I am assuming projects like this exist already - focused on the dad segment, but if not it's on my 2018 list. Anyone know of any?
Cut your kids a break. If you are going to monitor their usage, at the very least tell them about it first.
I get the urge - when your kids are very young you have to protect them and do everything for them. At some point you have to accept they are people, however young and inexperienced, and you have to teach them to look after themselves, not invade their privacy.
Or maybe I've misunderstood you and you meant older as in, they are 6 or something. Even then, I'd argue that you should be up-front about the fact you monitor it. Hiding it is just going to feel like entrapment.
but my main point still stands - we live in a surveillance society that works against us, so i want to use it to start working for us. and that to my mind means starting with metrics.
will it help to know daddy spends x hours a day on HN? will it be harder to complain about my kids watching cartoons if i spend 12 hours a day on netflix?
In my experience, ignorance is responsible for a lot more harm than "seeing too much". Going off hear-say, or just remaining ignorant is not a good thing. Having some room for privacy is important for development as people and for learning.
Yes, there is room for insight and lessons from data, but without an opt-out switch, it'll also be something that limits them. It's not just porn, there is a lot of stuff I'd want to learn about that I wouldn't want my family to know I'm learning about, if I was a child all over again.
I was fortunate in that I got to look up that stuff without fear of being discovered, and otherwise I know I'd have gone around believing playground rumours and the like.
It's easy to say "but I want them to be able to talk to me about that stuff" - it's easy to say that, but it's harder for it to be true, especially from the point of view of your child. You can't pre-empt every fear, question and insecurity, and some things will just always be embarrassing enough they'll stay ignorant rather than ask you.
I had a friend who didn't know basic (important) things about her own anatomy that caused health issues during university just because she was too embarrassed to ask her (non-judgemental, lovely) parents about it as a child. She didn't have a computer in her home then, but I'm sure if she had, knowing she couldn't have privacy would have stopped her as well.
It's not the worst thing in the world or anything, but I think many parents don't start giving their children privacy early enough. I get it's scary and hard to judge when it's perfect, but I think it's important.
On a side note, I just watched the ultimate "turned up to 11" version of this in Black Mirror S04E02 - ArkAngel, where a parent gets a monitoring device implanted in their child after a scare with them getting lost. Good series about the potential dangers of tech as it evolves, if you haven't already seen it.
Actually this idea is far lower down my priority tree than say working out how to monitor how much TV we watch, how much time on social media (or HN) - and then to compare to things we would prefer to do like walking the dog or playing board games.
Just inventorying our lives will be a huge step towards getting conscious control over the mass distraction world we live in.
Further ranting:
No one thinks having a comprehensive view on my monetary spend is a bad idea - websites, apps and even EU directives are trying to help. but there is nought for my time spend - apart from stupid things like please enter how much time you just spent on an activity.
So as a starting list i want
- To know what the TV was showing when.
- What netflix was showing on what device
- what youtube was showing
- for my phone - what podcasts, what youtube etc,
- same for social media (HN counts for me)
- The Nintendo Switch kinda sorta gets it - there is a parent app that lets one set time limits on daily usage. but hahahahha it assumes you only have one child (per switch)
- then use my GPS tag to show where was I and can I correspond that with an activity - gym, commute, walking across fields
- I am fairly sure there is value in Alexa / similar voice monitoring working out what is happening in the house (it takes you on average 34 minutes from the first "get dressed for school" till the door finally bangs)
Don't get me started on MOOPs
And none of which has an API i know about. All because they don't want me to stop watching.
Oh dear...I really wish your kids have the best parents in the world. I really do, my parents probably believed that too, but unfortunately they were not - surprise!
But I'm really happy that I was born at least two decades too early for that shit. I hope kids can still outsmart their parents today. If not, we've lost.
The internet is full of crazy awful stuff, and yeah sure I get that at some point you have to let them be independent and trust them, but we don't know how old his kids are, at younger ages there is certainly some protection required. And as they grow up and learn you can gradually give then more trust and freedom.
As much as I’d like to tinker myself, the little I’ve seen of the Circle app looks like a really slick way to monitor and manage usage in a low maintenance and least-intrusive manner.