Comment by Desafinado

Comment by Desafinado 5 days ago

12 replies

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A good start is to avoid giving them a smartphone until they're in high school. And once they have a smartphone require them to get permission from you before installing any social media apps, with consequences if they don't follow the rules (take the phone away). Make the consequences known up front, rather than reactive so they know the guidelines regarding their phone use.

And whatever you do DO NOT give your child a handheld device (tablet or smartphone) before they're in high school. My wife and I are seeing parents give their two year olds a tablet which is absolutely detrimental to their development.

9rx 3 days ago

> I are seeing parents give their two year olds a tablet which is absolutely detrimental to their development.

My kid couldn't care less about using a tablet or other device if there is any other activity on the table. In other words, for them to reach the point of using, I have to be completely ignoring them.

Is it really the device that leads to developmental detriment, or parents who aren't involved in their childrens' lives?

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  • M4v3R 3 days ago

    Just because your child has been this way does not mean everyone’s is. I have a 3 year old and even though I have been very strict about screen time (tv or phone) - she watched her first cartoon just months before 2nd birthday - from the very beginning screens were hypnotizing for her. She would stop whatever she was doing once a screen was playing nearby. No amount of entertainment I would provide would make her look away. So it’s good for you that you don’t have this problem, but from my experience and from talking to others this is definitely a struggle for many.

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    • Aeolun 3 days ago

      For what it’s worth. Mine was like this at 3, but at 6 he’ll definitely take playing super saiyan over watching them on TV.

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muzani 5 days ago

There's apps like Google Family Link which basically gives you and the child a contract and enforces that contract. Screen times on what days. What they install. The kind of media they can view on the YouTube on the device. Even if you change the policy, the child is informed.

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more_corn 5 days ago

I’ve got a friend who did this. His 13yr old daughter craved instagram and snuck access. The story sounded like parents of the previous generation catching their kids smoking and drinking.

I’m pretty sure the prohibition didn’t work and added the spice of forbidden. I don’t know the answer, but I suspect full prohibition isn’t it.

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  • Desafinado 4 days ago

    I've got a brother who did this. His son is about to graduate med school in the 98th percentile.

    More seriously, it's not beyond the pale to introduce them to the internet. The more important thing is to put off handhelds for as long as possible.

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  • NoMoreNicksLeft 3 days ago

    >Ideally, you would live in a community where all parents have agreed on the social media limits,

    At least on the iPhone, the parental controls are pretty fine-grained. Even if there was a way to have a web-only account on an Apple device, you can block those too (never used that feature though).

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  • jimbob45 4 days ago

    You're not going to be able to stop your kids from doing anything unless you shackle them up nightly. However, you can stop them from doing it while under your roof and that significantly curtails their ability to take anything too far.

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ACow_Adonis 3 days ago

I genuinely don't think the tech medium is the problem. There's good and educational software available on tablets just as there is on anything else.

While I've always been anti-tablet myself, and anti-phone for similar reasons (though why a kid would need a phone is beyond me at this stage), there's programs for literacy and learning available on the tablets that work just fine, as well as art, creativity and painting. The "secret" is just no access to the toxic: we have one tablet, my 5/6 year old loves reading-eggs and Minecraft but we have no social media and no YouTube and no purchases, plus the entire house is behind an ad blocking firewall. My kid is allowed to watch videos and access apps like ABC iView/kids, but from the open web they have to be ripped and placed on our local media share drive before they're viewable. No YouTube or YouTube kids obviously because it's a toxic cesspool.

My experience is that without the trash\addictive nonsense, while the kids are drawn to the iPad, they'll also self regulate a bit and move between other activities of they're available and get bored of spending all their time on the pad.

In his room I've just built him a Linux computer, and that's restricted both in time (can only log on to his account at certain hours), has no native web browser, and requires me to install programs and updates. He can access the games we approve but like everything else in the house it's basically a social media and almost ad free zone.

I've introduced him to modded Minecraft because it's basically Lego... And though it's frustrating that Microsoft took it over, we basically just ignore the Microsoft side of things and just operate on the free community modded side of things. I showed him how we could change his sword and I've got a whole modded world where we can set ourselves up and play on LAN together. The other game he loves at the moment is beyond all reason, a community made RTS game I've been involved with, and he just won his first match against the simple AI (though I did have to talk to the other Devs to allow us an account from the same IP so we could play together). The goal of all this is to give the message that technology is all about being a creative tool you choose to use to make what you want, not a medium about being a passive recipient for advertising or marketing or endless video consumption, feeds, recommendations or outrage cycles. No one needs any subscriptions or recommendations or likes or feeds. But there's nothing inherently toxic about a screen or a tablet, those are choices we make (or more accurately are pushed upon and chosen for us if we're not careful).

I think there's a non-zero chance that I'll be setting up a local server for the neighbourhood kids over the next year or two so they can all play together without worrying about the wider internet and I'll probably have to work to admin that in some way.

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  • Desafinado 3 days ago

    It can be done, but my take is that until your kid is through puberty their job is to learn how to navigate the real world, how to talk to people in person, and so on. You can give them technology but it has very minimal benefit compared to the alternative, that is if your home is full of books and you're reading to them regularly.

    All that being said we're somewhat liberal with TV, and we'll introduce them to a PC in time. But for now the MO is real world skills and intelligence.

    Jonathan Haidt also pointed to evidence that technology during the adolescence phase can wreak havoc. Particularly handhelds and social media.

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