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I think I'm going to be the odd man out here but I did not restrict my kids. I purchased mobile phones for them when they were around 8 years old (when they bec

I think I'm going to be the odd man out here but I did not restrict my kids. I purchased mobile phones for them when they were around 8 years old (when they become affordable enough for us). I put no restrictions on their screen time, websites, or anything else. I simply talked to them about what I thought was right or wrong and let them decide. My kids are now adults and it seems to have worked for them. I got my first computer system when I was 10 years old. I spent more time in front of screens than I spend anywhere else. I believe my entire life and career is a result of being allowed to express my creativity that way and I wanted my kids to be afforded the same freedoms.

aerovistae 5y ago
Yeah - for sure the difference here is when your kids grew up. I was a 90s/00s kid and in that time frame youtube didn't exist until I was 15. Facebook was new and alone in its category besides myspace. Instagram, Snapchat, and Tiktok didn't exist at all, and youtube hadn't yet cultivated itself into the monstrous addiction engine it is today (for kids, specifically.) Moreover smartphones didn't exist or were just starting to proliferate, so it didn't follow you everywhere. Growing up using the internet was a different experience back then.
tombert 5y ago
My parents were generally lax on how much computer time I had, with the only time they wouldn't let me use my computer was if I got bad grades in middle and high school (which admittedly was far too frequent...sigh). I pretty much got all my dad's hand-me-down computers since I was a kid, and as a result I became fairly tech-savy relatively young. Once my parents saw that I was learning to code C++ for fun when I was fifteen, without getting any school credit (and instead of playing video games), they stopped taking my computer away completely; partly because I was getting too old to "ground", and partly because they realized that me showing interest in technical work was probably something they want to encourage. When I dropped out of college, I was able to find tech work pretty quickly, and built a pretty cool career out of it, and I largely thank the fact that I was constantly tinkering with computers as a kid and teenager for that.

aerovistae 5y ago

Yeah - for sure the difference here is when your kids grew up. I was a 90s/00s kid and in that time frame youtube didn't exist until I was 15. Facebook was new and alone in its category besides myspace. Instagram, Snapchat, and Tiktok didn't exist at all, and youtube hadn't yet cultivated itself into the monstrous addiction engine it is today (for kids, specifically.) Moreover smartphones didn't exist or were just starting to proliferate, so it didn't follow you everywhere. Growing up using the internet was a different experience back then.

tombert 5y ago

My parents were generally lax on how much computer time I had, with the only time they wouldn't let me use my computer was if I got bad grades in middle and high school (which admittedly was far too frequent...sigh). I pretty much got all my dad's hand-me-down computers since I was a kid, and as a result I became fairly tech-savy relatively young. Once my parents saw that I was learning to code C++ for fun when I was fifteen, without getting any school credit (and instead of playing video games), they stopped taking my computer away completely; partly because I was getting too old to "ground", and partly because they realized that me showing interest in technical work was probably something they want to encourage. When I dropped out of college, I was able to find tech work pretty quickly, and built a pretty cool career out of it, and I largely thank the fact that I was constantly tinkering with computers as a kid and teenager for that.