3 ms·

It is 100% the parents responsibility to have an active enough role in their Child's life to know who they're interacting with and to provide appropriate superv

by abofh 2y ago

It is 100% the parents responsibility to have an active enough role in their Child's life to know who they're interacting with and to provide appropriate supervision. If your child is getting addicted to something, it's because they've been enabled, perhaps through their friends devices or what have you. You cannot push the burden of being a responsible parent on people who do not wish to be your childrens parent. Society owes you places they can go that they are safe, not padded walls on every sharp corner they might bump into -- that's baby proofing, and it has to be done at home.

ben_w 2y ago
The entire point of being a teenager is to get away from your parents and find new peer groups. Unfortunately, what we evolved for is 160 people in a village with a peer group of about a dozen within a few years of us, not even a school with hundreds to thousands, let alone the internet with two people for every heartbeat in a human lifetime of which 440 million (~= the population of the EU) is within a few years of us. And given the power imbalance between manipulative corporations and normal people is sufficient for the former to convince the latter to watch adverts while conversing with their friends — the entirety of Facebook's business model — it's not even clear to me that the internet in its current state is a good thing for adults either: to many of these companies, even the ones that are legal rather than criminal scams, we are the trees upon which money grows.
- abofh 2y ago
  Once we're at teenagers, then it's still - did you raise them to be aware of the world around them? Did you give them the tools to evaluate safe and unsafe online activity? A kid doesn't accidentally end up addicted heroin unless they have exposure to heroin. Child grooming predates encryption and the internet and relied primarily on trusted people convincing children not to talk. No amount of decrypted internet traffic will protect your children from unsupervised in-person access by strangers - worrying about what they do online as a black box of whataboutism -- and again, it's the parents, not society as a whole who has that responsibility. Are there evil people? Yes. Are there corporations that are interested in you being addicted to their products (Oxy, Alcohol, Nicotine, Meta) -- yes. Do you need the right to inspect what I send to my wife to protect your children? No. I'm sorry that teenagers are hard, they always have been - that's a hard part about parenting. The hardest part though is that you raised them to make their own choices - and this is the final exam -- did your kids make good choices. You don't get to put that responsibility on anyone else, you raised them, you gave them the tools - and at some point, they will make a choice without you. If you believe the only way for them to make a good choice is to be able to surveil every aspect of their lives, then I hate to tell you what will happen when they stop being children.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    I'm not suggesting that we should break crypto to keep kids safe, I'm suggesting that we shouldn't let kids be on the internet at all. Society doesn't let kids vote, doesn't let kids buy alcohol or tobacco, doesn't let them drive or join the army, and doesn't let them watch 18-rated films. I remember being a teenager. I remember the valuable life-lesson we got about not trusting strangers in the form of the police creating a (safe) demonstration with one of their own plain-clothed officers pretending to be a villain, I remember subsequently making huge errors of judgement, and I remember others being far more trusting than me. I remember the school anti-drugs campaign centred on Leah Betts, and that the way the teachers talked to us felt so patronising that I wanted to do drugs just to spite them. (Never acted on it, just wanted to). I remember the art department computer, some very old attempt at security to stop kids messing with it, which I could trivially circumvent. I remember when we got ISDN at school, and that I immediately started heavily using the internet whenever possible. They had content filters of course, but they were mediocre at best.
    - abofh 2y ago
      To be clear, I agree with you in principal - I think unsupervised children on the internet is a horrible idea, I just draw the line short of legislating that. I'm not looking forward to when mine are old enough to realistically need to start using the internet, and wish that I could put them on dial-up text-mode internet like I grew up on instead of this ad-filled garbage we have today... But that's on me I suppose.
thelibertines 2y ago
I hear you, but children aren't raised by parents alone. They are also raised by society and environment. It has to go hand in hand. Implementing structures in communications and tech that evolve around actual real-life material conditions and challenges, is what will make any innovation useful. Society can no longer afford to separate well-being and technology as two separate concerns for the long run. It's either for humans and what their realities really look like, or it's for nothing, imo. Whether the above is really a great step, I can't say, tho.
- abofh 2y ago
  Society plays a role, but like raising a dog, it's on the parents to socialize them and teach them how to interface with it safely. Society cannot progress if the adults have to live in a child safe box. There must be places safe for children, but it's the parents who have to keep them from sticking their fingers in plug sockets, not putting the burden on having a third party validate their access to electrons. If you send your child to a bar, they'll see alcohol - if you send them to the internet, they'll find the internet. I'm happy to tell you you shouldn't do that with your kids, but if you do it with yours, it's not on me to stop drinking at bars.

by abofh 2y ago

ben_w 2y ago

The entire point of being a teenager is to get away from your parents and find new peer groups. Unfortunately, what we evolved for is 160 people in a village with a peer group of about a dozen within a few years of us, not even a school with hundreds to thousands, let alone the internet with two people for every heartbeat in a human lifetime of which 440 million (~= the population of the EU) is within a few years of us. And given the power imbalance between manipulative corporations and normal people is sufficient for the former to convince the latter to watch adverts while conversing with their friends — the entirety of Facebook's business model — it's not even clear to me that the internet in its current state is a good thing for adults either: to many of these companies, even the ones that are legal rather than criminal scams, we are the trees upon which money grows.

abofh 2y ago
Once we're at teenagers, then it's still - did you raise them to be aware of the world around them? Did you give them the tools to evaluate safe and unsafe online activity? A kid doesn't accidentally end up addicted heroin unless they have exposure to heroin. Child grooming predates encryption and the internet and relied primarily on trusted people convincing children not to talk. No amount of decrypted internet traffic will protect your children from unsupervised in-person access by strangers - worrying about what they do online as a black box of whataboutism -- and again, it's the parents, not society as a whole who has that responsibility. Are there evil people? Yes. Are there corporations that are interested in you being addicted to their products (Oxy, Alcohol, Nicotine, Meta) -- yes. Do you need the right to inspect what I send to my wife to protect your children? No. I'm sorry that teenagers are hard, they always have been - that's a hard part about parenting. The hardest part though is that you raised them to make their own choices - and this is the final exam -- did your kids make good choices. You don't get to put that responsibility on anyone else, you raised them, you gave them the tools - and at some point, they will make a choice without you. If you believe the only way for them to make a good choice is to be able to surveil every aspect of their lives, then I hate to tell you what will happen when they stop being children.
- ben_w 2y ago
  I'm not suggesting that we should break crypto to keep kids safe, I'm suggesting that we shouldn't let kids be on the internet at all. Society doesn't let kids vote, doesn't let kids buy alcohol or tobacco, doesn't let them drive or join the army, and doesn't let them watch 18-rated films. I remember being a teenager. I remember the valuable life-lesson we got about not trusting strangers in the form of the police creating a (safe) demonstration with one of their own plain-clothed officers pretending to be a villain, I remember subsequently making huge errors of judgement, and I remember others being far more trusting than me. I remember the school anti-drugs campaign centred on Leah Betts, and that the way the teachers talked to us felt so patronising that I wanted to do drugs just to spite them. (Never acted on it, just wanted to). I remember the art department computer, some very old attempt at security to stop kids messing with it, which I could trivially circumvent. I remember when we got ISDN at school, and that I immediately started heavily using the internet whenever possible. They had content filters of course, but they were mediocre at best.
  - abofh 2y ago
    To be clear, I agree with you in principal - I think unsupervised children on the internet is a horrible idea, I just draw the line short of legislating that. I'm not looking forward to when mine are old enough to realistically need to start using the internet, and wish that I could put them on dial-up text-mode internet like I grew up on instead of this ad-filled garbage we have today... But that's on me I suppose.

thelibertines 2y ago

I hear you, but children aren't raised by parents alone. They are also raised by society and environment. It has to go hand in hand. Implementing structures in communications and tech that evolve around actual real-life material conditions and challenges, is what will make any innovation useful. Society can no longer afford to separate well-being and technology as two separate concerns for the long run. It's either for humans and what their realities really look like, or it's for nothing, imo. Whether the above is really a great step, I can't say, tho.

abofh 2y ago
Society plays a role, but like raising a dog, it's on the parents to socialize them and teach them how to interface with it safely. Society cannot progress if the adults have to live in a child safe box. There must be places safe for children, but it's the parents who have to keep them from sticking their fingers in plug sockets, not putting the burden on having a third party validate their access to electrons. If you send your child to a bar, they'll see alcohol - if you send them to the internet, they'll find the internet. I'm happy to tell you you shouldn't do that with your kids, but if you do it with yours, it's not on me to stop drinking at bars.