Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

I started off sympathetic, but as I got down to the end of the article I found myself horrified. It's a recipe for indulging the worst tendencies towards helicopter parenting. Is detailed invasive intrusion and surveillance into the personal lives of our children really what we want? Do children really deserve no privacy at all?

How about bringing up children to have a responsible attitude and building trust? I have exactly the same concerns the author has. I have two children ages 13 and 14, and they have each had an iPad since they were 6 and 7 thanks to the generosity of my brother. Our youngest in particular spends more time on youtube and chat apps than we would like, but I can easily imagine the damage I would do to our relationship by constantly spying on every single thing she does on it. Especially as she grows into her teenage years. It strikes me as lazy and avoiding building trust and responsible attitudes, the actual things parents should be doing to address such issues.

The article writer is has younger children, though. For older children the ability to set a daily time limit makes sense based on what research I've seen, and (if you, parent, would like) it could skip the helicoptering and invasiveness: kid gets x hours per day to do what they'd like, and then they need to find other things to do. My oldest is only four, so I haven't begun to think about raising teens yet, and he doesn't get unsupervised time with an iPad, but I'd love just to have a way to track how much time he actually spends using screens like that.

You can already control what apps children can download using family linked accounts and really the only problematic app left is the browser, but personally I found my kids were just not really interested in the web. For the most part you need to type URLs and search for stuff and it’s all far more confusing than using apps, so they tended not to use it.

I came here to post a very similar comment, thanks for posting this. While the public internet didn’t exist when I was a young kid, it did as a teenager. I can assure you my parents had no clue what I was doing and I turned out ok because my parents did the important thing, spent time raising me.

But good parenting is all about setting limits and never actually being there or allowing kids to exercise self control. What if they find out that Nick Berg was a fearless reporter who was beheaded and manage to form opinions about the world without traveling? What if they watch pornography? I am afraid my kids might actually have to learn about the good AND the bad. Good parents tell their kids that bad stuff is bad...they don't actually let them find out for themselves... I am the son of a robot and I turned out just fine. Bleep bop booop beep. I am limited to sarcastic comments because my dad programmed me to be an asshole. Sorry.

The solution is not an iPad feature. It’s you deciding to be a good parent.

My above comment is in support of that opinion.

So, as a good parent, how do you personally teach your kids self control?

As a parent myself, screen-based devices are a class all to themselves. While earlier generations were worried about kids overconsuming things like radio, comic books, television, arcade videogames, etc... devices like the iPad are way more addicting. Perhaps exponentially so.

Talk to any parent and you'll hear stories about how they put their kids to bed and discovered, later on, that the kid woke back up and stayed up until 4am watching videos and playing games.

One way to fix that is to remove the device. But we're teaching self-control and trust, right? So what do you do?

It's a process. I've found my daughter asleep with her iPad in her hands before, it's something that happens and there have to be consequences and rules. All devices go in our bedroom at bed time. If there is work to do, it takes priority as you can always go back to that game or video and continue later. No walking around watching screens.

But self control is just a skill kids need to learn by itself, if they have it as a general ability then they can apply it to screens too. Our kids have to do self-study time on top of homework, they do piano and flute, we take them horse riding and skating. They just joined the local Air Cadet squadron and just did a weekend camping. Spend time with them, do things together, encourage a variety of activities, talk about issues and build close, trusting relationships. I don't think intrusive surveillance has a place in that recipe.

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