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Dear All, As you post, please be clear what age range child you are discussing. There are a lot of posts here advocating strategies that make sense for a 10 y

• darkwater 10mo ago
  > Also, I got my start as a “hacker” gaming, cheating, and doing less legal stuff … nothing like getting level 99 equipment to incentivize learning how to read/edit a hex dump. Be aware of unintended consequences when you (try to) cut a child off from computer use. Yes, but no. I used to think the same, coming from the same background, and sometimes I still do but back in the day there was a big filter already (not everyone wanted or liked videogames or a PC), and we were not terminally online. Plus, for the average HNer there is a big survivorship bias on these topics because "I went earning 6 figures thanks to my experiences with computers back in the day". Nowadays almost everyone has access to an Internet connected smartphone, owning it is not a feature in itself anymore and the vast majority are not entertained trying to hack it. So it becomes something just like any other thing relates to children/teenagers: use common sense, adapt to your kids behavior, strengths and weaknesses and don't stick to rigid rules proposed by someone else that doesn't know you, but keep those rules in mind as an inspiration.
• sneak 10mo ago
  Why would a 15 year old warrant a mobile phone, much less an unrestricted one?
  • LanceH 10mo ago
    By high school there is definitely an expectation that everyone has a phone. They will literally miss out on a normal method of communication between friends and classmates. They miss out on the social group and then fade away from it and just become "that one guy in our class." The last time I mentioned this several people argued that, "true friends would stick together" or some such. Well, if you already have those friends. But if you're in high school and finding yourself, you probably haven't met all of them yet. A lot of both communication and organizing of social events happen through the phone. Kids without a phone (or some online method) will just be forgotten. This is just the reality. Unrestricted access? That depends on the kid. We had them charge in the living room (no overnight use), and their computers were actual desktops in a single office in the house. We never used filtering or tracking software. The one exception was blocking youtube (through /etc/hosts) for my youngest during covid when it was too big a distraction.
    • throwway120385 10mo ago
      This is just generally true even as an adult. A lot of social events used to start out on text threads in the early 2000's and then moved on to Facebook Calendar by the mid 2000's and then Instagram and I don't even know how it would work now. But if you wanted to be in any particular social group you probably had to deal with the icky features of all of these social media apps just to do that. We needed a public square for our little villages everywhere and instead we got a man screaming at clouds and occasionally handing out invitations.
      • LanceH 10mo ago
        So much has moved to facebook and it's eternally frustrating. Facebook has its own priorities, and I get the last minute "hey! meet here" things the next day.
    • deleted 10mo ago
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    • sneak 10mo ago
• mjg2 10mo ago
  With due respect, this comment conveys a position of privilege and surviver's bias. I, like you, eschewed online rules as a minor and I luckily benefitted from this time in my expertise. I was lucky. I didn't run into predators when using TF2, Runescape, or MySpace, but that doesn't mean the threat wasn't validated on with persons (children at the time) that fell through the cracks. The story outlined, one of a child prodigy solo-navigating the gritty online world of pre-2000's, is old and tired. An active parent can support a child at all ages safely in these "hacker" moments that are described without giving them un-reined access to tools. A parent should be able to ask "how was your day today?" and get a truthful answer about online activity, just like the same question being asked at the end of the school day. It's out of curiosity and protection, and from a nurtured relationship.
  • michaelmrose 10mo ago
    If your kid lies you might not get a truthful answer to that question in person or online. You are actually expecting a lot from devices that you never had in the real world in the first place in order to mitigate a risk that is very scary but less likely to kill them than drugs and alcohol, swimming, bad driving, biking, getting hit by a car whilst walking, getting shot, or suicide. People are freaking out over stranger danger not because it is by the numbers prevalent but because they feel like they can control it then find out the controls suck. What if I started Bikesafe an always online dash cam / coach for your rider where AI would identify unsafe behaviour and coach your kid and virtually eliminate bike deaths. Would you feel more safe? What if you read again and again that it didn't work because of how many accidents are caused by drivers or momentary mistakes. Would you feel only as unsafe as before or worse?
    • mjg2 10mo ago
      First, I'm responding the more (politely) trivial remarks. > drugs and alcohol, swimming, bad driving, biking, getting hit by a car whilst walking, getting shot, or suicide. These are false equivalences-- when has a pool try to groom a child over the span of 3 years? > What if I started Bikesafe an always online dash cam / coach for your rider where AI would identify unsafe behaviour and coach your kid and virtually eliminate bike deaths. Would you feel more safe? This is wholesale the wrong approach. This is the parent absconding responsibility, which is my driving point of the problem. Now to the main point: > You are actually expecting a lot from devices that you never had in the real world in the first place ... I'm not expecting anything from my devices because machines cannot be held accountable for human choices; a gun cannot be held accountable for being misused. The internet is a powerful tool and users should understand the ramifications of certain actions. > If your kid lies you might not get a truthful answer to that question in person or online. That's a parenting moment that one should relish retrospectively. To teach them good morals and values, to remind them that you love them, and that lying about safety processes can be very dangerous.
• xg15 10mo ago
  Parent: All I want is an off switch! HN: No no no let me stop you right there
• hexbin010 10mo ago
  Why are you addressing HN like a headmaster addressing schoolchildren?
• lo_zamoyski 10mo ago
  The main point of childhood is to develop a solid basic humanity with good habits and a good moral compass. That means moral, intellectual, spiritual, and physical development. Good parenting and a good social environment support these. As such, these goods should be prioritized. We know that children and teenagers are vulnerable to all sorts of filth that the internet makes available very easily, and indeed even inflicts without consent onto users. Porn, for example, was something that was more difficult to encounter before the internet, and when you did encounter it, it was in smaller amounts. Today, you are a URL away from an unlimited sea of it, and the ubiquity of mobile devices means restricting access is difficult. This makes parenting more challenging. And that's a more pernicious even if common problem. Social media and SFV cause all sorts of developmental harm without suffering the same stigmas as pornography or violence, and so its use continue with the full approval of the social environment. (And age range here is not so important to discuss; pornography consumption and social media/SFV use is bad for everyone, including adults.) > Be aware of unintended consequences when you (try to) cut a child off from computer use. A corollary of what I wrote about is that you have to understand what matters. Becoming a "hacker" isn't the priority of childhood, and it's odd to prioritize that. It isn't worth anything if you are left screwed up by consuming bad content. (Nor does most of the most fruitful experimentation require constant and unfettered internet access. Without maturity and discipline, the internet easily becomes an enabler of shallow and superficial engagement. Deeper exploration is often best facilitated by disconnecting.) It's also senseless to appeal to exceptions. However, I do think that the most important factor isn't parental controls, but the family environment, what parents teach their children, and the social groups your family and your children move around in. If parents are relying on technology as a substitute for their job as parents, then children will easily fall prey to all sorts of trash. But if children have parents who communicate clearly what they should and should not be doing, maintain a healthy and active family life, and model good behavior by example while penalizing bad behavior, then children will generally stick to good behaviors. I think law has an important role to play. The former should support the latter. And more fundamentally, this requires a certain backtracking from the anything goes/do what feels good ethos of the contemporary moral landscape. Moral confusion is the biggest factor. Law is effectively a determination of general moral principles within certain socially and culturally concrete circumstances. As the old expression goes, lex iniusta non est lex (an unjust law is not a law). The point of the law is to guard the common good (which is what makes a society) and help steer people away from the bad and toward the good. We all need these to live good lives, and we need to finally put to rest the pernicious notion that the law is not about moral guidance and that all it exists for is to secure our "rights" to whatever we want, where the understanding of rights entails a destructive do what thou wilt relativism. True freedom is not the ability to do whatever you damn well please. It is the ability to do what is good, and to be able to do the good, one must be virtuous - a proper formation - that enables you to be good. Vice cripples our ability to be. A legal system and a society that is supportive of virtue and the good is good for its individual members. One that embraces a bullshit "neutrality" is an easy target for predatory exploitation. There is a great deal of money to be made from vice and stupidity. We become morally defenseless in the face of the wolves. Might becomes right, and in a culture of moral relativism, we internalize this tyrannical false principle.
• micromacrofoot 10mo ago
  and I was groomed and raped at age 13 because I had unfettered access to AOL chat rooms caution is necessary and kids can learn plenty without unrestricted access I personally would have been better off without internet access, no knowledge of hex dumps would have been worth it. It's a little upsetting that you're using that as an example of why kids should have more permissive access.
  • DebugDruid 10mo ago
    You blame unfettered access to AOL chat, I blame your parents for giving you internet access and not teaching you to never share your real name or real address online. Mine taught me that early on. Later, I learned about proxies so I could further hide my approximate IP location from danger.
    • deleted 10mo ago
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    • micromacrofoot 10mo ago
      no I blame the rapist personally, predators exploit any tools they're able to there was plenty of "you need to get your kids on computers so they can get the jobs of the future" in the 90s that parents fell into, and information about online predation was almost non-existent at the time - I didn't even have to share my home address or name, I was encouraged to meet this person at their church mind you my guardian at the time didn't even graduate high school I shouldn't have been given access to tools my parent didn't understand, but corporations still pressure this constantly today I doubt even a single digit % of parents know what they're doing when giving kids free access to youtube for example... and recently the CEO of roblox called pedophiles an "opportunity"
• Bluecobra 10mo ago
  > Be aware of unintended consequences when you (try to) cut a child off from computer use. In the mid 90’s I got my first PC when I was 13 but my parents would not let me online. I ended up finding a way via nefarious means. I bought a 25’ telephone cord from Radio Shack and when my parents weren’t home I would unplug their bedroom phone. I discovered that if I ran the Prodigy installer it would connect to the Internet briefly to download the latest phone numbers in my area. I found that I could alt-tab out of the full screen installer and use the lnternet unfiltered for about 10 minutes or so before they kicked me off. This worked for about a year or so. I then had to resort to stealing my parent’s credit card and signing up for free trials and cancelling them before the charges incurred. I eventually screwed up big time. I downloaded a “free porn” BBS dialer and it made an international call to South America and ran up the phone bill $300 or so. I lost my computer privileges for a couple of months. I guess the silver lining was when I turned 16, I immediately got a job and my drivers license so I could pay for my own phone line. I kept my grades up to maintain privileges and was a straight arrow since.