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How old are your kids? There's a difference between a teenager, and a six year old (who I'd argue shouldn't be on digital devices at all - there's far too much
by Syonyk 3y ago
How old are your kids? There's a difference between a teenager, and a six year old (who I'd argue shouldn't be on digital devices at all - there's far too much research on how kids brains develop from interaction with the physical world, and how the digital world shortcuts this badly, to their long term harm).
The short answer is, "No, there is not. There are simply ways to make it harder." However, there's no shortage of companies happy to sell you things they claim will do that - impossible though it is, having been a kid, and having done a lot of network related work in my years.
What you can do is provide an environment in which it's harder (not impossible - simply harder!) to run across stuff unintentionally, and ensure that computing hardware is an environment where it's more difficult to start intentionally bypassing boundaries set up.
A Pihole is a good start, but it's also trivial to bypass unless you lock down your network pretty hard, prevent external DNS servers from being usable (blocking UDP/TCP 53 outbound from everything but the pihole goes a long way here), and manage to block DNS over HTTPS (which is a bloody nightmare), as well as external SSH connections you can SOCKS proxy over. Assuming there's a good endpoint. However, the Pihole will help keep the amount of crap down, and should do a decent job (with proper blocklists) of helping prevent unintentionally following links one doesn't care to follow (think "hosts entries to block certain goat and tub sites," if you were on the internet in the early 2000s).
Any computer a kid is using needs to be in a public space in the house, with decent foot traffic, and you should ask them what they're doing often enough that it's clear you're paying at least some attention.
No cell phones with browsers or mobile devices until they're quite a bit older (mid teens, maybe?). If they need a cellular device, get them a flip phone.
And then beyond that, it's going to be kid specific.
And make sure there are plenty of things to do that don't involve computers in their lives.
The book that just came out, "The Anxious Generation," by Haidt, goes into some detail on the results of our experiments of more or less unlimited internet warfare on the development of kids, and the results are an absolute disaster, especially for tween/teen girls (in terms of mental health, suicide, happiness, human connection... pick your metric, it's been a disaster for them).
And if you think this is over the top, go spend some time on r/Parenting and look for posts by teachers talking about the sort of absolutely absurd stuff they see on phones from kids in grade school and middle school...
- ignoramous 3y ago> The book that just came out, "The Anxious Generation," by Haidt Not without controversy? https://archive.is/KU6FS https://archive.is/KU6FS Technological progress has historically scared people: https://pessimistsarchive.org/ https://pessimistsarchive.org/
- Syonyk 3y agoWhy would you expect anything of that sort to be without controversy? It's saying that we shouldn't hand our kids over to the tech company babysitters, and there are quite a few people, paid and unpaid, happy to argue against sort of thing (even on HN, arguing against constant connectivity through smartphones draws quite a bit of hostility). However, it's a book that's squarely in the topic of "Kids and technology," and is built around research that spans through Covid. I'm aware the concept of reading books is rather outdated, but I still try to suggest long form literature on topics that matter, versus some short form articles.
- ideashower 3y agoI can't open the archive link the other person shared, but the controversy as I understand with this book, is that it has more to do with the methodology the author presents. https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2024/03/22/anxious-generation-rewiring-childhood-jonathan-haidt-review/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2024/03/22/anxious-gene...
- Syonyk 3y agoAnd the Washington Post is owned (via a holding company or two) by Jeff Bezos. They're the sort of newspaper that I would expect would be very, very happy to cheerlead for "Everyone on consumer digital tech, all hours of all the days." But even then, the article isn't exactly highly critical of the book. It talks about the fact that there's a lot of correlation to make arguments, without even acknowledging the ever-growing pile of studies demonstrating causation - when you ask groups of teenagers or young adults to go without their social media apps or smartphones for a while, they get better for a while in terms of the sort of mental health metrics that have been going nuts lately. And of course he's writing defensively. There's no shortage of people who will, as you've seen in this discussion, start defending how "people arguing against smartphones" are just "scared of new technology" or such (ignoring that a lot of people who've worked in tech their entire lives and deeply understand the technologies used are some of the leading edge arguing that we shouldn't be using the stuff as we do). In any case, a discussion about the book is certainly an improvement over other options.