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Comment by toolz | Hacker News Reader

I'm not a parent so I'm not nearly invested enough to have put much into the problem, but having been a kid playing online games I have to wonder if you believe you can actually shield your kid from adult material anymore and if you can't then wouldn't it make more sense to just have some hard conversations and let the kid handle things as they come up?

Again, no judgement, I don't see optimal solutions here, just choosing the least worst option maybe.

I just can't imagine being a parent myself and feeling equipped to protect a child from adult material these days so it feels like the only viable alternative is to have adult conversations and enable the child to make decisions rather than the alternative of the child inevitably encountering adult situations and feeling the guilt/anxiety of having to hide that from their parents.

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How old a kid are you picturing?

My 6yo loves Minecraft. The servers and YouTube videos are consistently on topic. Not too hard to keep an eye on.

When I looked into Roblox last year, the top YouTube results were how to make super sexualized clothing and innuendo. Skip.

My nearly 7yo loves Minecraft too - both Java and Bedrock! He keeps asking me about Roblox but I've also heard of the whole monetizing thing and I keep telling him to stick to Minecraft as well.

My daughter is starting to use her Chromebook more and more independently. I'm very happy she's developing the skills, but also nervous about who and what she might encounter. I am convinced the danger is overblown by far, but seeing how trusting kids are I know I have to be safe rather than sorry. They think the world is a safe and good place and while it's much better in western countries than, say, India or Iraq, truth is that the world is a dangerous world for little girls everywhere. The internet takes away some of the physical aspects (direct bodily harm) but there's enough things that can happen to ruin your mind, psyche, life, and some abusers are skillful to even get victims to expose or harm themselves, setting up further harm for a lifetime (think of all the teenage girls who's photos are shared online for decades, with many of their friends having seen them, and with facial recognition this can all only get worse).

I'm less worried for the boys. I'm also less worried about the 'sex stuff' they might see (say, stumble upon erotica, porn, fetish porn, etc) as all those will come with time. I'm more worried about violence and /r/watchpeopledie kind of things. Imagine a seven or ten year old that can't sleep after watching Caspar or Moana, encountering a video of an innocent person being pushed in front of a train, or lynched, or ... It's absurd to me how that's legal on the US platforms that prudely censor every nipple...

But beyond this, there's a categorical difference to seeing something and being urged/pushed/forced into seeing it and the other person taking some perverse pleasure from it, as described by the previous poster. Goatse is disgusting but funny to some degree, but being lured into someone's virtual torture or rape den...?

It's like upskirt porn - totally uninteresting from the sexual perspective, its all about power, abuse, invading in the private sphere and mind of the victim. I don't want to expose my kids to that risk. The most previous thing I have in my world are my kids and especially their minds.

I want them to explore the digital, but the powers of abuse unleashed online - it's just incredible. From the random middle aged man paying for child rape in the Philippines or pretending to be a 12 year old boy and tricking kids into revealing their lives up to the abuse among classmates, friends and strangers - the internet is a damgerous place for kids. And I can manage and anticipate some risks for my kids. I dread what my daughters' friends will encounter when their only protection is a barely digitally literate single mom.

I've raised a boy and several girls in the internet age. I had your attitude from the get go. I wish I had been better educated and had done it different.

What I've learned raising children in the internet age is that boys are vulnerable during the formative years to porn addiction and the dopamine spiral that causes humans to seek harder stuff more often.

The girls are more susceptible to depression from social comparison through social media. There is a correlation, perhaps even a causation, with a drastic increase in suicide and self harm attempts of preteen and teen girls and the prevalence of social media consumption.

It shouldn't be too surprising that the formative years, when kids' brains are still developing and most vulnerable to impulse decisions, are formative for actual brain development through experience as well. It doesn't work to treat kids exactly like adults because they aren't as well equiped ad adults to handle adult situations.

Giving up on restrictions to experience and material during these formative years is, imo, like trying to teach children how to responsibly consume meth.

In my case, the answer is to tell them that there are some decisions that should absolutely wait until their prefrontal cortex is fully developed because of the developmental impact it has on them. Until then, there will be restrictions on certain things in this house under my roof.

I try to build a trust relationship that encourages them to be open and honest about what they've been exposed to do what I can help them navigate. And when we've calibrated wrongly, there's also therapy that had proven to be helpful for three of my six kids. It's also not cheap so I feel lucky that I'm able to afford the extra help when needed.

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