My wife and I talk with them about internet safety, but I'm interested in what (if any) technical measures HN moms, dads, and guardians have found helpful as age-appropriate internet guardrails.
- 8am-9pm
- Time limits per category, say 1 hour per day weekdays, 1.5 hours weekends
- Safari, only with whitelisted educational sites like Wikipedia, pbskids, etc.
- No social media accounts allowed.
- Location services off, other access (microphone, camera, etc) denied to most apps.
- No Youtube or other predatory apps. See recent HN stories:
Google, YouTube to Pay $170M Penalty over Collecting Kids' Personal Info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20876960
Adult Content Disguised as Kids Videos Is Flooding YouTube: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21937464
I restrict Netflix as well because most kids programming is low quality even when not inappropriate.
I also put many of these restrictions on myself recently so I could get more sleep, haha.
Nothing works that you don't do yourself. My parents told me not to smoke as they lot their cigarettes. Told me it's an adult thing, which was a very bad idea now that I think about it. I don't smoke, but not because of them. If anything, in spite of
- no tablet after dinner
- no tablet in the bedroom
- ask before searching something on the internet
They are only loosely enforced, but we are always in a position to ask: "what are you watching/doing?" and do so casually from time to time. Search engines filter inappropriate contents much better than a few years ago. No Youtube, and they moved away Youtube kid by themselves, preferring TV replay.
They are not old enough to have a phone, so that is pretty easy, for now :)
In Android: We use Family Link to approve apps installation and set app time limits per day. No social/user generated content apps. 11yo has access to Edge browser (more on that in Windows).
In Windows: We use Microsoft Family to monitor screen time/usage. We also whitelist webpages that can be visited through Edge (settings translate to Android's Edge).
We only just got a SIM card for our 11yo (so we and family can communicate with her), we closely monitor usage and gave strict guidelines about not answering calls/texts from numbers not in the contact list.
When given access to computing had discussions about finding things you may not understand or extreme weird things - and that he/she can talk with us to discuss these things.
We occasionally look at url history to this day.
later showed how to use multiple sources to check for accurate info and showed how mayo clinic, webmd, a few others may offer different details.
Showed articles from the news where people stalked and tried to kidnap based upon online chats.
Did research on software - used family-link on google to block things until age 13 when family auto-destructs.
Had discussions every few months about how people show edited bad things to get others to to bad things - story about the 'bernie sanders freedom sticks' - other challenges' where people got seriously hurt or killed.
Talked about how sharing a picture could give you your exact location in multiple ways.. and if other details were known like time or whether or time school starts, how that process is easier.
Decided Disney cirlce's dns poison on the router and via app on the phone is the best censoring we could find. Then found out we can't afford it.
Found out other kid never uses youtube on his phone and cant use directions apps cuz the family link from google.. found out other kid tells that kid to install amino chat(?) and it iframes youtube (non-kids version) - they are hackers already..
Show article from yahoo news recently about the grooming kids via list of apps, getting them to send pics, then blackmail for more - depression and crap.
Show them that anyone can voice change and appear to be a girl or kid using phone apps and even method to do so on playstation mic.
Show how I can use a cam plugin to show "live cam" form my system, which is actually some random girl not me..
I have been considering getting some people together to build an app that semi-spies on kid's audio - and auto erases 90% of it.. and only sending a notice or save if it gets hits on certain keywords.. and make that toggle-able for various parents.. some might want sex keywords.. I think suicide related ones would be pretty universal.. but able to toggle others.. some parents no cuss words.. it's still various napkins of ideas.. something maybe with mycroft or similar that does not send audio to the cloud..
Keeping an ear out... my stepkid can and does tell me various things that are going in his digital world and I cam always accepting / listening, not getting angry - and I offer counter info on occasion..
The surprise I had when I found that a meme-thread-group was pushing extreme anti-feminist stuff... I did not show my emotions, I instead offered multiple other viewpoints and said perhaps reality is in the middle and there are extremes and edge cases here and there that do not represent the masses..
Looked into the open source disney-circle like thing - could not figure out how to make it work after studying a couple hours.
There have been more things over things, I'll try to remember and add.
Please don't. That sounds like a terrible idea and shows lack of trust/faith of parents in their kids. No one is pushed to suicidal ideation without a significant disruption in life. Instead of focusing on when if it happens, prevention is always better. Try to engage with them regularly, be a nice friend and inspiration. You ought to be the role model and don't signal stigma or guilt which many people unintentionally do when topic of depression and suicidal ideation comes up.
Though, I don't have any case for preteen kids. They may require additional surveillance but not from their phones, from you. You need to be there for them, available and reachable.
Heads off for teaching them about tech and various implications of it early on!
That's certainly good.
One more thing, keep things normal. Stick it with realistic statistics. You don't want them to become paranoid. (I hope you already know that).
and it really is about the individual - the maturity and age and situations. That's reason I think IF something like this was to be used, it would have variable keywords to pay attention to.. I know some parents that would lose their mind if they caught kids cussing.. and even though that is not allowed in our situation, I would not turn on a toggle to flag it..
In this particular situation, we have had some run-ins where there has been some indications that make the need for listening closely for suicidal type things something that is likely a good idea.. this child was in a really bad place for the first 6 years of life, then major disruptions several times since. Have warnings from counselors to keep an eye out for certain indicators.. This in combination with physical and verbal bullying in multiple places and other things.. it's something we are trying to extend trust and space.. and keep an eye on things.. Like I said each situation is different, and I worry that people would use such tech in a way that really bothers me - I mean what if someone used it to determine sex keywords and they discovered an lgbt interest and went off the rails..
So it's tough to balance the thoughts on proper ways to consider use of such tech.
But I focus mainly on non-judgement, come and talk about anything, I suggest things or just listen, don't get mad, show multiple options for handling things, learn to check multiple sources, all that.
mom discovered porn url, flipped a bit - I calmed her down, it's not about punishing, it's about communication if needed and awareness when it's needed.
"Stick it with realistic statistics. You don't want them to become paranoid" - yes indeed! we need to also talk about the good, the positives of online chats and relations...
and then a middle ground of GF / BF you love and trust today could change one day and go the other direction.. but that is offline as much as online.. but be ware that if they got mad at you you wouldn't want them to have galleries of pics / videos that they won't delete if you ask them to and they no longer like you for example.
so many things, and situations vary immensely!
Parents have authority over their kids. There is potential to abuse and from what I have seen happen with smartphones has convinced me, any tech for kids need to be highly restrained in the use otherwise it will be abused for a replacement. Parents will start relying on it as the end and all solution. Add triggers for everything and snoop in instead of directly communicating and building trust. There is also context missing from short clips and it may appear a certain way while it isn't intended to be. I say lot of shit I wouldn't want others to hear including my parents. I will communicate about the same but in a more reasonable way if I feel comfortable. Some people can't take it calmly and I don't blame them, it will be hard to hear and emotional attachment could cloud judgement. It might signal guilt and stigma. If I knew someone was snooping in on the details, I would either stop talking about some things which I should ought to express more for others to take on or simply trash the device. In the later case, what if parents become convinced that the device is still working and they need not worry about anything?
You can try to restrict tech to certain parents but that's hard to do once it becomes mainstream. It's hard to restrict afterwards and build on human values for it to be not used as an armchair parenting device.
> mom discovered porn url, flipped a bit - I calmed her down, it's not about punishing, it's about communication if needed and awareness when it's needed.
I have similar views. Porn is unavoidable in some form, no matter how hard you try when they hit teens. It will be shared by friends and while you can block things in your home, you can't do it for someone else's home. I wouldn't try to block it so I can al teast notice if there is anything unhealthy in there and talk.
Counterpoint: grew up with full unrestricted access to the internet - parents were both trusting me not to do bad things and also clueless about technology. Saw things most parents would consider the end of the world (aka pornography), somehow it didn’t kill me or seemed to affect me in any way and I still ended up fine.
This was not too much a concern when the main desire was club penguin and youtube... however once a large par tof net access becomes amino chats, discord chats, meme boards and the such, I think it's important to discuss some of the dangers if it's relevant (I noticed when asked to fix something on the phone that selfie's started appearing in gallery) - this could be innocent but it could also be leading to not so much
If I had a daughter she might spend all of her time only chatting with her close friends she knows in real life until college - in which case my discussions would probably not be so many 'these-bad-things-can happen' - a different situation compeltely..
I used news stories and stuff that has aired on local tc broadcasts, and some from yahoo and such - I did not dig deep for horror stories... I think the most important thing is not to flip out and remain an open line of communication no matter how terrible something could be.
So again it varies by each person... I don't think you want to wait until your kid is swatting the neighbors and showing off on 4chan to pay attention to what they are learning / engaging in online.
I also would not have a device report to me if it heard youngsters talking about sex, people should talk about that and share what they know. I would perhaps want an alert if 'plane tickets' came up or 'sneak out' or 'skip school' maybe.. then I'd want to know more surrounding, but that is now and that might be different a couple years from now.
I don't know if we know more about it now or if the engine has improved, but some weird radicalization factions are starting to target kids and teens, and are leading them down rabbit holes faster and easier. That's why I use a blacklist for my nephew -- he can get around it for most things, but the behavior-optimization for radicalization gets knocked around because of random blocks.