Strong disagree on parental controls. As a parent, if I don’t trust my kids, they won’t get a device. Period. If I trust them, they will get a device without any limitations. Period.
I really don’t see the point in parental controls, all it does is encourage kids to learn how to get around parental controls. Instead of that, teach kids what it takes to earn your trust and go that route.
I’m a parent, and here are my only controls:
Switch - passcode because my 4yo kept playing games when not allowed; I told the older kids the code, and will probably remove it soon
my computers passwords - when my kids are allowed to play games or whatever, I’ll unlock it and tell them what they can and can’t use it for, with zero controls other than the underlying threat of losing privileges entirely if they misuse it
tablet - each has a passcode, but the kids don’t use them much (only on trips)
TV - again, 4yo kept watching when not allowed, and the older kids watched as well (but only when the 4yo did it), so they all lost access; will probably remove this soon
We do no internet filters, no enforced time limits (they have their own timers though), and no locks on specific programs. Either I trust them with everything or nothing. They know what they’re allowed to use, and they know the consequences.
I owe my IT career to my parents trying to restrict my access with parental controls. I learned a lot figuring out how to circumvent those things and cover my tracks.
Yup, I actually refuse to allow them to play any games with MTX, at least for now (they’re still young). So Fortnite et al are outright banned in my house because I don’t want them getting used to that environment just yet. We’ll probably get there, but they’re haven’t yet learned how to manage money properly and defer gratification, and I don’t think the consequences of MTX are steep enough to properly teach that lesson. And this isn’t just for them, I ban myself as well, and I’d like to ban my wife, but she gets to make her own choices since she’s an adult.
I totally give them money they can spend on other things, and my older kid has absolutely learned that spending it all at once is a poor choice, but they’re still too impulsive for me to let them loose on predatory games.
I’m not convinced by your approach but I respect that you’ve put a lot of thought into it. I guess my main issue is that it seems some parents don’t think about it at all.
Oh boy, good luck with that outlook in today’s age. You can trust them to get into shit, I believe helicopter parenting has become prevalent because we’ve lost the “village” it takes to raise a kid. You used to be able to trust a parent to step in if they were over at someone else’s house and a discussion got nasty or a fight broke out. You would have neighbors who looked after the kids and would let you know if they were up to some shit. Now the kids talk on discord and other apps, completely unsupervised or at times even inaccessible (after the fact) if they’ve set it up right. You’ve got algorithm’s trained on millions of users to suck your kids in, never ending entertainment with minimal effort.
As a parent, who is completely conscious of everything going on around social media and technology, you will absolutely need to step in. Most adults can’t even handle it, you WILL have to be the parent who sets boundaries on the stimuli their brain craves but has a negative impact on their overall health. You don’t instill healthy eating into a child by giving them unlimited money and telling them to make their own decisions. You work with them, share your experience, let them cook sometimes but monitor over and see the results of their activity. Are they making healthy choices or ordering door dash?
Make it more difficult for them by setting restrictions they have to learn to bypass, even if it feels ridiculous it’s a whole different setup for effort-reward. It will interest them into getting into deeper components of technology and how everything works. It’s absolutely what kids are suppose to do, just like we always figure out a way to get away with shit which ultimately improves various skills.
As a parent, who is completely conscious of everything going on around social media and technology, you will absolutely need to step in
Oh absolutely. My point is that supervision should be as low-touch as possible. Let kids screw up when the stakes are low so they don’t screw up later when the stakes are higher.
As a kid, I got into things I shouldn’t have online, mostly because we only had dialup so I would wait until everyone was in bed to use the computer so I didn’t disrupt phone calls coming in. I ended up getting caught, had a productive talk, and learned what to avoid. That was really effective for me, and the lack of firm guardrails got me interested in learning to computers worked, so I taught myself basic webdev as a teen, which launched me into a software dev role.
If we had strict rules preventing computer use, yes, I probably wouldn’t have gotten into things I shouldn’t, but I also wouldn’t have had the freedom to teach myself software dev and probably wouldn’t have gotten interested in it.
you WILL have to be the parent who sets boundaries on the stimuli their brain craves but has a negative impact on their overall health
Oh, and I certainly do, but I use a carrot and stick approach rather than a “guardrails” approach. I tell them what the rules are, but put nothing in place to prevent them from breaking the rules, and when they do (and they will), I’ll completely remove access for a time after a discussion about why the rules exist. For example:
video games - we have a system where the kids “earn” playtime (we do it by reading books), and if they go beyond their allotted playtime (we have a max of 2hrs/day), they completely lose the privilege (I take the console away)
bedtime - we got them watches w/ games on them and told them they couldn’t use them at night; we caught them using them at night, but let them continue and when they were late getting up, we pointed at the watch as the issue and took it away for a while; now they don’t stay up nearly as late w/ their watches
coming home on time - kid wanted to go to the park alone, so we told them when to be back; they came back late, so I took away their bicycle (that’s how they got there) for a while saying I don’t trust them to come back on time; now they come back on time, and they can ride their bicycle pretty much wherever they want (we have boundaries)
That’s how I was raised, and I found it incredibly effective. I almost never had things taken away as well, because once they showed they were willing to, I tended to listen and follow the rules.
You don’t instill healthy eating into a child by giving them unlimited money and telling them to make their own decisions.
Sure, but you also don’t instill healthy eating habits by not letting them make poor choices either. Let kids fail and fail hard (i.e. don’t catch them), but be there to help them back up.
For example, let them eat as much Halloween candy as they want for one day, and then when they inevitably get a stomach ache, they’ll learn why moderation is important. Likewise with money, if they waste it all on something stupid and don’t have enough for what they really want, they’ll learn the value of delayed gratification.
The more natural and immediate the consequence, the more effective it is at teaching them self-discipline.
Obviously, protect them from the worst harms (e.g. we don’t let our kids play w/ knives or fire), but let them try and fail while the stakes are low.
Nah, the point is that technical limitations are no substitute for actual in-person supervision. I don’t have a lock on the sweets cabinet but that doesn’t mean my kids can eat unlimited sweets.
lol I don’t want to get lost in analogies, but these sweets are in their pocket. Their friends are giving them new brands and better sweets. You know what sweets you have in the cabinet, you have no idea how many sweets your kid is eating per day. This is all pretty generic through when considering the entire childhood. Of course you’re gonna be there and watch your kid so they’re not over doing it at age 4, but 12+? Eh, it’s an uphill battle you should stay vigilant on till they’re legally and showing at least basic adult responsibility.
If you’re nearby your kid when you’re in the park or they’re at school interacting with other kids (etc), you’re gonna be curious and want to make sure they’re doing alright but just kinda peripheral paying attention to their actions while mingling yourself. It can be treated respectfully and non intrusively by just checking your router (other devices), what kind of traffic is coming in and out (generic safety), and maybe something along the lines of just asking to see their app activity in their account to get an idea of how they’re spending their time without diving right into their private data.
I don’t really understand the disconnect going on here and maybe everyone is a lot more innocent than I was. I for sure was up to some bullshit online at a young age and that was dial-up. We’re really looking at everything like how the election went, social influencers, and young people getting radicalized online and just throwing our hands up saying it’s all good?
Just set up redirects on DNS levels for the fedi alternatives. E.g. Reddit->selfhosted Lemmy, Musk’s trumpet called X->selfhosted Mastodon instance, Instagram->Pixelfed and TikTok->Loops. I mainly use Instagram, because we have a class group on it.
That is neat on getting your kids into a better online environment where development isn’t purely incentivized. But surely you must know that’s not the end-all of a kids user experience when being online. You’re not always gonna have them on just your setup either, they will be at their friends and on foreign devices. There’s unfortunately not much you can do in that instance without making a huge fuss.
Is everyone just young without kids and had free reign on the internet and got by ok so it’s more relaxed to you? Were you in a situation where middle school and that age have direct communication to each other? I know teachers and other parents with horror stories of the shit that comes out. It’s mostly what would be considered old school frat boy or fraternity shit but at a way earlier age, some grow out of it but I imagine others just carry on since it never effected them and then we wonder about the trolls who exist on social media lol.
Strong disagree on parental controls. As a parent, if I don’t trust my kids, they won’t get a device. Period. If I trust them, they will get a device without any limitations. Period.
I really don’t see the point in parental controls, all it does is encourage kids to learn how to get around parental controls. Instead of that, teach kids what it takes to earn your trust and go that route.
I’m a parent, and here are my only controls:
We do no internet filters, no enforced time limits (they have their own timers though), and no locks on specific programs. Either I trust them with everything or nothing. They know what they’re allowed to use, and they know the consequences.
I owe my IT career to my parents trying to restrict my access with parental controls. I learned a lot figuring out how to circumvent those things and cover my tracks.
This is also how I became an Internet plumber.
Agree and using the same approach. Only limitation is purchases, they can’t spend money.
It never stops with parental control. Corps will use it for their own CYA policy as well, specifically age restricting everything
Yup, I actually refuse to allow them to play any games with MTX, at least for now (they’re still young). So Fortnite et al are outright banned in my house because I don’t want them getting used to that environment just yet. We’ll probably get there, but they’re haven’t yet learned how to manage money properly and defer gratification, and I don’t think the consequences of MTX are steep enough to properly teach that lesson. And this isn’t just for them, I ban myself as well, and I’d like to ban my wife, but she gets to make her own choices since she’s an adult.
I totally give them money they can spend on other things, and my older kid has absolutely learned that spending it all at once is a poor choice, but they’re still too impulsive for me to let them loose on predatory games.
I’m not convinced by your approach but I respect that you’ve put a lot of thought into it. I guess my main issue is that it seems some parents don’t think about it at all.
That’s completely fair. IMO, engaged parent > parental controls > absentee parent.
Oh boy, good luck with that outlook in today’s age. You can trust them to get into shit, I believe helicopter parenting has become prevalent because we’ve lost the “village” it takes to raise a kid. You used to be able to trust a parent to step in if they were over at someone else’s house and a discussion got nasty or a fight broke out. You would have neighbors who looked after the kids and would let you know if they were up to some shit. Now the kids talk on discord and other apps, completely unsupervised or at times even inaccessible (after the fact) if they’ve set it up right. You’ve got algorithm’s trained on millions of users to suck your kids in, never ending entertainment with minimal effort.
As a parent, who is completely conscious of everything going on around social media and technology, you will absolutely need to step in. Most adults can’t even handle it, you WILL have to be the parent who sets boundaries on the stimuli their brain craves but has a negative impact on their overall health. You don’t instill healthy eating into a child by giving them unlimited money and telling them to make their own decisions. You work with them, share your experience, let them cook sometimes but monitor over and see the results of their activity. Are they making healthy choices or ordering door dash?
Make it more difficult for them by setting restrictions they have to learn to bypass, even if it feels ridiculous it’s a whole different setup for effort-reward. It will interest them into getting into deeper components of technology and how everything works. It’s absolutely what kids are suppose to do, just like we always figure out a way to get away with shit which ultimately improves various skills.
Oh absolutely. My point is that supervision should be as low-touch as possible. Let kids screw up when the stakes are low so they don’t screw up later when the stakes are higher.
As a kid, I got into things I shouldn’t have online, mostly because we only had dialup so I would wait until everyone was in bed to use the computer so I didn’t disrupt phone calls coming in. I ended up getting caught, had a productive talk, and learned what to avoid. That was really effective for me, and the lack of firm guardrails got me interested in learning to computers worked, so I taught myself basic webdev as a teen, which launched me into a software dev role.
If we had strict rules preventing computer use, yes, I probably wouldn’t have gotten into things I shouldn’t, but I also wouldn’t have had the freedom to teach myself software dev and probably wouldn’t have gotten interested in it.
Oh, and I certainly do, but I use a carrot and stick approach rather than a “guardrails” approach. I tell them what the rules are, but put nothing in place to prevent them from breaking the rules, and when they do (and they will), I’ll completely remove access for a time after a discussion about why the rules exist. For example:
That’s how I was raised, and I found it incredibly effective. I almost never had things taken away as well, because once they showed they were willing to, I tended to listen and follow the rules.
Sure, but you also don’t instill healthy eating habits by not letting them make poor choices either. Let kids fail and fail hard (i.e. don’t catch them), but be there to help them back up.
For example, let them eat as much Halloween candy as they want for one day, and then when they inevitably get a stomach ache, they’ll learn why moderation is important. Likewise with money, if they waste it all on something stupid and don’t have enough for what they really want, they’ll learn the value of delayed gratification.
The more natural and immediate the consequence, the more effective it is at teaching them self-discipline.
Obviously, protect them from the worst harms (e.g. we don’t let our kids play w/ knives or fire), but let them try and fail while the stakes are low.
Nah, the point is that technical limitations are no substitute for actual in-person supervision. I don’t have a lock on the sweets cabinet but that doesn’t mean my kids can eat unlimited sweets.
lol I don’t want to get lost in analogies, but these sweets are in their pocket. Their friends are giving them new brands and better sweets. You know what sweets you have in the cabinet, you have no idea how many sweets your kid is eating per day. This is all pretty generic through when considering the entire childhood. Of course you’re gonna be there and watch your kid so they’re not over doing it at age 4, but 12+? Eh, it’s an uphill battle you should stay vigilant on till they’re legally and showing at least basic adult responsibility.
If you’re nearby your kid when you’re in the park or they’re at school interacting with other kids (etc), you’re gonna be curious and want to make sure they’re doing alright but just kinda peripheral paying attention to their actions while mingling yourself. It can be treated respectfully and non intrusively by just checking your router (other devices), what kind of traffic is coming in and out (generic safety), and maybe something along the lines of just asking to see their app activity in their account to get an idea of how they’re spending their time without diving right into their private data.
I don’t really understand the disconnect going on here and maybe everyone is a lot more innocent than I was. I for sure was up to some bullshit online at a young age and that was dial-up. We’re really looking at everything like how the election went, social influencers, and young people getting radicalized online and just throwing our hands up saying it’s all good?
Just set up redirects on DNS levels for the fedi alternatives. E.g. Reddit->selfhosted Lemmy, Musk’s trumpet called X->selfhosted Mastodon instance, Instagram->Pixelfed and TikTok->Loops. I mainly use Instagram, because we have a class group on it.
That is neat on getting your kids into a better online environment where development isn’t purely incentivized. But surely you must know that’s not the end-all of a kids user experience when being online. You’re not always gonna have them on just your setup either, they will be at their friends and on foreign devices. There’s unfortunately not much you can do in that instance without making a huge fuss.
Is everyone just young without kids and had free reign on the internet and got by ok so it’s more relaxed to you? Were you in a situation where middle school and that age have direct communication to each other? I know teachers and other parents with horror stories of the shit that comes out. It’s mostly what would be considered old school frat boy or fraternity shit but at a way earlier age, some grow out of it but I imagine others just carry on since it never effected them and then we wonder about the trolls who exist on social media lol.