Dad takes down town's internet by mistake to get his kids offline | Hacker News Reader

Dad takes down town's internet by mistake to get his kids offline

bleepingcomputer.com

241 pointsFridayoLeary282 comments

In regards to screen time management and as a tech enthusiast dad of two kids--I have learned that simple low tech solutions work much better than most other more complicated methods. For example to limit screen time at night... we have a rule that all of the kid's devices need to be charged over night downstairs in the kitchen. I have a charging station setup in the kitchen for all their devices.

Also during the week devices are only allowed upstairs for homework use only.

>allowed upstairs for homework use only.

How are you enforcing that one?

Along these lines, I just purchased a low tech solution called a KSafe for personal use and I love it.

It's basically a safe with a timer and no override, so you can say, lock up for 2 hours, put your (de)vice inside, and push the button. The only way to open it early is to break the safe.

As someone who has struggled with impulse control, especially around technology, I have used it to great effect. Spent an uninterrupted two hours playing guitar and reading physical books for the first time in ages.

I use it personally, but I could see it being useful for families as well.

Is the safe fragile enough that anyone can break it with just their bare hands? If not, then what if you need to call 911 while your phone's in there?

It's plastic. You could throw it on a hard floor, or hit it with a hammer, and it would break open. They sell replacement bases because people breaking their own safe open isn't terribly uncommon, and the locking part is all in the lid.

https://www.thekitchensafe.com/

Have a landline?

A lot of people don't these days.

I would say a strong majority don't. I don't know anyone personally with a land line other than my mother

Then just use one of your old cell phones and keep it charged. Even if it does not have a subscription, it can still dial 911/112

Don't most people trade in their old phones to get their new ones for cheaper?

Yeah, except they're turning off 2G now so my old Nokia 3210 can't connect anymore. The two newer phones I have had since then actually broke down.

You could break the safe with a hammer or by smashing it on the ground, as others have mentioned.

You know though, you are mostly using the safe in your own home or office, for increments of 30 minutes to a couple hours. For many folks I think the risk is very low.

I guess, I find this emergency access sentiment really similar to something my wife's students say when there phones are taken away: "what if my parents need to contact me in an emergency?"

It's a really sincere worry they have that seems totally foreign to me, having grown up in an era when my parents often couldn't contact me for hours at a time. Food for thought.

When I was young (late eighties, early nineties), we had a device that controlled power to the TV. You had to type in a code to be able to turn it on; each kid in our family had a code, and each code had a certain amount of time allowed per week. Sounds similar -- but for a different era!

I had one of these too! Though parents could override it if needed (which was generally done if e.g. we had a friend over, so we could play games together without using up all our weekly time).

My wife and I both have ADHD and we couldn’t recommend this enough. So far, it’s helped us cut down on our weed habit and now I’m throwing the Xbox controllers in there because of my terrible impulse control.

Yep, the only sure way to keep a kid off a screen is to physically remove the screen. My son is grown and out of the house, but when he was a kid, he was eventually able to defeat just about anything I installed on our PC. With friends younger kids, removing iPads and suchlike is much easier than maintaining software limits.

We keep asking for wireless charging but if we ever actually get it then we are going to discover all the ways we made a liability into an asset. This being prime amongst them.

I could also see a black market of kids selling each other their old phones so that the kid can have a 'prison phone' they use at night.

I've been reading some of your comments elsewhere in the thread--I think you're one of the few people commenting that has some serious respect for how kids actually think and behave. I'm curious for my own sake if you've ever read a certain pseudonymous psychiatry blog--you will immediately know what I'm talking about if you have, and if you haven't I'd like to ask how you learned what you did about child behavior and consistent parenting.

I have not.

I could say that I have spent a lot of time and energy in my life doing root cause analysis, how you can steer people away from self-sabotage, how you can empower people to help themselves instead of being reliant on you for everything, but that's only the book jacket version of the real story.

The real story is sadder and I'm still actively dealing with the consequences of feeling like I needed to become an autodidact at the age of 8 to ever have any success at anything. Which necessitated spending a lot of time thinking about thinking. Self-teaching morphed into self-mentoring, self-doctoring, and self-parenting. Me, me, me (what could go wrong?) I watched my parents (from my perspective) abandon Discipline almost entirely with my kid brother, who has struggled his entire adult life, and even at 14 I could see this road ahead of him. I wish I had been like some stories where the eldest child takes care of the younger ones, but unfortunately he spent most of his childhood finding ways to push my buttons and we were never close (something my mother has pointed out as a mistake that is playing out now between his own kids, to which I responded, "Tell him this is why I never call.")

That story about my friend's kid reminds me a lot of my little brother and as you can imagine by the length of that reply, was a little triggering.

I could also see a black market of kids selling each other their old phones so that the kid can have a 'prison phone' they use at night.

Sneaky little devils. I can totally see it, especially pre-teens and older.

It's quite common among communities that have heavy phone restrictions (religious kids that go to public schools, etc.) They're as clever as adults are, just more monitored.

They are also less encumbered by thoughts of consequences.

I worked on a contract one time where they were trying to alerts for college sports, and I insisted on adding some security to the system. The manager reasoned that the cost/benefit analysis for someone deciding to hack a sport score feed did not add up and so nobody would think to try that.

I pointed out that college students have poor risk assessment. I pointed out MIT/Stanford. I pointed out it was already written. They made me rip it all out. And then the customer cancelled the project because 'we' had given them exactly the system they already had and why should he pay for it again. I just stared at the manager, who avoided eye contact. (If I'd been a bigger and braver person I would have jumped in here with a counterproposal that amounted to restoring all of my changes, but I did not think of it)

Which is just as well because there totally would be fake messages sent out during the last timeout stating that <our team> won by 6 points just for the lulz. Because of course they would.

Yep - when I was a kid, I had to put all my electronics in the kitchen at night, so I bought an old used smartphone that my parents didn't know about. Kids are crafty

> kid's devices need to be charged over night downstairs in the kitchen

How do you prevent them from going downstairs after you've fallen asleep?

You don't. You just teach them self control through reinforcement.

You're lucky, and must have a typical child.

When my oldest child was 2, he snuck an allen wrench in his diaper and disassembled his whole crib. He is atypical with aspergers syndrome.

You "just don't know" how difficult it is for some children to learn self control through reinforcement.

> When my oldest child was 2, he snuck an allen wrench in his diaper and disassembled his whole crib.

I have to tell a colleague/friend about this, his kid is quite similar to yours in that respect.

I think as a parent it's also important to set the standard for your kids by doing the same thing. If they need to charge their phones overnight in the kitchen, then you should do the same too.

I think leading by example is a good parenting technique in general, kids figure out when their parents are being hypocritical pretty fast.

>then you should do the same too.

No. My phone is my alarm system. It is what wakes me up at 5:20am every morning to start things going. My wife uses hers for white noise.

I use my apple watch for this.

That said, you can easily buy a simple analog alarm for a few bucks.

Ok, but why shouldn’t your kids be able to also use them in similar ways?

Because they are children. They get to have fewer responsibilities in return for having fewer freedoms while they grow up and gain experience.

I know if I was a child, I would be upset that you get to take your phone into your bedroom and use it for useful things. I understand that this is OK for some parents, but the whole point of the comment above the one I was responding to was that children react positively to consistent applications of the rules, and the comment was basically "I have valid uses for my devices (but this is not true for my children)".

It's not that you have valid uses for your devices. It's that you trust yourself with the self-control to not to use the devices improperly or in ways that could be self-harmful, or, if so, to be able to bear the consequences. Adults can also drive, but children can't. There is no inconsistency there, either.

Writing as a parent who has had to deal with children staying up late at night, way after they should be sleeping, and looking up things on devices that I would consider inappropriate for both children and adults.

> It's that you trust yourself with the self-control to not to use the devices improperly or in ways that could be self-harmful, or, if so, to be able to bear the consequences.

This sounds like something an addict would say. Not calling you out as an individual but instead highlighting the dangers of “I can stop anytime I want”.

I think you’re inadvertently propping up another idea, that all rules apply equally to children and adults. This is obviously not true.

Were you upset that your parents got to drink booze and you didn’t? That they got to watch nighttime (e.g. adult) TV? Drive the car? Stay up late? Have sex?

Adults have myriad privileges that children do not. It is not unfair.

Of course that's unfair. Always has been.

Please explain, because IMO that is a ridiculously stupid statement: to paraphrase your claim, “of course it’s unfair that children don’t get to fuck/fly airplanes/etc. Always has been.”

Surely you meant something else.

First, even if you think everything is handled perfectly now, things can be unfair and still be the best possible option.

Try to see things from the perspective of a child. Or if that's too far away, a teenager. Didn't it always feel unfair to you that the adults could do all these things, were free to decide what they do and especially what they didn't have to do? Althewhile you were literally forced to go to school and could decide almost nothing? Especially later on, when you felt like an adult but just weren't on paper (not even talking too much about myself here, I had more freedom than most).

And that wouldn't have been completely unjustified. The way society forces teenagers, young adults even, into these states where they get no freedom about their lives is not something that's necessary natural, not necessary the right thing to do. I mean, for something easier, look at the utter harmless jokes of PC games that were censored back then for non-adults (and effectively even for adults, depending where you lived). That really was unfair and ridiculous. Heck, one of the most influential games I played back then was Deus Ex, would be seen as completely harmless today, it was rated 18+. Crazy.

Being completely unjust with things like phone usage can't help with all of that. Do as I say, not as I do can't be a great guideline for how to handle these things.

Society says some stuff is bad that's not actually that bad.

Children and teenagers should not be able to do some things that adults are allowed to do.

These are not mutually exclusive.

An 18+ rating on Deus Ex is dumb for a mature 16 year old. Cannabis should be legal for adults.

I'm also glad that 12 year olds can't drive cars. Even if I wished I could drive at 12.

In other words, the rules can be set up unfairly AND still have room for just differentiation between children and adults.

Try 12 for DX1.

But exactly:

> In other words, the rules can be set up unfairly AND still have room for just differentiation between children and adults.

That's the point I wanted to make. The other that some of the rules just are unreasonable. And that the whole years of pseudo no responsibility (because that's never really true) and no freedom isn't as straightforwardly a fair deal as some comments here want it to be.

I guess I'll reveal my boomer age but yeah, as a little kid that shit was 'unfair' and we all made an effort to find the nudie mags and watch the scrambled cable TV porn channels and lament the fact that we weren't adults and able to drink and smoke like James Bond or Clint Eastwood. I mean shit Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry smoked and drank all the time.

Kids don't understand life because they're kids, but they do intellectually develop to observe hypocrisy and contradictions. And if you spot one contradiction then the whole house of cards starts falling down. So our parents went out of their way to hide their vices from us. We were kids, we didn't understand at the time, but it was the thrill of finding something 'forbidden' that drove us to do it more than anything. The twisted little perverse curiosity of childhood. :)

Were you upset that your parents could drive the car and you couldn't? Parents and children are not the same and do not abide by the same rules.

Because kids lack almost all control when it comes to entertainment and talking to friends and their brains aren't fully formed. I have a screen time timer set for my phone. After 1 hour each day I don't use it for anything fun after that hour is up. My kids aren't going to be able to handle that with personal discipline. Before you ask, yeah I've tried, the only way is to force them to surrender their devices at a reasonable time at night like 8pm.

So it sounds like you gave them an opportunity to use their devices productively, and they couldn't, so they don't get to use your phone. Had you not been able to do that, your screen time would kick in and do the same to you. Seems reasonable to me?

I did, I watched very closely (and took estimated times) for a couple weeks and they were obsessed a couple years back. All they wanted to do was be on the phone or switch. If you close some doors then other doors will open up. Board games, actually sitting down and telling their day to me (and their mom), playing with the cats and dog. Etc. I give them a lot of freedom until around 8, everyone needs personal time that they own, including kids, then it's back to business of being a family and homework.

You are aware impulse control is something that takes a decade or two (or more) to acquire? Most kids simply can't use them just in those similar ways.

Because, when it's my bed time, I go to bed. I know that I have responsibilities that require me to get a full nights sleep. The kids? It doesn't matter if they know that they have to diffuse a nuclear bomb in the morning. They will stay up all night on their devices if given the chance and then let the world burn. Their brains are not ready yet. That is why they have parents.

That’s easy to fix with a $15 alarm clock.

O would rather model not wasting money unnecessary

Is spending $15 on an alarm clock wasting money? That thing will probably last a decade or two and outlive a couple of phone generations.

You’ll get to lead by example and perhaps even improve your sleep.

Buying a second thing to unnecessarily duplicate functionality seems like a waste, even if the thing by itself would otherwise be a solid deal.

That depends on whether or not you'd consider "setting an example for your kids" in this particular way as necessary or not. If you think that's valuable, then this isn't an unnecessary duplicate. If not, then sure.

As opposed to a fancy gizmo that does everything but has to be replaced every three years due to lack of support?

1.) I replace phone when they are too broken, not on schedule.

2.) I need phone anyway. And even old flip phones had alarm. Phone with alarm does not need to be fancy at all.

Yes it is wanting money. Especially since I already own multiple device capable to do exact same thing.

I prefer to set example of not buying all the available crap. That one is more important all I all.

Or you know... $1 at a garage sale or goodwill.

Goodwill isn't cheap for stuff like that any more

After I realized I could buy, brand new, many of the items I was looking for for a couple dollars more, and sometimes a couple dollars less (they left the original price tag), I mostly stopped going. I went back in for the first time in a couple years and it was just ridiculous. I have to assume their real purpose is some sort of tax benefit at this point, because none of it made sense, besides the clothes.

Last time I went to Goodwill, they had a bunch of 20 year old gamepads with the joysticks chewed off for $60 each

I guess they decided to err on the side of not selling things rather than risk giving away a good deal

About $4 at the thrifts near me, and at one in particular, that's likely to be half-price on specific days of the week.

I’ve seen cheaply made kids toys for exactly what they cost brand new. Goodwill has been going downhill. I’ve seen on numerous occasions employees breaking fragile items on drop off, no regard. I might as well trash them that give them to someone else to do the same.

My alarm clock, purchased as an undergraduate in the 90s, has never had any bugs in its alarm or clock functionalities, and comes with (red 7-segment LED) digit display that's larger than my phone. I do think it was more than $15, even back then, but it's lasted a long time.

My phone has this super quiet noise that is so calming and doesn't wake up the wife when it goes off. It is such a soothing way to wake up. That $15 alarm clock? That's a klaxon alarm letting you know that Armageddon has started.

This has really got me thinking about the hidden costs of having one high tech device that does everything.

Like, I wonder if someone is running ML models on all of our sleeping habits based on phone alarms. Would be interesting to get some of the telemetry/tracking output from the clocks app.

Or just install opensource ROM without this stuff.

Kids need to learn that we all have roles to play, not everything is egalitarian.

Edit: for the downvoters, you're the problem with the education system and parenting, your kids aren't little adults, they need some guidance and boundaries to learn a bit of self-control.

When a child asks for X, they are not really asking for X. They are asking for X, and for you to deal with any consequences of that action, regardless of how poorly-executed. When you do X you are also dealing with the consequences, so it's really no concern of theirs.

Mentioning that a parent gets to do X while they do not is just a way for a child to score a point against foolish parents in an argument.

You are right to a degree. Clearly a parent can lose credibility by being too hypocritical. But you shouldn't feel any general obligation to treat children as adults or yourself as a child.

People will misinterpret you, but if something is bad for you at any age, then the parent should be taking their own advice. "If you can't do it with self-control, then don't do it, or find a way to make it work..." applies to everyone, regardless of roles. No, you don't have to wear pajamas and sleep the same times they do, but you cant tell them how healthy it is to get a full night's sleep with the screen down if you're (frivously) harming your own sleep.

I wish I'd been wise enough to see this solution on my own, but in our case what happened is that charging cables kept disappearing, and it came down to the fact that when the kids broke a cable, they would throw it away and take another one without telling anybody. This same pattern was how I ended up having to put stickers on all of my laptop chargers because I had posession of 1-2 despite having 3 laptops and bought 2 extras when I dropped below 3. Shit just walks off.

And the reason the cables broke is that the distance from their bed to the nearest outlet was 2m, and they would lay in bed on their screens, with the cable stretched to its limits.

Eventually you'd reach crisis mode when we simply couldn't find a cable anywhere and someone was trying to call a plumber or talk to grandma with a dying phone. Anker charging stations came to a partial rescue, The Rules were that the cables in that charger should stay there. But kids (and sometimes my partner) rationalize 'needing' things and eventually I had to zip tie a daisy chain across all of the cables to make it easier to ask for a new cable than to try to take one.

It wasn't perfect, but about half of the devices ended up living at that charging station, because spare chargers [were] still in short supply.

I bought 3m and longer cables for myself and kids. Best purchase ever.

One is 6m, but that one is truly excessive.

I did the opposite thing: everyone in my family kept ruining the standard length lightning cables by smashing them against something while using their phone, so I found a 10-pack of literally 4 inch cables on Amazon.

Now their options are to use the phone or let it charge (or squat inches from the outlet). Haven’t had to buy any more cables.

My daughters tablet will go down the battery in like 15min of minecraft or roblox. And I don't mind her using it for longer then that. Plus, especially during covid, I was glad that they occasionally socialized with friends when at home.

I don't want to intentionally cause discomfort to them or me either.

15 minutes is extreme, but I find for my own time management I really need artificial interruptions to help me check in with myself and others about with what I’m doing is still a good idea. For instance drinking water and coffee all day, my cup empties, I hit a stopping point, I get up, pump the blood a bit on the trio back and forth to the kitchen, come back. And then an hour later it’s off to the bathroom. The only thing I miss about the office is the routines I haven’t been able to recreate, but I’m still trying. For instance I only fill my glass from the kitchen now instead of using the closer faucet to “save time”.

Having a game eat the battery in two hours might be enough gaming for one sitting. I have a couple games that used to eat my laptop battery in a few hours even when plugged in (60W charging off the monitor) but the new monitor has a bigger power supply, and that can almost keep up with the game. I’ve had a few late nights that I didn’t plan because of it.

> we have a rule that all of the kid's devices need to be charged over night downstairs in the kitchen

Tried this, didn't work. The problem is that we go to sleep earlier than the kids, so the kids will go get their devices after they figure we are probably asleep.

> I have a charging station setup in the kitchen for all their devices.

Isn’t that considered a fire hazard? I mean to charge gadgets overnight when there are no one close by in case something catches fire.

As long as you have a proper smoke alarm system and maintain it, why would it be? I have multiple exits upstairs, all bedrooms have a chain ladder, alarms go off all over the house.

But there are many other battery powered things like UPSes in an office, teslas, roombas, or Dyson vacuums that wouldn’t necessarily make sense to charge in your bedroom but tend to stay connected to a charger when not in use.

Basically the exact same thing in my household. But for their iPads I do have screen time to be off over night after I happened to find out if my kids woke up early (like 3/4am) they would just go hop on a device. I used to have all kinds of time limits but then I was having to always adjust for exceptions.

I'm sure many can relate to having strict parents literally "cut the cable" to get us offline when we were younger.

This problem only gets harder as technology progresses. There's no way to win this battle given the plentiful options to get online nowadays. You can do all sorts of things like block websites, traffic, or even delay priority so gaming is infuriating to play.

The solution is definitely in parenting styles. The strict removal / cold turkey approach doesn't work. Sure you may get your kids off temporarily, but your relationship of trust is going to be the cost of it. Your kids are going to conceal much more from you and encourage deceit which makes your life as a parent harder.

I think it's rather important to be open & transparent with your kids. To help them be self-driven and understand the consequences while giving them the freedom to do so and intervening/supervising enough to know if it's detrimental to their development.

Prevention is only temporary, kids will find a way around it.

The strict removal / cold turkey approach doesn't work.

Anecdotally, it works fine if implemented up front. If initial expectation is "1 hour/day after school between 2pm and 6pm" and you stick to it, it works. The problem is letting devices usage become a problem in the first place.

And the dynamics do change as the kids age. I'm referring to younger kids (preteen and younger).

My friends who struggled with this couldn't understand that they never made their kid responsible for policing his own time. If he went 3 hours instead of 2, he got a talking to (if they even noticed) and was back on the next day. For a while he was really good at apologizing because it got him what he wanted. Any time he didn't do what he was asked to do he would just say he was sorry and get away with it. His reward for being ignorant of his actions was clear, and his punishment was abstract. His parents were exhausting themselves trying to stay on top of things, and so twice a year they would overreact (no screens for a week!) which also blew up on them.

My suggestion was pretty simple IMO: The 2 hours a day is a budget, not a rule. If you went 3 hours today, then the consequence is that you only have 1 hour left tomorrow. If you went 6 hours, then guess what, you get 0 hours today and tomorrow. Straight mathematical consequences even a child can predict. They tried it for a hot second (even letting him bank up time for later, which he found enticing - do a paper tonight, play for 3 hours tomorrow!) but couldn't stay on top of it.

So this kid also learned that rules are flexible/inconsistent, and you can just keep asking for exceptions because his parents had no discipline to teach him. He ran into some trouble in high school because of this. The real world often doesn't care about reasons, they want results.

We tried the budget approach, and for us it just leads to endless discussions, especially when we wanted to do something that interfered with their screen time (eg. they didn't want to go to the pool or visit grandma because then they wouldn't have time for minecraft).

I personally think that a bit of leniency works better than totally rigid rules.

But it's of course still a constant struggle, because what works one week doesn't work the next, as the kids are going through different phases all the time.

It's always a tradeoff between keeping rules simple enough that "you know the rules" can foreshorten a long and exhausting exchange, and them trying to language lawyer the simple rules. Especially since part of growing up is constantly testing boundaries.

This plays out almost as often at work. Most of the time it doesn't amount to me seeing the person as a big kid playing grownup, but that's happened a few times. At least in the work situation I've come to see this as a subsection of the Rule of Three, which I call the Rule of Two - It's okay that everything is an X except if it's a Y. Once 'Z' comes into the picture you need to refactor to come up with workable rules again. I am not aware of having a similar narrative with children or pets, although I seem to be on the cusp on one with children.

Being consistent is the hardest of the important things for parents to do.

Being inconsistent basically turns you into a Skinner box for your kids. Or as one parenting coach I knew used to say "You don't see people sitting zoned out in front of coke machines, just slot machines."

A corollary is to create rules and structure that it is easy to do consistently, even when stressed out.

Absolutely. She could not figure out why she was tired all the time. It's because you try to discuss everything with your kids, lady. I got tired just watching it.

Edit:

The other thing is that sometimes you have to punish yourself in the short term in order to prevent long term problems. On your way to a sequel to your favorite movie, with prepurchased tickets, the consequences for doing something egregious in the car ride to the theater are going to have consequences for you as well. "Dealing with it later," detaches cause and effect which even adults struggle with.

At the very least, no snacks for them, maybe last pick for seats. Even if you usually split your favorite snack with the kid. At worst maybe you turn around and go home. Because otherwise every car trip for the rest of your life is going to be like this, and some day you're going to wish $100 was all it cost to solve the problem.

>Anecdotally, it works fine if implemented up front.

Parent of a young child, can confirm your anecdote with my anecdote. My daughter's screentime has always been strictly enforced, so there's nothing to "cut back". She reads a lot of books in her free time without complaint.

> The strict removal / cold turkey approach doesn't work.

This is an over-simplification. Briefly losing privileges is not an intrinsically-bad thing, and (to your point about being open and transparent) will not affect "your relationship of trust" if it's a well-communicated consequence that's not a surprise, and not done in anger.

Yep I agree with you. Was mostly referring to overreactions / overstepping rather than these open boundaries being broken and it being a consequence intrinsically understood by both.

This, I was one of those in 56k era. My dad walked to bathroom to piss at 2am and still saw me in front of computer, and boom! cut the rj11 wire into 10 pieces. Next day I bought a new wire, and this time he didn't cut the wire but put a bug on a modem splitter by slightly took off a copper inside a little, it looked like it's connected but it's not. I fixed that. Next time he just told my mom to deal with me instead .. that is a short version of the story.

Haha, back in those days my mother could just pick up a phone in another room, and it would disconnect my modem from the internet. Maybe that was just an issue in how my own home's POTS line was installed, but it would infuriate me so much to have to restart that HUUUUGE 30 minute / 10MB download (probably of a naughty pic), that I'd eventually just give up and read a book or watch TV.

We got a second phone line once we kids started doing the same thing to the parents.

Not to mention that plenty of us can probably relate to parents not understanding what we were doing, making the "cut the cable" approach even worse for the relationship.

My family didn't take me seriously regarding self-learning anything (especially programming) until someone they seemingly trusted more told them the same things I had been telling them for years.

It used to be pretty frustrating to be trying to learn something and be treated like I was just wasting time on gaming. All it did was make me great at doing things under their nose and unwilling to discuss anything I did or was interested in with them.

So yeah, teaching your kids boundaries while allowing them to be self driven is probably ideal.

Counterpoint: we were open minded parents who wanted our kids to be familiar with technology, and found out years later, through therapy, that our 9 year old daughter had found murder porn (that they believed was real) and was mainlining that every night. Take their phones at night, at a minimum.

there is a solution, distopian kind of surveillance, that is never used against child's interests(by child's definition) except very strict predefined set of rules, and there is an opportunity to give them a variable lesson: when they are old enough tell them about surveillance and how hard it was not to misuse it, about every case of your wrongful use of surveillance, and that this kind of technology cannot be used unless the powerful one loves the survailed one more than anything(which means it's unacceptable Ina general society)

that's a bold idea that should not be used by overly emotional not well disciplined people

Just teach them to be responsible in their use. It can be done at any age, I'm sure it's just people treat cjoldren like dogs or something instead off little humans.

I have a little similar story :)

My wife had to do something and asked me to disable internet when I go to work so she won't waste time. I was in hurry and I just switched the "WAN" and "LAN" wires in my router. It worked, I went to work.

About 2 hours later my wife called me and said that guys from the internet provider came and asked her to fix it because the internet broke for everybody in nearby buildings who use that provider. My router was assigning local IPs to everybody :)

See, this is what I expected the story to be like: instead the linked story is just "they were using a jammer".

Had something similar happen at a company I worked at.

The conference room tables had ethernet ports and cables in them. Someone idly plugged both ends in, making a loop. This somehow screwed up the network for the building.

> This somehow screwed up the network for the building.

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

I'm very surprised they figured out the issue, down to the offending modem, so quickly.

In the USA, the FCC takes serious action against anyone using a frequency jammer[0].

On the FCC's website [1] you can find both fines issued [2] as well as details into the investigations they carried out.

[0] https://www.fcc.gov/document/48k-penalty-proposed-against-in...

[1] https://www.fcc.gov/general/jammer-enforcement

[2] https://www.fcc.gov/enforcement/orders/1866

No SDR folks in the list.

Radio Amateurs find jammers for fun. They consider it a sport. Literally, in some cases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_direction_findin...

So the FCC doesn't even need to spend any money on finding them because the hams will do it for free.

My dad's a Ham and I used to go to hamfests with him. One time someone jammed the talk-in frequency for the hamfest. I was never sure if that was more like waving a red flag in front of a bull or throwing down a gauntlet, but the talk-in quickly switched to a different frequency and the jammer was caught.

This is a little village in France. The mistake was genuine.

There will be no charges pressed, he will have to pay 500€ for the investigation.

When I was in highschool in India, our school had installed jammers everywhere to try and prevent the use of cellphones by the students.

This was done in part because a sister school had a student sex video make the rounds and it had gone viral being shared via Bluetooth in schools.

Anyway what they hadn't accounted for was that our school was right next to a cellphone tower.

Anyway it was a mess. You'd walk down a hallway and randomly go between full and zero bars.

They had more than one jammer, right? I'm guessing when your physics teacher tried to warn them about wave superposition they said, "shut up, nerd."

I'm sure the kids figured out all the little nooks and crannies that had full bars if you held your phone just so.

My favorite jammer story is the truck driver who wanted to jam his employer's GPS tracker. Except he regularly drove by Newark Airport in New Jersey and was blocking GPS signals used by the air traffic control system. Story from 2013: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/truck-driver-has-...

Parenting is hard, but if you ever find yourself in a situation where you are doing weird stuff because your kids completely disregard family rules, just stop. There are more fundamental issues that need to be addressed first, and your kids will almost certainly get around whatever you're trying to do anyway.

I agree with you, but I’m curious if you could offer some specific measures to assess what these fundamental issues are.

A good starting place for assessing is on communication-related things like: do we regularly just talk with our kid? How does that go? Are we able to talk about anything it depth or is it just superficial "how was school today" stuff? How much of our interactions are tense or even contentious?

If communication is in a decent state, then another thing to look at is the rules for the kids, like: have we really given our kid a chance to weigh in on things or do we just dictate? As a parent you do sometimes just have to put your foot down, but there's a world of difference between shutting down pushback with "I'm the parent and that's the way it is" and a collaborative attitude and an open conversation with real listening and sharing of viewpoints/concerns and, where appropriate, some compromising. Are our rules based on solid principles or just things we pulled out of the air?

The article mentioned that the kids were addicted to social media. If it's an actual addiction, then that probably needs to be addressed with professional help. If it's more a compulsion/habit, then good communication is again key. Does the kid agree it's excessive but isn't sure how to reign it in? Or does the kid genuinely think it's just fine? Gotta figure that out first, but in either case, jamming the signal to their phones doesn't really address the problem.

I'm not saying this is bad advice, but I don't feel like you're really thinking about the issue. If the child is spending all day on his phone, how do you think trying ``communication'' is going to go?

If you don't take the phone away, the child won't interact at all, beyond the superficial, ``school was fine.'' If you do take the phone away, do you really believe interactions won't be tense or contentious?

Haha, I'm definitely thinking of the issue; I've raised several kids and this is stuff we dealt with all the time. It's not easy and as a parent you screw up a ton because you're usually figuring it out as you go and making lots of mistakes along the way. :)

These sorts of issues aren't things you address in a moment. Yeah, if you suddenly take a phone away, you kid will likely blow up. But the problem wasn't created in a moment, either. Things got to a bad place over time so it's unsurprising that improving them takes time. Further, in the heat of the moment everyone (including the parents) are less even-keeled, so most progress happens when tempers are cool.

One thing we did for awhile was, as a family, we came up with the rule that from 5-7pm (IIRC) each night there were no devices/screens and we had to be around each other during that time. (We settled on that after a family discussion and some back and forth negotiating, but eventually everyone committed to it.) We did it for /months/ before I felt like it really paid off, but eventually every one of the kids recognized that we were stronger as a family and that they actually enjoyed the screen breaks. And one side effect of it was that we all started talking to each other a lot more, but again, it was a slow process. What works varies by family and changes over time as the family changes, but the meaningful changes seem to always take a lot of time.

> just stop

On one hand (and as a parent) I agree, there are deep-seated issues around boundaries and authority... on the other hand if my folks had followed that advice I would have never been incentivized to learn to hack.

I'm conflicted.

I sincerely believe the incentives are out of whack. In the US, at least the only way to "win" parenting is to not play. We should refuse to have children at all.

My hope is once we see total fertility rate shrink below one, we will start to see proper support for parents and children with things like paid paternity leave and medicare for all enshrined in our laws.

That being said, I absolutely do not condone frequency jammers and were this to happen in the US, I'd argue a minimum of six months in jail is an appropriate sentence.

Unfortunately the most realistic scenario where the birthrate drops below 1 comes from extreme economic inequality or authoritarianism. The birth rate does indeed drop as countries develop more, and as more people get educated about birth control, but controlling it beyond that is likely not a good thing.

Jail time for frequency jamming seems very extreme (if you want to see the failure of jail time to curb behavior, look at how many people are in American prisons and how high their recidivism rate is).

> Jail time for frequency jamming seems very extreme (if you want to see the failure of jail time to curb behavior, look at how many people are in American prisons and how high their recidivism rate is).

I find this comment interesting because I remember people were very supportive of Freakonomics (iirc) saying locking away people works.

>> Steven Levitt (of Freakonomics fame) wrote a paper in 2004 that concluded that 58 percent of the drop in violent crime during the 1990s was due to incarceration. (pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittUnderstandingWhyCrime2004.pdf)

I am OK with no prison for the criminal in the OP. However, I would like a drop in jail time or prison sentences for more people at least for non-violent offenses. I agree that too many people are in prison in our country.

> The birth rate does indeed drop as countries develop more, and as more people get educated about birth control, but controlling it beyond that is likely not a good thing.

Sorry for my poor communication skills. I meant to say voluntarily, not through use of force or coercion. People are just way too optimistic about the future or maybe I am just too pessimistic...

I think I agree with your message, though I see how it can be misinterpreted in this context.

As a society, I think US is not doing enough to support parenting - paternity leave, work hours, health system, and myriad other ways to provide support and help and assistance and relief to parents. I'm in Canada, I'm lucky and blessed and privileged, my wife is getting 18 months parental leave, and parenting is STILL hard. I cannot imagine trying to do it in USA :O

(If your post on the other hand is that you cannot win with the kids, you might need to elaborate to make your point clearer:)

> That being said, I absolutely do not condone frequency jammers and were this to happen in the US, I'd argue a minimum of six months in jail is an appropriate sentence.

Compassion much? What's the point of throwing them in jail? I can't see anything but a net negative for society. I'm having trouble understanding that desire for punishment.

Try phoning the emergency services on a mobile phone when there's a signal jammer running.

And throwing them in jail does what exactly?

How about educating people, how about going after those that sell these devices in the first place instead? Sure, give them a fine but jesus, don't throw them in jail.

That doesn’t answer the parent question. Yes the jammer is dangerous and bad. Putting the father in jail doesn’t fix that or particularly help.

A fine, community service or something like that seems more appropriate.

>> That doesn’t answer the parent question. Yes the jammer is dangerous and bad. Putting the father in jail doesn’t fix that or particularly help.

> A fine, community service or something like that seems more appropriate.

First of all, a fine doesn't hurt everyone equally. A thousand dollars is huge for me. It is nothing for someone who makes lets say thirty eight million dollars a year. How do you say we do fines? Based on net worth? Previous year's tax return?

(Allegedly, Steve Jobs paid a fine to drive without a license plate.)

See, there is awareness that jail and prison are horrible places. Yet, our "solution" seems to be people like us should not go to jail or prison for things people like us might do. That is not a solution. This "tough on crime" nonsense needs to stop.

1. Jails and prisons should not be able to charge for necessities like food or hygiene products. If we can commit to keep someone locked up, we can afford to keep them clean, fed, and read on taxpayer money.

2. Nobody in jail or prison should ever have to work without their consent. No more free prison labor.

3. No for-profit private services. Phone calls from jail or prison (excluding common sense things like premium numbers) ought to be free of cost, not collect. Public libraries coming up with services like free video visitations is nice but it is not enough. It is also not available everywhere in the country.

4. I cannot believe I have to say this but zero tolerance to sexual abuse or physical in prison. If that means there can only be one person in one cell, then so be it. If it means maximum occupancy of facilities are lower, so be it. If we can commit to keep someone locked up, we can afford to keep them safe from abuse from others there. If not, we have no business locking people up. It is insane that otherwise "good people" joke about "don't drop the soap" in prison.

> 4. I cannot believe I have to say this but zero tolerance to sexual abuse or physical in prison

You don't have to say it. Perhaps somewhere you should be talking like a schoolteacher to prison guards, but this is not that place.

There's no greater motivator than telling somebody they can't do something they want to do.

You could have easily gone down the path of lying, cheating and stealing. Not to mention issues with authority could sabotage your career.

In 2008 HN a comment like this would get you laughed at. Being submissive to authority? Not a successful startup.

How times change.

> There are more fundamental issues that need to be addressed first

I mean maybe so, but if I knew what they were, I'd already be doing them. This advice doesn't seem like it could help anyone.

If you are actually in this position, then you should understand that the advice is not to fix the other issues, but to stop doing what you are currently doing, not because it's not working, although that is a very good reason to stop expending the energy, but because it's making the situation worse.

Yes, thank you for saying it more clearly than I did.

I'm not really in this position, but the advice sounds way too general and blunt for it to be generally useful.

Just to break it down a bit more (and with this particular article we are speculating some since there aren't a lot of details, but the situation in the article sure looks similar to what parents deal with a lot):

1) With anything, it's good to take a step back and ask yourself if you're addressing a symptom or a problem. Again, don't have a lot of details, but this sure looks like the dad was addressing a symptom. This doesn't solve anything (and the problem will manifest again 10 different ways later), it almost certainly does more harm to the relationship, and it leads to everyone feeling terrible.

2) It's easy to /think/ you'd tackle the problem if you knew what it was, but that's often not true at all. This probably applies to all relationships, but as a parent at least it's often much easier to fixate on a symptom. If I suspect my kid is lying to me often, it's realllly easy to go down the rabbit hole of trying to come up with ways to catch them and then to punish them, and it's far harder to focus on healing/strengthening the relationship, getting to the bottom of why the kid feels the need to lie, confronting the flaws in my parenting style etc. :)

I think it is too blunt; the sort-of truth around the matter is that the "stuff you have to stop doing" is often entirely out of reach for most parents.

In many families, the adults are both working full- or overtime jobs, the children are at school or in school-adjacent activities (commuting, extracurriculars, homework, etc.) for 9+ hours per day, and 90% of parent-child interactions are rule-reinforcement (Did you do your homework? Did you put your shoes away? Haven't you already used your screens for an hour?)

Actual concrete advice, which is "have one parent leave the workforce so they have more time to parent, reject destructive social norms at the family level, and move away from bad social environments" is not only financially impossible for most, but for those that it is possible for may find that they still can't reach their children, because their children have already adopted a "reject-parent" identity and will continue to prefer online-and-friends over offline-and-family.

The most useful advice that I think that any parent can take is to learn about what the world is really like to a kid or teenager, not what it appears to be [1]. It is very difficult to do this, because you have to enter a mindset where a child is not a subsidiary of their parents, but rather a totally foreign and separate entity, capable of the same depths of rage, cruelty, laziness, vindictiveness, passion, joy, etc. [2] No Gen-X parent I know models their kids like this; they reserve the true spectrum of emotion for themselves and their age cohort, and treat their children as less-able to think and feel.

[1] = (http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html#:~:text=The%20world....)

[2] = As a example, I often hear parents discuss with amazement the shenanigans that their kids (even up to and around pre-teen) will pull when video games are restricted: full-body tantrums, claims of hatred, physical violence, etc. From the parents' perspective, their child is being completely unreasonable and upset over inconsequential things, but the parent is assigning their own assessment of consequence to the video games, and not accepting their child's version. To the child, these games often represent the only hours in their life when they feel excited, proud, and free; to deprive them of this gives them the short-term chemical emotions that an adult might feel if their house burned down.

This. We are above average US earnings for the region and we do not feel comfortable leaving current dual income setup. It is ridiculous, because on paper, we should be able to.

The simple reality is that we will need to make some adjustments to make it happen though, because we both see it as a desirable outcome.

I have yet to deal with real child issues ( and I know I was a terror to my parents ), but having time is a pre-requisite to not slap a simple 'solution' on the problem.

I am sorry to hear that but I am also not surprised. Time, money, and support from other friends/family are essential for avoiding serious internal family strife, and those are the three resources that are stripped from by any go-getter in a wealthy country merely by the act of moving up in the world.

> From the parents' perspective, their child is being completely unreasonable and upset over inconsequential things, but the parent is assigning their own assessment of consequence to the video games, and not accepting their child's version. To the child, these games often represent the only hours in their life when they feel excited, proud, and free; to deprive them of this gives them the short-term chemical emotions that an adult might feel if their house burned down.

True, but I'm sure a heroin addict would say the same thing about being deprived of heroin. At a certain point it's a parent's duty to limit destructive addictions. And these social media networks and games are made to be extremely addictive, companies spend billions of dollars on this goal.

Part of the problem is, like you've said, most kids are going to be spending a lot of their time not with their parents, but with other kids. You can tell them what you want at home, but then you're sending them off to a school full of addicts, almost all of whom are exerting an immense social pressure on your kid to partake.

> At a certain point it's a parent's duty to limit destructive addictions. And these social media networks and games are made to be extremely addictive, companies spend billions of dollars on this goal.

Yes, I agree. I actually typed out a bit about my own experience with playing Gameboy at 10 and comparing it to drinking and partying at 21, but I didn't end up appending it to my comment.

It's one of those things that parents don't get--modern stuff (video games, social media) is like heroin for kids. You can't just give them "an hour of heroin time" per week and then expect them to think about anything else for the periods of time you suspend them from it.

When I was younger, I could think about playing Donkey Kong Country for literal days at a time. I'd imagine levels in my head, draw pictures, stare at old video game ads, hum the music to myself, and once I made a cardboard Gameboy and pretended to play it to scratch the itch. My life was measured as blocks of time in between playing DKC. My parents didn't get how single-minded I was and thought that by "restricting it" they could redirect my attention to other, more wholesome things. Impossible. I am so thankful I didn't have unlimited internet access or Fortnite when I was younger.

I'm thinking there should be a new term for these kind of addictions to activities that remained socially acceptable for decades despite globalization and increased media scrutiny. Saying that you "watch videos" or "play video games" can now have drastically different implications based on the unstated degree of the activity. And some degrees of these activities have been gradually distorted beyond recognition from their counterparts in the 80's and 90's when nobody asked the question of how much was enough. Actual hard drugs were never going to gain mainstream acceptance because they're addictive and destructive by their physical nature. In contrast, a "game you can't put down" can be interpreted as a piece of critical acclaim for an indie developer or a dire alarm for the guardians of the consumers.

It is a sobering thought to hypothesize that, due to incentives beyond our control, the most earnest and hard-working creative minds inadvertently feed the addictions of millions of people. Whenever I look at the view counts of a successful creator, I have to wonder what percentage of the people behind those views specifically asked to be shown the content.

Having been subjected to strict time limits on electronics when I was growing up, they didn't do much except to make me a more bitter person. As an adult I now spend the majority of my time on a computer. I don't consider myself addicted to personal computers specifically, but that is what's most sinister about addictions such as these - it's a socially acceptable drug that still changes some peoples' lives for the better, and is in some cases necessary to participate in modern society. That acts as a mental wedge to excuse the addictive parts that aren't yet held to the same standard to other addictions on a whole - "watching videos" or "playing video games".

I have to wonder if it's something intrinsic to human nature that leads people down pathways such as these. Many kinds of media feed on our curiosity, which we're taught is an important virtue growing up. And I think curiosity tends to motivate us to find better and more effective ways at succeeding, such as developing and shipping a game that receives critical acclaim and breaks sales records. But soon we might have to start judging ourselves on metrics besides how successful we are, if success is based on how well our thoughts can capture the hearts and minds and attention spans of the world population.

What is with the nonstop comparison of video games to hard drugs? There is no basis for comparing an activity of a person to the administration of chemicals that directly affect the physical and mental state of someone.

Under this train of thought, the following activities could be considered "addictions" for me

1. Getting up in the morning

2. Making breakfast

3. Going to work

4. Spending time with friends

5. Walking around the neighborhood

6. Going to the park

7. Riding my bicycle

8. Working on my house

9. Lifting weights

I could list many more things, but I think I have made my point. You tell me I can't do any of those things and I'm going to be very upset. The only difference is that as an adult I realize there are other things I can seek out as alternative activities. I also fundamentally _more_ activities than most children. Take away all of what I just listed and I am going to be exceptionally irate. Is there any individual in society which we expect to tolerate a removal of almost all of the activities in their life which they selected? Even prisoners get access to a library to prepare their own legal defense or educate themselves as they see fit.

Children have nearly zero autonomy in the US nowadays, the opportunity to participate in an interactive world (even a single player city building game for example) is one of the limited times they have a high level of autonomy. Suggesting that those activities are equivalent to hard drug addiction is facetious.

Have you ever done hard drugs?

Edit: This is being downvoted; if someone wanted to disagree, they could respond and say "yes, I have both done hard drugs and played superstimulating video games as a nine-year-old, and there's no comparison".

I have done both, and I think the comparison is valid.

> This advice doesn't seem like it could help anyone.

I did sneaky shit to get around my parents' rules when I was a kid, most people here probably did. To some degree kids need to learn how to push boundaries, for everything else device related there's MDM[1].

There are MDM solutions that are specifically for parenting.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_device_management

Apple came out and said MDM was not a suitable way to do parental device control and could pose a security risk, which killed apps like OurPact.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/apple-is-nixing-iphone-pare...

Was it meant to promote ScreenTime? Perhaps. But ScreenTime is another iOS feature that was highly touted at first and then became a neglected unusable mess in the years since.

Honestly, I don't blame the guy for setting up a signal jammer because the whole cat-and-mouse game you play with teens is fucking exhausting.

My parents simply chose to not have internet. We used an old WRT router to boost the neighbors wifi, cracked it, and then had free internet. They had no idea.

I would be proud of my kid if they did that. I would ground them, but proudly.

My dad would take the modem with him to work, and when he was at home using the internet he would turn it on, wait for it to boot, load a web page, and then turn it back off until he needed to load another webpage. That was the only way he actually stopped me from getting to the internet, but it was a too much effort and he didn't keep it up for long.

Statute of Limitations, but...

A "friend's" parents chose to go without a phone. My "friend" realizing how simple the old phone systems were rewired the second line of "his" parents' house to the line of a neighbor from a near by junction between houses. "He" would have to quietly pick up the phone to see if the line was free, and quietly hang up if not to try later. It worked well for a period of time until "he" forgot to unplug the phone before leaving. "His" parents were quite surprised when the phone in "his" room started ringing.

Oh man. I too have a "friend" with a similar story. Except my friend was connected to a pay phone line at a nearby store and managed to route the line all the way into his bedroom via existing unused pairs along the way. All so that he could dial into long-distance BBSes. (Because there were none locally.)

Eventually the phone company caught on and probably _could_ have charged my friend with theft of services or something, but instead just disconnected the rogue line and put a lock on the payphone interface box and placed a large "property of the telco" sticker on it. Probably dodged a significant bullet there, in retrospect.

If it's possible for a parent to set up MDM in a way that a child can't remove, then what's stopping a domestic abuser from setting up MDM in a way the victim can't remove?

Nothing is stopping that from happening and there are many many apps that give you very granular control and reporting on phones, sometimes in very sneaky ways.

The police. If you're an adult and someone messed with your phone, you have [or should have] a case under CFAA or some similar law. It's basically a blinking neon sign that says "abusive partner".

A simplified comparison: if it's possible for a parent to take away a kid's phone, what prevents a domestic abuser from taking away their victim's phone?

> The police. If you're an adult and someone messed with your phone, you have [or should have] a case under CFAA or some similar law. It's basically a blinking neon sign that says "abusive partner".

If "just go to the police" were an option for all domestic abuse victims, I'd expect that there'd already be plenty of other blinking neon signs they could point to.

> A simplified comparison: if it's possible for a parent to take away a kid's phone, what prevents a domestic abuser from taking away their victim's phone?

The difference is that the phone doesn't sprout legs and run away from the victim, or otherwise assist the abuser in taking it away.

>If "just go to the police" were an option for all domestic abuse victims, I'd expect that there'd already be plenty of other blinking neon signs they could point to.

Not really. Proving domestic abuse is not easy. It's mostly "he said, she said" until somebody ends up in the ER. That's why restraining orders are so common, because the evidence available won't lead to a conviction, but the legal system still wants to provide some kind of protection to victims, even though the protection afforded by a restraining order isn't that reliable. A big limitation for victims in going to the police is that if there isn't evidence to convict, the system does not effectively protect them from retaliation.

Now, on the other hand, if you can produce a device with some software illegally installed on it, you've got physical evidence that can be presented in front of a jury leading to a felony conviction. It's easily more reliable than most evidence used to prove abuse, which tends to be testimonial.

A remarkably high proportion of abusers walk away even when the police have been involved, cf Brian Laundrie and Gabby Petito. So no, there are not plenty of blinking neon signs. There are almost never blinking neon signs.

>The difference is that the phone doesn't sprout legs and run away from the victim, or otherwise assist the abuser in taking it away.

This is trivial and irrelevant.

Speaking of pushing boundaries. Parents in the generation had to get a physical box with a padlock in which the phone was placed. You could still pick up the handle to answer a call but you couldn't reach the dial. Some figured out how to tap dial but I never did.

Set expectations, boundaries and define responsible use beforehand.

Teach self-control.

Talk to your kids and have discussions instead of resorting to passive aggressive style parenting.

Well, it's meant to be broad-based. Like if your friend called you, saying "Can I borrow your fire extinguisher; my Internet isn't working", you can say "Whatever you're doing, it's likely to be wrong" and you're most likely correct! Of course, since that is a two-way channel you would ask for clarification after.

That second part is unavailable here.

My thoughts exactly. It's as helpful as telling people to not be poor. I've known parents doing all kinds of things to prevent their drug-addicted kids from getting drugs. Yes, there are fundamental issues, and yes, it would be nice to resolve them, but in the meantime you do what it takes to stop your kids from getting their hands on drugs.

How old are your kids?

4 kids, 18-26 years old.

Then you've done a better job than me! I was expecting you to say 5 or something. I've totally failed with my four step kids (15-23). Three have been involved in all sorts or shenanigans (all of which have involved the police, social workers and huge amounts of distress). We have good communication, an open, tolerant family culture where we talk about issues, and still three of the four have gone off the rails in truly "You must be making this story up" ways. I've tried to model appropriate behaviour (I'm not manacled to my phone, and I've been way ahead of the curve on phone use and social media's effect, but I've not stopped them from doing it as 'everyone is on there', and they think I'm an old man who doesn't know what he's talking about). I dread every phone call I get from my partner when they're not 'scheduled' as it's nearly always another disaster.

What I'm saying is that I could easily be the guy in this story, because short of a blackout, I've got kids on VPNs who are looking at extreme content (because everyone they know does, apparently), thinking QAnon is real, etc., and whose capacity for disrupting everyone around them without a moment's thought of anyone but themselves knows no bounds. Pandora's box is open, and I have no idea how to close it. On dark evenings when we've had another gut-wrenching round of horror stories, I'd probably buy one if I knew where to get one.

It's probably not your fault. My dad couldn't control me. I never got into trouble with the police, but I could easily imagine a version of myself that felt compelled to do so. And then my dad (and I) would've been in real trouble.

Don't let it bug you. People are how they are, more often than not. And your kiddos will probably relax in a decade or so when their testosterone levels start to drop.

> I've totally failed with my four step kids (15-23)

I don't know you or your kids, but I can almost guarantee that this is not true at all, so please don't tell yourself that. You don't take credit for their good traits and accomplishments, right? :)

There are way too many variables involved, the largest being that they are each independent people. You have no idea how they would have turned out had you not been in their life - for all you know, things would have been much worse and your involvement was one of the things that made the difference. And their stories aren't finished yet... people figure things out at different times; they may yet turn out just fine and look back with gratitude to a stepdad who didn't write them off even though they gave him every reason to.

I did some sneaky crap to mine, routed all PS4 traffic through a linux box that added random 200ms-500ms delay on packets. He could play but kept dying because its so fun to play with high ping.

Hey I ain't got kids so only a thought but whilst fun, that sounds toxic. Let the kid play to their fullest enjoyment then tell them to stop, this seems the worst of both options.

Having grown up in a house with DSL, I can say that this works. When YouTube only plays in 240p it's a lot less addictive.

Though then you run the danger of https://xkcd.com/598/

Some children hit a certain age and then just don’t give a shit. Can happen to the best parents. Honestly, the only thing toxic about it is that it sounds like the the child didn’t know it had been done to him. Let them know they have boundaries. If he gets around it, at least he’s showing ingenuity.

Or at least tell the kid, and have it play normally, but increase over time past the allocated hours. They'd likely work out which games have the best net-code and would be a teaching opportunity about TCP vs UDP xD

I don't have kids either but I remember my youth well enough to know that this probably would have worked on me and my parents just telling me to stop probably wouldnt (and hadnt if they made the effort to do this)

Really? This wouldn't have made me want to stop. It only would've made me bitter and angry.

You would never know it was on purpose , we blame in on the ISP. They just accept it as a fact of life and guess what it works, play less, going out with family and friends more. I just can never ever get caught or i ruin everything so i go to great lenghts not to get caught

As a parent you're up against a widespread addiction to social platforms that dramatically outpace you with psychological tricks, fomo, and advertising. It's insurmountable. Your kids will go through phases where they won't listen to reason, and will often seek out ways to defy it.

In a perfect world I'd agree that parents shouldn't do stuff like this, but the world is far from perfect.

This is a rationalization parents do in order to avoid the feeling that comes with implicitly (or explicitly) being criticized on their parenting.

"This modern world is too complex", "I have no time for it", "I can't afford such a luxury", "kids are just going to be contrarian". So they come out with easy punishments as a "solution".

It isn't an easy task, but it's not an insurmountable one to have a chat with a teenager to figure out what kind of life they want to lead in the future and work out with them *as a peer* what they objectively need to do to get there and how they can manage that. Then revise and review the plan every year or so. Let them figure out what time they can allocate to their hobbies and only make suggestions if you disagree.

If your child is a kid, where they can't possibly be mature enough to start discussing his adult life, then just let them play the freaking game. If you're giving them love, they're socializing enough not to feel isolated, are getting basic education, not suffering from malnutrition, and are not being traumatized by helicopter parenting, cults and other similar shit, you're likely doing your job fine. Don't ruin it by trying to architect the ever-living shit out of someone else's life.

You're reducing the point to fit a specific narrative so you can counter the entire argument with a shallow statement like "helicopter parents bad."

I'm not talking about helicopter parenting, I'm talking about combating multi-billion dollar companies with full-time psychologists on staff that are making concentrated efforts to get children addicted to their platforms, sometimes at the cost of their mental health.

"Let them play the freaking game" isn't a counter-point to the concept of children losing sleep and failing classes because they're up at 3am doom-scrolling instagram and falling into depression about the way they look. A phenomenon that the company is aware of and has done nothing about[1].

Large social media companies are creating social dynamics that they barely understand to generate ad revenue, and to opt-out of these networks can lead to social isolation amongst peers. This isn't a simple matter of having more conversations with your kids or instilling specific values. The cards are so stacked against parents this is akin to telling your kids that all the feedback the world gives them (peers, popular media) is wrong. Many adults are even ill-equipped to handle this for themselves.

[1]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-instagram-is-tox...

When i let 'play the freaking game' = play till 5am with friends, failed 1 yr school etc etc

So they get the worst of both worlds because you either didn't want to draw a line on them playing or you get some weird enjoyment in your kid having a shit time? Weird behaviour honestly

I draw a line they do it anyway behind my back.

That is sneaky, are you afraid of just being direct with your own kid?

My dad was very direct with me, i still tried to break all the rules, it's ok, helps them learn to deal with frustration (the 'kid' is 17)

Aren't you worried that dishonesty like that would hurt your relationship with your kid?

Only if i get caught, so i try not to. Would be extremely proud if he found out but even though he is in tradeschool for computers and networking i dont know wtf they teach there he has no clue how nothing works.

What is “weird stuff”?

I have actually set up two different ssid’s and the kids only connect to one, but I haven’t enabled time limits on theirs (yet). I need to, because the 13 year old doesn’t understand not to use devices which don’t have easy parental controls (switch) at night.

Previously I also edited /etc/hosts to localhost youtube, which was most effective (but not available on iOS/switch.

The big cause of the problem? Fortnite. I would love to just kill Fortnite but it would also mean disconnection from part of his social network (which he is experiencing currently)

So anyway, as a parent, you are up against a social network and an addicting game company - the odds are stacked against you.

> What is “weird stuff”?

Doing something that is clearly illegal to stop your kids from accessing the Internet certainly is. Bonus points if it is also heavily enforced and easily traceable. All of that is true for using a signal jammer.

The Switch has pretty robust parental controls; you can even control it remotely from a smartphone.

You don’t need any help by the sounds of it, but her is some unsolicited advise anyway.

A Pihole gives a nice GUI to what you are doing, and has some nice config options.

PiHole is just DNSmasq (unless it has newer features?)

my teenage kids have figured how to get around that

I think I like them!

Wonder if you can channel their abilities somewhere.

I force all devices on my network to use my local ADGuard DNS. Maintaining host files is too much administrative effort.

If any device has coherent parental controls it's the Switch.

I know I need to download the app, but I have been procrastinating and I _just_ figured out ScreenTime reliably (annoyingly it doesn’t share properly with his Macbook either, and it’s buggy a bit there too)

>There are more fundamental issues that need to be addressed first, and your kids will almost certainly get around whatever you're trying to do anyway.

I'd bet most parents intuitively know this, the problem is nothing they have tried has worked. How have you solved this problem?

At the risk of oversimplifying: if you have a problem with something but the kid does not see it as a problem at all, and it doesn't give them much pause that you consider it to be a problem, then that's a problem. :) Any rules you try to enforce will be circumvented, ignored, or hurt your relationship.

That doesn't mean you get rid of the rules - you still need to be the parent - but you need to put at least equal focus on coming to a shared understanding of why it's a problem, or building a relationship where they can have some faith that you might be able to see a danger where they don't, or seeing the wisdom in at least temporarily agreeing to some rules that they don't totally "get" yet.

You're defining end-states and goals, e.g. - 'focus on coming to a shared understanding of why it's a problem' and 'building a relationship where they can have some faith that you might be able to see a danger where they don't', etc.

While that is great, I think the problem parents have is with the steps/process to get there. What works for one child won't work for the other, etc. Like I said, the problem isn't that parents don't know these things, the problem is stuff they're trying isn't working.

Hmm... maybe. Since we're generalizing, I'll throw another generalization on the pile. :) Most parents are slow to react to these problems but, once they do react, they want fast results and so they are tempted to reach for actions that are unhelpful or even counterproductive.

When parents approach it with a mindset of realistic expectations (especially around timeframes), I think most of them can in fact figure out things that work (where 'work' means 'lead to improvement over time'). There are always some kids who simply don't respond, but speaking generally, I believe most do.

Yes, we can only speak in generalities. Thankfully we aren't automatons, quite yet! :) I'd say we agree on most things here.

I thought kids could set their own boundaries with tech (like I did), but I no longer believe that's possible. The internet is like a drug and sometimes you need to take drastic measures to keep your kids safe from it.

I got my kid on all Apple devices and set screen time to completely block him out outside of school hours, when unfortunately he is required to have his computer all day. He's never been as respectful, attentive, or creative as he is now, and after an angry adjustment period, I only regret not doing this sooner.

He might be hiding it, or playing along hoping to get access back later. Regardless, one thing I learned growing up with incredibly strict parents is that it doesn't teach you self-governance. Once he starts living independently, this could come back to bite him. There's also a level of animosity to your parents when they don't trust you that pervades the relationship. Add to that, a level of social isolation since almost every remote interaction is done on an app nowadays, I really question that decision to completely block him out.

I let him back in when he asks for it.

About self-governance, honestly I don't know. I know that what kids are dealing with online is crack compared to the coffee I grew up with. I don't know if anyone can have a healthy relationship with Roblox, Tiktok, and Youtube.

I also know that now he finishes his school work, is learning guitar entirely on his own, and talks to us about school and his friends. Before he would stare at the computer until dinner and go back to it after unless we forced him to do something else.

I'm curious how old your kid is?

It took a lot to convince my wife to enable the time limit on our Amazon Fire tablets. They get 1 hour of videos and apps, but unlimited book time.

He's 13.

I completely sympathize with this. I had to kick the ipad off the network an hour ago so I could get the 6 yo to stop playing roblox and go somewhere with me. This was after asking numerous times over the course of 5 minutes and while trying to get results without yelling as often.

Anyone judging and trying to lecture on how doing actions like this is actually counter productive - well, chances are you don't have kids or you yell a lot.

People want a more comprehensive solution to be discussed, a wider universe of possibilities, instead of false dilemmas and gatekeeping arbitrary choices with children or not.

Congratulations, those are huge wins. My oldest is 4 so I’m just starting to test the waters with a system and more concrete time blocks.

> There's also a level of animosity to your parents when they don't trust you that pervades the relationship.

The counter-balance for that is plenty of love, support, and one-on-one time. Building trust, essentially. With that, the kids will understand the reasons for the rules.

> I really question that decision to completely block him out.

I have two children. One child has always successfully-self moderated her screen time and we have never had to step in and correct anything. Zero worries about her.

The other child is the exact opposite. He is not that young anymore but still has no self-moderation. He has his own computer on which he can do an unlimited number of things but if given the choice, he will spend literally ALL of his time on it not even playing video games, but watching YouTube videos of other people playing video games.

Even if we tell him, "here's your computer, you can do ANYTHING except watch YouTube gaming videos," he still ends up watching YouTube gaming videos when he thinks we aren't looking. When he gets caught, we take the computer, tablet, or phone away, and remind him what the rules were. He gets angry and throws an enormous temper tantrum. Rinse and repeat, for years on end. He doesn't seem to be learning any lesson here so the only option we are left with is banning him from Internet-connected devices most of the time.

It's a real bummer to me because free access to computers (as a kid) and the Internet (as a teen) are the only things that turned me into a half-capable human being. I'm worried he won't have that chance due to his inability to self-moderate his screen time, combined with the fact that the Internet is now more of a shopping mall than a library.

Oh man, my oldest seems to be exactly like your son. Nowdays its even difficult for him to do homework/read for exams because to urge(fomo?) to watch tiktok/youtube/play whatever free-to-play is so huge.

Apple devices? So what, they can learn to become good consumers?

Get them on Linux or a BSD and explain their purpose and value.

My two cents: kids can not do this on their own, and the comparison to drugs is apt. I think as parents the goal is to teach the kid the risks and the importance of limits, and then help them over time learn to manage it on their own (i.e. as they mature and show they're able to do so).

Working backwards, at some point they are going to be on their own, and if up until that point they are entirely leaning on the fences set up by the parents, and/or don't understand the 'why' behind those fences, they will fail badly.

> Working backwards, at some point they are going to be on their own, and if up until that point they are entirely leaning on the fences set up by the parents, and/or don't understand the 'why' behind those fences, they will fail badly.

I've seen situations where the opposite happens. People who aren't exposed to something when they're kids, and then have almost no interest in it when they're on their own as adults. Whereas people who are exposed to it develop an interest and addiction that lasts through adulthood.

I had something similar when I first came across PC, internet and online gaming. Growing up I didn't have any access to these things and I came across them during university, and I kind of got addicted to them and my grades suffered badly. It did help me later in life to adjust my habit around any online gaming. I don't do it at all but sometimes I would install some games, play for few days, and then uninstall them.

> completely block him out outside of school hours

> He's never been as respectful, attentive, or creative.

I hope the latter statement is true and is not just satisfaction from completely controlling your childrens life. Because blocking all electronic after school is certainly the harshest thing I've ever heard of.

I completely agree with you, and it took me years to come to terms with the necessity of it. There is so much more positive emotion in my home after making this change.

In fact, I exert less control than I used to because now I trust him to be taking care of himself. He gets his work done, he learns new things on his own, and he takes more responsibility for his own health and well being.

How much of this is just timing though? Anecdata, but my parents took my computer away a bunch of times and restricted me from watching TV on weekdays, and I still got terrible grades in middle and high school (though I almost always did well on tests, just didn't like doing homework).

My grades didn't get measurably worse when I got the computer back, and my parents stopped taking it away from me when they saw that I was teaching myself how to code for fun, because I think they realized that is a marketable skill, and I think I taught myself to code (and my grades started improving) because I simply grew up a bit.

Granted, there weren't really "smartphones" throughout most of my high school years, and I didn't even have a laptop at that point either, so it's possible my information is out of date.

Yeah, if my parents tried to control that much of my life while I was living with them I would be in "basically live at a friends house and move out at 18" mode. Because holy shit "nigh completely cutting off the social life of a kid during their formative years" is brutal. It's gotta be so hard for them to maintain friendships, when I was in HS if you totaled up my Snap/Discord/IG/Texts/iMessage I probably sent 5k messages/mo -- all to IRL friends, and I wasn't even that social.

> I thought kids could set their own boundaries with tech (like I did), but I no longer believe that's possible. The internet is like a drug

Hell, I can barely control my own urges to look up some interesting fact whenever a thought pops into my head---and for years I was the guy everyone mocked for never looking at his phone.

I'm the same. I distinctly remember being annoyed at my brother and father when they got early-gen iPhones because they kept pulling them out and burying their faces in them. And now, I'm sure I'm much worse than they were then.

> to completely block him out outside of school hours

they cannot google stuff or check wikipedia when they are at home? no internet access at all?

You'd be surprised how irrelevant wikipedia and googling are to elementary and middle school educations. Due to a lack of assumptions about who has devices at home all the information you'll need for course work is included in the course materials (whether that be a text book or some other form of reference).

I think online educators have a lot to offer young students, but they help accelerate the process - they don't replace it.

> You'd be surprised how irrelevant wikipedia and googling are to elementary and middle school educations.

You say that as if the official elementary- and middle-school curriculum are the only things worth looking up. There is much one can profitably learn from the resources which are freely available online beyond the least-common-denominator taught by schools.

I did purposefully exclude High School from that list since that's a good period to start independent research. If you have an issue with the curriculum being taught that's an issue you should take up with your school board - not try and monkey patch by using online learning as a solution. Elementary and middle school expectations are usually focused on learning the way to learn since that's where the brain is at.

I for one am extremely glad that you in particular, and others of a similar mindset, had nothing at all to do with my pre-high-school education. It is truly unfortunate that not everyone else can say the same.

The right time to start "independent research" is approximately from birth. We should be overjoyed that any child is curious and eager to learn. Standing in their way by limiting access to educational resources based on arbitrary ideas of "age-appropriate materials" is absolutely a crime.

That's not what they're doing when they have 24/7 unlimited internet, it certainly ain't wikipedia or looking up animal/computer facts.

I do the same. No phones after 8 pm. They are pretty free range before that. Better not catch them doing anything on their laptops other than homework after that. Everything goes on the kitchen table/counters after homework is over. I might relent a bit as they get older but tweens and younger seem to have zero self control with electronics. I let them free range with whatever on Saturday (i think everyone needs a safety valve day), but Sunday it's back to business as usual. Firewalls are great at limiting this stuff.

> The internet is like a drug

I mean, that's what Big Tech pays many here for, isn't it?

Are there any books that anyone recommends?

We do our best to limit screen time, but you can tell it's all they think about sometimes. When we say "You can play nintendo switch when your friends come over", their brains kick-in like limitless -- "i need to charge the controllers now, so they don't run out of battery. 2 need the usb cables while 1 needs more AA batteries". In comparison to when I recommend doing something creative, I have to push through "if you want to draw, the paper is on your desk"....

I did this sometimes as a kid. 28 now. I think they’ll grow out of it. Alternatively, you could try to encourage better habits around charging after they’re done playing.

Which creative medium they use I don’t think I care as much about. The reality is that screens aren’t going away. If they want to draw on an iPad, I’d allow it.

"... if you ever find yourself in a situation where you are doing weird stuff because your kids completely disregard family rules, just stop ..."

Carseats come to mind immediately as I think of counterexamples to this ...

I found the Apple parental controls worked pretty well - set max hours per day, set bedtime after which apps are restricted.

Didn't really cause much friction, worked well enough.

"By mistake" seems way too generous. He intentionally deployed an illegal signal jammer with complete disregard for the effect it would have on other people.

The high power level (33dB) was the mistake.

Using an illegal device was the mistake. A lower power level would have taken longer to notice.

Transmitted power is measured in watts. dB is sometimes used to measure received power, but it depends on the location of the receiver, what kind of antenna is being used, and so on.

If you're referring to the graph in the article, that's not a graph of the actual signal jammer, just a stock photo.

Yes, good catch! The time matches the story, however the date isn't even close.

Epoch user name, btw

He thought they it was for his house only.

If he has had any idea on the technology, he would have known that funding him is very simple.

One of the best things we invested in is a Circle device. All kid's devices have the Circle VPN. Through it we can turn off their Internet access at certain times, give them a time limit on certain applications or websites, easily monitor what they are doing from our own phones, etc.

If I were go to such great lengths and finally resort to order a multi-frequency signal jammer isn't the next follow-up question: Is it powerful enough? Or could it disrupt like ... I don't know ... 911 calls in the vicinity? No experimenting? Really desperate, I guess.

I mean, yes; part of the reason that these jammers are illegal is that it'll happily wipe out all service, including 911, in the affected area.

It's a few years out from being an issue for me, but I'm planning to rely on Apple's ScreenTime and parental controls to take care of this issue for me. My thinking is that having the enforcement be automatic and passive will lead to less conflict.

Anyone have any experience with this? Pros and cons?

Are there any bands in the US that are open for free use? A sort of Wild West band. The tech seems very cool to experiment with, but I don’t want to end up in this guys shoes for trying to wirelessly control my coffee pot (for instance…).

Kind of, there are unlicensed radio bands but there are still rules about what you can't do on them. 900 MHz, 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz

In particular, you're still not allowed to jam them. You're not allowed to jam any frequency, ever.

Ah, walkie talkie and wifi, of course! :) I suppose a good starting point would be to just buy some commercially available walkie talkies and see what sorts of modulation is possible. Cheers!

I'm having one of those false memory experiences. I 'know' that the 1.2GHz band was used for earlier WiFi specs and yet Wikipedia disagrees.

In fact this is allocated to Ham radio and that has rules (poorly enforced due to budget constraints) up the wazoo.

This goes firmly into the criminal stupidity bucket. Mobile phones are critical infrastructure at this point, if only for the need to communicate with emergency services.

Why didn't he just confiscate their phones?

This guy used a somewhat similar technique[1]. Yeah, it's wrong -- but I can't help but sympathize. And, he gets 20 points alone for the 6-pack of "Old Style" that he used to conceal the jammer.

1. https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/chicago-man-arrest...

> Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in your country.

Wow, seems like the technique is very effective!

Ah, the World Narrow Web strikes again.

   A crotchety Chicago man who became notorious among commuters for riding the train with a cellphone jammer and a six-pack of beer now faces felony charges for using the signal-blocking device to get some peace on his way home.

   Dennis Nicholl, 63, faces felony charges of interfering with cellphone calls using a signal jamming device on the CTA Red Line in Chicago, Illinois.

   Dennis Nicholl was arrested Tuesday for using a cellphone jammer on the metro because "he was disturbed by people talking around him," his attorney, Charles Lauer, told the Chicago Tribune.

   The 63-year-old financial planner for the University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System had become well-known among commuters on Chicago's Red Line railway who noticed their calls would drop around the bulky, antennaed device on Nicholl's lap.

   Some commuters also noticed a six-pack of Old Style beer at his feet, as seen in photos that circulated online for months.

   Nicholl was finally busted after undercover officers set up a sting operation and deployed a plainclothes cop to commute alongside him.

   The inconspicuous cop made a phone call and, when it dropped after Nicholl turned on his device, he handcuffed him at the next stop.

   Nicholl admitted to police that he "gets annoyed at people talking on their cellphones while riding on" Chicago's transit system, according to the police report.

   Cellphone jammers violate federal law and can disrupt all phone or radio signals in their immediate surroundings, causing calls to suddenly drop. People who use or sell them in the U.S. can face prison time and significant fines — up to $16,000 for each violation, according to the FCC.

   The judge on Nicholl's case dubbed the cantankerous commuter the "cellphone police" and set a hefty $10,000 bail.

   Nicholl's lawyer said the man was harmless and just trying to get some peace and quiet on his ride home.

   "He might have been selfish in thinking about himself, but he didn't have any malicious intent," Lauer said.

   Nicholl posted bond and left jail Wednesday.

> "He might have been selfish in thinking about himself, but he didn't have any malicious intent," Lauer said.

I recognize this is lawyer speak, but what the heck? How is "Broke other peoples stuff for own benefit" not malicious intent.

Jamming cell phones on the red line is a public service.

What makes you think he used the 6-pack to conceal the jammer?

Truck driver drives by Newark airport frequently with a GPS jammer: https://www.cnet.com/news/truck-driver-has-gps-jammer-accide...

What happened to just hiding the power cord or keyboard :) That's what worked for my parents when I was growing up. But we also only had one "family" computer as the internet and PCs were expensive.

Does China have the right idea with respect to kids and the internet? Should we effectively ban kids from social media and restrict their usage at the ISP level?

Would like to see the arguments for and against.

As parent, I think China may have the right idea. From my perspective, I think kids shouldn't have social media until late teens especially stuff like instagram. Go through an average 14 year old girls instagram feed and it is easy to see how eating disorders are increasing.

The other thing is if every other kid in the class has social media, I will allow it because it important to be involved in the social aspect of school. So, China has the right idea because it is forced to be a social norm of not having social media and I think the whole community and individuals will be healthier because of it.

They do something with limiting the amount of video games you can play, I think they are on to something there.

I never see anything like that happening here in the USA though

I think any blanket policy that just apply the same rule to everybody is just lazy policy. A less lazy approach is provide the capability (through e.g. ISP or device manufacturer) to do so to parents/guardians and let them make the choice on an individual level.

Even for education, its much better to have options for home school or special needs school, than it is to just blanketly say all children must go to a regular school like every other child.

Reading the threads here about parents trying to manage their kids' online usage something strikes me. It's a little hard to articulate, but I might call it the "assumption of normalcy" in regard to media/technology. People assume, to various degrees, that current forms of technology and levels of usage are "fine, just fine", yet if you think about it for a bit it seems really more like a "boiling frog" situation. What I mean is that we are engaged in a massive open-air social/psychological experiment of sorts, and we're more or less doing it on auto-pilot.

From that POV the policy changes that China has introduced seem like an attempt to opt-out, which would make Chinese kids into a kind of "control group" for our media/internet/phone/game mass experiment. The problem is that there are so many confounding variables that it seems unlikely that we can learn much from it after all. And it's moot anyway since there's no political way to enforce similar bans in the West.

FWIW, if I had kids I would ban the Internet, smart phones, and even cable TV. I've been on the Internet, there's no way I would expose my kids to it, even with ad-blockers. The Internet used to be Burning Man, now it's Bangkok. I wouldn't let my kids wander around the open Internet any more than around the back alleys of Bangkok. I feel for parents that are dealing with this.

It is not clear to me why he didn't just remove the phones for part of the day? Getting a jammer seems like more work, actually, even if it doesn't get you arrested.

If he was an engineer I would completely get it they he went the hard, unexpected, convoluted way.

I think that sometimes the obvious solution does not work out that well.

Wow, a dad really did cut the internet down: https://youtu.be/ricmZy9VZMM

midnight until 3am is a weird time imo. Midnight is way to late for a child to be up I started cutting my kids off at 9pm but at the router as I won’t pay for them to have a cell service and was experiencing the same issue with my oldest kid. Is there a way you can do the same thing for cellular signals? I guess my solution would be to just take the phone at 9pm. Also I would punish my kid for repeatedly ignore my rules.

Just curious, when you tried explaining to your child the importance of sleep and negative health impacts of late night social media, what was the reaction?

I’m curious what led to wifi being turned off rather than kid personally convinced to do it.

Not OP, but my parents tried that back in 1997 when I was nine.

My solution? I'd fake being asleep, wait for them to go to bed, and then sneak over to the computer room and turn it on.

I did this nearly every night for a long, long time.

I knew full well as a kid that poor sleep was bad. Between a night owl body and school schedules lacking any compassion or space for significant self development, I felt the trade-off was worth it. Kids are smart, and I've found them responsive when engaged with respect from an early age.

I know you're being downvoted, but when I was young, my parents were able to turn off mobile data between set hours through our carrier (Verizon Wireless). It might have required paid parental controls, but I don't think so.

They claimed it was to make sure the phones didn't chew through our small datacaps at night in case things went down, but it had the effect you were looking for.

Morale: next time also jam gps and services radios so they won't get to you ) I mean, who can drive without GPS these days? :)

moral?

Could he have just turned it down a little bit so that it wouldn’t cover such a large area? (I know it would still be illegal)

I think I probably would have just cancelled the kids phone plans.

Could look at pihole or nextdns (cloud version of pihole)

it's Zuckerberg's fault, not parents

I’m not saying he was right, but I understand.

“By mistake”? This was absolutely criminal. And since this is a very small town (<1000), knowing the kind of people who live in small towns, I could very well believe this is a case of “fuck everybody else”

right, because people who live in small towns are known for their knowledge of electromagnetism

In this guy's online research he never came across a firewall? He could easily block the Internet for his kids with a pfsense fw.

The kids were using cellular data, not his Wi-Fi.

If I wanted to take down the internet for my kids, I could just block all their IP addresses in my router. Much easier and not illegal. (I have not actually done this.)

Pictured was a mobile phone blocker. Presumably the kids were using their phones over cellular network.

There is conflicting information about how bad is the Internet for kids[^1], but assuming we find out it is bad, and kids must be disconnected at any cost or (put something terrible here), then it could be a good business idea to create "parental suburbs" in the middle of nowhere (say, mountainous region scarcely populated with very bad weather) with no Internet access. Because only family with kids would ever like to live there, the kids themselves would get plenty of kids in the neighborhood to play with. And goats and border collies. Beats Meta.

[^1] I for one think that more physical activity would be good (and that can be achieved with VR, but that's not neither there nor here), and that girls and boys tend to like more the athletic type of the opposite/same sex (/sighs)

I could see this working only in very narrow cases. Closing doors to kids seems higher risk to their future than risks posed by some parts of the internet. If it's not the internet addiction machine it's gambling. If it's not gambling it's drugs. If it isn't drugs it's any of a wide variety of self destructive behavior. Towns where these things don't exist are fantasy.

Imagine coming of age in such a place and trying to find meaningful work without any net skills. I'd imagine it's a huge disadvantage. For example, consistent net access from an early age (and respectful parents that mostly recognized my autonomy) gave me such a huge boost in my self confidence and career. It made me more self reliant, too.

> but assuming we find out it is bad, and kids must be disconnected at any cost

Maybe, but that's a really big precondition.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com