4 ms·

It seems like there was a long, downward spiral associated with this child’s use of character.ai that the parents were aware of, had him sent to therapy over,

by K0balt 2y ago

It seems like there was a long, downward spiral associated with this child’s use of character.ai that the parents were aware of, had him sent to therapy over, etc. My question here is, what the hell were the parents doing, not removing this obviously destructive intrusion in his life? This reads to me the same as if he had been using drugs but the parents didn’t take away his stash or his paraphernalia. For the sake of your children, people, remember that a cellphone is not an unequivocal good, nor a human right that children are entitled to unlimited use of, and there are plenty of apps and mechanisms by which you can monitor or limit your child’s use or misuse of technology. Also, just don’t give kids screens. Period. A laptop maybe if they are using it for creative purposes, but the vast majority of social media and consumption that is achieved by children on cellphones and tablets is a negative force in their lives. I see 3 year olds scrolling TikTok in the store these days. It makes me ill. Those kids are sooooooo fucked. That should legit be considered child endangerment.

__egb__ 2y ago
We had a similar situation in our family and we tried teaching mindful screen habits. We still lost because we couldn’t do anything about the school screen (chromebook). If we took that away at home it just provided an excuse for not doing schoolwork. We contacted teachers about our child downloading and watching anime and playing games all day in school. They wouldn’t/couldn’t do anything. We requested that the school take the computer away and give hardcopy assignments. They refused because that would invite notice from other students which could lead to bullying. That’s what they told us. I found the acceptable computer use policy on the school website and tried playing that card. Turns out our child hadn’t actually even signed it the last year…but that didn’t actually matter, and the school didn’t enforce the policy anyway. The schools here won’t actually discipline kids anymore. We would get emails from the principal begging parents to tell their kids that they’re not supposed to leave school grounds at lunch, but every day at least a hundred kids would just run out. (Our kid didn’t do this…I guess watching anime in the corner of the cafeteria prevents truancy…yay?) The last two-and-a-half years of high school were so exhausting trying to find anything that would work. Nothing did. Two parents and a therapist trying to counter one teenager, bad family influences, the school system, and multibillion-dollar internet corporations that intentionally work to addict people is a very uneven situation.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 2y ago
  You could try blocking his anime website on your home network. Then he can keep using the Chromebook for school work but can't access his favorite sites.
  - windlep 2y ago
    That's just an arms race. The kid will find a new favorite website to play games on, there seems no end to them. There's endless websites out there that are more appealing than doing homework. I have a very locked down network, there's always some new website that has games of some sort to play. If schools are going to provide these things, they should have the sites the kids might need to access white-listed and block everything else. Telling parents to try and block things is not realistic.
    - ndriscoll 2y ago
      With SSDs costing under $50/TB now, it's hard to see why you couldn't put everything the kids need onto the laptop itself. The entirety of Wikipedia with pictures is 110 GB. Throw in a selection of reference books, videos, and software, and there's essentially no reason to have it go online. Provision it with the full year's worth of material at the beginning of the year and that's it.
      - loocorez 2y ago
        Definitely agree this is possible and a great idea, but I think one challenge might be if you need access on a school laptop to do the majority of the homework. Not sure if that’s the OP’s case
    - K0balt 2y ago
      Whitelisting is the way.
  - meowster 2y ago
    It sounds like they need to get other parents involved and go to the school board and have them create a policy where only Google Classroom or whatever is whitelisted. Other parents are going to fight that though because it's a free pacifier for their kids.

by K0balt 2y ago

__egb__ 2y ago

We had a similar situation in our family and we tried teaching mindful screen habits. We still lost because we couldn’t do anything about the school screen (chromebook). If we took that away at home it just provided an excuse for not doing schoolwork. We contacted teachers about our child downloading and watching anime and playing games all day in school. They wouldn’t/couldn’t do anything. We requested that the school take the computer away and give hardcopy assignments. They refused because that would invite notice from other students which could lead to bullying. That’s what they told us. I found the acceptable computer use policy on the school website and tried playing that card. Turns out our child hadn’t actually even signed it the last year…but that didn’t actually matter, and the school didn’t enforce the policy anyway. The schools here won’t actually discipline kids anymore. We would get emails from the principal begging parents to tell their kids that they’re not supposed to leave school grounds at lunch, but every day at least a hundred kids would just run out. (Our kid didn’t do this…I guess watching anime in the corner of the cafeteria prevents truancy…yay?) The last two-and-a-half years of high school were so exhausting trying to find anything that would work. Nothing did. Two parents and a therapist trying to counter one teenager, bad family influences, the school system, and multibillion-dollar internet corporations that intentionally work to addict people is a very uneven situation.

8n4vidtmkvmk 2y ago
You could try blocking his anime website on your home network. Then he can keep using the Chromebook for school work but can't access his favorite sites.
- windlep 2y ago
  That's just an arms race. The kid will find a new favorite website to play games on, there seems no end to them. There's endless websites out there that are more appealing than doing homework. I have a very locked down network, there's always some new website that has games of some sort to play. If schools are going to provide these things, they should have the sites the kids might need to access white-listed and block everything else. Telling parents to try and block things is not realistic.
  - ndriscoll 2y ago
    With SSDs costing under $50/TB now, it's hard to see why you couldn't put everything the kids need onto the laptop itself. The entirety of Wikipedia with pictures is 110 GB. Throw in a selection of reference books, videos, and software, and there's essentially no reason to have it go online. Provision it with the full year's worth of material at the beginning of the year and that's it.
    - loocorez 2y ago
      Definitely agree this is possible and a great idea, but I think one challenge might be if you need access on a school laptop to do the majority of the homework. Not sure if that’s the OP’s case
  - K0balt 2y ago
    Whitelisting is the way.
- meowster 2y ago
  It sounds like they need to get other parents involved and go to the school board and have them create a policy where only Google Classroom or whatever is whitelisted. Other parents are going to fight that though because it's a free pacifier for their kids.