Ask HN: What is your policy regarding smartphones for your children?
Recently, there are more and more studies that smartphones harm learning and not a single study with the opposite results. However, very few parents have the guts not to buy a smartphone for their child. At what age do children in the HN crowd begin to have censored access to proprietary software (personal supervision) and uncensored (smartphone with or without parental controls)? Are there families where children have access to computers with only FOSS before they have access to proprietary software?
399 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 345 ms ] threadAs for computer access, I gave my kids access to my old PC running arch linux with some open source games, like minetest or supertuxkart. There are complaints that games are not as slick as they have seen when visiting other kids, but similarly to smartphones- they tend to accept my reasoning.
I don't let my kids to watch youtube unattended, I'm not happy with youtube recommendation system and more importantly with ads they serve. Luckily I got to the point where each time my kids see something weird on the internet they are either turning off or switching with some funny comment about the content.
As for youtube ads I think many are inappriopriate for kids, when I see them I chat with my kids about things that should not be shown to them and why.
I sometimes relate to my experiences, as I was heavily addicted to games, social media and to tech in general (in unproductive way), I see how this addiction changed my personality and I don't want my kids to go and make same mistakes. But even when they do at least they will be aware..
I do wonder why you aren’t okay with mainstream games like Minecraft.
Here is what I would want.
- Access to my child's browsing history
- Access to my child's YouTube watch history
- Require my (remote approval) before a child wants to install an application
- Give me the remote ability to turn off acess to certain applicationsy child use for a certain period
- The ability for me to block certain sites from my child browser like shock sites
Is this a logical conclusion/hunch/feeling, or is this documented somewhere?
I want these features to come with Firefox, Chrome, MacOS, Windows & Linux
Google offers you the ability to set up children's accounts with parental controls. I believe it offers some or all of this functionality. It appears that you actually need to access the child's account to view their history (doesn't seem different than an adult's in that respect) but you can definitely enact parental controls and whatnot. You can block or whitelist websites and apps for sure.
Windows has it built in but I’ve found it pretty non-functional.
- block YouTube. Mirror content you approve of locally. Yt-dlp + Jellyfin
- iOS has these last three built in to screen time. DNS can help with the last one too.
I’d urge you to resist attempting total control. Trust and verify can go a long way.
- What am I going to do with my child's browsing history except snoop? Are we still worried about porn in 2023?
- What applications are they going to install that I'd want to override that couldn't be solved by not giving them a credit card number?
- What are they going to watch on Youtube that can't be solved by simply limiting device time?
- Shock sites? Surely every one of us experienced that at some point in our childhood, and I haven't thought about them in years. And are they even in vogue these days?
- Stories like strangers trying to meet up with children seem on par with poisoned halloween candy. It happens incredibly infrequently, often ends up being a known family member anyway, and people forever fear it as if it's actually something to fear in their daily lives.
I think communication, education, and limiting screen time at certain ages is the only healthy thing to do. Giving children (yes, even young children) some privacy is important. Your suggestions I believe fall into the "helicopter parent" territory.
Also until extremely recently, almost no one saw adult material unless they found a magazine of utterly tame (by today's standards) printed nudity.
So porn is part of the issue? Really?
> So porn is part of the issue? Really?
Isn't that your claim? You needed access to sites your parents wouldn't have allowed to become the engineer you are today?
Social media addiction, etc. can be helped by restricting time without restricting access.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37357463
I guess that the percentage of people who approve of their preteen children watching porn is still a rather small minority. In fact globally I'd bet the majority of adults don't even approve of themselves watching porn.
More broadly speaking, assuming we're roughly of the same generation, I'm not sure our parents' borderline neglectful approach to children (latchkey, ads at 10 PM to remind them we exist, not being let in the house during the day) is one that's worthy of emulation.
So much to unpack here.
These restrictions just don't make sense to me. I was a pretty reserved child, so I can't imagine getting over all the hurdles needed to grow as a person and foster my love for programming/tech:
- Asking for permission to read all the random Perl forums or IRC chats I stumbled upon just wouldn't be a thing I would have done.
- My parents probably wouldn't have understood what it all was and denied my request. Early on I probably wouldn't have even been able to explain why I needed that access.
- Remember installing linux for the first time? Sorry, not going to happen because the stalkerware doesn't work on linux.
- You want access to a website called "hacker news"?? No way! (HN wasn't really a thing I think back in my childhood but you get the idea).
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Second, I was a latchkey kid. Having two working parents is neglectful? What would have been the alternative?
And my point with the porn is that it's not worth locking everything down for fear that your child is going to see some boobs. It's not worth it, and it seems that it's the driving force or a lot of these restrictions.
That's either a stupid or a dishonest description of the Internet pornography we're talking about here.
If you're so concerned with Internet pornography that you want to lock down your child's digital life and know every single thing they say and do, then so be it. We probably won't change each other's minds.
For what it’s worth my personal philosophy would be trust, but verify. That necessarily entails some way to verify.
Furthermore, in many jurisdictions parents are civilly or even potentially criminally liable for their childrens’ activities. If you’re in one of those jurisdictions you have a duty to prevent your child from breaking the relevant laws or other rules.
They shouldn't. Fight the ISPs.
> For what it’s worth my personal philosophy would be trust, but verify. That necessarily entails some way to verify.
Again, trust what? Do all roads lead to porn?
> Furthermore, in many jurisdictions parents are civilly or even potentially criminally liable for their childrens’ activities. If you’re in one of those jurisdictions you have a duty to prevent your child from breaking the relevant laws or other rules.
Really grasping at straws here. What laws are you worried your child will break that would reasonably reach the level you're worried about?
Trust that they aren’t harming themselves or others. The Internet is an extremely powerful tool and all powerful tools are potentially dangerous.
The pen is mightier than the sword and the Internet is to the pen as the sword is to the thermonuclear bomb.
Latchkey is a little after I grew up, mid Gen X, I think the premise is that these kids with working parents would run home alone and lock themselves inside in terror because some kid somewhere got abducted and it made the news. I don't know what statistics there are around it, but that's my memory of the phrase latchkey. I don't remember locking the door when I was a kid, we didn't live in a great neighborhood.
But I was a beneficiary of the borderline neglectful approach to children, and I'm certainly glad I grew up that way. I got kicked out of a bar for the first time when I was 10 or 11, and when I was 14, I would go to hardcore punk shows a hundred miles from home and my mom had no idea where I was. "I'm sleeping over at Joe's house tonight". Maybe "Joe" existed, maybe he didn't, but either way, I am at a show learning how to stage dive.
So it's weird reading how closely people watch their kids these days, and I'm not criticizing, people raise their kids how they raise their kids, none of my business. But I am reminded of one friend whose house I stayed at a couple times, he actually had two parents, if you can believe that, and they monitored everything he did, asked him questions about everything, listened to his answers, and he had to ask for permission for everything. On one hand I could tell he was lucky he had parents who cared about him and wanted the best for him, but I also remember feeling so, so sorry for him.
That being said, here are some of the things I worry about:
- The internet is no longer a niche playground for nerds, and much of it has become a mainstream entertainment megahub, very highly cultivated for your bland engagement. When I was growing up, I had to constantly fiddle with and troubleshot several layers of software in order to explore, interact with friends online, and play games. It was almost like a barrier to entry. These days, I'm not entirely sure I would have fiddled with anything and might have just skipped to the gaming & media consumption part. After all, it just works now, and the media is more engaging than ever. There seem to be fewer incentives for learning and creativity.
- I'm more concerned about bad behavior modeling than I am about the moral panic nonsense. I want to make sure that whatever personalities my kids are having a social/parasocial relationship with aren't encouraging trollish and abusive behavior.
- I'm also concerned about misinformation. Most people generally are very bad at gauging the trustworthiness of information online. Ironically even the people who cry the most about how media distorts your worldview tend to have that exact problem. I want to teach my kids critical thinking and how to evaluate information based on several important criteria. This will have to be an involved process, and I want to be able to contextualize heavy sources of misinformation while they're being exposed to it.
None of these problems are well addressed with a luddite approach, but they do need careful attention.
Every, and I mean every one of my male peers uses porn more often than he'd like...and at least a third of the women.
"Not worrying about it" in that context sounds like "conceding defeat," not like having overcome a problem such that it's no longer worth concern.
When I was 15, YouTube was music videos, shitty flash animations, and people doing bargain basement myth busters. Now it's content farms, conspiracy theories, cleverly crafted dopamine hits.
Similarly, online multiplayer games when I was 10-15 were warcraft 3, neverwinter nights and diablo 2. Compare those games to Roblox, Fortnite and co - it's just not the same (and I say this as someone who now works in this space).
I don't have a good answer, but the landscape has changed so wildly in the last decade that I thin it's incredibly naive to think that it's safe to allow unrestricted unmonitored access to devices.
You've commented plenty throughout your replies. But this bit uses very concrete, casual language. I'm not sure how you could possibly know such a thing and therefore write the statement you wrote. So much of your success as a hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars engineer is luck, timing, and other things that are not so clear in nature.
I otherwise agree with most of what you wrote.
To the OP: people typically have a herd mentality. HN is no different in that way. All you can do is try to instill trust between you and your kids and hope they will listen to you. You should also be super transparent with them about why you take the position you take. Give examples of people’s addiction to their screen/social media and how it’s distorts their view of reality to only make them feel bad about their existence. I am sure you can find a few in your own extended family or surroundings. Generally speaking , going against the grain takes a high degree of belief in something. Overcoming one’s minds transient desires requires strong intellect. That can be developed but it’s not an overnight thing and it’s certainly extremely hard when most People barely have any time to themselves or their kids - at least in USA (where real wages have been stagnant for 30+ years but cost of living has not[1]. The US deserves the birth rate decline it’s facing. It’s going to be a while before free markets and capitalism can evolve to solve this one)
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/08/07/for-most-...
My child is grown but grew up during the iPhone era.
Anyway, I had a policy.
It lasted until middle school.
Then we had a conversation.
And worked things out together.
That's my recommendation because in the long run, conversation and negotiation are the only tools you really have.
Good luck.
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Appendix:
1. FOSS is your value. Your child is not you. If your child thinks FOSS is cool, it's cool. If they think it is lame, you are being lame.
2. Parental controls are only as good as someone else's parents. Your child can look at naked people on someone else's phone.
3. Around middle school, your child's peers begin to have massive importance. It is not that you cease to be important. But you are going to have to share influence. Even if you try to forbid such sharing.
4. It is better if parents grow as their children grow. Growing is on you because you are the adult.
Yup, don't turn them into a pariah due to the color of chat bubbles (not having iPhone-colored bubbles was recently a major social problem for American teenagers). The color of a bubble might seem stupid to someone dealing with the issues of the adult world, but social issues is basically/hopefully the extent of problems that kids face.
That being said, parents have been successfully imparting values to their children for millennia. If you believe that using FOSS is important (I happen to agree) then you should have no issues convincing your child the same. Maybe they'll end up using Linux on their laptop, while prioritizing the color of chat bubbles on their phones. You can only give them the tools and knowledge to make the right choices, you can't make choices for them.
Sorry if I am missing something painfully obvious here.
My daughter did get a feature-phone in middle school and then a smartphone in high school. I never set any limits - but I was fortunate to have a child who managed her time exceptionally well. I wonder how much of that came from her not having smartphone exposure when young.
I do feel for parents today.
I had many problems, but generic “screen time” was never one of them.
But in hindsight I'm extremely thankful for the limitation. A computer stops being a social channel when it's offline so the hours I spent offline were pretty crucial for me to learn a variety of things - from learning how to code to creating art.
It also really did force me to go outside and learn about the world that way.
Even though you may not have had that much, health benefits are definitely there.
Especially for any older parent to young kids, taking steps to optimise your own longevity is pretty much acting responsibly the way I see it.
I did it nearly three years ago primarily for longevity reasons, but the role modelling aspect is starting to dawn on me. My 13 year old son has at least one parent (I'm divorced) who doesn't need alcohol to survive various settings - I think he'll have a much more conscious approach to it.
One of my biggest fears is him getting into a car with a drunk kid driving. Have already started to talk to him about it, even though he's likely years away from it being a possible thing.
So much this. Kids are living, breathing, thinking human beings. They are immature yes. But that doesn't remove the value of their opinions or their agency. And it's not to say you give them everything they want, but that you find common ground and aren't seen as dictating things without reason. If you can explain your point of view in terms they understand, compliance is far more likely.
For the most part, my kids have unlimited access to electronics and the internet. Yeah, sometimes they watch stupid TikTok videos or silly toy reviews on Youtube. Other times they are learning how to code or learning how to knit or how to make slime from common household materials, etc. Last week I baked bread with my daughter because she found a recipe on TikTok she wanted to try out. They sometimes watch content I don't like or agree with, but often that's resolved just by talking about why I don't think it's good content or sending a good message. I've talked to both of my daughters about why I don't like SSSniperWolf content as an example. Usually this works out fine, but none of the things they watch are so egregious I feel like I need to cut them off. And who am I to judge the occasional mindless entertainment when I've always done the same and I can readily see it's a small portion of the content they are consuming?
When I hear folks talking about zero access and no smart devices until X years, I have to ask myself where the trust and relationship exists between these parents and their children. I just can't imagine not having enough of a relationship with my kids to not have a good understanding of what they are up to online and how they are perceiving it. I can't imagine not being able to trust the values that I've instilled in my children and having to cut them off from the world to hide that neglect. Further, I feel these sort of blanket bans put kids into a position where they feel they need to hide what they do from their parents online which is the absolute opposite of what they should be thinking.
That said, we do have restrictions. No electronics during dinner or shared entertainment sort of things. People scrolling social media during movie time is a pet peeve of mine. The electronic devices are not an escape from small talk during boring family dinners or the slow part of the show we're watching.
I'm not judging, to be clear. I think that's a healthy policy. I was just curious since humans are great liars and bad lie detectors.
I've also experienced that this extension of trust is reciprocated. One time my son was hanging out with some of his friends after high school. He's not one to make friends easily and this was one of the few times he went out on an "adventure" like this. They did typical teenage boy hooligan stuff. He was comfortable enough to tell me about what they had gotten up to so we were able to have a discussion around it and I explained the likely outcomes of continuing down that sort of path. At some point that "harmless fun" can become a lot less harmless and have real consequences. I didn't have to ground him or ban him from seeing those kids again. He took the lesson and ran with it. I'd never want my son to feel like he has to hide something like that from me, and I feel if you're going too authoritarian you corrode the trust that let's them be honest with you. When my kids are in trouble, I want them to think of me as a possible solution and not someone they have to hide it from instead.
Again, I won't claim to be any sort of expert on this. I parent like anyone else. As best we can with the tools we're given. My sample size is small with 9, 11 (10 & 12 this month!), and and 18 year old. But I know for a fact I would never have told my parents about any shenanigans I got up to and I'm having conversations with my kids that I couldn't have imagined having with my parents. We never had that sort of relationship.
When they are blind to something that you can plainly see is a net-negative for their life it seems like it would be much harder to not intervene.
I'm not speaking as someone who has lived this but I have observed a close family member who very much has the relationships and parenting style you're describing and I've watched this parent go through incredibly challenging situation after situation as her kids have grown into teenagehood (covid really did a number on kids coming of age). It's not that her kids are bad either, a tad naive perhaps, but genuinely good kids.
How is this different from literally any other social interaction in your life? I extend folks the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise as a general rule. The same policy applied to my children has had fantastic results for the past 18 years. Should distrust and suspicion be the default? No thanks, I’d rather like to have a meaningful relationship with them continue long after they become self sufficient.
I already explained this in the original comment?
1. Technology and screen time aren't the problems; it's the lack of passion and interests that is the root problem. Cultivate passion in your child and expose them to new things. You'll immediately notice a positive change in how they use their screen time to pursue these interests. When they watch gaming videos or unboxing on youtube they do that because that's their current passion.
2. Your control over your children diminishes over time. Build trust early on and allow them to make mistakes; these are invaluable teaching tools. It's better to teach them good habits concerning technology while you still have influence, rather than later when your control is limited.
3. There are real costs associated with not allowing your child largely unrestricted access to technology. These costs include social drawbacks, a significantly reduced ability for them to explore their passions independently, and long-term tension between the child and the parents due to a lack of trust.
Hard disagree. Many passions and interests take time to develop, and a big way they (used to, at least) develop naturally is through boredom. I remember well when I was a kid in the 80s who would get bored with my friends in the summer, and so we'd go and build forts or explore (illegally I guess) houses that were still under construction. A lot has been written about "the death of boredom" because smartphones are always there to give you that little dopamine fix to keep boredom at bay.
I agree with the general thrust of your post (technology is pretty unavoidable, and I've never seen a case where parents have been successful "hiding their kids from the real world" past a certain age), but I do think technology has had a severe negative impact on the mental development of youths since the advent of the smartphone, similar to how modern diets have had a severe negative impact to the development of their bodies.
I'm not advocating for unrestricted technology use; rather, I'm pushing for a more nuanced approach. I acknowledge that technology, when misused, can have negative impacts, much like poor dietary habits can have physical repercussions. However, the focus should be on the quality of engagement over simply counting screen time. Guide your children towards finding their passions and setting corresponding goals. This will foster intrinsic motivation, helping them utilize their time more effectively—whether you are present or not.
This is not an argument defending screen time, just recognizing that it is a difficult problem with no easy solutions.
Could not disagree more.
“No dad, I don’t want to go fishing together. I need complete this raid in Clash of Clans.
FOSS is the software author's value. It correlates with the author's intentions, their incentive and the software's shape and influence on the user – your child. It's a way to delineate content you want your child to see and that which you don't (and thus we circle back to the idea that you imposing a policy ultimately means imposing your values anyway).
> And worked things out together.
You make it sound so simple. What if your kid simply doesn't listen? They are smart, so they know that if they keep nagging, they will eventually get what they want.
They carry dumb phones for calls only (we gave them one when they started going on multi day trips from school or outside of it at age like 6/7).
They both have laptops and can game on and communicate with friends and classmates.
They have old iPhones they sometimes use at home (with no sim cards). Those don't leave the house and are very rarely used (mostly to chat in friends groups).
They don't watch youtube (except for music sometimes). They know what TikTok is (because all their friends watch it), but they don't (currently) have interest in it (mainly because we've had long talks about how terrible doom scrolling social sites and short videos is).
If at some point we give them smart phones with sim cards, we'll heavily restrict social media sites and apps, but I plan on keeping the dumb phones in use for as long as possible (hopefully until 15-16).
I don't think children care too much about any of those problems, though. I used to listen to music on a cheap radio player with an usb stick and I thought it was the greatest thing ever.
We started loosening it for the 10 year old, but within 6 months of that we had a few incidences of early online bullying so we are pushing back again.
I personally hate to see kids and young people zombified looking at phones and want to delay, delay, delay.
(Some children walk, some cycle, and others take the regular busses and trams, depending on the distance involved. In our case the child has to walk a few hundred meters, and not cross any roads at all, so it's an easy walk for him.)
Because school finishes around 2pm we've just recently given him a phone so he can say "I'm going to play outside", "I'm coming [to the empty] home", or "I'm going to friend XXX for a couple of hours". It isn't a proper smartphone, but it does allow more than an old-school Nokia.
We've generally allowed 30 minutes of "screen time" a day, sometimes that has been watching selected youtube videos, sometimes playing Super Mario Bros on the nintendo, and sometimes it has been watching TV. I expect the dynamic will change a little more now, but not hugely.
Parental controls will be setup to allow more access between 1pm and 6pm, but I expect that we'll not allow access in the mornings or "late" at night, just to ensure there's not too much obsessive use.
When/If the child can route around the parental controls I think we'll "reward" that creativity with more access. Need to encourage the hacker-mindset :)
When he's left to his own devices he reads a lot of Aku Ankka, plays with lego, pokemon cards, and toy cars.
He's quite interested in designing simple board-games, and role-playing character sheets. I think he gets that from his mother, and also from Minecraft. He'll show me a sheet of paper with a bunch of weapons (bows, swords, guns, etc) with "points" associated with them, and then tell me stories.
He goes to play with kids in the garden, the park, or at their houses often, and every weekend I take him swimming, then to sauna. Or sometimes just sauna.
We're doing a bit more "adult" stuff these days, now he's a bit older and has an attention span. For example in the past few months I've taken him to a 90 minute-long circus show, Linanmäki, his first metal gig (hevisaurus), and to the cinema to watch the Mario film. I expect it is only a matter of time until I take him to watch a hockey match, but I don't think he'll be so interested so I've held off for the moment.
I guess other recurring things include going to the allotment (palsta) to weed, harvest berries, and random walks in the forest. He's been really interested in that this year, especially.
My parents did this when I was growing up but it only handicapped me because I was interested in coding and didn’t have enough time to learn to go to the competitions I wanted. And I learned that coding was bad because my parents kept a strict time limit on it while other things were encouraged.
Maybe it’s difficult for me to see the benefits of a time limit when I think it has done more harm for me than good. It would make more sense to limit harmful apps and websites but not time from my perspective. But everyone is taking about time-restricting.
I can tell you if my kids were coding, making music, reading, or otherwise engaged in something more productive with their screens, I'd absolutely whitelist those apps for much more time. But it is, sadly, more YT Kids shit, Roblox nonsense, etc.
I think this is a much better approach than blanket screen time restrictions.
By the way, I got into programming when I was about 10 because an informatics teacher at school showed me how to do it and encouraged her students to compete in school programming competitions. I think it's very difficult for kids to engage with learning-centric stuff on their own, so an incentive (even a very basic one) helps a lot.
Later if he has interest I'm sure I could talk to him about coding, but I know he's seen me do enough that he'll not consider it bad..
(It has to be said that a lot of people who talk about bad content are also saying they don't trust that youtube, and apps, will have appropriate content. And a lot of the time kids want to play with phones and the internet they want to do it alone..)
What about getting them involved in a physical hobby like a sport, and not restricting screen time? Would that be more beneficial for the kid?
as long as you dont really expect to have any control, lower your expectations and act surprised
1) It's much more nuanced than you're making it out to be. There are a lot of studies that show overuse of phones ("phone addiction") is bad for academic performance. Going beyond that runs into some serious correlation/causation problems. For example, children in lower income families spend significantly more time in front of a screen than middle-class families.
2) Is "learning" the sole issue you're concerned about? There are studies that show cell phone bans are harmful in other ways: reducing social interaction, student happiness, and feelings of safety.
If you look at the above two points together I think you can draw a conclusion that smartphones, like most other things, are fine in moderation and potentially problematic at the extremes.
Here are the AAP recommendations about screen time: https://www.aap.org/en/patient-care/media-and-children/cente... AAP has a reputation for being conservative and evidence-based in what they recommend.
EDIT: I found a high-quality study from just last year that should no association between the age a child acquires a phone and depression, grades, or sleep quality. https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cdev.13851
The 11 year old is addicted to his phone/switch. But he constantly plays with friends so when we block it he ends up being somewhat isolated. Seems like a can’t win situation but he is also pretty active with sports and does great in school.
9 year old doesn’t have restrictions but seems to get sick of it after an hour most days (more on weekends). She only games with her brother usually watches YouTube.
5 year old gets 1-2 hours of tv time a day. Usually because she wakes up first and turns the tv on herself, and then right after daycare while one od us is preparing food.
It’s really challenging. The younger ones get jealous of the older one if he gets more screen time. The older one is very social and suffers when he’s isolated from his friends when we turn off his screens.
Just looking around the room I’m in, I see 3/5 of the people with laptops/iPads but also on their phones. I think phone addiction is common, but maybe addiction isn’t quite the right word if it’s not negatively impacting their life as you mention with school and sports.
We're right on the cusp of giving her a laptop w/ some flavor of desktop Linux and LibreOffice. She has expressed interest in typing versus hand-writing schoolwork. I'm also considering giving her an offline copy of Wikipedia, and perhaps a typing drill app. Edit: No network access, though. Strictly an offline machine.
She has sent text messages to me with her mother's phone a few times and had a lot of fun. I wish she had a phone for emergency calls and perhaps text messages only with specified contacts. (There are times I find myself wishing I could email or text her... >smile<) Her mother and I are Apple phone users, albeit w/o iCloud accounts and minimal interaction w/ the Apple "mothership". I wish their parental controls didn't require using iCloud.
Edit: Her mother and I already had a "no phones in restaurants" policy before we had the child. Having her around has helped reinforce that since we didn't want to be rude and effectively ignore her at restaurants. (Although once she learned to read she'd just read her book and ignore us. >smile<)
I don’t believe they do unless you want to be able to configure them from your own phone. It actually seems to be more reliable[0] if you do an entirely offline screen time setup. You can also use Apple Configurator to create configuration profiles that definitely do not require Apple IDs to use (though installing Configurator on your laptop does require an Apple ID since it’s distributed though the App Store).
[0]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2023/08/05/apple-io...
You can set very granular things, like which apps they can open, for how long, and what permissions are allowed. For app installs, the parents can remote-approve it, or allow kids to download only free apps (not good idea).
You can see adjust the restrictions on the fly, like oh you've done your homework, I'll give you extra hour. You can see usage report.
My kids are still using it to watch youtube. So I'm not successful yet.
Gave unlimited books and magazines.
Elementary school- bought an iPad with screen time and “no devices upstairs” (all bedrooms were upstairs). 30 minutes on school days, 60 minutes on weekend. Wi-Fi rules to shut off at night. Pihole to block porn and YouTube.
Middle school got laptops with same controls. And a gaming pc in the living room.
No instagram until 13. This was hard because all other kids got at 10 or earlier. Am trying to push this to 16 with later children.
High school- same laptop, little more screen time and later Wi-Fi turnoffs.
Phones with data when they have jobs and can afford to pay directly.
Hard to tell if this “works.” Have done some tests of how much screen time and apps and behavior was very different for the worse with more screen time. Things like more arguments. Less time creating art or playing in person with friends with more screen time.
Maybe I’ve got brain worms because I had more or less unrestricted internet access since the time I was able to use a computer, but it feels like it wasn’t overly harmful.
I spent far more than an hour behind a screen and I think I’m better off for that time. I spent a lot of time learning to program, learning mathematics, and consuming general knowledge content via things like vsauce, scishow, minute physics, cgp grey, crash course, etc.
However, I also spent a lot of time on reddit which I’m certain wasn’t ideal for my social development. I understand this case may not be typical and maybe not even reproducible given the addictive content machines like tik tok, reels, and shorts, but I think having the freedom I had was a net positive.
I saw plenty of violence and sex earlier than I should have, but like you said I feel the internet is a different beast these days. At the time, it was merely an unrefined double-edged sword of time wasting and free information. Now it is more addictive, filled with experiences designed by morally degenerate PhDs to prey upon our basest psychological weaknesses to make money for megacorps.
I have the opposite experience.
YouTube and Tik Tok scare me; as a grown-up, I can still waste hours just swiping and swiping. I suspect that getting this behavior early on will make you more docile. My siblings raise their kids with tablets, and it impacts their learning ability and sociability tremendously.different set of norms but just different
abstinence only education doesn't work, no need to become your parents just because of a new thing to have a knee jerk reaction to
I am 100% against completely banning them from using it as it excludes them from important social situations and an anti-technology policy hurts them in the long run.
They're here to stay: be a responsible parent and help them use them safely. Reward what they do well, don't punish them up front.
Edit: my eldest is 2nd year at university now. Without the technology focused upbringing she would have the burden of learning that on top of the education. Now she zooms around on her iPad Pro / Apple Pencil as an extension of herself. No technology is a barrier to her.
I don’t see it as a big burden. Do you think it took 18 year olds in 2010 who got an iPad when they first came out a long time to learn how to use them?
Kinda silly that it takes a long time learn how to use one.
Yet, I don't have the courage to make a peep when I see friends handing their phones to their kids so they'll let us talk at the restaurant.
In my day (back then) they'll send me to buy cigarettes or some other errand.
But in those similar posts and this one, the OPs never mention how they were raised.
I think it’d be interesting to know.
Even if it’s not a smartphone. It could be a Nokia trac phone or whatever. It could be video games. It could be their own personal laptop or pc or their own AOL kids or teen account.
It’s hard to provide advice when we don’t know the baseline.
More recently when much of the inner city was in lockdown, those tools proved invaluable. Even if it were just for kids communicating to other kids in lockdown in the room next door.
My daughter is only 4, but she's had access to a tablet since 1. She's far less addicted than any of her cousins. She will give it up in a heartbeat to do anything else. Sometimes just cartwheels down the hallway. Her tablet is wall garden locked to amazon, so no access to youtube which was honestly a good move looking at some of her classmates. I've some apps outside of Amazon's garden like Disney Plus. All her stuff has parental controls and her tablet operates at my pleasure and before bedtime.
I think that some this is just parenting. I saw a study that stated that screen time only correlated with bad outcomes if your kid would have been doing something else. So if your kid could have been interacting with you, but instead was play games or watching streaming then that's where it's bad. If they would have just been home doing nothing, then the tablet doesn't hurt and can sometimes help.
I've taken this to heart and from a young age I've tried to just do stuff with my kid and have her so stuff and make sure she understood that while riding in the car with her tablet was okay, using it at the park was not okay. Replace park with literally anything. I think this is why now, her tablet is more of a boredom thing for her and she's doesn't need it every moment of every day. She'd rather run outside.
I'm just a sample of one and I know I'm more strict the more addicted the child seems to be (I have many niblings). I do think that screens are dangerous, but so is sugar and I think like sugar you a balance is best. You don't want a kid sneaking sodas because you never let them have one, but allowing soda every day is probably bad idea. That's my stance about screens. If you feel more attached to your phone, etc beyond it being a tool, you probably need a longer break from one is my thinking.
and probably predisposition which is being selected against in real time
as in, yes, its an additional distraction that undermines a group of human’s productivity for the next few generations, but not all
I raised my kids on a sailboat. Literal death was just a matter of standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, or falling off when no one would notice for 5 minutes.
They all survived.
They survived because they had a deep understanding of the dangers involved and how to avoid them, not because raising 6 towards old children on a sailboat is perfectly safe.
Was it worth it? Sure. They are all amazing people with a global culture, strong risk taking and management skills, and a broad range of skills.
If one of them had died, my answer would probably be no, not worth it.
With screens at a young age, There is a risk of dopamine-short loops and damage to attention mechanisms in brain development. If they don’t do the thing’s that are damaging, they won’t be damaged.
To be perfectly clear, I am not criticizing your choice. Sounds to me like it was the right one. But it’s definitely a YMMV situation, like sailing the ocean with young children.
Danger can be a good thing if it's visible and apprehensible https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/24/why-germany-is...