave their filter bubbles, but they equate all points of view as equally educational, when common sense would point out that some points of view on some topics should be considered off-limits. If I say "I want to live" and your point of view is "die mofo die!" do we really need to compromise on merely mutilating me? perhaps your point of view can be entirely dismissed in such a case, as situationally wrongful. Morality has social functionality, gasp. But I reckon that 1) there's likely no state actor with sufficient power to control the goog by now, accumulated dirt being accumulated dirt, pols having browsing histories, money having value, and all... 2) there's likely to be no such reaction here on Hacker News due to this malicious algorithm being considered a form of "free speech" I suppose. Here I always figured on tech being a liberalizing social force, but between FB and the G, it's going downhill rather swiftly...

PhasmaFelis 7y ago

Per the second sentence of the paragraph you pulled that quote from, they are restricting her internet. It's not helping. > I’ve tried to go in and manually delete all recommended videos, put in parental controls, everything (including blocking the app) — but she’s finding ways to log on using browsers and school computers.

whamlastxmas 7y ago
I addressed the school part and it sounds like she has access to a computer without supervision at home
- PhasmaFelis 7y ago
  > I addressed the school part You addressed it by saying she couldn't possibly watch videos at school, which is silly. There's plenty of educational content on YouTube. A lot of school firewalls only block stuff that's been tagged as age-restricted content. Or students may know how to get around the block. Or she may be watching on her friends' phones. (The parent says "school computers", but how would they know for sure?) All this can happen during lunch, or before or after school, or between classes. It is impossible to directly monitor 100% of a school-age child's internet access unless you homeschool them, never let them go to the library or talk to other kids, and sit and watch them while they do their homework.

quickthrower2 7y ago

I'm tempted to block Youtube at the router (at least between specific times) because I find it is far more addictive for kids that I remember the TV used to be. The good thing about old TV with 4 channels is that most of the time it was boring, so you'd turn it off and go do something else. Kids TV would stop at about 6pm for the news (IIRC).

ygjb 7y ago

> Don't give your children unsupervised access to the internet. What phenomenally useless advice, and an utterly uninformed perspective. Who and how do you propose offer this "supervised access" in a meaningful fashion? How do you adapt for the fact that children, when supervised, specifically avoid play that might subject them to additional scrutiny (for example, not using youtube, etc). How do you address the lack of supervision in environments that aren't specifically at home, or when one parent finds different content problematic than another parent? How do you ensure that two parents who are at odds (e.g. divorced couples, etc) coordinate what is permitted or not in an environment where the child has different rules in different environments? Far from children not having internet access at school, the school my children attends recognizes the need to teach children how to think critically about online content, and both my 8 year old and 10 year old have had assignments to use youtube and other media sites to learn more about specific topics. Far better advice would be to periodically review content your children view, and then have meaningful discussions about the content they are consuming, what makes it "good" or "bad", and encourage children to make better choices, and to discuss what they are seeing and learning. As awful as Youtube is, it's not possible to block it out of kids lives, any more than porn magazines and other objectionable content could be kept out of the hands of children 30 years ago.

true_religion 7y ago
Blocking YouTube access doesn’t have to be perfectly implement to be useful. As you say in your last sentence, it’s impossible to keep porn magazines out of the hands of children, but yet we as a society are determined to at least try. It’s all that’s suggested here, try to limit access, make it clear that some things aren’t to be watched at a young age. Can you image what society would be like if people just had given up on restricting porn and said they could sell it to 10 year olds and play it in elementary school libraries?
- ygjb 7y ago
  Unfortunately if you limit access to content, children who are curious will simply bypass those limits. For some children they will do it through social means, for others (puts up hand) they will learn how to bypass technical controls, but in general, if they are curious about it, then parents have a choice: teach them about it, or let someone else is. Most parents hope that it's school that teaches stuff they don't want to, but it might be a friend, or someone worse. I am not arguing for wholesale abandoning of parental controls, but there are relatively innocuous parental controls (for example, my kids tablets don't let them do anything between 10:00 pm and 9:00 am; they don't need it after bed time or before school, and if they do, then I can override it). On the other hand, there is invasive surveillance that copies off all traffic so that parents can review it, keystroke loggers, and other "spouseware" that makes sure that parents can intrude into every interaction. There are no doubt a subset of children who merit this kind of surviellance - children with health issues that need supervision so they don't harm others or themselves. For those edge cases, those tools make sense, but for most children, a more effective strategy is to listen to your children, respect their feelings, agree on boundaries, and have consistent and reasonable consequences for breaking those rules. Anything else says to children that you don't trust them, and that will lead to them developing a habit of keeping secrets and hiding things from parents, and that is a pathway to children not talking to parents when there are unsafe interactions because they are afraid of the consequences of asking for help and admitting that they broke the rules.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]