7 ms·

Ok. Leaving aside quarantine, do kids really need to talk to other kids through a personal computing device that they carry around as a constant companion? Doe

by hosh 5y ago

Ok. Leaving aside quarantine, do kids really need to talk to other kids through a personal computing device that they carry around as a constant companion? Does that foster something developmentally that could not happen without it? What do kids lose if they use such devices as their primary means of communication? And let’s say, we think the “constant companion” is the problem, and we restrict the kid’s interaction through an old school, family computer. Is that necessarily any better? I have already seen first hand how social media interaction at the middle school (when kids are starting to form social identities independent of their parents) gets toxic. And looking at the social-media-fueled culture wars since 2014, it does not get any better for adults. (https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/03/06/a-quick-battle-field-guide-to-the-new-culture-wars/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/03/06/a-quick-battle-field-g...).

tjr225 5y ago
I don't really know how I'm going to approach this once my child is old enough to use devices but I think one might be able to argue that it makes sense for them to learn how to interact with the world as it exists, rather than a fantasy world where devices and the internet doesn't exist.
- wreath 5y ago
  > rather than a fantasy world where devices and the internet doesn't exist. The fantasy world is also the one that the likes of Facebook want to lead us to.
- hosh 5y ago
  My wife and I decided on a no-social media policy for our kids. We have a teenager and a 5 month old. Our teenager has a phone we found that is a locked down Android, and has no internet (no wifi or 4g/5g). It is just a phone, with multimedia text, and non-network enabled calendar, clock. There is no app store. My daughter is autistic. Our problems with the phone has more to do with her feeling like we are cutting her off of connecting with people she clings to, triggering some childhood history. I have no idea what will happen when our neurotypical son becomes a teenager. There is much more to life than just what are on devices, and I have a general idea on how to approach this. I have been studying, and to some extent, applying regenerative paradigms. A good deal of that will involve the kids into the natural cycle of life. To viscerally experience where their food comes from, and where it goes. How to connect with another living being as a whole being in an ecosystem and community, whether that being is a human, animal, or plant. I am going to teach them the ethical framework, “care for people”, “care for land”, “fair share”. Technology, then, is thoughtfully applied within that context. What that means, I am still discovering for myself. But I have already made some progress on that —- what Christopher Alexander really meant by pattern languages and a timeless way of building; what Smalltalk and Hypercard had in common, why we had turned our back to it, and maybe it is time to use it; the philosophy of Free Software and how it is different than open source, and why it matters more than basic rights and liberty; how sandstorm.io enables community-oriented and local platforms. It has not all gelled together for me yet, but I know something is there.
  - thehappypm 5y ago
    Somewhat ironic that you don't let your children use social media but here you are posting on a social media site.
    - enriquec 5y ago
      also remarkably ironic that they seem to want their kids to value life outside of technology but then proceed to say that software project licensing is more important than "basic rights and liberty" - completely out-of-touch
    - booleandilemma 5y ago
      Not really. Kids are not adults. They’re two separate categories of people. Maybe OP drinks alcohol but they don’t let their kids drink it. Maybe they own firearms but they don’t let their kids wield them. Maybe they watch movies with violence and gore but they don’t want their kids watching them. etc. There is a double standard, and there should be, imo.
      - numpad0 5y ago
        Actually from biological standpoint there are no clear lines between kids and adults. That distinction is post-industrial revolution cultural one.
        booleandilemma 5y ago
        I’m not a biologist, but isn’t puberty still a thing?
        jkinudsjknds 5y ago
        Two groups can be very different without a clear line delineating them.
        coddle-hark 5y ago
        There are no clear lines between summer and winter but sandals stop being appropriate footwear at some point nevertheless.
- drewzero1 5y ago
  This is the conclusion I'm starting to come to as well. On the one hand there are things they shouldn't be exposed to until they can handle it themselves, but on the other hand they're going to learn stuff through friends or alternate routes of access. I'm not sure how I'm going to teach them how to have a healthy relationship with technology, besides trying to model one myself.
- mixmastamyk 5y ago
  The "real" world also consists of filth in all its myriad forms. Will you be exposing your kids to these experiences, so they can learn to interact with them as well? These platforms have very little to teach, so it's not like there is useful tradeoff being made in any case. It's simply an often toxic form of entertainment, worse than television imho.
  - gmadsen 5y ago
    yes? if they don't know that predators exist or what drugs are, that is setting them up for dramatic failure
    - mixmastamyk 5y ago
      There's a difference between knowing they exist and hands-on experience at a young age. Do you think being on Facebook, et al is a proper course in these subjects? How did you learn about them in the days before social media? The idea that corporate surveillance and conditioning is somehow required for growing up is silly and dangerous to the kids themselves.
      - gmadsen 5y ago
        besides the surveilence part, yes I do. social acceptance is a huge part of being a teen, no matter the social circle. I was on irc throughout my early teens.
        mixmastamyk 5y ago
        IRC in the old days is only tangentially analogous to today's sophisticated addiction services. I suggest watching the Social Dillema on Netflix for an idea. Here's a decent article I recently read on the subject, though there are probably better ones: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-lonely-burden-of-todays-teenage-girls-11565883328 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-lonely-burden-of-todays-tee... Perhaps my argument is not clear enough, but it feels like we are not arguing the same point. I have no problem with technology, simply that kids should not be the product. There are plenty of higher-quality alternatives, just like there are alternatives to broadcast television and McDonalds.
mfer 5y ago
As a parent, those always present computing devices have been a problem. Instead of doing a variety of different things... many of which build life skills... my kids want to just stare at rectangle screens. I now wonder what society will look like in 20-30 years. By life skills I mean things like creativity, being able to work out things on their own, in person interpersonal skills, grit, etc.
- saiya-jin 5y ago
  We used to stare at square radioactive flickering screens all the time, and they were completely passive which can't be good for child development either. I too share some concerns as a parent of 1 and expecting 2nd soon, but I don't mind accepting that I have no clue what kind of world our kids will live in. I might be out of touch with it in similar way current old generations are from phones and internet. It could also be that shielding kids from it at all costs because we think we know what's best for them might be a significant harm for them later in life. Some things will disappear, some will get different and/or better, and new ones will come. Fine by me. I just wish it wasn't Facebook, a company with crystal clear amoral values through and through. Anytime Facebook wins, mankind loses in long term. But that might be just me getting already out of touch with current reality out there.
  - johncessna 5y ago
    If ever present computing devices were gone, I think we'd be looking at the on-demand content from providers and the streaming services as the great ruiner of children. At least when I was growing up, you could actually run out of content on the idiot box. Your show wasn't on and you didn't have enough channels to find something else. We'll see how this plays out, though. I think some aspects are constructive. The growing content creation community seems to be a Good Thing. The even faster growing content creation consumption community, doesn't seem to be. Personally speaking, I've found myself at an expert at a ton of things, but haven't actually done any of those things.
NikolaeVarius 5y ago
You must have hated when kids got cell phones.
- hosh 5y ago
  My wife and I tried letting our teenager have her own cell phone, and that informed a lot of what I saw. We eventually found a locked down phone purpose-designed for kids, but I have no problem with getting a landline if it continues being an issue. (The issue with my kid and phones is not what we were discussing; she is on the autism spectrum, and so it is not quite the same; I have no idea yet what I will do with my neuraltypical son when he grows into a teenager)
  - yeetman21 5y ago
    Are you guys also on the autistic spectrum too because that is no way to raise kids. When they leave the carefully curated and filtered walled garden that you've created for them and enter the real work at 18 or so, they are going to be hit like a truck. In college its always the kids whose parents were the strictest that act out or become alcoholics when the finally get a taste of freedom. You cannot do everything for them, it is better now for them to experience more of the world/ internet when you still can influence them/ they have a high opinion of you rather than ten years down the line when they feel betrayed or whatnot by you and don't want to speak.
    - throwaway3699 5y ago
      Yeah, GP is cutting their kids off from society. We aren't living in the 60s anymore, much of the infrastructure for growth and development at that age does not exist outside the internet. Just look at libraries, social clubs, etc... They're all replaced.
    - numpad0 5y ago
      I was trying to comment on parent comment and some others but it hurts. “Going to be hit like a truck” — it involves luck for that line to remain figurative.
whatshisface 5y ago
Leaving aside the quarantine means leaving aside the single most important factor in the last two years.
- anoncake 5y ago
  And an entirely irrelevant factor for the future, which therefore should be left aside.
  - munk-a 5y ago
    This past year might have felt breezy if you're in your sixties, or bearable if you're in your thirties - but if you're in your teens or younger you've been deprived of a lot of social development time and there will be long term damage from this. Additionally - I don't know if it really is an irrelevant factor for the future. This is a flu variant that could continue to mutate and cause havoc if governments act irresponsibly or if a particularly large segment of the population continues to resist vaccination and mask wearing while being egged on by idiots on TV. Lastly, global habitat destruction increases the chances we discover fun new world ending diseases, hopefully we won't see another one for decades, but it's unlikely that we'll be spared another global pandemic for the next 100 years.
    - hosh 5y ago
      It is for this reason I consider “zoomers” as an appropriate label for the Gen Z kids. But here is something else I also know: the modern way in which kids develop through the teenage years is already screwed up, even without the internet, smart phones, and social media. It seems normal now because it is normative.
    - anoncake 5y ago
      > but if you're in your teens or younger you've been deprived of a lot of social development time and there will be long term damage from this. Exactly. So let's not make it worse by making children communicate through devices without even a flimsy justification.
  - deleted 5y ago
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
The only thing I can think of that sucks is kids feeling left out when all their friends have iPhones.
shoto_io 5y ago
I played Zak Mackraken on my C64 for 18 hours in a row until it crashed and I could not restore my save... I started over. I was 10 back then. Both my parents were in academia and wouldn't just let me play all the time, but at some point they gave up. Later, I played Civilization for so many hours and through the night that once I fell asleep my dreams were filled with hexagons. Then there was Tetris. Oh, and, Wolfenstein, and the all legendary Age of Empires! And, here I am, 25 years later, and I am doing just fine. I am healthy, mentally stable and don't care about any computer game no more (ok, I am addicted to HN but that's a different story...).
supernovae 5y ago
I'm 45 years old, my parents asked the same things about me.. the screen wasn't necessarily a pocket companion at the time - but it was computers, consoles and hand-held devices and all the stuff around them. At first, they fought me... and it was a dumb battle for battles sake. My parents never bothered to understand anything I did and generally just gave up and let me do whatever... Turns out, they were in the midsts of a relationship failure and there was no time for the kids, so they let me have at the computer... BUT... It worked :) I taught myself programming, operating systems, I ran a BBS that was the first BBS in texas to offer Linux downloads, I got published in books/magazines/journals talking/writing about OS/2, Linux and DESQview. In the end, I never went to school, my parents relationship was still crap but I made friends, found my wife and still work online to this day.. My kids are 13 and 17 and its new battles... but i just think back and remember where I started - I try and fill in the gaps of just "Caring" in general and just "wanting a relationship" with my kids in general - and i do that in lieu of trying to prohibit something that is already pervasive in their lives. Yes, I run firewalls, safety, anti-virus, family-safety, yes there are some things blocked - yes their phones have family safety too but mostly to do what I can to protect them from maliciousness. The last battle any parent can or should fight is the battles of pop culture, society and social interactions... espeially a year+ into a pandemic. we had to re-think the whole grounding from devices during pandemic because that was suicide to a teen... and in doing so - it sparked conversations we weren't having and made me realize i was just following in the same ignorant foot steps as my parents. Kids will get burner devices if they're grounded, they will jailbreak/root phones/devices to bypass controls, they will buy sims at 7/11 to get around time/restrictions - they may find a drawer of old devices and keep one alive for tethering and many other things - lock down their PC? they will install bluestacks and have unlimited android environment... It's crazy But damn, if they're doing all that effort and learning/collaborating on all that - they're getting skills that i find many adults still lack
- akiselev 5y ago
  > Kids will get burner devices if they're grounded, they will jailbreak/root phones/devices to bypass controls, they will buy sims at 7/11 to get around time/restrictions - they may find a drawer of old devices and keep one alive for tethering and many other things - lock down their PC? they will install bluestacks and have unlimited android environment... This brought to mind: Years ago when I was a teen, my mom grounded me and took my desktop away for quite a while, which was like a death sentence even back then. Given that it was an oversized cube case and there really wasn't anywhere to lock it away, I would always just grab it after school and keep using it until she got home. Problem is, she put the computer next to the door so I had to resort to locking the second lock to give myself time to put it back when she got home. I didn't think about it at the time but I. was being blatantly obvious and she clued me in years later that she knew what I was doing from the beginning. Punishments don't have to be all or nothing, they can be like locks: they won't stop the determined, but they will stop the opportunists. The punishment is the inconvenience of the workaround and often has the added benefit that enforcement requires spending more time with them. </parenting "advice" from a coddled nonparent>
spothedog1 5y ago
My personal anecdote. I'm still very good friends with all of my friends from high school and college and it is almost entirely due to the ability to constantly group message. We all talk almost every day and I've since lost contact with most friends not included in the 3 group chats I have. We're all in our mid 20's now so getting together is more difficult but since we talk so often it drives us to hang out in person more. In the absence of constant communication we would probably all drift apart and rarely if ever hang out in person. There's a big difference between generic public social media interaction and smaller more intimate direct messaging and group chats. It's definitely different for kids cause they are forced to spend all day together in school but I think there is immense value for adults.
jlos 5y ago
They also prevent children from deleting messages. Messenger kids has been great for my family, especially the times when we've had to self isolate and couldn't meet friends outside.
TameAntelope 5y ago
To use a fairly broad brush and a potentially overdramatic example, starving an extrovert of contact with others is tantamount to torture. I know introverts don't understand this on a fundamental level, but the only times I've ever even vaguely considered harming myself are when I was in forced isolation for long periods of time. To know that there are opportunities to socialize and grow my friendships, and those opportunities are being intentionally and needlessly withheld from me as some kind of "character growth" would evoke a kind of primal rage that would have caused me permanent harm as a child. I'm extremely grateful my parents saw the value of learning how to build and maintain relationships, and I wouldn't dream of taking that away from my children, or any other children I somehow had supervision over.
- mixmastamyk 5y ago
  Quarantine aside, online relationships are no substitute for those in-person.
spoonjim 5y ago
Phones are like drugs and sex... kids are going to use them, and trying to ban them outright will often lead to destructive behaviors. The effective approach is to teach them boundaries, enforce those boundaries, and let them experiment within those boundaries.
notyourwork 5y ago
I spent a large portion of my teenage years chatting with strangers on IRC. As much as 12 hours at a time, I would stay up through the night talking with groups in channels I frequented. I'm not sure if this is good or bad for my personal development. Though it did jumpstart my education in computer science and career as a software engineer.
newobj 5y ago
My kid does not use M:K as a "constant companion". It's on his ipad (e.g. his tv), and it's a way for his extended family to be able to reach out to him directly. He actually uses it more like email. Maybe engages with his messages once a day. Doesn't sit and "chat" on it like an adult would.

by hosh 5y ago

tjr225 5y ago

I don't really know how I'm going to approach this once my child is old enough to use devices but I think one might be able to argue that it makes sense for them to learn how to interact with the world as it exists, rather than a fantasy world where devices and the internet doesn't exist.

wreath 5y ago
> rather than a fantasy world where devices and the internet doesn't exist. The fantasy world is also the one that the likes of Facebook want to lead us to.
hosh 5y ago
My wife and I decided on a no-social media policy for our kids. We have a teenager and a 5 month old. Our teenager has a phone we found that is a locked down Android, and has no internet (no wifi or 4g/5g). It is just a phone, with multimedia text, and non-network enabled calendar, clock. There is no app store. My daughter is autistic. Our problems with the phone has more to do with her feeling like we are cutting her off of connecting with people she clings to, triggering some childhood history. I have no idea what will happen when our neurotypical son becomes a teenager. There is much more to life than just what are on devices, and I have a general idea on how to approach this. I have been studying, and to some extent, applying regenerative paradigms. A good deal of that will involve the kids into the natural cycle of life. To viscerally experience where their food comes from, and where it goes. How to connect with another living being as a whole being in an ecosystem and community, whether that being is a human, animal, or plant. I am going to teach them the ethical framework, “care for people”, “care for land”, “fair share”. Technology, then, is thoughtfully applied within that context. What that means, I am still discovering for myself. But I have already made some progress on that —- what Christopher Alexander really meant by pattern languages and a timeless way of building; what Smalltalk and Hypercard had in common, why we had turned our back to it, and maybe it is time to use it; the philosophy of Free Software and how it is different than open source, and why it matters more than basic rights and liberty; how sandstorm.io enables community-oriented and local platforms. It has not all gelled together for me yet, but I know something is there.
- thehappypm 5y ago
  Somewhat ironic that you don't let your children use social media but here you are posting on a social media site.
  - enriquec 5y ago
    also remarkably ironic that they seem to want their kids to value life outside of technology but then proceed to say that software project licensing is more important than "basic rights and liberty" - completely out-of-touch
  - booleandilemma 5y ago
    Not really. Kids are not adults. They’re two separate categories of people. Maybe OP drinks alcohol but they don’t let their kids drink it. Maybe they own firearms but they don’t let their kids wield them. Maybe they watch movies with violence and gore but they don’t want their kids watching them. etc. There is a double standard, and there should be, imo.
    - numpad0 5y ago
      Actually from biological standpoint there are no clear lines between kids and adults. That distinction is post-industrial revolution cultural one.
      - booleandilemma 5y ago
        I’m not a biologist, but isn’t puberty still a thing?
      - jkinudsjknds 5y ago
        Two groups can be very different without a clear line delineating them.
      - coddle-hark 5y ago
        There are no clear lines between summer and winter but sandals stop being appropriate footwear at some point nevertheless.
drewzero1 5y ago
This is the conclusion I'm starting to come to as well. On the one hand there are things they shouldn't be exposed to until they can handle it themselves, but on the other hand they're going to learn stuff through friends or alternate routes of access. I'm not sure how I'm going to teach them how to have a healthy relationship with technology, besides trying to model one myself.
mixmastamyk 5y ago
The "real" world also consists of filth in all its myriad forms. Will you be exposing your kids to these experiences, so they can learn to interact with them as well? These platforms have very little to teach, so it's not like there is useful tradeoff being made in any case. It's simply an often toxic form of entertainment, worse than television imho.
- gmadsen 5y ago
  yes? if they don't know that predators exist or what drugs are, that is setting them up for dramatic failure
  - mixmastamyk 5y ago
    There's a difference between knowing they exist and hands-on experience at a young age. Do you think being on Facebook, et al is a proper course in these subjects? How did you learn about them in the days before social media? The idea that corporate surveillance and conditioning is somehow required for growing up is silly and dangerous to the kids themselves.
    - gmadsen 5y ago
      besides the surveilence part, yes I do. social acceptance is a huge part of being a teen, no matter the social circle. I was on irc throughout my early teens.
      - mixmastamyk 5y ago
        IRC in the old days is only tangentially analogous to today's sophisticated addiction services. I suggest watching the Social Dillema on Netflix for an idea. Here's a decent article I recently read on the subject, though there are probably better ones: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-lonely-burden-of-todays-teenage-girls-11565883328 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-lonely-burden-of-todays-tee... Perhaps my argument is not clear enough, but it feels like we are not arguing the same point. I have no problem with technology, simply that kids should not be the product. There are plenty of higher-quality alternatives, just like there are alternatives to broadcast television and McDonalds.

mfer 5y ago

As a parent, those always present computing devices have been a problem. Instead of doing a variety of different things... many of which build life skills... my kids want to just stare at rectangle screens. I now wonder what society will look like in 20-30 years. By life skills I mean things like creativity, being able to work out things on their own, in person interpersonal skills, grit, etc.

saiya-jin 5y ago
We used to stare at square radioactive flickering screens all the time, and they were completely passive which can't be good for child development either. I too share some concerns as a parent of 1 and expecting 2nd soon, but I don't mind accepting that I have no clue what kind of world our kids will live in. I might be out of touch with it in similar way current old generations are from phones and internet. It could also be that shielding kids from it at all costs because we think we know what's best for them might be a significant harm for them later in life. Some things will disappear, some will get different and/or better, and new ones will come. Fine by me. I just wish it wasn't Facebook, a company with crystal clear amoral values through and through. Anytime Facebook wins, mankind loses in long term. But that might be just me getting already out of touch with current reality out there.
- johncessna 5y ago
  If ever present computing devices were gone, I think we'd be looking at the on-demand content from providers and the streaming services as the great ruiner of children. At least when I was growing up, you could actually run out of content on the idiot box. Your show wasn't on and you didn't have enough channels to find something else. We'll see how this plays out, though. I think some aspects are constructive. The growing content creation community seems to be a Good Thing. The even faster growing content creation consumption community, doesn't seem to be. Personally speaking, I've found myself at an expert at a ton of things, but haven't actually done any of those things.

NikolaeVarius 5y ago

You must have hated when kids got cell phones.

hosh 5y ago
My wife and I tried letting our teenager have her own cell phone, and that informed a lot of what I saw. We eventually found a locked down phone purpose-designed for kids, but I have no problem with getting a landline if it continues being an issue. (The issue with my kid and phones is not what we were discussing; she is on the autism spectrum, and so it is not quite the same; I have no idea yet what I will do with my neuraltypical son when he grows into a teenager)
- yeetman21 5y ago
  Are you guys also on the autistic spectrum too because that is no way to raise kids. When they leave the carefully curated and filtered walled garden that you've created for them and enter the real work at 18 or so, they are going to be hit like a truck. In college its always the kids whose parents were the strictest that act out or become alcoholics when the finally get a taste of freedom. You cannot do everything for them, it is better now for them to experience more of the world/ internet when you still can influence them/ they have a high opinion of you rather than ten years down the line when they feel betrayed or whatnot by you and don't want to speak.
  - throwaway3699 5y ago
    Yeah, GP is cutting their kids off from society. We aren't living in the 60s anymore, much of the infrastructure for growth and development at that age does not exist outside the internet. Just look at libraries, social clubs, etc... They're all replaced.
  - numpad0 5y ago
    I was trying to comment on parent comment and some others but it hurts. “Going to be hit like a truck” — it involves luck for that line to remain figurative.

whatshisface 5y ago

Leaving aside the quarantine means leaving aside the single most important factor in the last two years.

anoncake 5y ago
And an entirely irrelevant factor for the future, which therefore should be left aside.
- munk-a 5y ago
  This past year might have felt breezy if you're in your sixties, or bearable if you're in your thirties - but if you're in your teens or younger you've been deprived of a lot of social development time and there will be long term damage from this. Additionally - I don't know if it really is an irrelevant factor for the future. This is a flu variant that could continue to mutate and cause havoc if governments act irresponsibly or if a particularly large segment of the population continues to resist vaccination and mask wearing while being egged on by idiots on TV. Lastly, global habitat destruction increases the chances we discover fun new world ending diseases, hopefully we won't see another one for decades, but it's unlikely that we'll be spared another global pandemic for the next 100 years.
  - hosh 5y ago
    It is for this reason I consider “zoomers” as an appropriate label for the Gen Z kids. But here is something else I also know: the modern way in which kids develop through the teenage years is already screwed up, even without the internet, smart phones, and social media. It seems normal now because it is normative.
  - anoncake 5y ago
    > but if you're in your teens or younger you've been deprived of a lot of social development time and there will be long term damage from this. Exactly. So let's not make it worse by making children communicate through devices without even a flimsy justification.
- deleted 5y ago

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago

The only thing I can think of that sucks is kids feeling left out when all their friends have iPhones.

shoto_io 5y ago

I played Zak Mackraken on my C64 for 18 hours in a row until it crashed and I could not restore my save... I started over. I was 10 back then. Both my parents were in academia and wouldn't just let me play all the time, but at some point they gave up. Later, I played Civilization for so many hours and through the night that once I fell asleep my dreams were filled with hexagons. Then there was Tetris. Oh, and, Wolfenstein, and the all legendary Age of Empires! And, here I am, 25 years later, and I am doing just fine. I am healthy, mentally stable and don't care about any computer game no more (ok, I am addicted to HN but that's a different story...).

supernovae 5y ago

I'm 45 years old, my parents asked the same things about me.. the screen wasn't necessarily a pocket companion at the time - but it was computers, consoles and hand-held devices and all the stuff around them. At first, they fought me... and it was a dumb battle for battles sake. My parents never bothered to understand anything I did and generally just gave up and let me do whatever... Turns out, they were in the midsts of a relationship failure and there was no time for the kids, so they let me have at the computer... BUT... It worked :) I taught myself programming, operating systems, I ran a BBS that was the first BBS in texas to offer Linux downloads, I got published in books/magazines/journals talking/writing about OS/2, Linux and DESQview. In the end, I never went to school, my parents relationship was still crap but I made friends, found my wife and still work online to this day.. My kids are 13 and 17 and its new battles... but i just think back and remember where I started - I try and fill in the gaps of just "Caring" in general and just "wanting a relationship" with my kids in general - and i do that in lieu of trying to prohibit something that is already pervasive in their lives. Yes, I run firewalls, safety, anti-virus, family-safety, yes there are some things blocked - yes their phones have family safety too but mostly to do what I can to protect them from maliciousness. The last battle any parent can or should fight is the battles of pop culture, society and social interactions... espeially a year+ into a pandemic. we had to re-think the whole grounding from devices during pandemic because that was suicide to a teen... and in doing so - it sparked conversations we weren't having and made me realize i was just following in the same ignorant foot steps as my parents. Kids will get burner devices if they're grounded, they will jailbreak/root phones/devices to bypass controls, they will buy sims at 7/11 to get around time/restrictions - they may find a drawer of old devices and keep one alive for tethering and many other things - lock down their PC? they will install bluestacks and have unlimited android environment... It's crazy But damn, if they're doing all that effort and learning/collaborating on all that - they're getting skills that i find many adults still lack

akiselev 5y ago
> Kids will get burner devices if they're grounded, they will jailbreak/root phones/devices to bypass controls, they will buy sims at 7/11 to get around time/restrictions - they may find a drawer of old devices and keep one alive for tethering and many other things - lock down their PC? they will install bluestacks and have unlimited android environment... This brought to mind: Years ago when I was a teen, my mom grounded me and took my desktop away for quite a while, which was like a death sentence even back then. Given that it was an oversized cube case and there really wasn't anywhere to lock it away, I would always just grab it after school and keep using it until she got home. Problem is, she put the computer next to the door so I had to resort to locking the second lock to give myself time to put it back when she got home. I didn't think about it at the time but I. was being blatantly obvious and she clued me in years later that she knew what I was doing from the beginning. Punishments don't have to be all or nothing, they can be like locks: they won't stop the determined, but they will stop the opportunists. The punishment is the inconvenience of the workaround and often has the added benefit that enforcement requires spending more time with them. </parenting "advice" from a coddled nonparent>

spothedog1 5y ago

My personal anecdote. I'm still very good friends with all of my friends from high school and college and it is almost entirely due to the ability to constantly group message. We all talk almost every day and I've since lost contact with most friends not included in the 3 group chats I have. We're all in our mid 20's now so getting together is more difficult but since we talk so often it drives us to hang out in person more. In the absence of constant communication we would probably all drift apart and rarely if ever hang out in person. There's a big difference between generic public social media interaction and smaller more intimate direct messaging and group chats. It's definitely different for kids cause they are forced to spend all day together in school but I think there is immense value for adults.

jlos 5y ago

They also prevent children from deleting messages. Messenger kids has been great for my family, especially the times when we've had to self isolate and couldn't meet friends outside.

TameAntelope 5y ago

To use a fairly broad brush and a potentially overdramatic example, starving an extrovert of contact with others is tantamount to torture. I know introverts don't understand this on a fundamental level, but the only times I've ever even vaguely considered harming myself are when I was in forced isolation for long periods of time. To know that there are opportunities to socialize and grow my friendships, and those opportunities are being intentionally and needlessly withheld from me as some kind of "character growth" would evoke a kind of primal rage that would have caused me permanent harm as a child. I'm extremely grateful my parents saw the value of learning how to build and maintain relationships, and I wouldn't dream of taking that away from my children, or any other children I somehow had supervision over.

mixmastamyk 5y ago
Quarantine aside, online relationships are no substitute for those in-person.

spoonjim 5y ago

Phones are like drugs and sex... kids are going to use them, and trying to ban them outright will often lead to destructive behaviors. The effective approach is to teach them boundaries, enforce those boundaries, and let them experiment within those boundaries.

notyourwork 5y ago

I spent a large portion of my teenage years chatting with strangers on IRC. As much as 12 hours at a time, I would stay up through the night talking with groups in channels I frequented. I'm not sure if this is good or bad for my personal development. Though it did jumpstart my education in computer science and career as a software engineer.

newobj 5y ago

My kid does not use M:K as a "constant companion". It's on his ipad (e.g. his tv), and it's a way for his extended family to be able to reach out to him directly. He actually uses it more like email. Maybe engages with his messages once a day. Doesn't sit and "chat" on it like an adult would.