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Agreed 100%. I've a homelab, ntop traffic monitoring and considering forcing my son's mobile device (10 years old and about to receive his first mobile device f

Agreed 100%. I've a homelab, ntop traffic monitoring and considering forcing my son's mobile device (10 years old and about to receive his first mobile device for Christmas) to go via my home network via VPN and I'm still not sure I really want to do this... He could still come across content via friends devices. My wife and I are trying to figure out a conversation/teaching method to keep his mind healthy (in terms of sex/porn) as he progresses through his childhood into teens. It's a stressful minefield; but we don't want to be overly intrusive and figuring out a balance is not an easy task. I'm certainly not going to rely on the law to cover parenting issue. A child feeling that he can have healthy, open and honest conversations with parents on these issues is critical.

ethbr1 3y ago
So, $0.02 as a parent... The overriding goals are to (a) avoid overly alienating him from his peers' experience (e.g. don't be the only kid who can't watch some TV at home), while (b) teaching him to make good decisions himself and use things responsibily, by (c) introducing things at a measured pace. Consequently, you're not going to keep a teenager away from porn. Not without causing more harms in doing so. But! You can (and in my opinion should) absolutely moderate the speed at which it's introduced. E.g. for now, at 10, he gets restrictions via VPN on his device. And you be frank with him about this! "Some websites aren't going to load" etc But also you sit down with him and say "Look, this is how it's going to be, for now, because of your age. But when you turn 12, if you keep your grades up... I'll turn the filtering off for a couple hours a night." IMHO, the problem isn't {thing}, the problem is {abuse of thing}. And the best way to empower people to avoid abusing a thing is to gradually build their skills to cope with it, which means measured exposure. PS: Also, don't ever read his DNS logs. You don't want to know. Everyone, even children, deserve some secrets. The gold standard should be he-comes-to-you-with-questions, not you-go-to-him.
- cooper_ganglia 3y ago
  "But when you turn 12, if you keep your grades up... I'll turn the filtering off for a couple hours a night." So, $0.02 as a person who grew up with what I thought at the time were overly-protective parents... I say this as respectfully as possible, but imo, this is an insane take and shouldn't be taken seriously at all. Letting 12 year old children watch porn for a "couple hours per night" as a reward for good grades sounds like a dystopian hellscape. Porn is not for minors, full stop. We already have a male loneliness epidemic and a drop-off in dating in young men. We don't need to exacerbate problems by conditioning them to dull their desire for real intimacy, or to be OnlyFans simps from their pre-teen years. 12 year old minds don't need to be implicitly taught that women are objects to be used for the sexual gratification of men. Teach them about sex, respect them and give them space to grow into themselves and still respect you, but pornography is not an inevitable given in someone's life, it is not a universal constant that every person falls into the trap of. It is a toxic, poisonous addiction to an intensely dopaminergic false sense of intimacy, it's destroying our young men and women. and I cannot recommend enough regularly moderating the devices and messages of any minors in your home. 16 years old is the earliest point where I would even consider tapering that moderation off slightly.
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    I get it. You don't want kids watching porn. You don't think it's good for them. How do you propose to stop it? Fully manage their devices? Never allow them access to the internet? Only allow them at friends' while supervised? Never let them out of your sight? The redress for the ill is what's insane. What we have is an epidemic of overly-restricted children who fail to learn independence and self-control, because parents "think they can do better." And now, sadly, have access to the technical means to absolutely control their children. Don't. They will sometimes do things you disagree with. But they will learn lessons from those things and grow into adults capable of handling themselves. It's not "watching porn for a couple hours a night," it's doing something that's blocked for a couple hours a night. What that is? Well, that's the child you've raised.
    - johndunne 3y ago
      Interesting points. And, I've not yet decided what I'm going to do as a parent yet. The discussion you guys are having here is kind of what's going on in my head right now and over the last few months :D The general direction I think is best for any parent is to leave them to make their own mistakes and educate them, knowing that they can come to me and have frank conversations. The first time I watched any porn was at 13 when one of my mates found his Dad's stash. And I turned out... normal ;-) There was no accessible internet back then, unfortunately.
      - ethbr1 3y ago
        It's always the parent-head discussion! Because both sides are "right." But I do think too much of either side is wrong. Kids of the pre-digital generation certainly turned out okay, broadly speaking. And we certainly had far more freedom than kids nowadays (e.g. "I'll be hanging out with {friend}, call me at their house. I'll be home for dinner!"). But... it's also true that some modern evils weren't possible. Pedophiles couldn't groom us from across the country. Information came from the library or people. Communities were smaller and looked out for each other. The one thing I'd be pretty resolute on -- establish some form of "you don't get to always have your device" up front. Whether that's homework time, or sleep time, or whenever. And be hard-nosed about it: no exceptions. Otherwise "you always have your device" expectations set in, which coupled with stickiness of modern apps and peer pressure, means it's World War 3 trying to part them from it. But if "no phone o'clock" has always been a thing... everything runs smoother.

ethbr1 3y ago

So, $0.02 as a parent... The overriding goals are to (a) avoid overly alienating him from his peers' experience (e.g. don't be the only kid who can't watch some TV at home), while (b) teaching him to make good decisions himself and use things responsibily, by (c) introducing things at a measured pace. Consequently, you're not going to keep a teenager away from porn. Not without causing more harms in doing so. But! You can (and in my opinion should) absolutely moderate the speed at which it's introduced. E.g. for now, at 10, he gets restrictions via VPN on his device. And you be frank with him about this! "Some websites aren't going to load" etc But also you sit down with him and say "Look, this is how it's going to be, for now, because of your age. But when you turn 12, if you keep your grades up... I'll turn the filtering off for a couple hours a night." IMHO, the problem isn't {thing}, the problem is {abuse of thing}. And the best way to empower people to avoid abusing a thing is to gradually build their skills to cope with it, which means measured exposure. PS: Also, don't ever read his DNS logs. You don't want to know. Everyone, even children, deserve some secrets. The gold standard should be he-comes-to-you-with-questions, not you-go-to-him.

cooper_ganglia 3y ago
"But when you turn 12, if you keep your grades up... I'll turn the filtering off for a couple hours a night." So, $0.02 as a person who grew up with what I thought at the time were overly-protective parents... I say this as respectfully as possible, but imo, this is an insane take and shouldn't be taken seriously at all. Letting 12 year old children watch porn for a "couple hours per night" as a reward for good grades sounds like a dystopian hellscape. Porn is not for minors, full stop. We already have a male loneliness epidemic and a drop-off in dating in young men. We don't need to exacerbate problems by conditioning them to dull their desire for real intimacy, or to be OnlyFans simps from their pre-teen years. 12 year old minds don't need to be implicitly taught that women are objects to be used for the sexual gratification of men. Teach them about sex, respect them and give them space to grow into themselves and still respect you, but pornography is not an inevitable given in someone's life, it is not a universal constant that every person falls into the trap of. It is a toxic, poisonous addiction to an intensely dopaminergic false sense of intimacy, it's destroying our young men and women. and I cannot recommend enough regularly moderating the devices and messages of any minors in your home. 16 years old is the earliest point where I would even consider tapering that moderation off slightly.
- ethbr1 3y ago
  I get it. You don't want kids watching porn. You don't think it's good for them. How do you propose to stop it? Fully manage their devices? Never allow them access to the internet? Only allow them at friends' while supervised? Never let them out of your sight? The redress for the ill is what's insane. What we have is an epidemic of overly-restricted children who fail to learn independence and self-control, because parents "think they can do better." And now, sadly, have access to the technical means to absolutely control their children. Don't. They will sometimes do things you disagree with. But they will learn lessons from those things and grow into adults capable of handling themselves. It's not "watching porn for a couple hours a night," it's doing something that's blocked for a couple hours a night. What that is? Well, that's the child you've raised.
  - johndunne 3y ago
    Interesting points. And, I've not yet decided what I'm going to do as a parent yet. The discussion you guys are having here is kind of what's going on in my head right now and over the last few months :D The general direction I think is best for any parent is to leave them to make their own mistakes and educate them, knowing that they can come to me and have frank conversations. The first time I watched any porn was at 13 when one of my mates found his Dad's stash. And I turned out... normal ;-) There was no accessible internet back then, unfortunately.
    - ethbr1 3y ago
      It's always the parent-head discussion! Because both sides are "right." But I do think too much of either side is wrong. Kids of the pre-digital generation certainly turned out okay, broadly speaking. And we certainly had far more freedom than kids nowadays (e.g. "I'll be hanging out with {friend}, call me at their house. I'll be home for dinner!"). But... it's also true that some modern evils weren't possible. Pedophiles couldn't groom us from across the country. Information came from the library or people. Communities were smaller and looked out for each other. The one thing I'd be pretty resolute on -- establish some form of "you don't get to always have your device" up front. Whether that's homework time, or sleep time, or whenever. And be hard-nosed about it: no exceptions. Otherwise "you always have your device" expectations set in, which coupled with stickiness of modern apps and peer pressure, means it's World War 3 trying to part them from it. But if "no phone o'clock" has always been a thing... everything runs smoother.