7 ms·

As a parent I was more interested in the "supervised users" feature to monitor your children's internet usage. Parents desperately need something simple to help

by junto 13y ago

As a parent I was more interested in the "supervised users" feature to monitor your children's internet usage. Parents desperately need something simple to help them make sure that their children are safe on the internet. Most solutions are far too technical for most parents to understand and their children are more technically aware than they are, even at a young age. It is of course important that parents can educate their children about the dangers of the internet, but such a feature is like having stabilisers on a bike. Once your children show you that they can be trusted the you can take the supervision off and give them the privacy they they too deserve. I think Google is hitting a sweet spot if they can get that feature right. http://chrome.blogspot.de/2013/10/a-beta-preview-supervised-users.html http://chrome.blogspot.de/2013/10/a-beta-preview-supervised-...

avighnay 13y ago
Echoes with all parents for sure
- CamperBob2 13y ago
  Not all. As a kid, I was taught that information wasn't dangerous.
  - jack-r-abbit 13y ago
    As a parent, I have learned that not every mind at every age is equipped to process every bit of information out there without some guidance. Misinformation can be dangerous. Information out of context can be dangerous. Information in ill-prepared hands can be dangerous. The word is mightier than the sword - Ahiqar The feature is called "supervised users" not "locked in a tower users". So information can flow however the supervisor wishes. It could be simply a "monitor & discuss" role where seeing the user's browser history gives the supervisor information about what the user has been reading and they initiate a conversation about it. It doesn't have to lead to blocking and restriction. It can be another tool for parents to use to teach their children.
    - superuser2 13y ago
      > where seeing the user's browser history gives the supervisor information about what the user has been reading and they initiate a conversation about it. Surveillance has a chilling effect and parent-child surveillance is no different. If I had to do this, I would have just avoided the internet as much as possible. I suspect most kids beyond age 9/10 are roughly the same. I would never have learned to program, never have started reading HN, never have browsed Wikipedia except for specific queries. I would never have acquired the information or communication and technical skills I currently possess. I'd be a completely different and vastly inferior person looking at a much less interesting future. > It doesn't have to lead to blocking and restriction "Monitor and supervise" is orders of magnitude worse than content filtering. This approach forces children to block themselves from having any sort of individual experience. If your child is even slightly introverted and is old enough not to not want to share every second with you, "monitor and supervise internet activity" is equal to "learn about and engage with the world around you as little as possible." It sends a message that by default, information is bad - any time you do seek information, you know you'll have to justify your curiosity. This doesn't just apply to objectionable content, it applies to everything. I was happy to show my parents my finished projects and even wrote a few specifically for family. If I were getting interrogated, incompetently, about every intermediate step ("Why did you install django-south? What's a database? What's a schema? What's a query? What's a function? Oh, is that like a ___? No, mom, go away.") I would have just watched mindless TV instead. Could you imagine knowing that you will have to discuss every link you follow and every Google search you enter with anyone, let alone your parents? That's horrifying.
      - ccernaf 13y ago
        Why do you think that you would have to explain to your parents every single link you visit? Surely parents will use their discretion, just as they do with every other decision their child makes. There is a difference between the government-citizen surveillance and parent-child surveillance.
        FBT 13y ago
        The analogy between the spying government and the spying parent is a good one, and I am interested to hear how you say that it's different. In both cases, a figure of authority (legitimate authority!) spys on you, pro[poradly for your own good. (Maybe even really for your own good! Just because the NSA's spying hasn't actually successfully foiled any terrorist plots yet doesn't mean that all spying programs of that sort are ineffectual...) The one difference that I can see (and it's not an unimportant one) is that a good parent is open about what they are doing, and talks to the kid, gets the kids opinions. While organizations like the NSA try their hardest to make sure the citizenry don't even know that they're being spied on. This is a way in which a parent's spying might be not quite as bad. However, remember that at least in theory the USA is a democracy, while a family is best described as a dictatorship. In the ideal world where the US government actually listened to its citizens and engaged in discourse with them, the USG would have by far the moral high ground over parents, even over parents who run a benevolent dictatorship where they actually listen the kid and make family policy accordingly, as a benevolent dictatorship still has certain problems when compared to a true democracy.
  - PhasmaFelis 13y ago
    There's shit I got into as a kid--horror movies, torture accounts--that gave me nightmares for weeks. My parents did their best to guide me away from stuff like that until I was older, and they were right to do so--I had enough trouble sleeping as it was. When they failed, they helped me talk about it and deal with it. Your shallow sanctimony excludes a gigantic middle between "let your kids do whatever they want" and "keep your kids in a padded room lined with Bible verses."
    - superuser2 13y ago
      >There's shit I got into as a kid--horror movies, torture accounts--that gave me nightmares for weeks So what? "Kid does something, figures out it was a bad idea" isn't a tragedy. Definitely doesn't rise to the level of justifying censorship. It's being a kid. It's learning. Seriously, human beings are going to choose (partially) negative experiences sometimes and you should let them. It's part of being a person. Use of (physical|emotional|technological) force to prevent this is both disturbing and ultimately futile. Warnings are one thing, but you still have the right to ignore them and find out for yourself why they were given.
      - PhasmaFelis 13y ago
        > Seriously, human beings are going to choose (partially) negative experiences sometimes and you should let them. It's part of being a person. Use of (physical|emotional|technological) force to prevent this is both disturbing and ultimately futile. O.o Have you, like, seen children? My roommate's one-year-old regularly chooses to throw himself headfirst off the couch. She uses physical force to prevent him. Disturbing and futile, apparently! Or, if we assume an exception for physical injury, I would certainly have chosen to spend my childhood indoors playing video games if my parents hadn't used emotional force to get me to go to school. I suppose you can try to derail onto the failings of public education if you like, but I wasn't interested in alternative education either; I just wanted to play video games, which would probably have resulted in me still living at home at 35 instead of having a degree and a satisfying, well-paying job. Clearly they should have just "warned" me that I was going to ruin my entire life, then stood aside and let me learn, eh?
  - avighnay 13y ago
    The fact is inspite of all parenting measures each one of us has had encounters as a child, which when looking back might have done us great harm if we were not just plain lucky enough to have supportive parents As parents ourselves this gets us into the cycle of being protective around our own children and it is definitely needed to minimize the encounters and be there to safely catch them when they fall A bird pushes its fledgling off a ledge to make it fly but also hurries to take it under its wings when it senses a predator about. Guess this is basically the dilemma of every parent (every child that becomes the parent)
    - LaGrange 13y ago
      In fact I’d say that the harm to the trust in your parent that comes from such censorship pretty much outweighs the risk of reading stuff. It’s important to know what the kids do, but that’s to be achieved by having real contact with them and having them tell you that. Which happens in many families I know, so before anyone says that’s impossible because of the „teenage rebellion”: too bad all the kids that can assert their independence while still talking to their parents about pretty much everything exist.
  - snowwrestler 13y ago
    Information is the most dangerous thing there is.
    - CamperBob2 13y ago
      Well, yeah, but not in the sense used by the GP and other assorted pearl-clutchers in the thread.
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
  - zobzu 13y ago
    Likewise. I turned out ok. I think.
jack-r-abbit 13y ago
Same here. I didn't realize tabs playing music was such a rampant problem that needed to be addressed. The supervised users feature has a lot of appeal to me as well. My kids' computer (Mac Mini) has Chrome set as the default browser. I'll need to look into this more closely.
- sentenza 13y ago
  Initially, I also wondered how many people have the noise problem. So far, the only way I managed to maneuver myself into that situation in Firefox is by having a few hundred tabs open (enough to make FF become sluggish and unresponsive) and then clicking around too much in an unresponsive interval. In that situation, I'd end up with some tabs, unknown to me, that I had accidentally clicked, which then start playing youtube videos. There might, however, be more exposure to this problem for people who don't use adblockplus and noscript. I'm just not sure how. You'd open a bunch of tabs and then a few seconds later one of them would start blabbing?
  - djur 13y ago
    It's almost entirely due to ads, and this exact problem drove me to using adblock after years of avoiding it. Sometimes it just happens in the background at random, and sometimes it happens when loading bookmark groups. It's not really a sufficient solution for me. I'd prefer to explicitly allow tabs to play sound. I believe Firefox experimented with that approach and found users didn't like it, though.
  - simcop2387 13y ago
    There's been a number of ads and things on pages like cnn.com that'll start playing something to make noise, while being below the fold just so you'll have to go looking for it to stop it. I've seen it go in and out in cycles depending on the page and what you view.
  - jack-r-abbit 13y ago
    I guess I just don't use my browser the same way. I don't typically have more than 15-20 tabs open but I very rarely have a tab open that I'm unaware of. I must also manage to avoid all the annoying sites that use ads that play automatically. I don't use adblock or noscript and I think I can count on one hand the number of times I've had an ad play on its own. And it was always pretty easy to spot and rectify. I wonder how many tabs you can open before the tabs become too narrow and this new speaker icon goes away. Or maybe it would take the place of the favicon on a really narrow tab.
imperialWicket 13y ago
Supervised users are definitely awesome for kids, but I'm also planning to try it out as a replacement for my current /etc/hosts hack for keeping away from time-sucking sites.

by junto 13y ago

avighnay 13y ago

Echoes with all parents for sure

CamperBob2 13y ago
Not all. As a kid, I was taught that information wasn't dangerous.
- jack-r-abbit 13y ago
  As a parent, I have learned that not every mind at every age is equipped to process every bit of information out there without some guidance. Misinformation can be dangerous. Information out of context can be dangerous. Information in ill-prepared hands can be dangerous. The word is mightier than the sword - Ahiqar The feature is called "supervised users" not "locked in a tower users". So information can flow however the supervisor wishes. It could be simply a "monitor & discuss" role where seeing the user's browser history gives the supervisor information about what the user has been reading and they initiate a conversation about it. It doesn't have to lead to blocking and restriction. It can be another tool for parents to use to teach their children.
  - superuser2 13y ago
    > where seeing the user's browser history gives the supervisor information about what the user has been reading and they initiate a conversation about it. Surveillance has a chilling effect and parent-child surveillance is no different. If I had to do this, I would have just avoided the internet as much as possible. I suspect most kids beyond age 9/10 are roughly the same. I would never have learned to program, never have started reading HN, never have browsed Wikipedia except for specific queries. I would never have acquired the information or communication and technical skills I currently possess. I'd be a completely different and vastly inferior person looking at a much less interesting future. > It doesn't have to lead to blocking and restriction "Monitor and supervise" is orders of magnitude worse than content filtering. This approach forces children to block themselves from having any sort of individual experience. If your child is even slightly introverted and is old enough not to not want to share every second with you, "monitor and supervise internet activity" is equal to "learn about and engage with the world around you as little as possible." It sends a message that by default, information is bad - any time you do seek information, you know you'll have to justify your curiosity. This doesn't just apply to objectionable content, it applies to everything. I was happy to show my parents my finished projects and even wrote a few specifically for family. If I were getting interrogated, incompetently, about every intermediate step ("Why did you install django-south? What's a database? What's a schema? What's a query? What's a function? Oh, is that like a ___? No, mom, go away.") I would have just watched mindless TV instead. Could you imagine knowing that you will have to discuss every link you follow and every Google search you enter with anyone, let alone your parents? That's horrifying.
    - ccernaf 13y ago
      Why do you think that you would have to explain to your parents every single link you visit? Surely parents will use their discretion, just as they do with every other decision their child makes. There is a difference between the government-citizen surveillance and parent-child surveillance.
      - FBT 13y ago
        The analogy between the spying government and the spying parent is a good one, and I am interested to hear how you say that it's different. In both cases, a figure of authority (legitimate authority!) spys on you, pro[poradly for your own good. (Maybe even really for your own good! Just because the NSA's spying hasn't actually successfully foiled any terrorist plots yet doesn't mean that all spying programs of that sort are ineffectual...) The one difference that I can see (and it's not an unimportant one) is that a good parent is open about what they are doing, and talks to the kid, gets the kids opinions. While organizations like the NSA try their hardest to make sure the citizenry don't even know that they're being spied on. This is a way in which a parent's spying might be not quite as bad. However, remember that at least in theory the USA is a democracy, while a family is best described as a dictatorship. In the ideal world where the US government actually listened to its citizens and engaged in discourse with them, the USG would have by far the moral high ground over parents, even over parents who run a benevolent dictatorship where they actually listen the kid and make family policy accordingly, as a benevolent dictatorship still has certain problems when compared to a true democracy.
- PhasmaFelis 13y ago
  There's shit I got into as a kid--horror movies, torture accounts--that gave me nightmares for weeks. My parents did their best to guide me away from stuff like that until I was older, and they were right to do so--I had enough trouble sleeping as it was. When they failed, they helped me talk about it and deal with it. Your shallow sanctimony excludes a gigantic middle between "let your kids do whatever they want" and "keep your kids in a padded room lined with Bible verses."
  - superuser2 13y ago
    >There's shit I got into as a kid--horror movies, torture accounts--that gave me nightmares for weeks So what? "Kid does something, figures out it was a bad idea" isn't a tragedy. Definitely doesn't rise to the level of justifying censorship. It's being a kid. It's learning. Seriously, human beings are going to choose (partially) negative experiences sometimes and you should let them. It's part of being a person. Use of (physical|emotional|technological) force to prevent this is both disturbing and ultimately futile. Warnings are one thing, but you still have the right to ignore them and find out for yourself why they were given.
    - PhasmaFelis 13y ago
      > Seriously, human beings are going to choose (partially) negative experiences sometimes and you should let them. It's part of being a person. Use of (physical|emotional|technological) force to prevent this is both disturbing and ultimately futile. O.o Have you, like, seen children? My roommate's one-year-old regularly chooses to throw himself headfirst off the couch. She uses physical force to prevent him. Disturbing and futile, apparently! Or, if we assume an exception for physical injury, I would certainly have chosen to spend my childhood indoors playing video games if my parents hadn't used emotional force to get me to go to school. I suppose you can try to derail onto the failings of public education if you like, but I wasn't interested in alternative education either; I just wanted to play video games, which would probably have resulted in me still living at home at 35 instead of having a degree and a satisfying, well-paying job. Clearly they should have just "warned" me that I was going to ruin my entire life, then stood aside and let me learn, eh?
- avighnay 13y ago
  The fact is inspite of all parenting measures each one of us has had encounters as a child, which when looking back might have done us great harm if we were not just plain lucky enough to have supportive parents As parents ourselves this gets us into the cycle of being protective around our own children and it is definitely needed to minimize the encounters and be there to safely catch them when they fall A bird pushes its fledgling off a ledge to make it fly but also hurries to take it under its wings when it senses a predator about. Guess this is basically the dilemma of every parent (every child that becomes the parent)
  - LaGrange 13y ago
    In fact I’d say that the harm to the trust in your parent that comes from such censorship pretty much outweighs the risk of reading stuff. It’s important to know what the kids do, but that’s to be achieved by having real contact with them and having them tell you that. Which happens in many families I know, so before anyone says that’s impossible because of the „teenage rebellion”: too bad all the kids that can assert their independence while still talking to their parents about pretty much everything exist.
- snowwrestler 13y ago
  Information is the most dangerous thing there is.
  - CamperBob2 13y ago
    Well, yeah, but not in the sense used by the GP and other assorted pearl-clutchers in the thread.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
- zobzu 13y ago
  Likewise. I turned out ok. I think.

jack-r-abbit 13y ago

Same here. I didn't realize tabs playing music was such a rampant problem that needed to be addressed. The supervised users feature has a lot of appeal to me as well. My kids' computer (Mac Mini) has Chrome set as the default browser. I'll need to look into this more closely.

sentenza 13y ago
Initially, I also wondered how many people have the noise problem. So far, the only way I managed to maneuver myself into that situation in Firefox is by having a few hundred tabs open (enough to make FF become sluggish and unresponsive) and then clicking around too much in an unresponsive interval. In that situation, I'd end up with some tabs, unknown to me, that I had accidentally clicked, which then start playing youtube videos. There might, however, be more exposure to this problem for people who don't use adblockplus and noscript. I'm just not sure how. You'd open a bunch of tabs and then a few seconds later one of them would start blabbing?
- djur 13y ago
  It's almost entirely due to ads, and this exact problem drove me to using adblock after years of avoiding it. Sometimes it just happens in the background at random, and sometimes it happens when loading bookmark groups. It's not really a sufficient solution for me. I'd prefer to explicitly allow tabs to play sound. I believe Firefox experimented with that approach and found users didn't like it, though.
- simcop2387 13y ago
  There's been a number of ads and things on pages like cnn.com that'll start playing something to make noise, while being below the fold just so you'll have to go looking for it to stop it. I've seen it go in and out in cycles depending on the page and what you view.
- jack-r-abbit 13y ago
  I guess I just don't use my browser the same way. I don't typically have more than 15-20 tabs open but I very rarely have a tab open that I'm unaware of. I must also manage to avoid all the annoying sites that use ads that play automatically. I don't use adblock or noscript and I think I can count on one hand the number of times I've had an ad play on its own. And it was always pretty easy to spot and rectify. I wonder how many tabs you can open before the tabs become too narrow and this new speaker icon goes away. Or maybe it would take the place of the favicon on a really narrow tab.

imperialWicket 13y ago

Supervised users are definitely awesome for kids, but I'm also planning to try it out as a replacement for my current /etc/hosts hack for keeping away from time-sucking sites.