6 ms·
It's a nightmare managing all this stuff. Roblox, Minecraft, Meta Quest services, Fortnite, the list goes on and on. These companies are not helping us either
by bmurphy1976 11mo ago
It's a nightmare managing all this stuff. Roblox, Minecraft, Meta Quest services, Fortnite, the list goes on and on. These companies are not helping us either.
Thankfully my son and his friends have somehow iterated away from Fortnite. It's no longer cool so they just stopped playing it. That's one less thing I have to worry about.
- andsoitis 11mo agowhat have they replaced Fortnite with? more physical play or something digital?
- Pet_Ant 11mo agoPhysical play is nigh impossible. It means getting other kid's parents to let them out. And then you need to spend your full-time supervising them. Can't just let them out with their bikes on the streets. I think the problem is that either you can give children freedom to explore the world, or you can make them accountable for their actions. Can't have both, and parents will protect their kids by not letting them get into trouble.
- coryrc 11mo agoYou can't let them out because they keep getting killed by automobiles. https://walksf.org/2023/06/28/pedestrian-deaths-reach-highest-numbers-since-1981-and-an-action-to-end-this-trend/ https://walksf.org/2023/06/28/pedestrian-deaths-reach-highes... https://www.statista.com/chart/17194/pedestrian-fatalities-in-the-us-by-year/ https://www.statista.com/chart/17194/pedestrian-fatalities-i... https://www.nbcwashington.com/investigations/driveway-danger-kids-being-injured-and-killed-in-frontover-suv-blind-zone-incidents/3119237/ https://www.nbcwashington.com/investigations/driveway-danger...
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- PunchyHamster 11mo agoSummer's highest case of kid accidents that ended in hospital in my country were the escooters, parents just buy whatever looks good in ad, not caring to train kid (technically moped license is needed) or even get one that's actually legal (with speed limit). End result - machine capable of going 50km/h or faster (think they caught one doing 90) in hands of young teen or outright kid. Hell, there was even a trucker that reported getting overtaken by one...
- coryrc 11mo agoI also hear lots of scooter accidents, and that is way too fast. The overwhelming number of deaths is still cars.
- hamdingers 11mo agoI dug into this statistic for my city recently and found the majority of reported "scooter accidents" were actually occurrences of car drivers crashing into someone on a scooter. Actual solo-scooter serious crashes were rare.
- wartywhoa23 11mo agoI'd been riding bikes with my friends around the block since the age of 6. Parents didn't chase us around and minded their own business instead of nanomanaging us into absolute snowflakes that modern children have become. We played tag at building sites, jumping gaps meter wide and five deep, made explosives out of match sticks, bolts and nuts, and showed up at home just to check in and have a quick lunch. We did a bunch more things many parents would deem insane these days (and even our own, should they know)... And yet every single one of my friends managed to survive this now-impossible freedom and came into adulthood with a bunch of wonderful warm memories of our childhoods, free of any stigmas or psychological trumas. This modern fear-based attitude towards childhood is beyond sick. Now before anyone says "but pedophiles and terrorists" - mind you, that was 80's USSR, Chikatilo had still been at large, the gossip was there but wasn't amplified enough to put everyone into scared trance like modern mass-media does. Literally nothing has changed in the society since then, maniacs were around just like they are now, but the attitude towards the outside world has been so blown out of proportion today, that parents are eager to outsource the upbringing to strangers in online games out of fear of strangers and dangers outside.
- watwut 11mo ago> We played tag at building sites, jumping gaps meter wide and five deep, made explosives out of match sticks As someone who thinks kids should have freedom, like kids in Germany or Japan have, I hate it when ridiculous arguments like these show up. Look, if you was regularly doing all that, you probably should not have all that freedom. But, most kids are actually more reasonable, if raised right.
- wartywhoa23 11mo agoWhat problem with me as I am now would you solve if you had any power to prevent me from being a kid and doing pretty common things kids were doing then? See, neither me nor any of my friends became terrorist bombers, heck, there is not even a single stuntman around us! On the contrary, that unimaginably dangerous activity in our childhood raised responsibility in us better than any supervision. We knew what we did. No amount of nannying will fix kids who lack the touch with the harsh reality, as it takes feeling some pain sometimes to be responsible and not inflict pain on others.
- skeezyjefferson 11mo ago[dead]
- massysett 11mo agoI let my kid play Roblox for a couple of weeks and I was absolutely horrified by all the inducements to seek Robux. So I removed it from her iPad, which is locked down. She gets along just fine without Roblox.
- ryanjshaw 11mo agoI play Roblox with my daughter from time to time and we have lots of fun. I’ve explained the dangers to her (strangers messaging, gambling style games, etc), and I see it as an opportunity to teach her while she still listens to me. When she’s older and I’m not privy to everything she does on a computer I don’t want her stumbling across these things uninformed. A portion of her pocket money goes to Robux, which she saves up for special outfits (eg halloween) or creatures in her favorite game about birds. No different from the hobbies many adults have - except I use it as a teaching opportunity about saving, buyer’s remorse etc., again while she’s still young and listening.
- Fuzzwah 11mo agoI've had a similar approach. My kids computers are setup next to mine and I keep an eye on what they're playing. I've instigated a purchase wait period of at least 3 days. Very often they themselves realize that the thing that they wanted to spend their pocket money on was a brief desire. I was super proud when I heard my son say "meh, this is pay to win" as quitting a random roblox game he was trying out.
- graemep 11mo ago> My kids computers are setup next to mine and I keep an eye on what they're playing. laptops and phones mage that a lot harder.
- toshinoriyagi 11mo agoThey don't have to have those. Depending on your definition of "kids", most people on HN I imagine are not giving their kids phones, laptops, or tablets at young ages (maybe less than ~13?). And if they do, I imagine the devices are somewhat locked down and monitored. I think the more technologically literate a person is, the more wary they are of unfettered access to it for children. Hence, preferring a stationary desktop where use can be supervised.
- pjmlp 11mo agoEpic made a deal with Unity, apparently they intend to work around stores by turning Fortnite into a game store.
- socalgal2 11mo agoDo you have link? How does Unity make money running in Fornite which uses Unreal?
- pjmlp 11mo agoSee Unite 2025 keynote, also https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/news/unity-and-epic-games-together-advance-the-open-interoperable-future-for-video-gaming https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/news/unity-and-epic-gam... Unity makes money as usual, the people doing those games pay their professional licenses to Unity.
- fhd2 11mo agoWhat's wrong with Minecraft? I'm not exactly a Microsoft fan, but am pretty impressed with how little control they have so far exerted over Java Edition, they even made modding easier recently by removing obfuscation. You can run your own server as much as you want with no fees, obligations or anything. And unless the kids know a server address, they can't easily join some third party server with weird stuff going on. Not that I ever heard of one of those, but I'm sure they must exist. Roblox is a dystopian nightmare in comparison.
- Nextgrid 11mo agoAs others have said there's a big difference between the Minecraft "we" (the tech community growing up on Beta versions of Minecraft) know and the Minecraft of today. The subsequent versions also developed the game mechanics a lot to turn it into something closer to an RPG than the early, bare-bones sandbox game with minimal, well-understood mechanics and the rest purely up to the players' creativity. There's nowadays an abundance of Pay-to-Win servers with custom mechanics to enable that, and I'm sure a lot of unsavory people preying on children. The social media (YouTube/etc) community around it has exploded too in a way I don't recall it before (I used to be into Minecraft videos back in the ~2012 era, and what I see nowadays grosses me out in comparison).
- autoexec 11mo agoMinecraft is infested with ads including massive in-game ads and advertisers are all over servers, popular online influencers, etc. https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/article/lacoste-x-minecraft https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/article/lacoste-x-minecraft https://minecraft.wiki/w/Universal_Studios_Event https://minecraft.wiki/w/Universal_Studios_Event https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/how-the-hell-do-you-throw-a-music-festival-in-minecraft/ https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/how-the-hell-do-you-throw-a-m...
- RGamma 11mo agoApparently Minecraft became what Second Life wanted to be.
- theshrike79 11mo ago
- acedTrex 11mo agoWhats wrong with Minecraft, that seems like an odd inclusion in the list?
- Spivak 11mo agoThere is Minecraft the standalone game that you play either by yourself or on a private server with friends you know IRL. That's totally fine. Then there is the wider Minecraft community based on a constellation of public and semi-public servers. This is a lot more like Roblox.
- hedora 11mo agoMicrosoft forces login these days for single player play, and jams ads, social networking crap. As a parent, I don’t have time for this bullshit, and assume they have malicious intentions. Also, at least once, there was some warning about a profanity filter that my kid dismissed without reading. It’s tied to my MS account, and only a matter of time before that is tied to github and linkedin. So the kid says “doodie head” one too many times, and what, I lose my windows login / bitlocker key, gh repos and professional network? Screw it.
- autoexec 11mo agoExactly, everything wrong with Minecraft started with Microsoft. They took a fun, harmless, and free game so that they could profit from it and they've been working at making it increasingly harmful ever since.
- dwattttt 11mo agoHave you considered not tying your encryption keys to your child's online activities? I can understand the thrill of danger, but I'm not that much of a gambler myself.
- LeifCarrotson 11mo agoThe Minecraft you know and love is a fantastic game, especially for kids. Top 10 all time, IMO, in terms of creativity and education and development. And you can easily set up a personal friends and family server/realm, and there are tons of free mods and maps. The problem is that malicious actors can build Roblox in anything. It's not hard to get kids hooked and begging their parents for lucrative in-game gambling currency.
- worldsavior 11mo agoThankfully? Why don't you just forbid him to play Fortnite? Sounds like your son doesn't listen to you, and that's a problem.
- dave_sid 11mo agoVictorian Dad is on HN
- recursive 11mo agoMy money's on non-dad.
- bmurphy1976 11mo agoSame. I read his other replies, he definitely comes off as somebody who does not have experience with the complexities of raising children in today's world.
- uniq7 11mo agoHas an authority ever forbid you to do something and you still did it? If so, was it a problem that you didn't listen? I'm not a parent, but fortnite is not like smoking or drugs, common. If you don't let kids grow over this kind of bad content, they will never become good discriminators.
- worldsavior 11mo agoIf they grow on it they will normalize this bad content. If someone didn't grow on Fortnite and then hear somebody wastes 6h a day on Fortnite, they will think "this guy is nuts".
- uniq7 11mo agoEverybody consumes bad content when they are a child, and everybody grows over it, becoming bored of it, and then looking for something better to do. What show did you like when you were a kid? Do you still like it? Are you eager to consume it in the same amount as you did? If not, it means you grew over it. When I was a child I loved the Monkey Island series, completing them several times a year. Solving the puzzles made feel smart, and the jokes made me chuckle. But now? I could hardly complete the high-res remakes or even the latest title. The puzzles are either too simple or just nonsensical try-and-error, I find the story boring and shallow (compared to other content I consume now), and none of the jokes really hit the spot anymore. South Park even has an episode about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxRFQ_333_Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxRFQ_333_Y I think forbidding kids to access content they crave is wrong and cruel, as you are basically forbidding them from exploring their tastes, forbidding them from becoming interesting adults with refined and deep tastes. Even in the case of alcohol, I think people should explore it and their limits (getting wasted) when they are young. I have an aunt who never tried alcohol until she was in her 40s, and she went through the same phases as teenagers; however, at that age getting too drunk too often has serious social consequences. She spiraled out of control, becoming alcoholic, and then later addicted to other drugs. I am not a psychology expert, but I always thought that her problem was that she was too old to explore this path. In my country we have an idiom I like: "potro que no galopa, de caballo se desboca", which means "colts that don't gallop become wild horses".
- cogogo 11mo agoAgree massive headache. Our kids go to the boys and girls club after school where they were playing roblox during computer time. Some parents apparently complained and it’s now banned. Not sure of that is local or nation-wide. They were kind of annoyed but they seem to understand why. I am definitely worried about giving them the tools they need to navigate the online jungle when they are older.
- PunchyHamster 11mo agoSchool (or parents) running local servers for kids in school to play to avoid the whole bunch of dangers of open online would be interesting turn back to gaming roots
- neighbour 11mo agoCurious, what have they moved on to? Is it better than Fortnite and the other games you've identified?
- theshrike79 11mo agoTo be specific: Bedrock Minecraft bad. Java Minecraft good.