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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 th

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.

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.