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Between talking with your kid, teaching them to be responsible, and implementing technical & physical solutions (at the home level, not country level), there sh

Between talking with your kid, teaching them to be responsible, and implementing technical & physical solutions (at the home level, not country level), there should be very little issue. No need for looking over their shoulder 24/7. Foisting the parenting onto the government sucks for everyone.

gjsman-1000 2y ago
The government can, and has, taken a vested interest in parenting when parents fail. Car seats? Seat belts? Curfews? Hospital reporting laws? Child safety standards? Mandatory smoke detectors? Curriculum standards? Mandatory education? All not necessary if parents just did their jobs, right? On that note, the US government states in their own papers in the SCOTUS case that parental control filtering is so niche, that it is at the level of complete irrelevancy in fulfilling the government’s interest in preventing children from viewing porn. One SCOTUS judge with children has already said that in her experience, it’s impossibly complex even for a devoted parent. Tech can’t point to parental controls when they failed miserably in their implementation.
- chii 2y ago
  > All not necessary if parents just did their jobs, right? most, if not all of those things, are necessary because a parent is unable to make any changes to stop the danger. Good parenting cannot stop a car accident (unless you're claiming that you have perfect driving skills). Ditto with the other examples. The difference between age verification and those is that verification puts an undue harm onto the entire population, for which they derive zero benefit, just so that a few parents who cannot be bothered to monitor their child could continue their lack of responsibility.
  - gjsman-1000 2y ago
    A few parents? According to the US governments own statistics at SCOTUS right now, almost all parents are failing to restrict, and don’t even know how, even if they wanted to. This also hoists undue harm across a population - children and teenagers. As the SCOTUS case is going forward, Texas is (correctly) pointing out that this is very different than 90s dial up, and the porn is far more intense, violent, graphic, and accessible. Because we’ve already had porn filters, and even the opposition concedes they’ve been uselessly ineffective, therefore… That’s the argument. It’s a good argument. You don’t have to like the conclusion. However, I have seen firsthand that filtering, and talking to children, absolutely is not, and never will be, effective.
    - ziddoap 2y ago
      >However, I have seen firsthand that filtering, and talking to children, absolutely is not, and never will be, effective. Weird, I have seen firsthand that absolutely can be! I guess we're at an impasse.
      - gjsman-1000 2y ago
        Do the children in question watch porn, even sometimes? If so, it was not effective. And even if it was, according to the US government, >90% of parents can’t pull it off, and they’ve had over 20 years to try (tech companies included). That’s law-changing time. As one legal analogy put it: Imagine if there was a law mandating public transportation from City A to City B. There’s a bus line, but it’s people 6 feet or taller only. Don’t come into the courtroom defending it by saying crawling is always an option, and some people have been crawling, so therefore the law is upheld.
        bigyabai 2y ago
        This is a pathetic incarnation of the "think of the children!" fallacy Americans love so much. You fundamentally cannot stop children from watching porn. It is like arguing for a second prohibition so we can stop kids from accessing alcohol - not only will the plan fail, it will disproportionately harm the legal consumers to the point they're comfortable breaking the law. Age authentication doesn't work, and it's going to train kids to access illegal pornography if they want their fix. Parents can't stop it any more than they can stop kids from watching violent movies or renouncing their faith. Quit arguing with this slippery-slope logic, your comment history reads like Pagliacci's personal diary.
- ziddoap 2y ago
  >All not necessary if parents just did their jobs, right? No... Parent's can't reasonably mitigate what a car seat or seat belt mitigates. Besides that, the benefits vs. harms needs to be weighed before you shove your parenting responsibilities off to the government. Age verification laws have the potential to do a lot of harm to a lot of people. Seat belt laws do not do a lot of harm to a lot of people.
- ipython 2y ago
  I agree with your comment but disagree with the framing that these are necessary because parents “fail”. The safety mechanisms you point to are not a result of parents failing, it’s a result of a common agreement that society as a whole benefits from certain guardrails. Seatbelts were very controversial! But after you realize that a seatbelt is a small inconvenience that can prevent you or your children from being violently ejected from the vehicle and splatting on the pavement in the event of a car crash, we agreed as a society that the public health good outweighed the slight inconvenience of wearing a seatbelt. Nothing to do with the failings of parents. Parents already feel like failures most of the time already as it is.
ipython 2y ago
What are those technical and physical controls you speak of? If your kid is taught to be responsible why would you need them?
- ziddoap 2y ago
  >What are those technical and physical controls you speak of? We're on a "Hacker News", and you want me to explain what parental controls are? Do you have some specific questions that you genuinely want help with? Because this smells like a bad faith question. Physical controls like... Gosh, I don't know. Choosing what devices your kids have access to, and what time their allowed to use them? Taking devices away when rules are broken? Putting devices in common rooms instead of bedrooms? >If your kid is taught to be responsible why would you need them? Ah, I see your edit confirms that this is a bad faith line of questioning.
  - ipython 2y ago
    It’s not bad faith, I honestly have not found a set of physical and technical controls that work for kids that are addicted to short form video content. Have you tried to restrict devices against a determined child? Especially one that has to use a device to complete school homework? Because you make it sound easy. I can assure you, it is not. Just because a device is allowed at a time of day doesn’t mean he’s using it for the stated purpose. I sit with him as much as possible while he’s doing homework, but I may have to step away to cook dinner, wash dishes, drive a kid somewhere, help one of my other kids - and guess what, I come back and it’s more YouTube. So how does “time of day” restrictions help? I may come off snide and annoyed, and truly this topic does make me annoyed as there is no simple solution. Yet people who are not in this position are so quick to point out how simple it is - yet never can back up their claims with actual facts. Edit- before I’m accused of being too lenient, I have a fairly strict screens policy for my kids, and I still struggle. When I go out, it’s insane how many parents just let their kids sit and watch videos while the parents talk. The kids will have iPads basically chained to them while in line, at the table, in the car, it’s absolutely sick. Hell, I have my own problems with screen addiction. Here’s some mitigations and how they’ve failed: There are no devices allowed in bedrooms. Work is to be done in common rooms, but unlike when we were kids, there is no desktop. Only laptops. So they’re easily portable. I have had a recently wiped iPhone swiped from my office because it was unlocked - it took me a few days to realize that, and by then he had watched 22 hours of YouTube. Internet is locked out on their devices but turning it on and off is a bit of a pain so sometimes I’ll forget. Even with no internet, he will pull out the laptop while in the car driving home from school and play a cached web game. They tricked my wife into thinking the rear screen in the car was unlocked, so she toggles it- not realizing that actually unlocked the screen. Their Nintendo switches have ok parental controls once I realized you can actually set it to zero time if you do it on a day-by-day basis (otherwise the minimum is 5 minutes). I have a house wide pihole, but once he gets a cellphone that will be trivial to bypass unless I go through the effort of forcing an always on vpn. One time my wife shared the password to her laptop with my daughter (who is responsible) but my son was within earshot, so he was able to unlock it while we weren’t looking. Shall I go on? I believe I’m doing the best I can yet I am fighting upstream the entire way.

gjsman-1000 2y ago

The government can, and has, taken a vested interest in parenting when parents fail. Car seats? Seat belts? Curfews? Hospital reporting laws? Child safety standards? Mandatory smoke detectors? Curriculum standards? Mandatory education? All not necessary if parents just did their jobs, right? On that note, the US government states in their own papers in the SCOTUS case that parental control filtering is so niche, that it is at the level of complete irrelevancy in fulfilling the government’s interest in preventing children from viewing porn. One SCOTUS judge with children has already said that in her experience, it’s impossibly complex even for a devoted parent. Tech can’t point to parental controls when they failed miserably in their implementation.

chii 2y ago
> All not necessary if parents just did their jobs, right? most, if not all of those things, are necessary because a parent is unable to make any changes to stop the danger. Good parenting cannot stop a car accident (unless you're claiming that you have perfect driving skills). Ditto with the other examples. The difference between age verification and those is that verification puts an undue harm onto the entire population, for which they derive zero benefit, just so that a few parents who cannot be bothered to monitor their child could continue their lack of responsibility.
- gjsman-1000 2y ago
  A few parents? According to the US governments own statistics at SCOTUS right now, almost all parents are failing to restrict, and don’t even know how, even if they wanted to. This also hoists undue harm across a population - children and teenagers. As the SCOTUS case is going forward, Texas is (correctly) pointing out that this is very different than 90s dial up, and the porn is far more intense, violent, graphic, and accessible. Because we’ve already had porn filters, and even the opposition concedes they’ve been uselessly ineffective, therefore… That’s the argument. It’s a good argument. You don’t have to like the conclusion. However, I have seen firsthand that filtering, and talking to children, absolutely is not, and never will be, effective.
  - ziddoap 2y ago
    >However, I have seen firsthand that filtering, and talking to children, absolutely is not, and never will be, effective. Weird, I have seen firsthand that absolutely can be! I guess we're at an impasse.
    - gjsman-1000 2y ago
      Do the children in question watch porn, even sometimes? If so, it was not effective. And even if it was, according to the US government, >90% of parents can’t pull it off, and they’ve had over 20 years to try (tech companies included). That’s law-changing time. As one legal analogy put it: Imagine if there was a law mandating public transportation from City A to City B. There’s a bus line, but it’s people 6 feet or taller only. Don’t come into the courtroom defending it by saying crawling is always an option, and some people have been crawling, so therefore the law is upheld.
      - bigyabai 2y ago
        This is a pathetic incarnation of the "think of the children!" fallacy Americans love so much. You fundamentally cannot stop children from watching porn. It is like arguing for a second prohibition so we can stop kids from accessing alcohol - not only will the plan fail, it will disproportionately harm the legal consumers to the point they're comfortable breaking the law. Age authentication doesn't work, and it's going to train kids to access illegal pornography if they want their fix. Parents can't stop it any more than they can stop kids from watching violent movies or renouncing their faith. Quit arguing with this slippery-slope logic, your comment history reads like Pagliacci's personal diary.
ziddoap 2y ago
>All not necessary if parents just did their jobs, right? No... Parent's can't reasonably mitigate what a car seat or seat belt mitigates. Besides that, the benefits vs. harms needs to be weighed before you shove your parenting responsibilities off to the government. Age verification laws have the potential to do a lot of harm to a lot of people. Seat belt laws do not do a lot of harm to a lot of people.
ipython 2y ago
I agree with your comment but disagree with the framing that these are necessary because parents “fail”. The safety mechanisms you point to are not a result of parents failing, it’s a result of a common agreement that society as a whole benefits from certain guardrails. Seatbelts were very controversial! But after you realize that a seatbelt is a small inconvenience that can prevent you or your children from being violently ejected from the vehicle and splatting on the pavement in the event of a car crash, we agreed as a society that the public health good outweighed the slight inconvenience of wearing a seatbelt. Nothing to do with the failings of parents. Parents already feel like failures most of the time already as it is.

ipython 2y ago

What are those technical and physical controls you speak of? If your kid is taught to be responsible why would you need them?

ziddoap 2y ago
>What are those technical and physical controls you speak of? We're on a "Hacker News", and you want me to explain what parental controls are? Do you have some specific questions that you genuinely want help with? Because this smells like a bad faith question. Physical controls like... Gosh, I don't know. Choosing what devices your kids have access to, and what time their allowed to use them? Taking devices away when rules are broken? Putting devices in common rooms instead of bedrooms? >If your kid is taught to be responsible why would you need them? Ah, I see your edit confirms that this is a bad faith line of questioning.
- ipython 2y ago
  It’s not bad faith, I honestly have not found a set of physical and technical controls that work for kids that are addicted to short form video content. Have you tried to restrict devices against a determined child? Especially one that has to use a device to complete school homework? Because you make it sound easy. I can assure you, it is not. Just because a device is allowed at a time of day doesn’t mean he’s using it for the stated purpose. I sit with him as much as possible while he’s doing homework, but I may have to step away to cook dinner, wash dishes, drive a kid somewhere, help one of my other kids - and guess what, I come back and it’s more YouTube. So how does “time of day” restrictions help? I may come off snide and annoyed, and truly this topic does make me annoyed as there is no simple solution. Yet people who are not in this position are so quick to point out how simple it is - yet never can back up their claims with actual facts. Edit- before I’m accused of being too lenient, I have a fairly strict screens policy for my kids, and I still struggle. When I go out, it’s insane how many parents just let their kids sit and watch videos while the parents talk. The kids will have iPads basically chained to them while in line, at the table, in the car, it’s absolutely sick. Hell, I have my own problems with screen addiction. Here’s some mitigations and how they’ve failed: There are no devices allowed in bedrooms. Work is to be done in common rooms, but unlike when we were kids, there is no desktop. Only laptops. So they’re easily portable. I have had a recently wiped iPhone swiped from my office because it was unlocked - it took me a few days to realize that, and by then he had watched 22 hours of YouTube. Internet is locked out on their devices but turning it on and off is a bit of a pain so sometimes I’ll forget. Even with no internet, he will pull out the laptop while in the car driving home from school and play a cached web game. They tricked my wife into thinking the rear screen in the car was unlocked, so she toggles it- not realizing that actually unlocked the screen. Their Nintendo switches have ok parental controls once I realized you can actually set it to zero time if you do it on a day-by-day basis (otherwise the minimum is 5 minutes). I have a house wide pihole, but once he gets a cellphone that will be trivial to bypass unless I go through the effort of forcing an always on vpn. One time my wife shared the password to her laptop with my daughter (who is responsible) but my son was within earshot, so he was able to unlock it while we weren’t looking. Shall I go on? I believe I’m doing the best I can yet I am fighting upstream the entire way.