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Comment by jasongill | Hacker News Reader

I dislike Facebook as much as any HN poster, but I can say that the Facebook Messenger for Kids app has been... surprisingly good.

Kids can't talk to anyone who you don't add as a friend, and your child's friends list is managed by you and new friends must be approved by the parents of both kids. You can see at any time who they have been talking to, you can see all the images that have been sent and received, and there's no advertising. It's basically a walled garden just for your kids group of friends who've been approved by parents and nothing more. Kids can't even start a group chat or video chat with friends who aren't all mutual friends, so there's no way for your child to talk to anyone who you haven't approved.

It has stuff that kids like, like little games and filters they can use to play with their friends, which is clearly just to increase engagement (and screen time), but it's actually not nearly as terrible as you'd expect from Facebook (yet).

Messenger for Kids has been a godsend during the quarantine due to the fact that the kids want to do video chat but all have different types of devices, and it's nice because it's locked down to only the people you approve.

Now, is Instagram for Kids a good idea? We shall see, my guess is "probably not" but at least Messenger for Kids isn't exactly the nightmare you'd think it is based on the name.

View on HN

I loath FB Messenger Kids. Because other kids have it, there's huge peer pressure for my kids to use it. I either have to be the bad parent and isolate my kids from their friends, or give in and start them down the path of getting conditioned to use FB products.

And the games on it use the same engagement tricks all of Facebook does, so the kids end up getting sucked into them at a very young age.

I swear have people forgot what it was like when we were kids. It's not like Facebook is covering new ground here. My parents were pressured into to giving me internet access so I could talk to my friends on AIM, I begged my Dad to buy me a cell phone because all my friends had them. And don't even get me started on Pokemon cards, Game Boy links, slap bracelets, silly bands, a bike so I could reach my friend's houses, and a car when I turned 16.

You're not conditioning your kids to be soulless zombies to lord Zuckerberg any more than I was conditioned to love AOL. Let your kids socialize in whatever way their friends are, the actual socializing and shared experience is what will matter years down the line.

I understand where you're coming from but I hold the extreme opposite view.

I believe it should be illegal for a company to intentionally allow children into a system where their psychology is manipulated. Instagram has huge negative psych effects, predominantly on young girls. But the other social dynamics, and the effects of advertising, and the effects of the echo chambers that result from the algorithmic feeds are profound and harmful across all social media platforms.

It isn't socializing when every photo is edited, every post that a kid sees is the most dramatic thing thanks to the algorithm, and moral/political activism is rampant and signal boosted. Kids should learn how to deal with real humans in the real world rather than digital characterizations of humans curated by a machine.

When I was a kid, my parents said the same things about TV, Music, Cartoons and Magazines.

This is not in defense of facebook or IG, they are problematic for kids for sure for many reasons and they should be restricted from data collecting on kids.

BUT... American culture is rooted in pop/controlled/manicured/curated culture... we idolize celebrities, sports teams, beauty... we should fix that too

I understand what you're saying. But I think it's different now that everyone is online and sites like Facebook require you to use your real name.

Growing up, I hung out on chat rooms and online gaming servers. And I probably experienced stuff I wasn't ready for. But it was under a pseudonym and all online.

In social apps today, the bullying the kids do to each other is brutal and cuts much deeper because they know other. And, unlike back in my day, you can't just delete your account and log off. The next day in school, you'll see all of the kids who sharing awful doctored photos of you and telling you that you should kill yourself.

bullying is bad period.

Except when you bought Pokémon cards did Nintendo get detailed tracking on how you played? Did the cards change in subtle ways to addict you further?

What is fundamentally different now versus then is the the data you are handing over and the manipulation that you are unknowingly experiencing.

For kids chat app, they're not allowed to collect this data. For apps that do collect this data, they have to be what, 17?

Beyond that, in the 80s and 90s we were certainly marketed too... cartoons were invented to sell us toys, get us to buy cards/games and get our friends addicted

> Did the cards change in subtle ways to addict you further?

Kind of? CCGs are well known for their predatory monetization schemes.

I think you're overplaying brand loyalty. I didn't have loyalty once everyone switched off AOL instant messenger. They'll just likely see it as a utility and switch to the next best thing when it comes along.

In other words, as long as it’s the Facebook AND parents doing the surveillance, it’s okay? The concern is over the parents getting a cut of the data? My parents would never have snooped on me the way most parents try to these days, it would have freaked me out any time after turning 11 or so

I'd love to trust that my kids are safe with technology, but the landscape for parents is way different now than it used to be, too. The grandparents left my then-toddler alone with youtube for an hour or so and I came back to my child watching some truly nightmarish videos. I can't trust the tech, so someone needs to be watching.

Web companies used to forbid accounts belonging to children under the age of 13 until what, 5-10 years ago?

I was under the impression that that was US law, so I was initially surprised at the rapid fluorishing of child accounts on nearly every service. But there seems to be a "...without parental consent" rider in our laws about data collection, and that consent is now assumed to be freely given.

Really though, children should not be using these devices to communicate or access web services unsupervised. You are the parent, not the phone.

https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/rules/rulemaking-regulatory-...

Banning children from social media has generally been an easy way to avoid the highly stringent regulations concerning data protection in the USA. The FTC doesn’t mess around with COPPA and it’s very easy to find yourself in the hole.

Out of curiosity, was your child enjoying them? What did you find objectionable? How did the subsequent conversation with your child go?

I always wonder how I'll handle these types of situations if and when I myself become a parent. I imagine it's much more difficult in reality than it is in my head.

The OP said the child was a toddler. Depending on the exact age I'd suspect there wasn't much of a subsequent conversation given the lack of communication skills.

Aside from that, whether the child is enjoying them or not isn't all that relevant. My kid would enjoy eating ice cream for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day but I know what's good for them better than they do.

My child was pre-verbal. It was a cartoon of a baby with an outlandishly large head with its mouth held open by ravens’ claws being force fed various inanimate objects like doll heads and machine engines. I shut it down within seconds of seeing it.

Answering your questions in that context is sort of ridiculous, but I’ll give it a shot:

1. At that age, my kid would watch whatever was on the screen, basically slack jawed. No bandwidth for anything else, really.

2. See above

3. There was no conversation.

And to answer your comments accusative sibling comment, my kid found it by tapping “next” repeatedly, or whatever was in the sidebar. Fwiw, I know “the phone isn’t the parent,” but the grandparents don’t have the same sensibilities around tech.

Holy shit.

A TED talk about these videos https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v9EKV2nSU8w

Yes now it's totally different than all of the crazy shit we watched on the internet growing up. The world is a dangerous and degenerate place compared to the idyllic utopia of our youth.

It's not about "sheltering" children from the trials and tribulations of real life, what they have access to is manipulative and unhealthy.

Curious what your opinions are on the epidemic of pornography use in young children.

Well how young is young? I certainly lied on that "are you 18" question plenty of times.

I think the average age is 11 for boys, that means half are under 11 when they first encounter pornography...

also read somewhere that sexual assault perpetration is occurring at younger ages.

I am a parent. I am also a technologist. I agree with that the landscape of the technology has changed drastically since I grew up in the 80s and 90s.

I don’t think I can convey to my kids the wonder of the 80s and 90s, when people were able to get a personal, general purpose computing. It was not just that every month, something new came along. There was a wide diversity of software, even among the same kind of software. People tried to write their own. Although more difficult to use, users also had a lot more power over their computing environment.

The computing landscape we have now:

- we deliberately created computing appliances in which the design of the app are driven by A/B testing, growth hacks, and dark patterns

- being able to talk with your affinity group used to mean not feeling as alone. Now, it means those are the only viewpoints you see, with algorithms feeding your view point back to you. The ancient Greek had a cautionary tale about that, called Narcissus and Echo.

- My wife is a beneficiary of online “mom” groups, and it was through there, we learned about current toys and interactions on developmental psychology. We got a Lovevry subscription, and learned about the “mental leaps”. Yet, those very things show how kids learn through interacting with objects, building neural connections in 3-d, learning through touch, smell, taste, kinesthetic and not just through sight and sound. The Montesorri method of education lets the kids choose what they are interested, but the environment is thoughtfully curated and constructed, and there is direct attention from an adult.

Algorithms are no substitute for parenting.

I first heard that from Neal Stephenson’s _Diamond Age_, but seeing how the tech landscape is now, and having a kid, that is more incisive than it had been when I first read it.

> We got a Lovevry subscription, and learned about the “mental leaps”.

All that mental leap stuff is conjecture. I was unable to find any data to support it, and the person behind it (Frans Plooij) was discredited.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wonder_Weeks

I assume any claims about mental development and personalities and whatnot is bullshit. We don’t have the technology to test it, nor even the ability to properly define things in order to test them.

YouTube Kids is a thing, BTW.

That one misses a lot through. Pretty much none of the things I wanted to show my kids was there.

Do you have kids born after ~2006?

Ok. Leaving aside quarantine, do kids really need to talk to other kids through a personal computing device that they carry around as a constant companion? Does that foster something developmentally that could not happen without it? What do kids lose if they use such devices as their primary means of communication?

And let’s say, we think the “constant companion” is the problem, and we restrict the kid’s interaction through an old school, family computer. Is that necessarily any better?

I have already seen first hand how social media interaction at the middle school (when kids are starting to form social identities independent of their parents) gets toxic.

And looking at the social-media-fueled culture wars since 2014, it does not get any better for adults. (https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/03/06/a-quick-battle-field-g...).

I don't really know how I'm going to approach this once my child is old enough to use devices but I think one might be able to argue that it makes sense for them to learn how to interact with the world as it exists, rather than a fantasy world where devices and the internet doesn't exist.

> rather than a fantasy world where devices and the internet doesn't exist.

The fantasy world is also the one that the likes of Facebook want to lead us to.

My wife and I decided on a no-social media policy for our kids. We have a teenager and a 5 month old.

Our teenager has a phone we found that is a locked down Android, and has no internet (no wifi or 4g/5g). It is just a phone, with multimedia text, and non-network enabled calendar, clock. There is no app store.

My daughter is autistic. Our problems with the phone has more to do with her feeling like we are cutting her off of connecting with people she clings to, triggering some childhood history. I have no idea what will happen when our neurotypical son becomes a teenager.

There is much more to life than just what are on devices, and I have a general idea on how to approach this. I have been studying, and to some extent, applying regenerative paradigms. A good deal of that will involve the kids into the natural cycle of life. To viscerally experience where their food comes from, and where it goes. How to connect with another living being as a whole being in an ecosystem and community, whether that being is a human, animal, or plant. I am going to teach them the ethical framework, “care for people”, “care for land”, “fair share”.

Technology, then, is thoughtfully applied within that context.

What that means, I am still discovering for myself. But I have already made some progress on that —- what Christopher Alexander really meant by pattern languages and a timeless way of building; what Smalltalk and Hypercard had in common, why we had turned our back to it, and maybe it is time to use it; the philosophy of Free Software and how it is different than open source, and why it matters more than basic rights and liberty; how sandstorm.io enables community-oriented and local platforms.

It has not all gelled together for me yet, but I know something is there.

Somewhat ironic that you don't let your children use social media but here you are posting on a social media site.

also remarkably ironic that they seem to want their kids to value life outside of technology but then proceed to say that software project licensing is more important than "basic rights and liberty" - completely out-of-touch

Not really. Kids are not adults. They’re two separate categories of people.

Maybe OP drinks alcohol but they don’t let their kids drink it.

Maybe they own firearms but they don’t let their kids wield them.

Maybe they watch movies with violence and gore but they don’t want their kids watching them.

etc.

There is a double standard, and there should be, imo.

Actually from biological standpoint there are no clear lines between kids and adults. That distinction is post-industrial revolution cultural one.

I’m not a biologist, but isn’t puberty still a thing?

There are no clear lines between summer and winter but sandals stop being appropriate footwear at some point nevertheless.

Okay, but the potential harm / average good of internet access is orders of magnitude away from that of a firearm.

As a teenager, I would have loathed being restricted from the internet the way the above poster describes restricting their autistic teenager's.

(in fact, on one occasion my mother did restrict my computer access because I wouldn't go to the guitar lessons she paid for me anymore, I did absolutely loathe it, and I still consider that mildly abusive)

Devices aren't life, but they're part of ones life. Computers/tech are books, pen, paper, mail, the telephone, TV, radio, music - it is culture. It's the vehicle to connect people to all of that. Dehumanizing it won't do much to help people stay connected to humanity.

I'm not saying it's easy, i've had some epic battles with my kids in how they handle/navigate the complex social structures around technology in the palms of their hands - but i certainly don't think taking that away does anything and may be detrimental.

Society is all of us... There isn't a single one of us that didn't stay up all night reading a book, watching a movie, talking on the phone, writing a letter, sending "beeper" texts out, texting on smart beepers, getting on BBSs, connecting to internet, having phones, then text messages and so on and so forth. It's all connectedness and culture we've always had, but now more readily available.

Help your children navigate it, grow in it and thrive in it. Be there to keep it safe.

There's a big difference between reading at night or engaging with culture and the ephemeral content of social media newsfeeds.

Yes, it's important for children to engage with culture, to read, to explore music but this shouldn't be used as an argument to justify everything that can be grouped in under 'connectedness'. It's interesting you put reading there first because that is actually a solitary activity. Today it's arguably much more important to teach kids how to engage with their own minds and how to spend time alone and build out their own personality and views than hooking them into Instagram feeds. Which is not social in any genuine sense of the word.

Screen time for people that create/learn/do is much different than screen time for people that consume consume consume.

With that said, everything should be done in moderation. It's a skill important to know whether your socializing, or spending time alone.

It is the moderation part I al concerned with. Facebook is incentivized to create UX that draws your attention back to the content. The algorithms doesn’t care which content, just that you keep going with it. That kind of vapid interaction is not engaging meaningfully or socially with other people ... instead, it turns people into social media zombies.

The old school online forums were not designed to create such attention. Posts are made asynchronously. Absolute instead of relative timestamps are used.

There are purpose-designed social media software with UX designed to bring people to consensus rather than dissension. They have been used in highly contentious political debates and bring about policy consensus. But you cannot monetize that.

This is the conclusion I'm starting to come to as well. On the one hand there are things they shouldn't be exposed to until they can handle it themselves, but on the other hand they're going to learn stuff through friends or alternate routes of access. I'm not sure how I'm going to teach them how to have a healthy relationship with technology, besides trying to model one myself.

The "real" world also consists of filth in all its myriad forms. Will you be exposing your kids to these experiences, so they can learn to interact with them as well?

These platforms have very little to teach, so it's not like there is useful tradeoff being made in any case. It's simply an often toxic form of entertainment, worse than television imho.

yes? if they don't know that predators exist or what drugs are, that is setting them up for dramatic failure

There's a difference between knowing they exist and hands-on experience at a young age.

Do you think being on Facebook, et al is a proper course in these subjects? How did you learn about them in the days before social media? The idea that corporate surveillance and conditioning is somehow required for growing up is silly and dangerous to the kids themselves.

besides the surveilence part, yes I do. social acceptance is a huge part of being a teen, no matter the social circle.

I was on irc throughout my early teens.

IRC in the old days is only tangentially analogous to today's sophisticated addiction services.

I suggest watching the Social Dillema on Netflix for an idea. Here's a decent article I recently read on the subject, though there are probably better ones: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-lonely-burden-of-todays-tee...

Perhaps my argument is not clear enough, but it feels like we are not arguing the same point. I have no problem with technology, simply that kids should not be the product. There are plenty of higher-quality alternatives, just like there are alternatives to broadcast television and McDonalds.

There is a massive difference between the absurdist reduction you are proposing and what I am saying could be argued:

Everyone uses the internet.

As a parent, those always present computing devices have been a problem. Instead of doing a variety of different things... many of which build life skills... my kids want to just stare at rectangle screens.

I now wonder what society will look like in 20-30 years.

By life skills I mean things like creativity, being able to work out things on their own, in person interpersonal skills, grit, etc.

We used to stare at square radioactive flickering screens all the time, and they were completely passive which can't be good for child development either.

I too share some concerns as a parent of 1 and expecting 2nd soon, but I don't mind accepting that I have no clue what kind of world our kids will live in. I might be out of touch with it in similar way current old generations are from phones and internet. It could also be that shielding kids from it at all costs because we think we know what's best for them might be a significant harm for them later in life.

Some things will disappear, some will get different and/or better, and new ones will come. Fine by me. I just wish it wasn't Facebook, a company with crystal clear amoral values through and through. Anytime Facebook wins, mankind loses in long term. But that might be just me getting already out of touch with current reality out there.

If ever present computing devices were gone, I think we'd be looking at the on-demand content from providers and the streaming services as the great ruiner of children. At least when I was growing up, you could actually run out of content on the idiot box. Your show wasn't on and you didn't have enough channels to find something else.

We'll see how this plays out, though. I think some aspects are constructive. The growing content creation community seems to be a Good Thing. The even faster growing content creation consumption community, doesn't seem to be. Personally speaking, I've found myself at an expert at a ton of things, but haven't actually done any of those things.

You must have hated when kids got cell phones.

My wife and I tried letting our teenager have her own cell phone, and that informed a lot of what I saw. We eventually found a locked down phone purpose-designed for kids, but I have no problem with getting a landline if it continues being an issue. (The issue with my kid and phones is not what we were discussing; she is on the autism spectrum, and so it is not quite the same; I have no idea yet what I will do with my neuraltypical son when he grows into a teenager)

Are you guys also on the autistic spectrum too because that is no way to raise kids. When they leave the carefully curated and filtered walled garden that you've created for them and enter the real work at 18 or so, they are going to be hit like a truck. In college its always the kids whose parents were the strictest that act out or become alcoholics when the finally get a taste of freedom. You cannot do everything for them, it is better now for them to experience more of the world/ internet when you still can influence them/ they have a high opinion of you rather than ten years down the line when they feel betrayed or whatnot by you and don't want to speak.

Yeah, GP is cutting their kids off from society. We aren't living in the 60s anymore, much of the infrastructure for growth and development at that age does not exist outside the internet. Just look at libraries, social clubs, etc... They're all replaced.

I was trying to comment on parent comment and some others but it hurts. “Going to be hit like a truck” — it involves luck for that line to remain figurative.

Leaving aside the quarantine means leaving aside the single most important factor in the last two years.

And an entirely irrelevant factor for the future, which therefore should be left aside.

This past year might have felt breezy if you're in your sixties, or bearable if you're in your thirties - but if you're in your teens or younger you've been deprived of a lot of social development time and there will be long term damage from this.

Additionally - I don't know if it really is an irrelevant factor for the future. This is a flu variant that could continue to mutate and cause havoc if governments act irresponsibly or if a particularly large segment of the population continues to resist vaccination and mask wearing while being egged on by idiots on TV. Lastly, global habitat destruction increases the chances we discover fun new world ending diseases, hopefully we won't see another one for decades, but it's unlikely that we'll be spared another global pandemic for the next 100 years.

It is for this reason I consider “zoomers” as an appropriate label for the Gen Z kids.

But here is something else I also know: the modern way in which kids develop through the teenage years is already screwed up, even without the internet, smart phones, and social media. It seems normal now because it is normative.

> but if you're in your teens or younger you've been deprived of a lot of social development time and there will be long term damage from this.

Exactly. So let's not make it worse by making children communicate through devices without even a flimsy justification.

who says its irrelevant for the future? some experts are saying the quarantine is going to be semi permanent in some form or another.

Not a chance. That is fascist and evil to deprive people of social interaction by government decree.

Yes, epidemiologists. Who tend to focus way too much on preventing infectious diseases, just like policepeople tend to focus way too much on public order, security experts tend to focus way too much on security, etc.

The only thing I can think of that sucks is kids feeling left out when all their friends have iPhones.

I played Zak Mackraken on my C64 for 18 hours in a row until it crashed and I could not restore my save... I started over.

I was 10 back then. Both my parents were in academia and wouldn't just let me play all the time, but at some point they gave up.

Later, I played Civilization for so many hours and through the night that once I fell asleep my dreams were filled with hexagons.

Then there was Tetris. Oh, and, Wolfenstein, and the all legendary Age of Empires!

And, here I am, 25 years later, and I am doing just fine. I am healthy, mentally stable and don't care about any computer game no more (ok, I am addicted to HN but that's a different story...).

I'm 45 years old, my parents asked the same things about me.. the screen wasn't necessarily a pocket companion at the time - but it was computers, consoles and hand-held devices and all the stuff around them.

At first, they fought me... and it was a dumb battle for battles sake. My parents never bothered to understand anything I did and generally just gave up and let me do whatever...

Turns out, they were in the midsts of a relationship failure and there was no time for the kids, so they let me have at the computer...

BUT... It worked :) I taught myself programming, operating systems, I ran a BBS that was the first BBS in texas to offer Linux downloads, I got published in books/magazines/journals talking/writing about OS/2, Linux and DESQview.

In the end, I never went to school, my parents relationship was still crap but I made friends, found my wife and still work online to this day..

My kids are 13 and 17 and its new battles... but i just think back and remember where I started - I try and fill in the gaps of just "Caring" in general and just "wanting a relationship" with my kids in general - and i do that in lieu of trying to prohibit something that is already pervasive in their lives.

Yes, I run firewalls, safety, anti-virus, family-safety, yes there are some things blocked - yes their phones have family safety too but mostly to do what I can to protect them from maliciousness.

The last battle any parent can or should fight is the battles of pop culture, society and social interactions... espeially a year+ into a pandemic.

we had to re-think the whole grounding from devices during pandemic because that was suicide to a teen... and in doing so - it sparked conversations we weren't having and made me realize i was just following in the same ignorant foot steps as my parents.

Kids will get burner devices if they're grounded, they will jailbreak/root phones/devices to bypass controls, they will buy sims at 7/11 to get around time/restrictions - they may find a drawer of old devices and keep one alive for tethering and many other things - lock down their PC? they will install bluestacks and have unlimited android environment...

It's crazy

But damn, if they're doing all that effort and learning/collaborating on all that - they're getting skills that i find many adults still lack

> Kids will get burner devices if they're grounded, they will jailbreak/root phones/devices to bypass controls, they will buy sims at 7/11 to get around time/restrictions - they may find a drawer of old devices and keep one alive for tethering and many other things - lock down their PC? they will install bluestacks and have unlimited android environment...

This brought to mind: Years ago when I was a teen, my mom grounded me and took my desktop away for quite a while, which was like a death sentence even back then. Given that it was an oversized cube case and there really wasn't anywhere to lock it away, I would always just grab it after school and keep using it until she got home. Problem is, she put the computer next to the door so I had to resort to locking the second lock to give myself time to put it back when she got home. I didn't think about it at the time but I. was being blatantly obvious and she clued me in years later that she knew what I was doing from the beginning.

Punishments don't have to be all or nothing, they can be like locks: they won't stop the determined, but they will stop the opportunists. The punishment is the inconvenience of the workaround and often has the added benefit that enforcement requires spending more time with them. </parenting "advice" from a coddled nonparent>

> we had to re-think the whole grounding from devices during pandemic because that was suicide to a teen.

Parents who impose "grounding" on children tend to impose sanctions that last far too long. Children have a poorly developed pre-frontal cortex so very short groundings (ten minutes, an hour for most severe things) is more effective that longer groundings.

My personal anecdote. I'm still very good friends with all of my friends from high school and college and it is almost entirely due to the ability to constantly group message. We all talk almost every day and I've since lost contact with most friends not included in the 3 group chats I have. We're all in our mid 20's now so getting together is more difficult but since we talk so often it drives us to hang out in person more. In the absence of constant communication we would probably all drift apart and rarely if ever hang out in person. There's a big difference between generic public social media interaction and smaller more intimate direct messaging and group chats. It's definitely different for kids cause they are forced to spend all day together in school but I think there is immense value for adults.

They also prevent children from deleting messages.

Messenger kids has been great for my family, especially the times when we've had to self isolate and couldn't meet friends outside.

To use a fairly broad brush and a potentially overdramatic example, starving an extrovert of contact with others is tantamount to torture. I know introverts don't understand this on a fundamental level, but the only times I've ever even vaguely considered harming myself are when I was in forced isolation for long periods of time.

To know that there are opportunities to socialize and grow my friendships, and those opportunities are being intentionally and needlessly withheld from me as some kind of "character growth" would evoke a kind of primal rage that would have caused me permanent harm as a child.

I'm extremely grateful my parents saw the value of learning how to build and maintain relationships, and I wouldn't dream of taking that away from my children, or any other children I somehow had supervision over.

Quarantine aside, online relationships are no substitute for those in-person.

Phones are like drugs and sex... kids are going to use them, and trying to ban them outright will often lead to destructive behaviors. The effective approach is to teach them boundaries, enforce those boundaries, and let them experiment within those boundaries.

I spent a large portion of my teenage years chatting with strangers on IRC. As much as 12 hours at a time, I would stay up through the night talking with groups in channels I frequented.

I'm not sure if this is good or bad for my personal development. Though it did jumpstart my education in computer science and career as a software engineer.

My kid does not use M:K as a "constant companion". It's on his ipad (e.g. his tv), and it's a way for his extended family to be able to reach out to him directly. He actually uses it more like email. Maybe engages with his messages once a day. Doesn't sit and "chat" on it like an adult would.

I understand that a lot of parents are positive to the parental control and supervision that you describe, I am not that kind of parent. I want the relationship with my kids to be built on trust and honesty. My two boys make mistakes sometimes, probably more than I know of, but that is fine, it's part of growing up. They also don't use social media, instead they text their friends by SMS or simply call them when they want to talk or meet up. So far they have never complained about missing out on anything.

It’s not about preventing them from making mistakes. It’s about protecting them from predators.

Yes yes yes. The most direct discussions I have with my kid about social media is "there are adult male perverts who are going to pretend to be your friend because they want to have sex with you." It's a more explicit discussion than I'd like to have but there's no getting away from it.

It's also why I have the "I will monitor your internet usage at any time that I feel it's necessary" discussion. I don't like invading privacy - I wouldn't want my internet history explored and it's as vanilla as you can imagine but it's also a projection of my inner thoughts.

I knew a young girl who was lured into a sexual encounter with an adult after striking up a friendship on "Words with Friends". I don't trust/allow anything with private communication.

It’s totally possible that pedophiles and abuses are using tiktok and Instagram to groom children, but most of the time it’s someone that the child knows that actually does the abuse:

“ A common myth is that child sexual abuse is perpetrated by strangers and pedophiles. But most people who sexually abuse children are our friends, partners, family members, and community members. About 93 percent of children who are victims of sexual abuse know their abuseriii. Less than 10 percent of sexually abused children are abused by a stranger.” https://www.ywca.org/wp-content/uploads/WWV-CSA-Fact-Sheet-F...

So I’d not freak out too much if your kid searches for something really weird, because we all did that as kids.

The fact that most assaults are committed by people close to the child is not an argument against also being wary of strangers. It is not an either/or choice. Protect against both.

But also, it’s entirely possible that a family friend would initiate via an app like IG or FB Messenger.

There’s perverts of every gender, and not limited to males. Instilling this sort of sexism in children from an early age is not great.

Bonus points for telling a male child that males are inherently untrustworthy.

I see your point. I have friends that put GPS trackers on their kids "just in case they get abducted by a sexual predator". It does happen that kids get taken, however it's more likely that they get hit by lightning... and a GPS tracker wont really protect them anyhow. The absolute majority of abuse towards children are also done by people that are close to them (parents, relatives, teachers). I have put a lot of time and effort into building a relation with my kids where it's ok to talk about anything. My oldest have also been practicing self-defense for over 5 years now.

Two things: what age, and what's the alternative? Teens are quite a different group, and I agree that they should have greater privacy. But young children have friends too and they want to chat. While I agree it would be best to be screen free and meet IRL, circumstances make this very difficult.

That said, I wish it wasn't Facebook making this tool. I do not trust that company.

Out of curiosity: What causes them to currently not use social media? And what if they start doing so?

By doing this we are conditioning kids to not have privacy, later when they grow up - they'll come to accept lack of privacy because it's something they grew up with, first it was their parents spying on them, now it's tech company and government and their advertisers spying on them

So all this sounds good at first, but if the walls are too high, wouldn't kids simply end up treating it as a teacher/parent-infested app and start using something else (e.g. IRC) without you knowing?

I mean, when I was a kid I was all over IRC and Usenet instead of my school's censored e-mail/chat system, just saying ...

>I dislike Facebook as much as any HN poster, but I can say that the Facebook Messenger for Kids app has been...surprisingly good.

That opener and the glowing comment that follows are pretty strange. It's essentially, "I hate Facebook too, but in spite of hating it, I give their product to my kids and (effectively) here are all the reasons you should consider giving it to your kids too."

Maybe we dislike Facebook for different reasons, but I believe most (including myself) would point to something along the lines of their horrible business practices and privacy abuses. This is not a per-app thing. It's their approach to everything and, really, the entire point of their ecosystem (of which your kids are now a part).

So, whether or not they can make an app "safe" from outside predators, I have zero interest in feeding my kids to the Facebook machine. I'm not trying to be on the attack here, but it frustrates me as a parent to see another parent promoting this stuff in the name of convenience (or whatever) when they also know it's awful. Ultimately, when enough parents approve and enough kids are using it, then other parents are left to make the awful choice between also feeding their kids to the machine or allowing them to be socially isolated to some extent.

When do we take a stand? Or, at a minimum, maybe don't help Facebook promote it?

I have to ask, what’s the benefit of the app to Facebook? Are they serving ads to kids? Or are they hoping to bring them up with Facebook firmly as part of their digital identity?

Collect data now, profit later

That's probably illegal, and as far as I know the big tech companies take children's privacy at least somewhat seriously, as it's one of the few things that can land them in deep trouble if mishandled.

Yes I think this is more a play for Facebook mindshare with parents.

Kids generate data in more ways than can be directly siphoned from the web service run by Facebook.

It can be to their benefit simply because it pushes more Facebook traffic through the ISPs and other major infrastructure. A quick win on the business side, and a whole new venture for further tech development on the product side.

No ads, I think there is a bit of "If you like Facebook for kids, you'll _love_ Facebook for adults"

It has been a lifesaver during covid. It is the way kids text/video chat with each other without a cell plan and with only approved contacts. I don't know what my kid would have done without it, it is a 2-3-4 hour virtual playdate when there are no other ways to connect with their friends.

Who needs ads when you're giving parents an incentive to continue locking their children indoors?

It seems most of the replies that are positive about this service, focus on the way they've helped rear children during Covid.

That breaks my heart, since kids ought to be able to play with their friends in person anyway. Parents have been incredibly docile about lockdowns and have played along since there's been technology afoot to make it all go smoother.

But this only works for a portion of the population that has the money, time, knowledge, and resources to secure such things for their kid. This is a terrible idea in practice in the way it imposes further hierarchy and inequity among kids. In-person, children are on equitable grounds with one another, but this creates a void of separation where rich kids will be able to dominate over the poorer ones.

> kids ought to be able to play with their friends in person anyway

That is and was debatable during the lockdown. We didn't, and we don't regret our choice. Even if now it is clearer that kids are not as susceptible to Covid, it wasn't clear at the beginning and I don't regret erring on the side of caution.

The younger generation is mostly using alternate platforms, like snapchat. Facebook can benefit by hooking the kids to its platform at earlier stage and profit from it later.

Maybe show ads to the parents based on what the kids have been talking about?

Not displaying ads to the kids does not mean the data just gets thrown away, after all.

Not to mention that once the kid comes of age, Facebook will already have a huge profile built of the person.

> bring them up with Facebook firmly as part of their digital identity?

This. It's a gateway drug.

The same reason 2 year olds get into Disney World for free.

Facebook is inserting its brand into children’s lives early and it’s further cementing their relationship with the parents. This obviously has a monetary value.

It’s not completely off-base to compare these “for kids” branded apps to candy cigarettes and big league chew.

Not to mention the data collection.

I just now connected big league chew to tobacco, I use to buy it all the time from the tee ball concession stands. That's funny.

Exactly. It's getting the kids conditioned and addicted to devices just like Pavlov's dogs. Facebook knows exactly what they are doing here.

It is human nature to want to converse with others. The internet itself makes it extremely convenient to be in a 24/7 chat with your crew, so it’s addictive with or without Facebook.

Yes, Facebook doesn't create that out of mercy. But what is the alternative aside from becoming Amish?

You can't take away smartphones completely. And once there is the smartphone a communication app is the most useful thing they can get. Better than any game or whatever. But an open messaging app can quickly lead to issues.

Would be good if there were non-profit vendors of similar things, bit they don't exist, yet.

And Facebook entrenching itself reduces the chance of a non-profit vendor succeeding.

There is probably a middle ground somewhere between being hopelessly addicted to Social Media and going Amish and throwing away all technology.

Someone mentioned the other day on HN that Social Media is the modern-day Smoking, and I agree there are a lot of parallels. Surely we can keep our kids out of S.M. without restricting them from using other, less harmful parts of technology.

The alternative isn't becoming Amish. It's being more mindful about how your children interact with new technologies. Facebook/Instagram/etc aren't required for children, and even if there are good arguments for social media for children (like learning how it works), that doesn't mean letting the children have unfettered access to the tech and letting these companies have unfettered access to the children's attention.

Here's an alternative: restrict usage to a simple time-boxed window each day, contingent on the completion of what the child needs to have done (chores, homework, etc.). Augment that by limiting what apps the child will have access to, based on what is reasonable at the time. It requires effort, but seems totally reasonable. There doesn't seem to be a strong argument for children having continuous access to devices that have empirically been shown to cause serious mental health issues, not even including the crazy dangers of the internet (stalking, child sexualization, etc).

Alternatively, don't control anything the child does and hope it works out.

Well, communication is the primary feature I would allow.

Back in my days it was typical for us to run to the phone booth "mom, I'm still out playing, will be late for dinner" Now there aren't phone booths anymore.

The concept of the kids messenger by Facebook sounds right. Quite risk free communication, which allows giving the kid freedom without having to always look over their shoulder what they are doing.

As said: that being not from Facebook would be great!

I wonder if that just wouldn't happen latter anyway. As seen from many generations that had the "formative" childhood before smart phones and most social media.

There's a harm reduction argument to be made: kids are using digital devices already (probably too much) so one way to improve the whole situation is to make using them safer for kids.

I'm not a parent, but I imagine controlling your kids electronic device use is a difficult task. The jump to them having a smartphone must be like a dam being blown apart with dynamite.

So our dear FB is helping us get them depressed faster, 'safer', and with a nice blue icon, and we should let it happen?

Facebook is cancer. Letting this play out will only condition kids be more immersed/addicted to social media. How can that be good for them now? How can that be good for them in the future? Facebook has proven that they toy with its users, their psyche, their privacy.

This will definitely come to hurt them in the future. Either by FB selling out every 1_and_0 they got on you, or allowing 'by accident' another scammy CambridgeAnalyticaV2 to siphon all your data, or by getting hacked and disclosing that 2 years late.

If you're familiar with any other harm reduction efforts, pretty much the same arguments are made against all of them.

Take for example needle exchanges. People who run needle exchanges are not asserting that people being addicted to heroin is a good outcome, only that people being addicted to heroin and also having to share dirty needles is worse.

Likewise, I'm not asserting that little kids using Facebook products is a good outcome, only that it may be less bad than other outcomes.

Arguably, not allowing children to use Facebook products is easier than keeping keeping heroin addicts from consuming heroin. Also, I doubt needle exchanges actually motivate anyone to start taking heroin whereas getting children to use Facebook products is obviously Facebook's aim here.

> It’s not completely off-base to compare these “for kids” branded apps to candy cigarettes and big league chew.

In terms of verisimilitude, it is 49.9% off base to compare for kids branded apps to tobacco use. In terms of intellectual honesty, it is 99.9% off base to compare for kids branded apps to tobacco use.

If you want guidance on app use for your kids, ask a pediatrician a specific question. You'll get more knowledge than flaming on this place.

You are literally entrusting facebook with your kids private data because the app works well. Or in another world, my kid would definitly hate me because of all the tech its not allowed to use.

They'll wait for kids to get hooked and then gradually start injecting all those things you didn't want in the first place once the cat is out of the bag.

I think it is very healthy and good for major companies like Facebook or Youtube to create kids versions of their apps to keep our kids safe, to make sure parents understand what their kids do online and also to have better compliance with law.

The government on other hand is hell bent on destroying some of the most successful american comapnies at the expense of its citizens.

Yeah just like they told me when I was a kid, "never talk to strangers because there's a predator behind every tree." Of course what they don't tell you is that, overwhelmingly, the most likely person to abuse a child it their parents.

Avoiding your parents as a child because they might abuse you is not a real option though.

I didnt know parents would see the conversations also - seems right down FB line.

So spying is okay when parents do it? It's interesting how we normalize this all.

I'd imagine most kids use their own creative stuff anyway to get around snoopy parents.

Parents can't see the conversations but can see the number of messages and calls per contact, as well as recently shared/received photos. It's a pretty good compromise IMHO.

I dont have kids. But this still sounds creepy.

Either they are to young that a smartphone or Facebook would actually benefit them, or they are to old to spy on them.

Newsflash from police state parenting

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