I saw a post recently about someone setting up parental controls – screentime, blocked sites, etc. – and it made me wonder.
In my childhood, my free time was very flexible. Within this low-pressure flexibility I was naturally curious, in all directions – that meant both watching brainteaser videos, and watching Gmod brainrot. I had little exposure to video games other than Minecraft which ran poorly on my machine, so I tended to surf Flash games and YouTube.
Strikingly, while watching a brainteaser video, tiny me had a thought:
I’m glad my dad doesn’t make me watch educational videos like the other kids in school have to.
For some reason, I wanted to remember that to “remember what my thought process was as a child” so that memory has stuck with me.
Onto the meat: if I had had a capped screentime, like a timer I could see, and knew that I was being watched in some way, I’d feel pressure. For example,
10 minutes left. Oh no. I didn’t have fun yet. I didn’t have fun yet!!
Oh no, I’m gonna get in so much trouble for watching another YTP…
and maybe that pressure wouldn’t have made me into an independent, curious kid, to the person I am now. Maybe it would’ve made me fearful or suspicious instead. I was suspicious once, when one of my parents said “I can see what you browse from the other room” – so I ran the scientific method to verify if they were. (I wrote “HI MOM” on Paint, and tested if her expression changed.)
So what about now? Were we too free, and now it’s our job to tighten the next generation? I said “butthead” often. I loved asdfmovie, but my parents probably wouldn’t have. I watched SpingeBill YTPs (at least it’s not corporatized YouTube Kids).
Or differently: do we watch our kids without them knowing? Write a keylogger? Or just take router logs? Do we prosecute them like some sort of panopticon, for their own good?
Or do we completely forgo this? Take an Adventure Playground approach?
Of course, I don’t expect a one-size-fits-all answer. Where do you stand, and why?
Kids are people who deserve freedom and privacy. Teach them internet safety and common sense, and make sure they can always talk to you without the fear of punishment if they saw something they shouldn’t have.
I’ve got an 8 year old with a 20 minute timer for YouTube on the tablet, but a bunch of other things wide open. If they want to watch YouTube more, the TV will let them just as much. I’ve got timers on the tablet, keeping it locked out until 5:30am, because they’ll wake earlier to use it more in the morning otherwise and be a grumpy butt throughout the day. (It’s just what happens when there’s too much in the morning)
As for apps, permission is required, but I’ll just ask what it’s about and install it anyway.
I’ve noticed how kids seem to get into far nastier dopamine drip addictions with a tablet/phone than the same kid does with a TV where there’s more friction to changing videos. I’ll probably do something like this to encourage healthier content consumption habits once mine are old enough to do more that pause/unpause the TV
You prevent them from waking up earlier, huh? Youngsters definitely have infinite energy at the odder times. I sure did my fair share of waking up early to increase the fraction of the day I gamed for.
This is a pretty convincing stance in favor of timers, actually. The idea of transferring video-watching from the iPad to the television is a friendly way to prevent an unchecked iPad-kid situation. My opinion shifted a little. :P
Do you have timers on the iPad for any mobile games, or just YouTube?
None in the mobile games. It’s mostly strategy and puzzle games, with a few that are just silly for being silly. The Android tablet has decent family controls.
Minecraft is not on the tablet. Yet. (They know it can be installed, but like using the switch for it right now.)
My parents treated my device access something they had to keep a keen eye on. They were good at manually making sure I wasn’t sitting around having my brain rot, but their spying on what I was doing into my teens left me with some trust issues.
They briefly tried to use technological solutions to control my access and monitor me, but all that served was to make me very good at circumventing them. Outsourcing parenting to a computer program doesn’t work, and kids notice when you try.
If I were a parent; I’d only install a DNS filter against malware/ads to any device my kid uses until my kid is capable of understanding how to detect one. While I can teach them how to use the internet; it should be up to my kids to determine what they decide to do with it in the end.
But I do know the risks of having an infiltrated device on my local network; and I’m not having that.
i dont have children, but the “patental control” feature of nextdns improved my own mental health a LOT. probably would not use it on my kids tho, they wouldnt even know something like the internet exists lol.
I’m in the process of adopting a tween and that was my plan. DNS filter to block malware, ads, and I think I have it set to block gambling sites (which probably isn’t necessary, but eh, it shouldn’t also cause a conflict). My plan is to let him do his own thing, but know he can come to me to talk about anything he finds or doesn’t understand.
I think watching over kids without them knowing is the key. Time limit is stupid in my opinion. Obviously porn sites and other appropriate sites will be blocked network wide and when the time comes I’ll slowly teach the child how to circumvent the measures and even create their own.
As you have pointed out, feeling under pressure will definitely detrimental for the child development so it’s best to avoid that.
Someone downvoted you but I’d like to hear differing opinions, so I upvoted.
By teaching the child how to circumvent these measures, what do you mean by that? Do you teach them to break your router rules? And when would you do that – when they appear mature enough to you? Of course, there’s the chance that they don’t like tech.
Imaginarily, my kid and I could have some arms-race fun, but I don’t know how realistic that is.
What do you mean by that?
Literally teach them how to! When I deem them mature enough, of course.
Of course, there’s the chance that they don’t like tech.
I’m pretty confident that they will. If I get to raise the kid as I see fit. But you know I’m not expecting them to be a hobbyist or anything. Knowing small things like circumventing network blocks might be important in the future weather that would in a school enviroment or an oppresive regime. The latter of which is getting closer in my country to reality each passing day.
As a kid I was effectively given unlimited screentime, and that definitely shaped me into adulthood for better and for worse. My wife has severe insomnia so she often sleeps until 11am, and my 4 year old always gets up around 7:30am so before she started school we setup an old phone with a managed google account with a 2.5 hour screentime limit, and a 30 minute limit for the YouTube Kids app (grandma got her hooked on YouTube of course so no putting that cat back into the bag) to encourage more enriching content (I preinstalled the PBS Kids apps, as well as a number of age-appropriate games) She’s at an age where she’s extremely impressionable and without locking things down will end up installing things by clicking ads or watching weird stuff she probably shouldn’t be watching.
In the near future my plan is to gift my 4 year old an old ewaste laptop I acquired off a friend and a Minecraft account since she’s really been getting into Minecraft when she gets to play on my or my wife’s computers, and I’ll probably play it by ear for when to raise the parental controls, but right now she’s simply not ready for unrestricted internet access. I probably won’t limit screentime on the computer other than telling her its time to do something else when she’s been on the computer for too long, but we’ll play it by ear.
If I was a parent, I’d be one of those parents where the child has to suffer the consequences. No, I will not come to your defense when you engage with and anger trolls. No, I will not be responsible for any scarring you inflicted on yourself by watching things or seeing things not meant for a young person’s mind pre-adulthood.
I’ll gladly give them their own computer and I’ll give them internet access. I’ll gladly give warnings and cautions. But fuck with all of them whether it’s illegal activity that’s going to come at my doorstep or whine about anything you started - you’re fucked.
Someone downvoted but I want to hear your differing stance so I upvoted. (Come on fellow lemmings ` . ` let’s melting-pot a little!)
Anyway – your belief is interesting, though I feel like I might disagree! Seems similar to @Contramuffin’s upbringing, but more extreme.
How would you train them beforehand? Or would you just drop them into the archetypal sink-or-swim? Don’t you think the kid would feel lonely, say, if they stumbled on a jumpscare video and got the heebie-jeebies but you didn’t help? Everyone makes mistakes. And outside of scarring – what if your kid turns into one of those YouTube Kids jockeys?
Is your hypothetical “Tough shit, deal with it and get stronger” approach similar to how you were raised?
My mother’s policy was that the first time we do something wrong, talk with us, help us learn why it was wrong and how we should have acted. If we do it again even with that knowledge, punish us.
I feel like that would apply here, too, even if you don’t see leaving them with the consequences as actively punishing them. But as a kid it’s easy to get in over your head before you learn your own limits, and you’re not born with the knowledge of how to bail yourself out. I think they deserve a grace period.
I have a host list on my router. That always seemed like plenty (I block gambling and malware)
We’re not at a point yet where this is a concern, so still on the brainstorming phase of how to do this.
I think the main concern I have is the addictive side of the internet that’s enabled by their recommendation systems and infinite scrolling, so that’s what I would try to block. For example, allow free reign on YouTube, but you have to specifically search for what you want to see.
There’s also the question of privacy, and whether we should be keeping track of and checking their browsing histories. I’m currently leaning towards yes, while also making sure that they’re aware of what we’re doing. There’s value in letting them make their own mistakes and learning from them, but that only applies to things that they can learn and easily recover from.
