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If only there was a way parents could exert some sort of influence or authority over these children to prevent what they believe is harmful. We could call it “
by dahdum 4y ago
If only there was a way parents could exert some sort of influence or authority over these children to prevent what they believe is harmful.
We could call it “parenting”.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tintor 4y agoHow would you do it (serious question)? I live in US, and like China's approach on this specific issue. 1) Disallow smartphone until certain age. Which age? 2) Allow smartphone, but with parental controls. Which ones? Many of them are hackable. 3) Allow smartphone, but with time of day/week restrictions that you enforce by taking away the phone?
- Gustomaximus 4y ago1) We decided for highschool for the first phone. Some parents give smart watches so the kids are contactable but don't have a big screen. 2) I have the Google controls. That said, its as you say kids can circumvent controls so the best thing you can do is have this conversation. We've spoken a buch of times with the kids about how other kids will look at gore/porn out of interest/shock value but they should choose not to as its not healthy etc. And other things like staying private online, predators, come to us if they are getting bullied or do something wrong like share an embarrasing picture and its getting used against them etc. Ultimately this one its about having a good/trusting parent child relationship I feel than via digital restrictions. 3) From the Google controls we have time restriction, both time of day and total hours. The other thing I feel is important 1) is making sure you do things with kids. It's easy to get tired as a parent and let them entertain themself but playing board games and sports etc is so important. Making sure you have quality time beyond screens makes it a smaller part of their life. And 2) Encourage the right friendships. Put the effort to organise events with kids/families with good values as the group surrounding them will have a big impact.
- drewnick 4y agoThis is excellent advice, and points out how difficult parenting actually is. None of what you mention is easy, or path of least resistence. Especially waiting for highschool for the phone. We did sixth grade and we regret it now that our middle schooler is mildly addicted. We are spending this summer working on that.
- falcolas 4y agoI think it's fair to postulate that a high schooler will have the opportunity to become just as addicted. I'd even postulate that one cause will be the lack of experience self-regulating the use of a cellphone. And let's not forget the bullying and peer pressure a child who does not have a cell phone will endure. I saw this happen with a niece I tutor first hand, sadly. Not to mention that a good portion of her assignments come via the web or an app these days - which is super frustrating for me.
- jerrya 4y agosingle parents, parents working odd hours, divorced parents - they often must give phones to their kids at earlier ages are you certain your kids ~~are not sneaking a flashlight under their blankets to read books until dawn~~ do not have a secondary phone to scroll tiktok until dawn, are not learning from friends about vpns, are not browsing porn when your kids go to school or are away from home can you be certain they are not circumventing all those things you have had the talk about?
- ipaddr 4y agoWhy must single parents give phones let alone afford a phone?
- Dylan16807 4y agoIt's a lot more effort to get a secondary phone than a flashlight. Looking at some things at a friend's house is much less impactful than an everyday half-unlimited supply.
- 4y ago
- eredengrin 4y agoNot to mention, beyond the technical considerations, there's also social implications. To what extent can you remove kids from social media before they start feeling excessively socially constricted compared to their peers? For example, taking away phones altogether is likely to lead to a much harder social life. If the tech companies encourage more responsible use of social media, they can make it easier for both the parents and kids who may want to reduce usage of it. In the same way, the lack of any guardrails whatsoever helped bring us to where we are now. I imagine both pieces are necessary/useful. Disclaimer that I'm not a parent so haven't had to think about this too deeply but it is something I consider in a hypothetical sense at times.
- chaostheory 4y agoWhy not give children locked down phones instead of always opting for regulation instead? The first option is much faster and immediately effective.
- falcolas 4y agoIf a child can access porn on a locked down phone (they can, and do), they'll find a way to access anything they want. At some point you have to put some responsibility on the companies who are creating addictive experiences targeted at children.
- chaostheory 4y agoMost children aren’t able to do that. Also parents can routinely verify. The responsibility for parenting should remain with parents and not the government.
- tintor 4y agoDo kids really need to have an online social life?
- dotnet00 4y agoIt isn't much of a question of if they need to as it is a fact that they already do, thus anyone without such a social life is at a social disadvantage unless you outright legislate away internet usage for kids, which is of course absurd. At that point you might as well just lock them up and homeschool them.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- whitesilhouette 4y agoTo answer your questions 1/ You do that when you get the idea that they have grown smart enough and sneaking and doing it anyway on their friends' phones. 2/ Apple phones are good and hard to hack (at least by a regular kid). 3/ Yes. Plus a reward/punishment system for additional/curtailed hours on completion of chores. I personally have a slightly different approach. 1/ I have given them Kindle as replacement devices (they also have jailed phones) and socially engineered them to make them feel superior about that. I've also given them some RPi to play with (to practically apply the things they read and learn from the books on Kindle). This way, they don't take the phone as a forbidden fruit (since they already have it). 2/ I have created a normal user on Android phones with Microsoft ecosystem (I have a O360 family subscription) so, apart from the regular firewall stuff, it also logs everything my kids do on the phone and reports to me. Occassionally I go through the complete logs in their phones, to see if they tried to bypass their user profiles and do something funny. However, it's important to make them realise that all this is done for their own good. Plus I make sure not to interfere in everything they do. It's ok to make mistakes as long as I can make sure it's reversible. Otherwise I've seen deep rooted resentment in some other kids. For example, their map locations sync to me in real time. I make sure they understand that this is for their own convenience (kids don't care about safety so no point in highlighting that) like arranging an Uber if they need one or to give them directions. That way, they don't take it as spying on them and are completely comfortable with sharing their live location with me. On the contrary, they take it as their parent (me) taking care of them and are actually pretty proud about it. 3/ I avoid negative feedback loops. I don't say you can use the phone only for 2 hours daily. Rather I say, you can use the phone as long as you want but only after you finish your daily checklist. Chores/Class tasks etc. It's works pretty well.
- westondeboer 4y agoWhat a novel idea! /s I love talking with my kids, and I love hanging out with my kids. I don't understand the parents who go out to eat and let there kids bring a device of some sorts.
- gxs 4y agoIf corporations are going to go to the lengths they go to to psychologically manipulate their uses, they themselves have raised the gravity of the situation in terms of how social media affects people. Especially when the psychology behind it is completely unknown to everyone (sure, everyone has an idea but I think some would be surprised at what they actually do). I’m with you that it’s still on the parents, but parents taking it to the social media companies in a way is embracing their role as parents to act on their kids behalf. All that out of the way, sounds a bit zany and I’m not sure how or if this could ever actually work.
- MisterBastahrd 4y agoYes, but every time someone brings up "parenting" as a way to control their children's social media habits, a thousand man-children rush furiously to their phones to declare that the behavior is not only an infringement upon the rights of the child but worthy of estrangement.
- iamcurious 4y agoIf only parents could exert some sort of influence or authority over others harming their children. We could call it "sueing".
- Calvin02 4y agoWhy just limit it social media? Why not also include video games, streaming services, movies, etc.?
- chaostheory 4y agoWhy not give people both the freedom and personal responsibility instead of making assigning parental duties to the government like China has recently?
- ummonk 4y agoAgreed. It should be applied to all services which are optimized for addiction. Social media is just the worst of the bunch due to its built in peer pressure.
- falcolas 4y agoMy favorite is gacha games of any flavor. Please keep that crap out of the hands of children.
- seti0Cha 4y agoYou could argue that reading is addictive, maybe some people find math so as well. I became addicted to computers when I was a kid and we didn't even have the internet. Sports can be addictive, along with dancing, or just plain socializing. Silly, yes, but you can bet that there'd be lawsuits claiming all sorts of things are addictive and some number will find sympathetic juries. Seems like a pretty bad idea to me.
- khazhoux 4y agoAnd mid-1980s heavy metal music too.
- falcolas 4y agoIn an ideal situation, it's two parents against thousands of software engineers, marketers, corporate psychologists, and their children's many peers. Many adults can't keep themselves from the addiction. How do we expect parents to keep their kids from it? Or, to put it another way, I'm sure the median parent would have much less luck keeping their kids away from social media than they do with porn.
- voidfunc 4y agoWhy don't we just put everyone in a box after they are born and feed them through a straw like a hamster so they can't possibly ever harm themselves? People need to take responsibility for themselves.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- systemvoltage 4y agoPlease don't give them ideas.
- esrauch 4y agoDo you think cigarettes and alcohol should be legal for sale to children? What about advertising specifically targeted at getting kids interested and hooked on cigarettes? What about child labor? Why not let just parents decide what's right for their kids? There's some behaviors of corporations interacting with children that are correctly regulated in the interest of the broader society we live in. It is completely valid to argue that social media specifically isn't harmful enough to regulate, but your comment amounts to snark that implies nothing should be regulated which is a pretty extreme Anarcho-capitalist position to blanket take.
- vorpalhex 4y agoOddly enough, in most states it's legal for a parent to furnish alcohol to a minor. I remember being given a glass of wine or a beer occasionally growing up. I think this is something that my parents did to discourage underage drinking my making it boring (which worked, at least for me). That works because the parent is mediating.
- parenting_ 4y agoA controversial take. We should consider individuals aren't able to parent their kids effectively. Would you rather trust two exhausted individuals or a huge army of trained professionals at payroll by government to parent the kids? There is very less transfer of knowledge and the worldview of individual parents is often limited. If there is an organization parenting thousands of kids, they can run A/B tests, see results of changing incentives, able to better respond from all data gathering and long trail of past experience. A parenting organization at scale also has more power to push through effective policy faster and change legal system to remove harmful corporations (social media in this thread). Individual parents on other hand are inefficient, start with nothing usually, don't have enough visibility, time or expertise to consider the most optimal choices. They are helpless.
- Wolfbeta 4y agoThis is the most dystopian thing I've ever read. But probably the best way to defeat the existential threat of gray goo.
- systemvoltage 4y agoThis runs chills down the spine. Terrifying.
- dahdum 4y agoWhile I appreciate the social cohesion and equality of opportunity such a totalitarian indoctrination and control could provide, it’s anathema to most Westerners. I would not support it. Certainly it’s the fastest way to curb religious extremism, racism, and other social ills. Sadly it’s also the fastest way to create them.
- seoaeu 4y ago> Certainly it’s the fastest way to curb religious extremism, racism, and other social ills. Specifically, it eliminates extremism by extinguishing religious and cultural groups in their entirety. Under some definitions and the specific intentions/targeted groups, this can even qualify as genocide.
- 4y ago
- Teever 4y agoWould you say the same thing if someone was standing outside an elementary school peddling drugs and cigarettes? Or creepy dudes who offer to buy alcohol for minors to get in their pants? The world is a big place and it's impossible for parents to be everywhere they need to be for their kids all the time. It's only gotten unfathomably bigger since the advent of the web and the explosion of social media.
- fishtoaster 4y agoCouldn't the same argument be used for cigarettes? "We shouldn't regulate tobacco companies influence on kids because it's a parent's responsibility to prevent that sort of harmful thing"? I agree that this bill is silly, but "parents are responsible for preventing all harm to children" doesn't seem like a universally applicable argument.
- systemvoltage 4y agoBut then we go on to legalize Marijuana in California.
- pretendscholar 4y ago? With age restrictions like cigarettes and alcohol.
- ipaddr 4y agoYou're regulating chemical compounds with cigarettes. You are regulating patterns of presenting data with social media.
- ellopoppit 4y agoThis would be regulating dopamine within a digital Skinner Box
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mountainriver 4y agoYou must not have children
- tsol 4y agoWhen it's a few people, the individual is the problem. When it's a large percentage of people, it's a systemic problem.
- rsch 4y agoA big issue is how “parenting” has changed in recent decades. Even a couple of generations ago it was much more of a group effort. Now it is just the parents versus everyone else either not caring or kicking down on them (for example, some comments over here).
- saturnaga 4y ago