9 ms·

It is not voluntary for my children to leave their phones downstairs and go to bed at a bedtime I picked myself, but I think that's OK. It is entirely commonpl

It is not voluntary for my children to leave their phones downstairs and go to bed at a bedtime I picked myself, but I think that's OK. It is entirely commonplace for a family to impose restrictions on its children — anything less is neglect.

ddevault 7y ago
Bullshit. If you resort to coersion, it's quite the opposite of neglect. And it's not going to work - it is extremely easy to find porn if that's what your kids want to find, and there is nothing you can do about it.
- gcthomas 7y ago
  The second half of your comment is true, and I don't think anyone has claimed otherwise so the strength of your assertion is unnecessary. On the first half, children need boundaries set for them. And unless you are yourself a child rebelling against parental rules, you will find yourself on the barely populated side of the argument.
  - ddevault 7y ago
    I fundamentally disagree with you on the philosophy of parenting. You're not setting boundaries, you're incentivizing them to break rules and teaching your children not to trust you. Children are people, not property, and they ought to be treated as such.
    - gcthomas 7y ago
      I don't know how you got the idea of property or lack of trust here: my family know exactly what has been done and how to bypass it — I have taught my children to break unjust rules, but obey just ones based their moral judgement. The DNS filtering is for their protection, not their control. ps. you REALLY ought to make your children wear their seat-belts in the back of the car, freedom be damned. ;)
      - ddevault 7y ago
        >I don't know how you got the idea of property or lack of trust here: my family know exactly what has been done and how to bypass it — I have taught my children to break unjust rules, but obey just ones based their moral judgement. The DNS filtering is for their protection, not their control. If your children know how to break the filters, and they wouldn't get in trouble for doing so, then I retract my statements. >ps. you REALLY ought to make your children wear their seat-belts in the back of the car, freedom be damned. ;) This is not a fair comparison, you are legally obliged to wear a seatbelt in the car. I would not drive my adult friends around if they refused to wear their seatbelt.
        enitihas 7y ago
        For a better comparison, do you not force your children to take not legally mandatory vaccines, and leave it to their judgement?
        TheNorthman 7y ago
        Perhaps it hasn't been necessary to force them because he is capable of explaining _why_ they're important, i.e. he is capable of engaging in a dialogue with his children. Also, what kind of weird country do you live in where there even is such a thing as legally mandatory vaccines?
        lliamander 7y ago
        > Perhaps it hasn't been necessary to force them because he is capable of explaining _why_ they're important, i.e. he is capable of engaging in a dialogue with his children. As someone who actually does mainly employ this technique because it is generally more effective (especially with very spirited children), this is a delusional statement. For one thing, children don't always respond in good faith, and some (especially those who are verbally gifted) will try to manipulate the process of dialogue. It's also a bad idea to give them a false impression that something is up for negotiation when it is not.
    - Diederich 7y ago
      > Children are people, not property, and they ought to be treated as such. Children certainly aren't property, and they certainly are people. Immature, 'work in progress' people. Our autistic son is a person, and not property. At the age of 17 years, he also has a reasonable command of language. The only reason he can talk today is because we spent years using various techniques to strongly encourage him to learn language. Most of these were positive reinforcement: do this thing and you'll get something you want. Some were negative reinforcement: if you do this other thing, then you lose something you want. This was an enormous and draining work. At the age of six, he was evaluated by a world class group of autism experts in the SF bay area, and we were told, point blank, that he would never speak. It's true that this is a special case, but it's meant to clearly illustrate the underlying truth: to have positive outcomes, most children require variable amounts of coercion. More to the point: I agree that it's relatively easy for most people and many children to work around DNS based censorship. I think it can be useful in some cases, but not as many as its proponents believe. It's still a useful tool.
      - Mirioron 7y ago
        >It's true that this is a special case, but it's meant to clearly illustrate the underlying truth: to have positive outcomes, most children require variable amounts of coercion. Because it's a special case it doesn't actually illustrate this "underlying truth". I think this kind of coercion tries to normalize kids, to make them more like parents think all the other kids are like. However, it's quite common that parents, for some reason, don't seem to understand (remember) what kids are actually like. Coercing a child can backfire disastrously. It can make them dependent on you and thus unable to deal with life later on. It can make them reject you and rebel against you and the values you try to teach them. What I'm trying to say is that this isn't predictable. There is no straightforward "children need coercion" type thing. If my parents had tried to be as controlling as many people in this thread seem to be, then I would probably never have spoken to them as an adult.
- joezydeco 7y ago
  It's also easy for my children to find poison and sharp objects out there in the world, but because of that it doesn't mean I should leave those things lying around the house unsecured. Are you a parent? It's a bit easier to understand if you are.
  - kick 7y ago
    You can't impale yourself on information.
    - recursive 7y ago
      Traumatizing experiences are real, and they're made out of information.
    - mjfisher 7y ago
      It can be harmful when you're not yet developed enough to evaluate that information (and the motives of the people peddling it) properly. There are plenty of online communities that e.g. normalize and encourage eating disorders or suicide, for example. It's our duty to educate our children well enough that they'll eventually be able to make smart decisions themselves - but that takes time and guidance.
      - kick 7y ago
        Encouraging them to come to you when they see something suspicious or that's instructing them to do something is the solution to this problem, it doesn't seem likely that arbitrary censorship is the right solution. You'll get far more damaging views from viewing Facebook, a book written by an economist or the front page of a news outlet than anything blocked by one of these filters. Blocking 'icky' content is easier (notably, it isn't impossible) than blocking bad ideas. The trick is to talk about what they read online, it's not to stop them from reading it at all.
        woofcat 7y ago
        >You'll get far more damaging views from viewing Facebook, a book written by an economist or the front page of a news outlet than anything blocked by one of these filters. See now you're just trolling. You think economics books, and newspapers are more damaging than sites encouraging self harm...
- mturmon 7y ago
  I think the argument is that it's possible for a kid browsing to, in a succession of clicks, go from (for example) a surfing website to something they really shouldn't be looking at. These clicks may be naive curiosity on the part of the kid, rather than intentional seeking. Some of this porny drift would be encouraged by affiliate links and ads. Our society is broken in many ways - who could disagree? - and this tendency is one of them. One of my burdens as a parent is to provide a counter to this porny drift, and to the other broken aspects of our society for that matter.
  - moonchild 7y ago
    Lest anyone think this is pure hypothetical, this happened to me. When I was 6 or 7 years old, my parents let me have an account on the family computer. I couldn't do anything particularly destructive, and didn't spend an overt amount of time on it. Mostly, I would press random keyboard keys into the browser's URL bar. One day, I ended up at a website that said 'must be 18 or over to access'. (I suspect it was a credit card scam, not porn, but the point still stands.) Next time I logged into that computer, I found myself unable to start the webbrowser.
  - Corrado 7y ago
    One of the teachers in my wife's school was having the students research the government and asked them to find the address of the President of the United States. Well, most of them typed in "whitehouse.com", which at the time was a porn site. The teacher had to rush around the room turning off the monitors and dealing with the chaos. The site they should have visited was "whitehouse.gov" but they didn't know that. Something like 1.1.1.1 for Families would have prevented this from happening. I work closely with the school and am keenly aware of the dangers of censorship. We do NOT want to block access to some things that sound like they could be "bad" (ie. Essex England, breast cancer, etc.) However, that doesn't mean its a free for all where you can go anywhere and see anything. The Internet is a really, really big place for a 1st grader.
kick 7y ago
If your children are young enough that they need a specific time to go to bed, why did you give them phones in the first place? Surely they'd be too young for them? It also seems very strange to deem not restricting information as neglect. Why not just have a conversation about them as to why they shouldn't do whatever you want them not to do? Advice doesn't breed distrust, but censorship and other regulations do.

ddevault 7y ago

Bullshit. If you resort to coersion, it's quite the opposite of neglect. And it's not going to work - it is extremely easy to find porn if that's what your kids want to find, and there is nothing you can do about it.

gcthomas 7y ago
The second half of your comment is true, and I don't think anyone has claimed otherwise so the strength of your assertion is unnecessary. On the first half, children need boundaries set for them. And unless you are yourself a child rebelling against parental rules, you will find yourself on the barely populated side of the argument.
- ddevault 7y ago
  I fundamentally disagree with you on the philosophy of parenting. You're not setting boundaries, you're incentivizing them to break rules and teaching your children not to trust you. Children are people, not property, and they ought to be treated as such.
  - gcthomas 7y ago
    I don't know how you got the idea of property or lack of trust here: my family know exactly what has been done and how to bypass it — I have taught my children to break unjust rules, but obey just ones based their moral judgement. The DNS filtering is for their protection, not their control. ps. you REALLY ought to make your children wear their seat-belts in the back of the car, freedom be damned. ;)
    - ddevault 7y ago
      >I don't know how you got the idea of property or lack of trust here: my family know exactly what has been done and how to bypass it — I have taught my children to break unjust rules, but obey just ones based their moral judgement. The DNS filtering is for their protection, not their control. If your children know how to break the filters, and they wouldn't get in trouble for doing so, then I retract my statements. >ps. you REALLY ought to make your children wear their seat-belts in the back of the car, freedom be damned. ;) This is not a fair comparison, you are legally obliged to wear a seatbelt in the car. I would not drive my adult friends around if they refused to wear their seatbelt.
      - enitihas 7y ago
        For a better comparison, do you not force your children to take not legally mandatory vaccines, and leave it to their judgement?
        TheNorthman 7y ago
        Perhaps it hasn't been necessary to force them because he is capable of explaining _why_ they're important, i.e. he is capable of engaging in a dialogue with his children. Also, what kind of weird country do you live in where there even is such a thing as legally mandatory vaccines?
        lliamander 7y ago
        > Perhaps it hasn't been necessary to force them because he is capable of explaining _why_ they're important, i.e. he is capable of engaging in a dialogue with his children. As someone who actually does mainly employ this technique because it is generally more effective (especially with very spirited children), this is a delusional statement. For one thing, children don't always respond in good faith, and some (especially those who are verbally gifted) will try to manipulate the process of dialogue. It's also a bad idea to give them a false impression that something is up for negotiation when it is not.
  - Diederich 7y ago
    > Children are people, not property, and they ought to be treated as such. Children certainly aren't property, and they certainly are people. Immature, 'work in progress' people. Our autistic son is a person, and not property. At the age of 17 years, he also has a reasonable command of language. The only reason he can talk today is because we spent years using various techniques to strongly encourage him to learn language. Most of these were positive reinforcement: do this thing and you'll get something you want. Some were negative reinforcement: if you do this other thing, then you lose something you want. This was an enormous and draining work. At the age of six, he was evaluated by a world class group of autism experts in the SF bay area, and we were told, point blank, that he would never speak. It's true that this is a special case, but it's meant to clearly illustrate the underlying truth: to have positive outcomes, most children require variable amounts of coercion. More to the point: I agree that it's relatively easy for most people and many children to work around DNS based censorship. I think it can be useful in some cases, but not as many as its proponents believe. It's still a useful tool.
    - Mirioron 7y ago
      >It's true that this is a special case, but it's meant to clearly illustrate the underlying truth: to have positive outcomes, most children require variable amounts of coercion. Because it's a special case it doesn't actually illustrate this "underlying truth". I think this kind of coercion tries to normalize kids, to make them more like parents think all the other kids are like. However, it's quite common that parents, for some reason, don't seem to understand (remember) what kids are actually like. Coercing a child can backfire disastrously. It can make them dependent on you and thus unable to deal with life later on. It can make them reject you and rebel against you and the values you try to teach them. What I'm trying to say is that this isn't predictable. There is no straightforward "children need coercion" type thing. If my parents had tried to be as controlling as many people in this thread seem to be, then I would probably never have spoken to them as an adult.
joezydeco 7y ago
It's also easy for my children to find poison and sharp objects out there in the world, but because of that it doesn't mean I should leave those things lying around the house unsecured. Are you a parent? It's a bit easier to understand if you are.
- kick 7y ago
  You can't impale yourself on information.
  - recursive 7y ago
    Traumatizing experiences are real, and they're made out of information.
  - mjfisher 7y ago
    It can be harmful when you're not yet developed enough to evaluate that information (and the motives of the people peddling it) properly. There are plenty of online communities that e.g. normalize and encourage eating disorders or suicide, for example. It's our duty to educate our children well enough that they'll eventually be able to make smart decisions themselves - but that takes time and guidance.
    - kick 7y ago
      Encouraging them to come to you when they see something suspicious or that's instructing them to do something is the solution to this problem, it doesn't seem likely that arbitrary censorship is the right solution. You'll get far more damaging views from viewing Facebook, a book written by an economist or the front page of a news outlet than anything blocked by one of these filters. Blocking 'icky' content is easier (notably, it isn't impossible) than blocking bad ideas. The trick is to talk about what they read online, it's not to stop them from reading it at all.
      - woofcat 7y ago
        >You'll get far more damaging views from viewing Facebook, a book written by an economist or the front page of a news outlet than anything blocked by one of these filters. See now you're just trolling. You think economics books, and newspapers are more damaging than sites encouraging self harm...
mturmon 7y ago
I think the argument is that it's possible for a kid browsing to, in a succession of clicks, go from (for example) a surfing website to something they really shouldn't be looking at. These clicks may be naive curiosity on the part of the kid, rather than intentional seeking. Some of this porny drift would be encouraged by affiliate links and ads. Our society is broken in many ways - who could disagree? - and this tendency is one of them. One of my burdens as a parent is to provide a counter to this porny drift, and to the other broken aspects of our society for that matter.
- moonchild 7y ago
  Lest anyone think this is pure hypothetical, this happened to me. When I was 6 or 7 years old, my parents let me have an account on the family computer. I couldn't do anything particularly destructive, and didn't spend an overt amount of time on it. Mostly, I would press random keyboard keys into the browser's URL bar. One day, I ended up at a website that said 'must be 18 or over to access'. (I suspect it was a credit card scam, not porn, but the point still stands.) Next time I logged into that computer, I found myself unable to start the webbrowser.
- Corrado 7y ago
  One of the teachers in my wife's school was having the students research the government and asked them to find the address of the President of the United States. Well, most of them typed in "whitehouse.com", which at the time was a porn site. The teacher had to rush around the room turning off the monitors and dealing with the chaos. The site they should have visited was "whitehouse.gov" but they didn't know that. Something like 1.1.1.1 for Families would have prevented this from happening. I work closely with the school and am keenly aware of the dangers of censorship. We do NOT want to block access to some things that sound like they could be "bad" (ie. Essex England, breast cancer, etc.) However, that doesn't mean its a free for all where you can go anywhere and see anything. The Internet is a really, really big place for a 1st grader.

kick 7y ago

If your children are young enough that they need a specific time to go to bed, why did you give them phones in the first place? Surely they'd be too young for them? It also seems very strange to deem not restricting information as neglect. Why not just have a conversation about them as to why they shouldn't do whatever you want them not to do? Advice doesn't breed distrust, but censorship and other regulations do.