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Another reasonable point downvoted on HN as this comment will be too I'm sure. Some parents will abuse this ability and there's nothing to government should do

Another reasonable point downvoted on HN as this comment will be too I'm sure. Some parents will abuse this ability and there's nothing to government should do about that. Good parenting is hard and some form of tracking is important. My daughter had a phone from the age of 10, she uses it for google and email at school (it's part of their classes), texting me when her bus is near the bus stop so I can drive to collect her and for texting her friends. She is not allowed to use her phone to install apps that can communicate with people that she does not already know and this is something I periodically check on with the view that I will check less as she gets older. I am actually super impressed that she is not addicted to her phone like you would imagine a young girl would be. One of her friends does have instagram and other social media, I have checked her pages out and she has many followers that are men and much older than her. I wish her parents would check her phone more often. Regardless of what some childless anons on the Internet think, it's bloody hard to parent in the age of the iPhone. A simple solution is to not let your kids have anything but I've always believed that giving access to what everyone else has is fine as long as it's controlled with reasonable boundaries put in place.

jsjohnst 7y ago
> Another reasonable point downvoted on HN as this comment will be too I'm sure. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- notzuck 7y ago
  Yeah I can read. Doesn't mean I still don't want to moan about people downvoting him just because they're digging their heals in. He said something reasonable, a response would have been better than a downvote.
DoreenMichele 7y ago
I'm absolutely not childless. I was a full-time wife and mom for a lot of years. I'm sorry you feel so defensive and feel such a strong need to justify your choices rather than contemplate the possibility that some people who disagree with you have a fine parenting track record, have been at it longer than you and have thought a great deal about some things. I wish very much that I had a means to educate more parents. But I am no longer a full-time wife. I have bills to pay and I still support my adult special needs sons and the world has made it abundantly clear that the things I know and wish to share are not worth money. But in a nutshell, there are hidden costs to the kind of approach you are taking. It is akin to the saying "Going to war to preserve the peace is like fucking to preserve virginity." I chose to not tell my children "There are bad people out there that will want to do unspeakable things to you, so you should be afraid, very afraid." because I felt that would rob them of the very innocence I desired to protect and preserve. Instead, I taught them by example what genuine respect looks and feels like by setting the standard for that with how I treated them. They were taught they could say "No" to people -- including me -- for things like hugs and kisses. They were taught it was their decision, not mine. But I would happily play enforcer. If someone didn't respect their decision, "Come get mom." My oldest inferred based on his experiences that protecting himself from a bully with violent force was completely reasonable when he was at school and getting Mom was not an option. He didn't even feel it was noteworthy and I learned that story years later. Rumaging through your daughter's phone sets a precedent that future boyfriends or husbands can take advantage of to her detriment. And there are better policies that achieve the same thing without that. My sons have been online since they were two and five. I arranged kid-friendly menus to help them find things of interest to them easily with little risk of exposure to undesirable parts of the internet. They were not constrained. They didn't want such exposure. They were happy to stick to the things I helped them access that met their needs without having to be hassled with this other stuff. I know this is a touchy subject and you will probably be offended. But it's touchy because both sides of the argument are personally invested, not because your personal investment somehow trumps mine. I was molested and raped as a child. I thought long and hard about how to protect my children not just physically, but also emotionally and psychologically. They are old enough that I've gotten to see the fruits of my labor. Unfortunately, no one wants to know what I did. I'm just a woman, so I must be stupid or something. We all have our bag of rocks to carry in this crappy world.
- notzuck 7y ago
  Sorry if I upset you. I'm not sure if our opinions are different or not. I think I mostly agree with you to be honest and I don't see where my comment is massively opposed to yours. I don't believe I am setting a precedent with my girls that it's ok to be spied upon. If you know a better way, I would love to hear more about it. "Unfortunately, no one wants to know what I did. I'm just a woman, so I must be stupid or something.' I want to know!
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    She is not allowed to use her phone to install apps that can communicate with people that she does not already know and this is something I periodically check on with the view that I will check less as she gets older. Why do you think you need to do this? Why does this need to be a hard constraint dictated and controlled by someone else? My kids were given some general guidelines from a very early age. I tongue-in-cheek would say "No naked pics and no instructions on how to build bombs." They are my kids, so they understood what I was trying to get at. They also had it explained to them that as a parent, I had latitude to intercede on their behalf, assuming they stayed within certain boundaries. They understood that crimes like murder or arson would change that fact and put decision making power out of my hands and into the hands of strangers. My power as a parent served them. It was not weilded in an authoritarian fashion. If a child is getting their needs adequately met "within the rules," they have no reason to break the rules. When my kids proved consistently incapable of following the rules, I wondered what was wrong with my rules and tried to improve my process. Is there some reason your child would desire to talk to untrustworthy people she doesn't already know? Is she bored? Is she lonely? People don't take risks of that sort merely out ignorance. They do so out of desperation. Otherwise, they are quick to go "Nope, I don't need to keep this shitty app for talking to this awful person that I don't even like. Ugh. Moving on."
    - notzuck 7y ago
      "If a child is getting their needs adequately met "within the rules," they have no reason to break the rules." I'm not sure the above quote is true at all. Sometimes your kids want things that you won't give them. You can't keep 100% content kids 100% of the time. Everything you said sounds reasonable but I think kids can get themselves into bad situations even if they are happy and well adjusted. Sometimes hormones can kick in and make you talk to people that you would never normally talk to. It's easy to say that kids that are talking to strange adults online have serious issues in other parts of their lives and fixing those issues will fix everything but I think that's a really simplistic way of viewing the world. I was a very happy and content kid but still got mixed up with things I should not have just because my personality was adventurous and addictive at the time. I'm not assuming my kids will follow my behaviour but I've seen the overly sexualised content one of her friends posts and all of her friends just thinks shes cool for doing so now she has the popular girl feedback loop. I doubt her parents know. Maybe she's got some other issues and addressing those will fix everything or maybe she hasn't got issues but she's just addicted to it? Even if she has got other issues, the first sign might be the crap she does on her phone so it's good if her parents see that sooner rather than later. Maybe you're a great parent but you also had great kids which is only really partially under your control? Not every piece of undesirable behaviour can be easily traced back to an underlying issue that can be fixed. Sometimes it just is. The reason why I ban her from talking to strangers online is because I don't want her to be groomed while she's emotionally vulnerable. Girls can get hooked on the idea of older boys sometimes, I don't think this means they are unhappy and even if a kid is unhappy in some part of their lives, that's normal and that's ok. Sometimes being unhappy is fine and you need to teach your kids how to deal with that but I'd like to know if she's 'self medicating' by sending naked pics to older boys because more subtle signs of an issue might be hard to detect. It's a busy world with two working parents and large demands placed upon us by her school so it can be easy to miss something.

jsjohnst 7y ago

> Another reasonable point downvoted on HN as this comment will be too I'm sure. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

notzuck 7y ago
Yeah I can read. Doesn't mean I still don't want to moan about people downvoting him just because they're digging their heals in. He said something reasonable, a response would have been better than a downvote.

DoreenMichele 7y ago

I'm absolutely not childless. I was a full-time wife and mom for a lot of years. I'm sorry you feel so defensive and feel such a strong need to justify your choices rather than contemplate the possibility that some people who disagree with you have a fine parenting track record, have been at it longer than you and have thought a great deal about some things. I wish very much that I had a means to educate more parents. But I am no longer a full-time wife. I have bills to pay and I still support my adult special needs sons and the world has made it abundantly clear that the things I know and wish to share are not worth money. But in a nutshell, there are hidden costs to the kind of approach you are taking. It is akin to the saying "Going to war to preserve the peace is like fucking to preserve virginity." I chose to not tell my children "There are bad people out there that will want to do unspeakable things to you, so you should be afraid, very afraid." because I felt that would rob them of the very innocence I desired to protect and preserve. Instead, I taught them by example what genuine respect looks and feels like by setting the standard for that with how I treated them. They were taught they could say "No" to people -- including me -- for things like hugs and kisses. They were taught it was their decision, not mine. But I would happily play enforcer. If someone didn't respect their decision, "Come get mom." My oldest inferred based on his experiences that protecting himself from a bully with violent force was completely reasonable when he was at school and getting Mom was not an option. He didn't even feel it was noteworthy and I learned that story years later. Rumaging through your daughter's phone sets a precedent that future boyfriends or husbands can take advantage of to her detriment. And there are better policies that achieve the same thing without that. My sons have been online since they were two and five. I arranged kid-friendly menus to help them find things of interest to them easily with little risk of exposure to undesirable parts of the internet. They were not constrained. They didn't want such exposure. They were happy to stick to the things I helped them access that met their needs without having to be hassled with this other stuff. I know this is a touchy subject and you will probably be offended. But it's touchy because both sides of the argument are personally invested, not because your personal investment somehow trumps mine. I was molested and raped as a child. I thought long and hard about how to protect my children not just physically, but also emotionally and psychologically. They are old enough that I've gotten to see the fruits of my labor. Unfortunately, no one wants to know what I did. I'm just a woman, so I must be stupid or something. We all have our bag of rocks to carry in this crappy world.

notzuck 7y ago
Sorry if I upset you. I'm not sure if our opinions are different or not. I think I mostly agree with you to be honest and I don't see where my comment is massively opposed to yours. I don't believe I am setting a precedent with my girls that it's ok to be spied upon. If you know a better way, I would love to hear more about it. "Unfortunately, no one wants to know what I did. I'm just a woman, so I must be stupid or something.' I want to know!
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  She is not allowed to use her phone to install apps that can communicate with people that she does not already know and this is something I periodically check on with the view that I will check less as she gets older. Why do you think you need to do this? Why does this need to be a hard constraint dictated and controlled by someone else? My kids were given some general guidelines from a very early age. I tongue-in-cheek would say "No naked pics and no instructions on how to build bombs." They are my kids, so they understood what I was trying to get at. They also had it explained to them that as a parent, I had latitude to intercede on their behalf, assuming they stayed within certain boundaries. They understood that crimes like murder or arson would change that fact and put decision making power out of my hands and into the hands of strangers. My power as a parent served them. It was not weilded in an authoritarian fashion. If a child is getting their needs adequately met "within the rules," they have no reason to break the rules. When my kids proved consistently incapable of following the rules, I wondered what was wrong with my rules and tried to improve my process. Is there some reason your child would desire to talk to untrustworthy people she doesn't already know? Is she bored? Is she lonely? People don't take risks of that sort merely out ignorance. They do so out of desperation. Otherwise, they are quick to go "Nope, I don't need to keep this shitty app for talking to this awful person that I don't even like. Ugh. Moving on."
  - notzuck 7y ago
    "If a child is getting their needs adequately met "within the rules," they have no reason to break the rules." I'm not sure the above quote is true at all. Sometimes your kids want things that you won't give them. You can't keep 100% content kids 100% of the time. Everything you said sounds reasonable but I think kids can get themselves into bad situations even if they are happy and well adjusted. Sometimes hormones can kick in and make you talk to people that you would never normally talk to. It's easy to say that kids that are talking to strange adults online have serious issues in other parts of their lives and fixing those issues will fix everything but I think that's a really simplistic way of viewing the world. I was a very happy and content kid but still got mixed up with things I should not have just because my personality was adventurous and addictive at the time. I'm not assuming my kids will follow my behaviour but I've seen the overly sexualised content one of her friends posts and all of her friends just thinks shes cool for doing so now she has the popular girl feedback loop. I doubt her parents know. Maybe she's got some other issues and addressing those will fix everything or maybe she hasn't got issues but she's just addicted to it? Even if she has got other issues, the first sign might be the crap she does on her phone so it's good if her parents see that sooner rather than later. Maybe you're a great parent but you also had great kids which is only really partially under your control? Not every piece of undesirable behaviour can be easily traced back to an underlying issue that can be fixed. Sometimes it just is. The reason why I ban her from talking to strangers online is because I don't want her to be groomed while she's emotionally vulnerable. Girls can get hooked on the idea of older boys sometimes, I don't think this means they are unhappy and even if a kid is unhappy in some part of their lives, that's normal and that's ok. Sometimes being unhappy is fine and you need to teach your kids how to deal with that but I'd like to know if she's 'self medicating' by sending naked pics to older boys because more subtle signs of an issue might be hard to detect. It's a busy world with two working parents and large demands placed upon us by her school so it can be easy to miss something.