I tell parents about the reasons to avoid this stuff all the time and many of them are so exhausted it's more of a "whatever, they will be fine" type of response (more politely of course, but that's the gist of it).
I feel it now too. My kids are in middle school and all their friends are getting phones. All I hear about is "Everybody else can do X! We're the only ones that can't."
I let them have stretches of unlimited game access and when I saw what it was doing, took them away. After experiencing it, when I explained how the games work to make them addicted and the things that we saw changing in their behavior they understood and at least now they take a lot of what I say more seriously when I warn them. So that's a positive.
I have backed off on some things due to the pandemic just to make it easier to play with their friends (Fortnite, Roblox, etc). Previously my generally rule was "no iPad/iPhone/Touchscreen games" but just about anything on the Switch/Xbox was fine. I find that games that you purchase vs games that are free don't have anywhere close to the same tilt toward addiction, ad feeds, timed rewards, etc. I also don't see the negative behaviors that came from these either.
Over time, their friends parents seem to be going the other direction and getting more strict with the electronics, so I'm hearing less "why can't we" and more "he can't play anymore today".
Social stuff though...zero chance. None. It's a disease.
This is an important factor that extends into all aspects of tech that I've worked around. Us tech savvy people take a staggering amount of knowledge for granted, I think - partially due to how technical knowledge can compound and transfer so well.
People use the term whitelist - why not supervise kids with a whitelist? I understand that idea (I've written the behaviour into software), and I'd even seek it out if I wanted to protect my kids. But to some people, this concept won't make sense at all. They'll ask things like "Why does the phone know what my kid can see?" or "How can the phone know what each app/website is?" – questions that almost make no sense if you know how these things work. But, that's the world we live in. I personally think it's my responsibility as someone privileged enough to be technical to help those who don't understand. Whether it's my kids or their grandma or the people I work with. Most people learn these concepts readily, but they have no idea where to start or what to look for to learn. It's not really their fault (not that you or anyone suggested it is).
> games that you purchase vs games that are free don't have anywhere close to the same tilt toward addiction, ad feeds, timed rewards, etc
Absolutely, it seems analogous to watching a movie vs watching T.V.
> Social stuff though...zero chance. None. It's a disease.
100%
I’m sure this is probably a thing overall, but I also distinctly remember some extremely tech savvy friends, people making their livings in tech from the 90’s, using iPhone with games and YouTube as an opium stick whenever their 7-10 year olds wouldn’t sit still in public.
They fought about it, so maybe it was a cultural thing, but it definitely wasn’t because they didn’t understand the mechanics of adtech.
I also have super techno-illiterate friends whose teenage son spends maybe an hour a day online.
I don’t pretend to know the parenting solution but my anecdata suggests the tech-savvy parents are not automatically better at this than their less-teched counterparts.
If it's flashy, exciting, looks cool - other children are going to want to have the same thing too.
In a situation like that, even if your own preference is to have a quiet, slow existence for your family -- and even if that's what other families want too -- the environment has been altered by this external factor.
Adults aren't immune to these kind of peer effects either, to be honest - but it's particularly pathetic for multi-billion dollar companies to intentionally market towards children with the hope of holding on to their attention and customer data.
I recently decided to start using Netgear's parental controls (after many years of ignoring it) on our wifi router and found that they discontinued it due to a lack of use.
...wait, how would they know it wasn't being used, unless they were also spying on your router?
"I wasn't looking in your child's bedroom window for bad reasons. I was just gathering telemetry and analytics."
When new employees walk in, any moral conviction that existed in the first implementation takes its leave.
Honestly, given the near certainty and repetition of history, your disbelief comes off as naivete.
I remember I had email way before my parents, and now they use email everyday. People can learn how to use technologies, they just need the right training and simple UIs.
I feel for the parents that are not tech-savy, I do not feel for the parents that can see how social media is having negative effects of their children's brains.
This is the main issue. If they don't participate in online communities where their friends are, they will have significant social disadvantage.
As a grown up, I had quit Facebook for about a year, and I noticed my social life was declining slowly. Someone would forget to invite me to some event. Someone might be shocked that I didn't know so and had a baby. And I am sure people started to label me as weirdo for not having Facebook.
Back to kids, yeah this is a social issue, not something that one can solve alone for just their family.
They probably just don’t think of you. That’s the more likely scenario. People who engage with social media will stay in people’s minds more. If you’re not on there or not engaged, people will likely just forget about your existence. If I’m not connected to someone on social media or they don’t engage at all, there’s quite a bit of me forgetting they ever existed. After all, it’s not like we all see each other in physical spaces all the time. (Even pre-pandemic)
The difference is I have to go out of my way to keep up with people over text, calls, or email. It's not that hard to do, though, since it's how I lived my life before facebook. Some people do think it's weird that they can't find me on facebook and I am probably missing out on one or two people who moved to "only facebook" communications, but honestly I don't really miss them.
This is very interesting, can you give more details please?
How did you explain this stuff to them, and the behavior you noticed. How did they take it? How about having social media?
For example, my kids did not get phones. But all of their friends had them. Which meant my kids would just create accounts for these services on their friends phones and just post whatever they wanted without me being able to control it.
A second example is when their friends get new phones. Guess what they do with the old phone? They give it other kids who don't have them. Sure, they don't have a cell plan. But that doesn't stop them from using wifi at starbucks or any other place.
Also unfair because some parents are not rich. Some aren't living in the right place. Some are not highly intelligent. Some are not woke enough. Indeed very very unfair.
Lets hand over the responsibility to companies or to the state. Communistic coordinated child parenting probably isn't gonna make it better for the children but at least its fair.
If you go that route you could top down rule everything because some people are not good people. The end goal would be some kind of totalitarian government.
By the way, I can almost guarantee you that your kids will find a way to get themselves smartphones before you officially allow it. Kids are resourceful, and there's nothing as tempting as something their parents tell them they can't have.
With this said, I don't exactly understand how an instagram for children can possibly hope to NOT run afoul of COPPA. All it takes is one child uploading a single photo of themselves or their siblings, or referring to a friend by name in a comment, or heck even just using their real name in their username...
You’ll get really sick of downloading every. Single. Minecraft redstone tutorial for them.
EDIT: Wow, how is this so unpopular? Do your friends regularly make plans together without you?
As opposed to the stance (admittedly also ideological, but I agree with this one) that facebook and all its subsidiaries should gtfo children's lives.
Back when I was a kid and dinosaurs roamed the earth, we made after-school plans in 4th period math, because we were all in the same class. If my friends suddenly started making plans in a class where they knew I wasn't present, I'd start questioning whether they were really friends.
Yes, platforms can influence social interaction a lot - but ultimately, regardless of age, we're all still human.
I think most people learn to understand what's fair and unfair in terms of inclusivity, even if it takes longer in some situations. We'll figure out better solutions.
Being a kid without friends because your parents sucked at teaching you how to integrate into society, is very very hard. And allowing your children to be part of other children's social lives, that matters. Even if that means joining shitty social networks.
Does that situation suck, yes. But don't put this on the kids. Please don't make children suffer because of your views on an idealistic society.
Maybe he'll have friends who'll put the additional effort in to copy him in on email or phone the home land-line. But maybe he won't. Seems a big risk to take.
That said, I don't appreciate that there are people out there like Zucc, who are making it their business to create even more things I have to say no to, and specifically targeting them at kids. Just like those people out there making kids games that are essentially casino gambling, but just barely on the safe side of the legal line. Thanks, a lot assholes, for adding no value to the world and giving me yet another thing to forbid my kid from doing.
Also Yes, it should be illegal to sell them cigarettes and beer.
Given Facebook has a monopoly in social networks, it's entirely reasonable to hold them to a higher standard and question the impact of new products which use their monopoly power to launch.
It's definitely an easier said than done scenario.
For example, they encourage the use of the calendar app for tracking assignments and test dates. They use the camera to capture information for homework. Kids have projects that sometimes involves recording audio or shooting video. There's also a twitter-like app that the teacher can use to broadcast to students and students can use to communicate with the teacher.
Easy to say from an ivory tower.
Not everyone is you. Some people have two jobs. Some people travel a lot. Some people have to take care of sick relatives. Some people have hard jobs that consume a lot of time. Some people are poor. Some people don't have great education. Some people are simply not capable of doing all the things that you do.
It's very SV Bubble to make bad products available and then blame the parents when they damage their children. That's not how a civilized society works. It's why we have a Consumer Products Safety Commission.
Why can Facebook just do the right thing and not target children? Why is Facebook making money more important than everything else in the world?
During normal times, they’ll just get it from their friends or schoolmates. Unless you can surveil the kids all the time, this method alone won’t help.
There are two ways to look at this, imo:
(1) Individual parents. Absolutely agree. If you are one, do your research and limit internet use.
(2) Societally... It's hard. Culture doesn't move as fast as tech does. If SV culture isn't totally caught up, where is the average culture? It's hard because "think totally independently" isn't how people work, at least not all the time. Especially when it comes to parenting, people rely on norms.
Meanwhile, it's hard to control those little Bs.
While perhaps setting parental controls is trying to be simple and parents can get somebody's help with it, the second part like downloading video from youtube and playing it on VLC is way beyond most people. Especially that's not officially supported by YT.
I have just a 2yo and a t-6m so I do not have to worry about these things. Yet the way you handle it sounds a bit too strict. You sure that maybe strict limits on screen time and YouTube together with speaking about what they consume would not teach them more?
Louis CK had great comments about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HbYScltf1c
Perhaps this is the case for me because what he did wasn't really messed up from what I know about the story, just weird.
I will concede that in some situations, and from my perspective these would almost entire involve sexual assault, I'd consider a person unredeemable.
You should probably go read up on what he did - pretty messed up power dynamics. (https://www.thecut.com/2018/08/what-about-the-careers-of-lou...)
Let's use an example. Let's say now the norm becomes to allow kids to drink alcohol and smoke weed. Would you allow your kids to do it? Same principles, in my opinion, stand with Instagram or any other tool / toy / gadget.
But, alas, Instagram is not a regulated drug, and I see little reason why most parents' reactions wouldn't be more similar to those they have for video games or watching movies than it would be to the use of an illegal drug.
A more apt comparison might be a parent who doesn't let their kid go to the movies or play video games with their friends.
I completely disagree. We don't allow those things because we know kids shouldn't be doing it. If there were no drinking age laws kids would still not be drinking and smoking weed because parents wouldn't allow it. That was kinda my point. (let's not talk about the outliers, obviously some kids smoke and drink)
https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/brochures-and-fact-sh...
> If there were no drinking age laws kids would still not be drinking and smoking weed because parents wouldn't allow it.
In places with more relaxed drinking laws, we do often see more kids drinking. 42% of 15 year old boys were weekly drinkers in the UK in 2002.
https://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/382840/...
> Most young people begin using alcohol between the ages of 12 and 16, an age at which they gain increasing independence and spend more time outside the home unsupervised. At the same time, the direct influence of parents diminishes and friends become increasingly important.
I think Apple and Android offer some fairly powerful tools to manage these things? But I've found that routers, even in 2021, are just trash garbage at offering these kinds of powers.
I had technophobe parents like this. When other kids got technology I had to do without to build character or whatever.
Lesson I learned is that adults are mostly pretty dumb and stubborn. Haven’t seen ‘em in 15 years.
Yes, I mean parents should be responsible not to use leaded paint. And parents should be responsible for making sure they don't buy a crib that can suffocate their infant. And parents should be responsible for making sure pajamas are not going to catch on fire. And parents should be responsible for making sure that their kids avoid cigarette ads targeted to kids (like Joe Camel).
With kids, if there is a certain threshold of danger from something, especially if it is being targeted to kids, I think society should regulate (see alcohol and tobacco). I think there is increasing evidence that certain types of social media are harmful to kids.