Ask HN: How do you prevent the impact of social media on your children?

Four thoughts:

1. I've developed a analog->digital path for my kids. Before they can get a music player, they get a CD player. Before they get video games, they get board games. And then, for video games, before they get Super Mario Odyssey they get the original Super Mario Bros. Each of these "first they get" is a long period. Years long. Give them something that has limitations so they can truly explore it. Find the nooks and crannies of something. Make up their own weird little things within that limitation. And then, back to music, I want my kids to know what a musical album is, know how to savor the highs and the lows, how sometimes certain tracks mean more to you based on your mood or life-stage, then just an endless playlist of newness.

2. The gorilla in the room is that most adults can barely handle online media.

3. The other gorilla in the room is porn. Again, see #2.

4. The classic philosophers placed Prudence as the queen of virtues. What is prudence? It is essentially the ability to grasp reality. Why did they say that was most important? Because you couldn't use any of the other virtues if your didn't have a good grasp of reality (e.g. fortitude would be foolhardiness if you ran into a ill-conceived death thinking you were being brave).

You need to make sure you and your kids are able to grasp reality, not just the appearance of it.

Our kids? Hell, my wife and I don't use social media, except in very limited doses for work reasons. Our kids have zero access to it and never will. Their device usage is kept at a minimum and used for mostly educational or quality conversational purposes.

I hate how many people now, whenever we're around them everyone has their phones out scrolling through 30 sec videos. They want to show you things which aren't funny, aren't entertaining, aren't informative... it's damn near Idiocracy levels of content consumption.

[Insert video of someone badly dancing with caption that says "me."]

Personally, I find it bizarre and extremely boring.

I've 4 kids, the youngest is 11.

The rule in the house is; 1) no social media accounts until 13 and 2) one of your parents will be your 'friend' on that account.

This is actually a pretty great expression of "kids keep you young."

But, right now is right now and how kids communicate with each other is constantly changing - social media or not.

So, if you're not a parent to a tween or teens now - I'd say you have little to actually worry about as the landscape will be completely different in a decade.

We don't micromanage their online access, but we do try to encourage being online in healthy ways:

We did no smartphones before high school. (Have had zero problems with that in terms of their social acceptance) Also, no computers in their rooms - everything is done in more shared space, with monitors facing the rest of the room. We talk about what kinds of content to watch out for, how to think critically about it, and what kinds of content or people are more serious, that they need to let us know if they run into. (Stalkers, scammers, other such actively harmful stuff.)

That does give them enough freedom once they hit high school to be more secretive about what they do. But we feel that is also more appropriate as they grow older. There have been problems. When they occur, we talk openly about them and help them both resolve the problems and learn from them. We are big believers that wisdom comes from experience, and experience comes from doing, so we try to focus on letting them expand their autonomy as they grow up, while at the same time minimizing harm when mistakes are made and learning from them.

My son is 4.

He's never used a screen in any significant way. No movies / TV / cellphones / iPads.

My spouse and I read to him a lot. A chapter or two a night from one of the Oz books (there are dozens of them, we're on the 8th one) or something similar.

Results so far? He has a very wide vocabulary, loves learning about the world around him and has almost zero interest in screens.

I hope that by the time he reaches social media age (whatever that is) that the fad has passed and people move on to something less toxic. Even if not, we'll make sure he's in lots of social groups and camps where the focus is doing things rather than spending time on a device.

We have limited access to devices for under ten. Even educational apps on tablets have strict time limits. Initially there is an emotional reaction to limits and we talk to them about who is in control. Them or the technology. We want them to have mastery over the tech so that they can put it down. Only when you can put it down and move on to a real world activity are you the one in control. Personal tech is a tool, a dangerous one. We would not hand car keys to a 5 year old and let them teach themselves how to drive. Recently my 13 year old asked for a blow torch to do some metal work. We explained the danger and over see the tool. He is totally absorbed in his craft, he has not asked for a phone. In a chat with a neighbour we mentioned the blow torch and said “ we find it to be less dangerous than social media on a smart phone. They stopped and said “yes, that is absolutely right.” We just got our 16 year old a smart phone but with limits. He needs the tool for work, orchestra communication and for maps of public transport. We are in a constant dialog about gaining personal freedom and responsibility. We have friends whose children are self harming due to bullying they have experienced on social media. It has been a deep discussion in their home. They are carefully walking their way forward but they regret not having more safety rails and discussion 2 years ago.

I’m of the opinion that we need to think of smart phones like power tools. And that there ought to be significant training and oversight and demonstrated understanding of risks and how to use the tool safely.

I don't think this is a good place to go in with hard and fast rules. Every kid is different, everything change. What your kid wants and needs may be different from everyone else.

Having said that, my broad rule is to keep my kid from any social media where their peers rank them and give feedback. No FB, no Instagram, they can't host their own youtube channel, etc. That is where self-esteem goes to die.

I don't think I allow real-name accounts. I'm hyper-sensitive to online predators since a girl I know got assaulted by someone she met on 'words with friends'. My kids are lectured to boredom about personal identifying information and what not to reveal on the internet.

They are allowed Roblox and they spend a lot of time playing with their friends there. I'm happy with that, we do Roblox game night here ourselves.

As a parent of an 11-year-old, messaging is the hardest thing to handle. If you allow kids to message their friends, their friends will send all sorts of inappropriate content, exposing them to essentially everything bad on the internet. If you don't allow kids to message their friends, then they will miss out on fun events that all of their friends are doing.

At least at our local public school, when I talk with parents of high schoolers, 100% of them have given up and allowed messaging.

So by 14 I think you really can't "shield them" from internet content. What you can do is fight back against the human desire to waste lots of time, by limiting screen time. I think that's the best we're going to get.

Give kids more - teach them media and how to use a computer. Help them find quality programming from a young age so when they are teens they can make informed choices.

Discuss with them values, your and other peoples.

Make time for them IRL, and do things together so they don't have to find fulfilment in digital arms.

A lot of parents at our school signed a “wait until 8” pledge to wait until 8th grade before getting them smartphones. This way there will be less social pressure from their friends to be connected. My assumption is that without a smartphone they won’t use social media.

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.

My kid didn't get access to Youtube until they were 12. It's fine otherwise now, but Youtube Shorts is a cesspool and it CANNOT be turned off in any way. There are no parental controls to limit or disable it.

Before that we did try Youtube Kids, but it's creepy AF. There's a ton of "this kid gets to buy EVERYTHING he wants!" -shit in there.

I decided I'd rather pay for _every_ streaming service, give the kid a child account in there and let them watch anything. It kinda worked. Their ability to tolerate the basic screaming jump-cutting Youtuber is close to zero.

I've had chats with them where they explicitly said that "X does interesting videos but they shout all the time so I don't want to watch them".

With Netflix, Disney+ and our local PBS equivalent I can sorta trust that the content is professionally made and even slightly educational.

The age limit for social media over here is 13 at the moment, we'll need to burn that bridge this summer. Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Facebook and all that will be open after that. I'm not going to encourage that but we'll see what peer pressure does.

If you are fortunate enough, put your kid in private school where smartphones tend to be banned in elementary and sometimes up to middle school.

Beyond that, I don't intend to give my kids a device until they are 10. (Heavily restricted smart phone) and won't be allowed to social media until they are 13-14.

Mine are too small for any of this yet but I gave it some thought and here's what I have:

-Social media etc. are a means of avoiding one's emotions. Your job as a parent is to help your children process those so that they don't crave such distractions as much.

-Education is key. This is a huge topic, but one of the first things I taught my preschooler is that people do all kinds of things only because they want money. That is equally true in meatspace, as e.g. this enclosed playground we occasionally go to is dotted with shelves with toys that are, of course, not free, so if you want one you have to pay. I lost count how many things I explained with a short "they do it only because it brings them more money".

-It so happens that the worst brainrot is at the same time data-intensive, so data allowance is something I'm planning on introducing once the time comes. I sort of had this in my youth when my data plan was a whopping 1GB per month, so I had to be deliberate in my choice of entertainment.

As a final, optimistic note, it appears that generation alfa picked up on the fact that we, the parents, either try to distract them with screens or look at screens instead of paying attention to them. They don't like that one bit and my prediction is that their attitude towards this will be very much like my generation's towards our parents having the TV on at all times.

No phones or SM accounts for kids till they turn 18. Yes, there's a "fear" of being an outcast but they work their way around that quickly and if they have other things to spend time on, they'll be fine. The "need" for social media is mostly FOMO.

Lots of practical but low impact suggestions in this thread.

I think the only real answers involve large scale decoupling from the rapidly changing social norms. Can you cobble together a social group that will go Luddite with you? If not, can you join one?

I was an outcast as a kid, and this was years before social media. I think I turned out alright regardless. Your social status as a pre-adult doesn't really matter at all once you join the real world.

That and I think kids not having any social media will become more and more common, so it's not going to be that big a deal.

Sometimes I feel grief about the fact that I will almost certainly never have kids, but then I also feel immense relief that I don't have to navigate the extremely complex challenge of raising them in the modern world.

HN parenting thread…

> Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

Make sure they are living full lives and have many offline occupations to fill their time with. Social media addicts are just bored teenagers who have nothing else better to do, or teenagers who feel as though they cannot be part of the local social groups so they retreat to the online world.

I am in my late 40s and my two boys are 11 and 15. They make great use of the internet, especially youtube. One is a big fan of all the STEM channels on youtube and he is getting an education through those that, when I was at his age, I could only dream about: Matt Parker, 3B1B, Mark Rober, Steve Mould, and so on. He watches hours of those videos every week. The younger is in the VR/Gorilla Tag phase and has created his own youtube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@MagicianTheMonkey-p1f He taught himself how to install Mods, how to script and create contents in capcut, how to advertise his channel.

The internet can be an amazing opportunity for kids. We should be careful about policing it too much. My recommendation is: keep a close eye on how their behaviour changes (the output) but do not worry too much on what inputs they choose and receive. They have to build their own filters after all.

At 18, I went to see the movie "RoboCop" in the theater and walked out because I had never been exposed to such gratuitous violence before. This was long before the internet, cell phones, or social media.

Would I have been as shocked/traumatized if I had previously been even a little bit exposed to something much less intense? Now that kind of stuff is passe.

I don't want my children traumatized; obviously I'm going to do whatever I can to prevent them from premature exposure to lots of extreme content.

But we live in a different world than I grew up in, and I'm worried that kids need SOME exposure, especially to positive experiences but also just a little to mild bad experiences, in order to build up life skills like getting along and interacting with others, even with people who aren't nice to you.

I'm struggling with how to do that and where to draw the line but it definitely involves limits (that change over time), supervision, and communication.

Pov: (denmark) No SoMe, no smartphones - until 5th grade (class agreement and school policy).

No SoMe at all for kids under 13.

No messaging after 20:00.

1.5 h screentime (ios) maximum a day.

O.5 h enforced reading (actual books) from 17:30-18:00 (we make it a family thing - all reading together).

No screens at all at playdates until 4th grade.

No movies or media below age-level ratings without consent from parents.

No phones in bed or while sleeping.

Heavy utilization of screentime, unifi network blocks etc.

Works well for us

Delay, Deny, Defend

Don't let them have a smart phone until high school. Do not allow unlimited use. Do not allow certain apps. No phones in room at night. Continually have to "defend" and argue about it.

This is a question I keep asking myself. My in-laws live in until May and they give free reins of social media time to my 4-years old so I keep pulling him off. And we tightly control what he watches on TV (only downloaded videos, no YT, no network actually).

So far it's OK. But I don't know what happens when he goes into primary school and his friends start using social media because some parents just don't care. I honestly have no idea. I'll probably ask him to text using a dumb phone instead.

Worst case I'll keep a secret smart phone just for baking/maps but use a dumb phone for daily drive. Probably best for me anyway.

Social media is a nuclear blast for any mind who is not strong enough and doesn't have any hobbies. My father-in-law literally live in Tiktok and Red note. He is watching it when he goes to bed, when he is taking a dump, when he is exercising... it's just part of the body I guess. So much brain rot.

I'd recommend the stuff on this web site and the related book. https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/ Lots of good research backing this up with some guidance for communities to change the environment for their kids.

My kids are too young to use it and I'm hoping all said companies have failed by the time they're of age.

Maybe try pushing your community towards adopting https://www.waituntil8th.org/

Try to make sure they know how they stay safe online as best as possible.

No phones until high school. Limit phone usage via parental controls. No posting photos of themselves online. Closed social media accounts in their teens. WhatsApp contacts limited to people they know in person.

We play the game of pragmatic averages. We aren’t the first of the parents in their friends group to allow their kids to have access to <insert app here>, but we also aren’t the last.

Honestly though, it’s a minefield.

I have children, and I will never allow them to use social media while they are under my care. Once they are grown and independent, they can make their own choices. As a father, my responsibility is to protect them from harm, and I am fully committed to doing so until they reach adulthood. Here's an excerpt from an article titled “Facebook’s War on Free Will” by The Guardian.

> The many Facebook experiments add up. The company believes that it has unlocked social psychology and acquired a deeper understanding of its users than they possess of themselves. Facebook can predict users’ race, sexual orientation, relationship status and drug use on the basis of their “likes” alone. It’s Zuckerberg’s fantasy that this data might be analysed to uncover the mother of all revelations, “a fundamental mathematical law underlying human social relationships that governs the balance of who and what we all care about”.

It all depends on their peer group and their nature. I have one who doesn’t even like to be photographed. That one I have no problem with - there’s no way she’s posting stuff about herself. Also, I’ve told her stuff on the web lasts for ever. She doesn’t do social media but only private iMessage groups with friends.

The younger sister is a “social butterfly” and wants to create “a lot of content”. Luckily she’s in a school program that keeps her real busy. So we haven’t had to deal with it yet.

In short, kids understand when you tell them and more importantly you yourself keep off these apps. If you’re on there all the time, there is no way you’re convincing your child to not be on.

Kids are an experiment that you run without a control group. You do the best you can with the information you have, from a place of love. That's it.

Social media is crappy and dangerous, and you keep them away from it until you are able to explain to them why it's crappy and dangerous. It's also everywhere. YouTube comments, HackerNews, Reddit, Roblox. All are various flavors of social media, many of which are hard to justify complete blockage.

I don't think you can prevent it anymore than you can prevent the impact of advertising billboards, or the news.

Parents should lead by example. Easier said than done I know, but parents need to be the idols in their children's lives. Not influencers.

If a parent leads by example they will win in the long run because influencers are fake and shallow while you're real and always there for them.

Children who seek out other role models are children who didn't, or couldn't, look up to their parents. This has always been going on. Before social media we sought out role models in school or in the streets.

My kids don't have smartphones until they're 17. I keep them busy with maths, programming, robotics and other things they like. It seems to work. But now my older son is 17 and he hangs out with his friends on Discord all the time, sometimes it's even affecting his health (sleep) and his schoolwork. But it's less the effect of social media and more the effect of his age.

However, I don't know how it will be in later years, whether he will be able to develop a healthy habit of using devices or not, and I'm a bit worried.

Partly it’s having a constant discussion about society, the world, and news in general. We talk about how advertisers are trying to manipulate you, social media can be addicting and is also trying to manipulate you, etc. Not an angry way, a discussion, like how magnets work or how rain forms. Just the facts ma’am.

As for permissions, my oldest avoided all social media except iMessage (because for her age that is essentially the phone line), and only got Insta at 16 — but I had the password not her, so she could give out her @handle to people to connect, but she would only go only into the fray once a week with us around (vs the zombie doom scroll scenario for instance). We will probably allow Snapchat soon since it’s becoming the new “basic” connection — I’ve not used it, so does it have a feed and likes?

My younger kids all have iPads and the 13 year old had an iPhone — they use them for music and audio books so end up in their rooms even at night. I don’t love that, but I have on tight screentime so I hope that is helping a bit.

I wish there was a good device for ONLY music and audio books, like a souped up iPod. I locked down enough I think her iPad is limited to that, but it’s not obvious. We tried Alexa devices but navigating audio books is impossible and even song selection was tedious. Kindles could almost do it but we are Apple Music family and don’t think there’s and app, and the audio book library app is finicky, and I find kindles pretty kludgy in general.

You don't. I have a baby and a teenager and the teenager is pretty mind-rotted even tho mild restrictions were in place. Kids don't exist in a vacuum and you will only have strong influence over them until they turn 12 or so in my experience. The environment they are in matters a lot. Other kids, etc.. I am very worried about the future of my baby. My main concern is that he'll have a hard time being useful since automation looks like it'll do everything soon enough. Purposeless people are not good.

I wish I had something helpful to add.

My teenager has been involved with inappropriate texting with an assuming friend and the textual contents were, quite frankly, disturbing. Therapists say that this is normal these days. Our teen has refused to stop being friends with this person and even suggested that we just get over it. To that end, her phone is locked down with ScreenTime limits but she's somehow getting more time.

The influence of other classmates cannot be underestimated.

Hearing from therapists and other parents that we're doing the best we can is super fucking frustrating because our best isn't amounting to jack shit.

Every kid is different though. Our youngest doesn't seem like he'll be much of a problem but we'll see.

I guess I'll end this mini rant with: good luck and godspeed.

They have never had unmonitored access to the internet. Now that they're older, the <18yo boy has a dumb phone for communication, and our >18yo daughter has an older iPhone she only uses for comms and directions.

They have also not ever had access to drugs, alcohol, or modern cinematic fiction, because that would have similarly negative effects on their development as compassionate human beings. They have also not hung out with children raised in this compassionless media landscape.

Remember, people, that your tech overlords don't give a sh_t about any of you, except insofar as they can make a buck off of you. They don't care one bit about your happiness or the misery their products cause; they only care that you can't prove that they caused those harms.

They don't care that their "bitcoin"s are burning up our already-overheating Earth. They don't care that their LLMs are consuming massive amounts of water and electricity. They have sold our children's future for a small price.

And they have the temerity to call us "woke" for waking up to the fact that our world is run by callous, unscrupulous scoundrels.

Compassion is the essense of humanity. Without it, we are just very talented animals perpetuating dumb pack warfare amongst packs and within our pack, often for a buck.

Two buddies and I built a private “landline” network for their kids (~9 year olds) and their kids’ friends. We used analog phones and VoIP components, so there’s no screens or anything like that. It’s been cool seeing kids go from begging to use the family iPad after school to running to the home phone to dial their friends.

We ended up turning it into a network others can join[1] after other families started to ask about it. Having over a hundred local families join within a few weeks has given me hope that the next generation isn’t just condemned to live in a social-media-saturated hell, or that smartphones will inevitably be a part of kids’ lives earlier and earlier.

[1] https://tincan.kids/ – Disclosure: it’s not free, but we’ve tried to make it low-cost.

It should worry you. There are dreadful things happening in these spaces, and they are of such sophistication that children, and even many adults cannot fully ascertain.

The problem you describe is a cursed problem. You have so many malign influences being exposed that the only rational approach is to teach them as much as you can early to recognize and appropriately deal with these things.

That is easier said than done because at its core, you effectively have to teach your children how to lie, so they can recognize and discern the sophisticated lies.

There is also an element of biology, we call it the age of reason because there's a point where reason emerges, and prior to that point it isn't possible.

Prior to that age, they shouldn't be exposed. That will require a monumental amount of work because these influences are everywhere. Even in the Family movies (especially Pixar).

I would start following a classical education curricula (Trivium/Quadrivium) which includes philosophy, aristotle-in logic, Method, and reason.

Following that, there should also be education on perceptual blindspots, and its intrinsic link to communication, as well as how distorted reflected appraisal works (and its impacts). These are blindspot biases we all have as humans, and they will need to know and recognize the limits to defend themselves.

Robert Cialdini wrote a book on the levers of Influence. Communications should roughly follow an Intro course that you see in college with particular emphasis on perception, uniquely shared meaning, deceitful or manipulative structures, with guided exposure towards the end, relating to deceitful, misleading, and false narratives.

The basis requirements for torture should also be taught, so they can recognize it when it happens to them. Coercion should be fully understood so they are not helpless when its eventually applied to them. This should also include how you handle people who lie and how to case-build, and employ countermeasures in such areas.

Being capable of retaining rational thought under applied stress at higher amounts than others, will offer them the best chance at survival.

You could try out the https://wisephone.com to see if that helps. It doesn't allow social media, but it does allow apps that are tools to get a job done. I think if you let your kids experience boredom, they'd be sad and potentially spiteful, but it's what they need. Kids need to experience boredom. That's when the best experiences and ideas happen.