I decided to move away from big tech for my children and myself
lof.flounder.online
lof.flounder.online
I think I made a very good decision not to give my son a phone until he is driving. Instead of surfing tiktok all day, he learns music, does origami, plays outside, helps me with the garden and many other things that bring him a lot of joy. I obviously help him with whatever interest he has, and I think him seeing the way his friends handle social media has made him not really want a phone anymore. He doesn't even mention it to me like he did when all his friends first started getting one. He sees how addicted they are and how he doesn't even have those friends over anymore.
I think people over estimate the "pariah" thing. I grew up in a family of alcoholism, so I chose never to drink. At first people would ask me to drink with them at parties and such. Eventually they realized I never gave in, so when they were out buying alcohol, they would always buy me a pack of soda so when I came I would have something to drink with them. So if the friends are good, I don't think our kids will be pariahs. I think/hope that instead our kids will just find people who appreciate and understand their choices or the choices of their parents. If they don't, are they that good of friends after all? I think it is okay to have less friends, if the quality is higher.
It mostly went away in high school, but middle school was terrible.
It is interesting to think about how we understand social things for our kids.
When I grew up the only social time I had was when I actually hung out with my friends. We didn't have internet until I was around 16ish. The only social aspect we had outside of school was actually hanging with friends or talking on the land line. It's amazing how it is expected now for kids to be able to communicate with their friends 24/7.
I'm not sure if this is good or bad. As a parent I want to be the main influencer in my kids life for a bit longer still I think. I sound so controlling but in reality my son has a ton of freedom and is really a responsible kid for his age.
I have a 14 year-old and we have zero blocks on anything. Our logic was that a) kids have far more time to get around restrictions than I have to maintain them, and b) it only takes one friend without such limitations to make any protections moot. I'd much rather see what he's up to and focus on critical interventions than micromanaging everything he's doing.
What we do have is tracking and reporting (he gets the emails, too) and a policy of mom and dad have full access to devices at any time, and the computer is used only with the door open. We've also focused on etiquette, such as putting the phone down when someone is talking to you. Finally, homework, study, and family times are "quiet" times with no devices. We make sure that applies to mom & dad, too.
So far, it has worked well, mostly because we've worked very hard to be consistent with how we apply the rules. We're also very vigilant for any warning signs like obsession, etc. I also talk to him about things he wants to buy for games, etc., including discussing how the games are designed to put you into a loop to buy rewards. Usually I say to defer a couple days and ask if it's really worth it. He pays with his own money and we track purchases. Tracking has helped him really understand how much money _could_ be spent, and made him think hard about whether the purchase was worth it. When questionable behavior occurs, we make it a discussion and not a lecture.
>I'm not sure if this is good or bad.
I used to be convinced it was because of my age, but the more I interact with kids, the more I am convinced that I am right. It is bad, with almost no good in return.
The pressure today's children live under is absolutely incredible. They are expected to be available 24/7. EVERY mistake they make could be recorded and shared forever. Literally everything they do is scrutinized, and if it's dorky or funny looking or weird, they absolutely will be bullied for it. . . and can never escape because it's 24/7 now.
The world for children is terrifying.
That is so sad. Interesting to see that china has 'LOCKED' down screen time controls for their youth, but they 'strategically' let tiktok run unfettered in other countries
I have a daughter who is 10. She and most of her friends have a smart phone. She is friends with a neighbor girl who is home schooled. When they hang out, the home schooled girl who has extremely limited access to electronics just wants to sit inside and watch shows and play games while my daughter wants to go outside and play. In fact, when she's hanging out with any of her friends none of them are glued to their phones. Anecdotes are fun!
I don't have a child, but I wouldn't mind buying them a Nokia brick once they are around 12 or 13 lol
I mean we grew up without phones and our parents+ grew up without phones. I think it will be fine. He knows both of our phone numbers so if he ever needed something he would probably just ask a stranger to borrow their phone to call his parents or something.
I might be the edge case here, but I really like that he has to think about what he is going to do, or where he is going to go with his friends; that he might have to somehow contact me so he has to plan ahead. This is what we did when we were kids, we would have to let our parents know ahead of time where they could find us. It is sort of a responsibility that has kind of faded away with everyone having phones.
I noticed as I finished high school and post secondary school, my friends became people who I actually wanted to hang out with. I had complete freedom to find others to socialize with that were more similar to me.
I guess my question is, how much of an impact does not having a smartphone when you're a teenager have when you reach adulthood? Based on what you've described with your son, it seems like he's benefitting more from not having one.
The one thing I do know is that there isn't much good left in social media besides a few edge cases where its a resourceful group that hasn't moved off the platforms. I don't use social media anymore. We had to lead by example, so my wife and I both removed it from our lives. We are better off for sure without it.
It is an infinite time suck, and while that might be fine for adults who are grounded in their work life and need an outlet to just relax. Children have so much room to learn, explore and develop that it isn't a healthy eco-system for them to be on for hours and hours a day.
My older did not get a cellphone till 9th grade, that too because the kid used to walk to school. I use pi-hole at home and the kid has never used FB, Instagram, Tiktok. Unfortunately kids use Discord for communicating, so had to allow that, but we had a discussion about the language to use on such platforms and so on. And, so far I believe the kid is fine since I didn't teach them to just use the social platforms responsibly, rather I taught them (I hope) to not use the social platforms at all except for messaging when absolutely necessary. Moreover I try to tell the kid to use browser as much as possible rather than get the apps.
And, for the record I don't use FB, IG, or any other platforms myself - so we lead by example.
So, far I have not heard much protest. What happens when the kid will be in college is anyone's guess. But I personally believe that teaching kids a mistrust of social networks is inherently better than trying to teach them how to use them responsibly, since I don't believe they can be used responsibly.
EDIT: to add, my kid uses DDG instead of Google for search. Does use Gmail, but also has own domain with custom emails. PS5 and Switch, but no network play. Changed password immediately when was forced to use Gmail on a public school computer once.. So, I guess we're just teaching kids different things.
My child is also 11. Fortunately none of the friends or anyone in class has a smartphone yet.
I think this is somewhat easier here, in Silicon Valley. Most of the parents are either directly in tech or in very adjacent fields so we experience how the sausage is made and want no part of it. So parents are pretty aligned on no social media and minimal tech. I don't use a smartphone myself, so helps in leading by example. (I have one, but mostly it sits in my work backpack and I hardly ever take it out.)
Most of them have laptops, although only very recently. So they can research (DDG, never google) topics for school and personal interest but it's not something they have nearby most of the time.
So luckily they still get together and do the same things I was doing at 11, ride bikes everywhere and play in the park, forest and beach. Weekends we go camping in areas with minimal to no cell signals (also wonderful for parents, impossible to check jira tickets when there is no signal!). I'm sure it'll get more difficult in middle school and beyond, time will tell.
I would like to say that we can teach kids to have a healthy relationship with the internet and social media but sites like TicTok are engineered to be as addictive as possible so that would be naïve of me to say.
In saying that, if you outright ban these sites in your house it just means that when it comes time for your kids to be more independent they could possibly have no knowledge of how to healthily use social media and then be worse off than if they had access early.
There is no easy answer here, at the end of the day it will be their decision, all you can do is teach them to navigate the digital world and then be there to help when they make mistakes.
I don't think so. Don't underestimate the intelligence of kids. If your kid actually understands the way dopamine works (on a sufficient level), they will cultivate their own way of attention-management. That's perfectly doable, kids just soak up knowledge. They have to learn it anyway, so the later you start, the worse the consequences of both social isolation and bad usage-culture will be.
/edit:
to add to my original point, when your kids decide for themselves that they want something, and they feel that you are unfairly restricting their access to it, the consequence will be that they demonize you. Where that leads, for them, for their relationship with you, for the other points you're trying to get across, is never a good place. Be very careful about it.
And the reasons adults suck at this is just that: because we were never taught to deal with it, because our schools curriculae are in complete disconnect of the world we've built within the last 40 years. The mechanisms of attention are by no means rocket science, and kids are not braindead. Those who are generally able to understand and then recognize the dangers will have the ability to do so from young age, and the ones who don't have that skillset early on will never develop it anyway.
I'd be very curious to know if any of the tech-based education programs being rolled out at a rapid rate include any material on the dangers of technology and social media addiction.
<sarcasm>Which is why heroin addicts, quit when they choose, and have zero issues staying off the above.
Which is why after even a few doses, they never become horribly addicted, and end down a path of self destruction.</sarcasm>
Addiction means logic, and choice go out the window.
This is fundamentally a parenting question - and from my limited knowledge of it, pre-teens need a radically different approach than teenagers : for the first (whom we are talking about) you need to be a model, for the second you need to walk a fine line of not antagonizing the likes and values of the tribe they ended in, lest you completely lose any influence you might have too early on.
It's the transition between the two that seems to be particularly hard to pull off here...
Some companies see this as “innovation”: coming up with new ways to advertise, target, and stick to consumers. The problem with the “schools are behind” argument is that this is how the system is designed and it will always be this way.
Computer Science is a good example of this. It takes years for newer technologies to get into CS curriculum. By the time curriculum is updated to educate kids on phone addiction, there will already be a newer and more insidious method to target kids that didn’t make it into the curriculum.
The problem is not the technology. The problem is how they are used, and ethics is something that does not change - or at least changes at a much lower pace.
Your response may help you jerk off to your righteousness, but it does not give anything actionable and it does not provide any type of solution to solve the problem. Can you try again, please?
"Companies" can not do anything, except be used by unethical people at the top as an excuse for their deeds.
This is not an issue of Capitalism, but of Corporativism. If you want to fight, at least we should be clear about what is the real enemy.
because kids don't use Facebook?
But the idea that mere education can disarm these tools is incredibly naive. It's not powerless against it but not sufficient alone.
Intelligent people who are deeply knowledgeable about the physiology and psychology of addiction still get addicted to drugs, for example. Or. We all know how advertising works, and yet it still works. Do you think it doesn't work on you?
Intelligence and knowledge can be part of a defensive strategy but they're not a complete one. And even the best strategies executed flawlessly will fail sometimes or against some opponents.
This is not a matter of intelligence, and I find that framing chilling. It carries an implicit judgement that those who find themselves captive to these powers were merely too weak, undisciplined, or unintelligent to prevent that through their own agency. It's not the agency of individuals that is the problem here though.
do you people ever try to have an independent thought outside of the propaganda of big business ? what kind of nonsense of this, that children should be expected to compete for their attention span against literal city sized teams working to maximize the size of their algorithm
If you don't introduce something to your children and give examples of how to use it safely as an authoritative parent, then who will? Of course it can be safer to avoid some things, so I see TFA's point, but it seems extreme to avoid the whole ecosystem completely.
My circumstances were a little unusual (only child with physical disabilities) but not once did I feel like a social pariah what with books, games, books again, one or two loyal friends, pets, exploring the accessible parts of the backyard and digging up insects ...
There's a happy middle as far as giving into Big Tech vs not, basically.
It is a basic but at system level not obvious insight that you cannot ignore reality in how you educate your or anyone else's children. It is easy to be careful and conservative but for education to be useful you have to teach them about difficult topics early and thoroughly and both the substance and the methodology have to actually fit the reality these children can and do encounter every day and WILL eventually encounter once they leave the protected environment of school and parents.
You simply cannot teach a child to be a mature, employable, self-confident, independent, informed and sensible adult without the tools of the normal world. By all means, keep them away from tech completely and there are exactly two scenarios: 1) they sneak their way into getting access 2) they fall into an adult life they are not prepared for and will suffer for it.
You, as a parent or educator, mist face reality and discomfort yourself and engage with the world your children encounter. Teach them understanding and insight, not shame or fear.
As with most things in life, too far to either extreme and you will have problems. How can we expect our kids to cope if we ourselves are totally addicted ourselves or totally isolated from it all.
I do wish that more parents (and society in general) would be more sensible about a minimum age for smartphones; it just keeps creeping down. 10/11/12 would be somewhat manageable and it gives parents a chance to help guide their use.
And of course all the popular must have apps already have age limits they absolutely refuse to enforce. TikTok has 13 as the minimum age. WhatsApp (used by every Dutch teenager from 10 onwards) has a minimum age of 16 in the EU…
Why not? If you think that smartphone usage is harmful to your child, then you absolutely are justified in letting them be "that kid". Being moderately socially constrained is actually a perfectly fine thing if the alternative is worse.
> Being socially excluded was the bane of my life in school, and I'll be damned if I'm going to be a contributing factor to my child becoming a pariah
I don't know anything about you in particular, so I can't say whether this is a good idea or not. But we have to recognize the tradeoffs: unfettered access to social media from a young age with all of its downsides OR being the only kid without a cellphone and those accompanying downsides. Which one harms your kid more? Think about it and make your decision, but once you've made that decision you have to bite the bullet and accept the costs.
It's a trade-off - is peer ostracisation worth the benefits from lack of tech?
Most people, myself included, would say "No".
> Being moderately socially constrained is actually a perfectly fine thing if the alternative is worse.
It is not a moderate social constraint, it's a complete and utter exclusion from the set of peers.
From my observation children are increasingly dysfunctional.
Hasn't every generation complained about this? We forget that we were children once too, and pushed at the boundaries as we matured into teens.
This is what children do.
~ Socrates
Decadence is nothing new. Society goes through ups and downs. There have been numerous reformation periods did yield substantial benefits. I don't think anyone is arguing that things have always throughout history gotten worse in all places simultaneously.
It's my opinion that the exploitative power of machine learning with mass surveillance in the hands of profit incentivized corporations may not lead to the most conducive environment for developing brains. Even my mature brain has a hard time with it.
Well the article in question has the kids blocked from google search.
Such a radical block will almost certainly block everything else that their friends are using.
So, sure, they may not need their own phone, but at ages 10-13, blocking the child from all popular tech makes them more or less unable to join conversations with their peers who are not blocked.
I was homeschooled and moved every 3-6 months growing up and in spite of all these "handicaps" I still learned to make several IRL friends within a week or two of every new city I ended up in. I would say hi, show them a magic trick, do some comedy bits I had been working on, or share the latest anime I was into. Whatever. Making friends is the skill to build in a kid, not technology conformity.
Stop worrying about making kids popular and making them conform in ways beyond basic manners and respect. The roads less traveled are more likely to kelp a kid develop atypical skillsets which will give them an advantage in the job market later.
Right, and that was before all the kids were on facebook, or twitter, or whatever.
You're talking about a time when the only online-networking being done, was being done on a desktop computer. IME, less than 1 out of every 100 children in 2000 were actually using desktop computer.
We are now in a time were 95/100 children are using some sort of portable personal computer that is with them all the time.
> I was homeschooled and moved every 3-6 months growing up and in spite of all these "handicaps" I still learned to make several IRL friends within a week or two of every new city I ended up in.
Which was perfectly possible when almost none of the kids were on computers. Now they all are.
> Stop worrying about making kids popular and making them conform in ways beyond basic manners and respect. The roads less traveled are more likely to kelp a kid develop atypical skillsets which will give them an advantage in the job market later.
I'm afraid you're not a good example: you appear to lack some important skills wrt to the world as it is.
Think about it this way - there are people who didn't bother putting up with the hardship of a reduced social network, and they ended up more successful than you.
I don't think you have any interaction with children. I do.
Also, I used to be a kid.
Not every kid needs to conform to social norms.
To your point, plenty of kids will be successful with and without smartphones, but I would argue those that don't will likely be less prone to endless hours of doom scrolling on apps literally designed with casino-like dopamine drip algorithms to keep them addicted.
I choose to believe someone is not a shitty parent for trying to delay a child from having constant in-pocket access to addictive and harmful things.
Depends if you're talking about pre-teens or teenagers. ICQ alone had 100 million accounts in 2001. And I would expect teenagers to be amongst the first to use it.
They dont worry about them being "popular". They worry about them being excluded.
> I would say hi, show them a magic trick, do some comedy bits I had been working on, or share the latest anime I was into. Whatever. Making friends is the skill to build in a kid, not technology conformity.
How do you show latest anime without device? Where did you met kids willing to go to your house first time they met you?
A kid can use Freetube on a laptop or tablet for instance with no need for a Google account, and without targeting or ads.
Here in Finland, from 13 and up, it's pretty much total social exclusion and severely reduced ability to participate in school work if you don't have a smartphone. Teenagers without phones is pretty much uneard of, apart from in some religious circles.
The thing about those teenagers is that they rarely meet outside school. Covid made damn sure parents are somewhat paranoid about social contacts, and having people over is still pretty rare. The result is teenagers communicating pretty much all the time, but it's all done over social media.
Honestly -most- of the time I tell people I don't have a phone they say something like "That is super cool, I wish I could do that. My phone has ruined my life. How would you prefer we keep in touch since you can't use X app?"
Most people simply don't care enough, and that includes most teenagers. People want convenience, and as little interference as possible. I'm not saying it's a good thing; on the contrary I suspect it will be outright disruptive for society in a generation's time or so. Still, people _like_ their dopamine fixes. Most enjoy being hooked to TikTok, and having a real-life attention-span beaten by goldfish.
We, as a society, missed that the hopelessly incompetent and oblivios people in Wall-E was a warning and not a manual.
Not to mention the fact that if I somehow managed to get them to ditch Whatsapp, I would be held responsible for it. I'd like to keep my business running rather than be known as the local tosser -- being famous for being a technophobe won't attract new customers. And yes, that's what being against Big Tech makes you these days; most people see you as paranoid, or in the best case, as someone who fights windmills.
And all that assumes other kids wouldn't take it out on mine because they're frustrated about her dad forcing everyone over to some crappy app instead of whatsapp.
As another sibling mentioned, this needs to be addressed at a political level. And yes, I've contacted elected representatives about it. Most of those used Office 365 or G suite for receiving emails.
No, think of it as a grassroots movement. You won't be doing anything by yourself, you'll be gathering just enough support to make it become a collective action.
It doesn't even to be a majority. Just a small group of parents saying "anything but WhatsApp" will at least get people to look for an alternative. If their excuse is "the current system from government is bad", the group can respond with "here is a list of messaging providers that use open messaging protocols."
It does NOT have to be a crappy app (e.g, Conversations XMPP is actually quite a polished client) and it does NOT have to cost a lot (I know that I can provide a fully managed service to schools for $0.10/user/month and still be profitable). All it takes is a small committed group refusing to take no for an answer.
I run a security and privacy consulting company counting some of the world's largest companies as clients. I have many friends at FAANG and have had engless direct and indirect dealings with data privacy and data breaches at major companies.
I am also the guy that will teach their kids to program, and to solder.
When I am -also- the one to say I don't carry a smartphone and that I strondly recommend against TikTok and FAAANG, they at least hear me out. If anything it has gotten me -more- business because they know I take privacy seriously, which means they know I will take the privacy of their company seriously.
Don't be afraid to use your position of influence to be polite but firm in your convictions. People often will respect you for challenging toxic norms even if they don't choose to do the same. I think your fear of being "out" as a privacy advocate is unwarranted.
It's almost like all the talk about of "it's cool to be a nerd" and "we need to have more room for different voices" is just corporate-washed propaganda and not the real values of this generation...
Honest question, how many teachers do you interact with? I don't have kids, but I've got a few friends who are teachers, and most of their coworkers are completely tech illiterate. Getting them to use email rather than whatsapp would be hard enough, but setting up and running a matrix server is completely out of the question.
- Name of the server
- Username
- initial password, which needs to be changed upon login.
I get the feeling that your worldview is extremely limited, and you have not experienced the world of kids.
We choose schools based on how successful their graduates are. The more CEOs, doctors, etc that a school produced means that that school is more successful.
Once the school is chosen, you adhere to their rules. For my kids, some of those rules included online-only stuff. Sure, I could send my kids to a shittier school, but I don't want to do that.
It should not even be legal to do this and IMO parents in your situation should consider forming student privacy advocacy groups and legal funds demanding students not be discriminated against over legitimate privacy concerns involving third party private companies. I know I will if I am the parent of a kid in that situation and a teacher at the best school for them does not comply with polite help migrating to more accessible solutions.
Force the schools to self host, and use open source software. This is the norm at many major academic institutions in Europe. The US is just way behind because virtually no one is fighting for student privacy here... because most parents don't care about their own privacy so why would they care about that of their child?
Or it means that the elites managed to self-select themselves around that particular school.
And some (few) would appreciate your effort, but quite pragmatically have to acknowledge that there is no way they can support a classroom full of kids with those solutions, and that even if they could, it would get in the way of the curriculum. In the Netherlands too, WhatsApp is decidedly not (or only nominally) optional in high school. This is not something that can be solved by going to individual teachers (and really, most won't understand why you can't 'just' use WhatsApp); you need legislation to break open those silos and technological support at a national scale for non-commercial alternatives. The former is happening in the EU (so give it a few years before you can chat with people on WhatsApp without a smartphone from a Linux laptop, maybe); the latter is a non-starter in many countries due to government IT projects failing constantly.
Yes, it can. You just need to become part of the "intolerant minority" that refuses to give in. https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
That is what the teacher asking kids to use a Facebook product is doing. Speaking personally, if I end up with a kid in that situation, and they are limited in school in any way because they don't accept FAANG license agreements, I will take them to court and make a media shit show out of it.
Something being "normal" in education doesn't make it right, or unchangeable. Not washing hands in hospitals was once normal, and a small minority of people needed to challenge those norms to set appropriate healthcare hygiene standards.
I doubt anyone in the media will care as much as you think they will.
There are messaging platforms that are not dependent on Big Tech. If communication via group chat is so key to the school operations, parents are more than entitled to ask the school to implement a proper platform for it.
> Covid made damn sure parents are somewhat paranoid about social contacts, and having people over is still pretty rare.
That is your first-order problem to solve.
Giving kids a smartphone as a substitute for proper social interaction is a terrible band-aid.
Definitely. Personally, I've taken steps to remedy it.
On the other hand, other parents I discussed it with now consider me a luddite, and visiting friends is still a thing of the past for most of the local kids. I suspect it will remain so until the fear of Covid goes down and interacting with actual people becomes uncontroversial again. :D
In my kids' kita, I wasn't alone when I said that I didn't want to use WhatsApp. So we created a mailing list. Parents and teachers can still talk on whatsapp if they prefer, but any "official communication" needs to be through email.
Just talk with them, see how much common ground you can find. In my conversations with other parents, I found that some were interested in changing away from whatsapp, but didn't know what would be the "best" alternative. In the end they opted for Signal, still not ideal but at least it was a step in the right direction.
Most of the time people already were sending out emails as well, and they (perhaps begrudgingly) continue to do so to accommodate people like me.
The signal to noise ratio in these Whatsapp groups is extremely low.
Instead I made fast friends with the other outcasts like me. The computer nerds, the anime nerds, the hobbyists, the actors, the musicians, the magicians, and the artists. People that spent life chasing their imagination and not worrying about trying to be "normal". Those friendships helped me become the person I am today.
Kids without smartphones will be similar cast out of social circles that revolve around "app culture". Your kid will be better off without the influence of people that shallow.
People sometimes basically tell me "Oh, if you don't install snapchat, discord, or x app, we can't be friends". If someone can't figure out how to maintain a friendship with me without a particular app I have ethical objections to, then I don't consider it a loss. Your kid will learn not to either.
Ancedotal, but virtually all the nerds I grew up with are very successful now, and many of the popular kids that excluded me are still struggling to pay bills having never developed any specialized skills.
That's a false dichotomy - you posit that those things are the only alternatives, which is incorrect.
I never did non-stop sex, drugs and alcohol (and ignored sports) in school, and yet I was part of a number of different social groupings in school.
> Ancedotal, but virtually all the nerds I grew up with are very successful now, and many of the popular kids that excluded me are still struggling to pay bills having never developed any specialized skills.
That's funny - I was never a nerd (computer or otherwise), and grew up fairly successful.
I think you might be missing the fact that your exclusions has lead you to believe a number of things that simply aren't true, like your first statement above.
Removing any one popular activity from the life of a child be it smartphones, or tobacco, is likely to exclude them from some social groups, and perhaps make them more likely to land in others.
If anything the take-away here is that the idea that a kid not having a smartphone will handicap them in life is nonsense. There are so so many paths to success in this world, though sometimes traveling a different path than the majority can have some advantages.
While I share your objection on GP commenter's false dichotomy (though honesty who knows, maybe their high school was a real life enactment of Skins!) and their apparently judgemental attitude towards their peers, let's not forget that they also said they connected with:
>> The computer nerds, the anime nerds, the hobbyists, the actors, the musicians, the magicians, and the artists.
I.e. they were also part of a number of social circles despite not engaging in “non-stop sex, drugs and alcohol” etc.
I think that the overarching theme of this discussion is neither the false dichotomy that you pointed out, nor the dichotomy of social vs "non"-social, but rather how intense and alienating are a given culture's expectations to conform to the mainstream or its implications that this or that interest is better as of itself. Multiple social connections will always exist, and some shared interests will be more or less common. That is normal and socially healthy. What truly matters is that interest or lack of it in this or that hobby/theme/lifestyle does not result in cliquey social exclusion which can be very damaging in the long term.
Anecdotally, as someone who grew up in Spain, my generation would often comment on how bizarre it seemed to us that American high schools in fiction virtually always implied such a clear dividing line between those who were popular/sporty/cheerleaders on the one hand, and those who were nerdy/band/theatre on the other. Of course we knew people in school who would fit one stereotype more than others, and people were somewhat divided into groups of friends. However, these groups were neither themed, nor was belonging to one explicit and either-or, nor was there any implied social hierarchy in them.
But, the way OP socialized created false dichotomy in his head. He assumes all the kids not in his direct cycle are "non-stop sex, drugs and alcohol" kids. I mean, maybe he grew in some kind of hellhole being only one who did not ended up in jail. But even then, unless you are living in the same hellhole, you dont have to treat your kids the same.
I went to an American high school in the early 2000s and was also puzzled by the fictional divisions. A huge portion of the band was also in the football team; our half-time field show was full of dudes in their football uniforms.
The only people who tried to create those sort of divides were a couple music kids who maybe watched too many 80s teen movies or MTV shows.
Because it sets them on a track of social disconnect and isolation. No therapist in their right mind would support that path.
The adequate response is culture. Teach your children how to cultivate their own attention. Teach them about the way dopamine works. If you can't, you don't even know what you're talking about yourself. Creating social outlaws never, ever ever ever achieves the intended goal. The opposite is the case, you're creating damage in areas that you apparently don't even realize, probably because you project your personality model and own experiences onto a kid that simply doesn't grow up in the world that you became neuroplastic in.
> Once you made your decision, bite the bullet and accept the costs
...Or be open to rethink your decision?! That's just bad intellectual culture. It's perfectly fine to change your mind about something that you can't fully understand. And you can't fully understand this, because you can't see the world through the eyes of a now-12-year-old. Everyone tries to do the best for their kids, but almost no one knows what is the best for their kids. Setting them on a path to isolation and lack of connect certainly isn't the way, they'll never, ever, fully recover from it.
And on average most people will use it, so a kid that can use better than it is already on top of the pack
Smoking and football were once both pretty much required if you wanted to be popular, but time eventually revealed the interests of the cool kids often ended with lung cancer and brain damage.
Teach a kid to build computers, write software, design and solder their electronics. They will be miles ahead technically of most of their tiktok scrolling peers.
Some uses of social media can be "as harmful" as banging your head on a wall, but a smartphone is much more than that.
> They will be miles ahead technically of most of their tiktok scrolling peers.
Life is not only about technical skills. And I've had plenty of these "technically minded" people spewing complete BS about vaccines here on HN, so I guess they think they're technically minded but aren't
They would certianly have access to a portable device with a web browser like a small form factor linux laptop or tablet.
I also don't have a problem with the concept of social media. Neutral social media and messaging services that has no profit motivated data harvesting and behavior manipulation algorithims like Mastodon, Matrix, etc, I have no problem with. I would never allow a kid to use TikTok or a Meta/Facebook product however, as doing so is literally allowing strangers to pay to manipulate my kid towards any desired behavior change. That is just lazy parenting, IMO.
Overall there are probably enough anti-police punk songs to fill an entire genre of music.
Here are some of the prominent examples I could think of that beyond hating cops, are more directed threats:
https://genius.com/Terrorgruppe-all-comic-heroes-are-fascist...
"All cops are bastard, barbecue their dicks"
https://genius.com/The-dicks-anti-klan-part-one-lyrics
“I see that you’re a policeman, I know you’re in the Ku Klux Klan.”
https://genius.com/Mdc-lets-kill-all-the-cops-lyrics
"Lets kill all the cops and throw them in bags"
https://genius.com/Choking-victim-crack-rock-steady-lyrics
"Are you ready to stop the rotten blue menace? Let’s go kill us a cop"
Didn't expect to see this take on HN, especially in the age when the library of congress includes hip-hop records and a former president expressed his appreciation towards it openly. Ffs, it is just another form of art. It isn't some vice that they will unfortunately have to eventually be able to work around, like alcohol. There is genuine value in it.
Same with Tiktok. It can be used in a toxic way, but also in a way that can genuinely be great. I saw plenty of great DIY projects on tiktok that were fairly educational to me, as well as plenty of great examples of people teaching or creating amazing things. I am not "coping with toxicity" of tiktok when i use it, i am just using it in a way that is controlled and intentional.
The only thing I can add at this point is, you are just going through the good old "heavy metal/rock music/Dungeons and Dragons turn our children into devil-worshipping heathens" type of thinking.
If you dont have conversations about it and just blanket declare it as evil and ban it in your household, it won't stop your kid from listening to it. It will stop any discussion of it though, which means that they will have to work through it without your guidance on the matter (which has a potential for turning ugly), all while eroding the trust between you all.
Saying that as someone who grew up with very overprotective (at quite a few points) parents, (almost) nothing good came out of it at all. You probably don't want your kid to get a motorcycle license just out of spite for you the second they are fully financially independent and realize that you have zero control over them. And then promptly crash on that bike and break a couple of bones within the same year. I didn't even have an itch to ride a bike that badly, but it felt like some internal obligation to myself. No regrets about it whatsoever, I genuinely enjoy riding it now as intrinsically as possible. But it definitely didn't start off this way at all.
And that personal example was on a very mild side, from what I've personally observed in my peers. As a former RA in college dorms who had a chance to see a lot of those situations play out, you can pretty much always correctly guess what kind of parenting the freshmen kids who got into ER with alcohol poisoning within the first month of college or dropped out due to partying too hard (or playing videogames all day) had. It was almost always the kind of parenting that you are advocating for.
Is this supposed to be some kind of moral argument? I once asked my classmate what the hiphop song was about becuase I couldn't follow the lyrics (I'm not native to the anglosphere) and he replied "It's about how he drives around and finds women to drug and rape". Apparently it was quite a popular hiphop song!
Something tells me that the type of hip-hop songs you've mentioned aren't the ones being included in the library of congress.
I'm not surprised at all, it's entirely consistent with a lot of other things you'll find on this site.
At least they admitted it's music.
Its so easy to go along with whatever is making the headlines. Isn't it better to be that kid who is at least thinking independently, and having the childhood that humans were designed to have.
There are "indie web" alternatives to the big social networks which everyone can use. Social networks without the algorithms that make you doom scrolling, messaging apps that do not track you or read your messages for ads, photo apps that do not have likes and do not gamify karma-whoring, and so on.
To make it even better, these apps are not exclusive to smartphone platforms, so they won't need a smartphone just to participate.
At least here in Germany, even my non-techy friends that are totally addicted to Instagram and Facebook don't publish anything with their kids. I am hoping that by the time their kids have grown a bit, these tools will be more popularized and accessible so that their kids don't fall into the same trap as their parents, and perhaps even the parents take the opportunity to do the switch themselves.
Christ, I'm not really on the 'complain about social media' train, but this resonates with me so much. The way people pose and mug for upvotes on Reddit - or mortifiedly delete their comments when they get some downdoots – is, well, it's self-abasing. I can't believe the effect it has on people. For kids I can only imagine how destructive it would be, in the already insecure and reputation-centric environment of school.
I don't know what the solution is. I believe it lies _broadly in the direction of_ better clients, rather than different networks. The latter is a fool's errand. The former is still hard, but at least practicable on one's own: to find or create [apps / web clients / browser extensions / etc] which don't surface the karma component as much.
HN is a good example of that: it still has upvotes and downvotes, but the design (especially not showing you others' downvotes, beyond binary indicators of positive/negative) centres them much less. It's an illustration of how you can substantially reduce this through frontend changes alone, without needing to change the core logic of the product.
Conversation threads on hn are also nice in my opinion, they are not compulsory, if you forget a discussion was happening the platform allows that. Instead of throwing it back in your face to encourage engagement.
As someone who had similar experiences, thanks for letting your children be in control of at least some part of their lives. You're doing the good thing.
"Creepy?! What? Google, Facebook, etc do it. What's wrong?"
I feel like hacking the phones of parliamentarians, then setting up a website showing their daily activities, would be excellent.
Double effective if it just keeps happening, even when you say you'll stop, no matter how often they reset or reconfigure the phone.
"What?! Everyone else does it!"
There is no such thing. All these are dopamine manglers fueled by low-quality content that have no real benefit.
> "my child becoming a pariah"
If having no smartphone is all it takes to be a pariah, I think it's a good thing to be a pariah ! Or more seriously: there are much better ways to socialize than socialize on the phone (like participating in real/non-virtual activities with other people). I guess as the generations goes, people will eventually forget that the notion of social network largely predates telecommunications.
It's interesting that most of the replies here focus on the children aspect, while the same spy-device paradigm applies as much or more to adults.
The bottom line is I just don't get enough utility out of my devices to justify spending all that privacy on them. Plus ads make the internet unusable on them. I'll just use my laptop because it's more convenient.
The majority of consumers are not tech-savvy enough to make informed decisions when it comes to electronics and their own freedom because the tech stack is just too complex, and even if they wanted to learn about it, most of the hardware and software is closed source and nearly impossible to modify. Most smartphone users don't even know that they're being spied on. To compound the problem, the companies that make the phones put out deceptive advertising claiming that these devices are private, and your data stays in your pocket. They're lying, and even the ToS agreement you click through during a new device setup says as much.
I reject the notion that a majority or even a plurality consent to this garbage.
In a place like the US, you get the illusion of choice. It's quite literally red team and blue team, and proponents of this system treat it exactly like a sporting event. The average American has zero ability to get any law changed or enacted.
A great contemporary example is the right to repair activism. Most people are sick of the "throw it away and buy a new one" mentality, and a lot of them are becoming very vocal in their support. This could be an easy way for politicians to boost their popularity and get reelected while doing real good in a bipartisan manner. Instead, these politicians pay the crowds lip service, sit on their hands and drag their feet while making up any reason not to do it. They know full well that their continued enrichment is contingent on the bribes they take and the connections they have, not your votes.
Because the average adult is completely uninformed on this matter. And this is no fault of theirs - life is far, far too complicated and busy to become experts on the thousands of things we participate in.
Luckily, we can rely on regulation. We plug in a new appliance and it doesn't blow up. Our cars rarely catch fire on the highway due to defects, and if they do, regulation and the legal system forces recalls.
Windows users are also suffering a similar problem because of the smartphonisation of the desktop (side note, I hate that people still use that meme about "one version of Windows is bad and the next one is good". W10 still has most of the problems of W8, and some of them are even worse. I don't think we're ever going to get a "good" Windows ever again). We need to choose between being able to run old, trusty software or being actually in control of our computer (in terms of privacy, updates and so on). Then again I suspect that I have only a few months left of personal Windows usage.
I get more utility out of my tech interactions on my phone than I give to "various spy enterprises". I use many services to their maximum, IMO negating most of the benefit they gain from loss-leader products that are their bait for me-as-a-product.
You _are_ being tracked and monetized. Your devices _are_ fingerprinted, and your demographics are tabulated and collated. The modern web doesn't have an effective opt-out (Ye Olde Web didn't either), so you may as well go all-in and extract as much value of your own as you can from the system.
I had problems with my kids use of social media - until I involved myself in it with them, so that I could see the things they were learning and enjoying. And then, having established the reality of their world, I communicated with them about my concerns - the tracking, the groupthink, the dangers of online interactions with strangers.
Most important of all, I gained their trust and inspected their phones, and read their conversations. Yes, there were definitely things to be concerned about - and so we discussed it, rationally, and have established a 'review schedule' where I can get involved in their digital lives a little more.
Its not easy. Teenagers are obstinate and difficult at best of times. But parenting is important, and the basis of all good parenting is the ability to communicate with your kids.
Most parents don't realize how little control they actually have over their kids' lives. If a parent doesn't provide a consequence-free communication channel with a child, the child will quickly learn that communication leads to punishment and will refuse to communicate.
I agree with this for the question of what to do in the concrete situation of handling your kids. In a larger sense though the answer to technology can be also regulation and laws.
To keep kids safe today we have an infinitude of regulations specifying how kids toys, stairways, etc... are to be built. Some of this is over the top, but it would also be insane to expect parents to inspect the precise chemical composition of every toy their kid gets, and research how toxic it might be.
We need to build a societal agreement that data gathered in the name of targeting advertisment is toxic, and ban it. No "consent opt-in/opt-out" either, just a ban. This will obviously take time to get right. And it would make Google poorer so it will be hard to get this done. Think environmental regulations that started with social movements in the 60s/70s and are strong enough to do their job only decades later.
I am assuming it’s the “always on” culture it breeds, but that might be my projection.
Sure, the movies make it seem simple, but... you know, AIDS. It sucked even more if you were queer. "Crack babies" that weren't (that was just poverty we were seeing). Regan starved people with the 'welfare queen' stuff. Misogyny was so much more open.
It wasn't the same. It wasn't better. It was different.
I remember when the restrictions started in many countries and everyone saying it was draconian, but having experienced the benefits of the restrictions, I can't imagine going back to it.
Because that's what the AIDS epidemic was in the 80's.
Edit: I'd add that folks would rather have AIDS from the 80's instead of COVID because for most folks, AIDS wasn't something they thought could affect them.
AIDS panic in the west was dumb. Covid panic has become an endless treadmill of insanity pulling in all directions.
My comment isn't really about smartphones, but the dangers of rose-colored glasses that tint the past in ways that obscure the downsides and make the positives rosier than they really were.
It gives me hope.
I think 'we' should, at least to a degree, suck it up and let kids figure things out for themselves. Cable TV didn't give me square eyes, video games didn't turn me into a school shooter, and I don't believe mobile phones fried my brain. I don't like rock & roll though, and free love has never been a thing.
Which is the other thing; a previous generation was throwing a tantrum because the youth was having sex more and more, nowadays people are throwing a tantrum because the youth are having LESS sex. Which one is it? Neither?
I firmly believe your tools as a parent is to start understanding concepts taught in Stoicism, Taoism, Buddhism, and more.
The ideas around moderation, detachment, and effortless action should be praised. Technology is a tool if you consider these ideas. It can work for you, not against you.
I wouldn't be in the same position I am today without my early addiction to the internet & video games. My parents tried their best. Now being 30 with 2 young kids, I'm more prepared than ever to fight the good fight. It's going to be hard, but perhaps when they grow up they will also look back to these lessons I was trying to teach them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_wei
https://www.theschooloflife.com/article/wu-wei-doing-nothing
I believe this applies more to parents than children in the sense that the more you allow things to just be, the more likely they will just get done. The Tao of Pooh is a short read that covers this concept a bit more.
Well in the long run there is: laws. The EU is finally moving in the right direction at least.
So what we must do is vote for political parties that support this. And support/donate to people like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Schrems
But yea, it will get worse and take time before it gets better indeed.
I don't think avoiding big tech is really possible without joining a separate offline society. You can reduce it but you're not going to keep your kids offline without their friends also being offline.
I also don't have a smartphone and I almost exclusively use open standards and open source software, most of which I self-host in a rack in my closet. The only way I can be reached is e-mail and matrix.
You do -not- need a smartphone or FAANG to live a rich technical life in 2022 though many in the US sure seem to think you do. In the USA, you go to Defcon and see google/apple/discord nonsense everywhere. Even the privacy village (ugh). Go to CCC in Germany and you will see thousands of people gathering and exchanging ideas with only open software and protocols, because they don't trust US big tech.
The fact so most in the US, like you, think that app culture and surveillance capitalism is required to thrive in our online world is evidence of some very successful marketing.
It's a big question for our generation. I posted this using a gemlog in gemini: protocol but it has an html proxy so that 'the world' can see it (I'm glad I did, I don't think we are to the point where posting a gemini: link works, even in HN, to get some attention.
Can you live, and market your business/services if you don't use social media? I'm betting you can, but I don't have data.
I have 1000s of twitter followers on company and personal accounts, but I rarely tweet anymore. Is it costing me business? Perhaps.
I will teach them the dangers of being online and will force the phones to use a VPN through our house with PiHole installed. I may or may not go as far as putting a custom cert on the phone so I can monitor all the traffic -- that will depend on if I catch them violating my trust. My default stance will be no custom cert.
But if I do add a custom cert it won't be a secret -- they will know that I'm monitoring them until they earn the trust back and we will review the logs together.
Normalizing being under surveillance for them is a lesson hard to understand to be honest. I don't know your kids, but at some point their technical abilities to circumvent the paternalism is likely to make such mechanisms futile anyway and there just remains a breach of privacy.
I agree that keeping tech out of childrens hands is a bit futile, but the surveillance ambitions of some parents look more unhealthy than the harm any internet content could cause.
Also, you won't really block them from anything unless you forbid them to meet up with friends with their own unmonitored devices.
That's why I was careful to say that the default would be to trust them, but only after they show they can't handle it will they be monitored, but in a way they are fully aware of and we would review the logs together. But my point was I hope I never have to get that far -- that I can just teach them to be safe and leave it at that.
Especially when most of the risks the author sees are technical security issues. The real issue is that kids and adults alike are unable to police their screen time.
I have made a conscious decision to limit my smartphone usage to communication, not entertainment, and it seems to work fine.
You are going to spy on you kids if they violate your trust, what does it take to violate your trust; visit a website that you don't like? How will your kids ever trust you again, if they find out you're spying on them for possible trust-violations?
Can you imagine your own parents asking you for the same (at any age)?
Perhaps it's not technically spying when they know they are being monitored or spied on, but it's not something better...
We always discuss power abuse in terms of corporate bosses, politicians; but parents seem to abuse their power very frequently. Almost everywhere I've worked most of my coworkers have had exactly this attitude. I.e. that they can spy on their kids (cell phone/iPad/computer), or invade their privacy in all sorts of ways, and they always do this to protect them of course, so nice of them. If it were to happen to me, I'd be leaving home as soon as possible at least - and I don't think I'd come back to visit.
https://www.gottman.com/blog/helicopter-parenting-good-inten...
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27561986/
My note: The process of attempting and failing is the learning experience; children should (imho, based on experience and input from professionals) given the opportunity to learn and fail with grace, while being provided a strong safety net to ensure the failure is inexpensive (from a harm perspective).
When they didn't like the content of my livejournal, I simply used my MITM to serve them a copy different from what the rest of the world saw.
The more you teach a kid about how tech works, they sooner they will use it to defy you.
It is not a big surprise I ended up in infosec.
If the effects of the digital drug Facebook™ or Instagram™ has worn off this last billion addicts, then the new digital crack / cocaine, TikTok™ will onboard the next billion.
Now the twist has taken another turn for the worse, after what happened in this story about its glorified recommendation algorithm [0] that dictates what is seen and unseen and how it manipulates its users addicted to it.
After looking at that [0] and this post, I would prefer NOT to be in the crowd of addicts to suggest that: "TikTok is the best thing to have happened to the Internet" [1]. That goes for all of them.
Once this one wears off, on to the next hit.
So far I try not to use it in their presence and if it appears, we speak of it as "the monolith". The monolith is mysterious, but ultimately it's just a slab of glass. Less interesting than e.g. musical toys.
Also you can't take the monolith to the pool, which happens to be our weekly family activity.
As for internet access(in its modern incarnation), because that's what it's actually all about: I have a little quiz in mind, which should at least help my child familiarize themselves with the dangers of sharing data and pay-to-win schemes.
This is the new tobacco. As research accumulates on detrimental effects (individual cognitive impact and societal damage) it's going to get easier to do the right thing for your children. It's hard right now in 2022, as seen in the many hostile comments from those who've made other life choices and feel obliged to defend them.
You did something great with that book. Last time I recommended it I said something like "If you were impacted by Stallman or Lanier, this Farnell is deeper, more philosophical, and at the same time more applicable. It solves a real problem that _everybody_ has." They look at me with Dali-like eyes-wide-open :)
I had a no display rule for our toddler but during my absence, her mother introduced her to the iPad, and now she watches YouTube on it whenever I’m not around. I know that the American Pediatric Association recommends limiting screen time to 1hr a day, which I also agree with. I don’t know yet how to proceed once she gets older. I think I want to teach her programming and I want to disallow social media. Already now I disallowed her watching Russian videos on YouTube and she doesn’t watch them any more because I said to her that I don’t like those videos.
Youtube-dl is your friend. Download (or pirate) quality content for them to consume offline. Disney streaming is also a no-go these days, not going to touch that with a 10-foot pole.
There is a Blippi stage musical on YouTube she watched already more than five or six times. I also see that it actually helps her language acquisition.
Amazon Kids, you could probably allow a file/music app that can play specific files. Overall definitely a big gap in the market.
I'm not sure what the best solution is
- giving regular (but not too frequent) and detailed real life examples of things that went horribly wrong with other teenagers, combined with total freedom (in this domain)
- or reverse psychology combined with a heavy handed approach where they're going to quickly learn how to fool you and also how to hack your countermeasures, which would supercharge their learning ? (With the risk of a decade+ of bad relations...)
1. She keeps it way to close to her eyes (even after I move it further away)
2. She gets way too much blue light
3. She doesn't get tired of watching cartoons if given the chance (e.g. on long road trips)
4. She now wants cartoons to be playing in the background while she plays with toys
I didn't see any improvements after some time, so I decided that the tablet medium must go away. I now cast videos on the TV from my phone and that has solved most of these, since I have better control over what, when, and or how long she's watching cartoons.
It also helps a lot that (1) AFAIK pretty much all primary schools (<12 years) in our country forbid phones in our country, and (2) we as parents don't spend much time on phones ourselves (we do spend a lot of time behind a laptop, but they usually just see screens full of boring text and number tables, so they don't associate them with something desirable), and (3) pretty much none of the other kids they know have a smartphone.
I expect things will be very different in middle school (>12 years), but we still have a few years to revise and refine our strategy.
My parents had to limit my access to books as a kid because I would stay up all night reading with a flashlight.
As we all know., the internet is an infinite time sink.
self-discipline is easier to learn if i am in control, not when it is forced on me. the key is to find other more interesting things to do
In terms of being opted-in by somebody else: yeah, that sucks, and has been a danger ever since Facebook started auto tagging faces from pictures at parties. But we need to pressure them to add controls, not just pull ourselves away from society.
This is the best summary of why more people should disconnect.
It is not a fearful response to technology - none of this is about technology - it's about large corporations making money from things that they never had the right to take.
Remember that for 99% of people, seeing a video of their friends is a happy interaction. It's the kind of thing an ML model would notice, even if TikTok didn't.
As the author points out, of course TikTok uses wifi data to know. It's not even wifi -- it's "Both people connected to our service from the same IP. These people are related in some way."
If you think that's sinister, you must think Dan's pretty sinister too. Checking IPs is moderation 101, and dates back to the dawn of chat rooms.
I think everyone is nervous (and rightly so) that bigcos know so much about us. We've also seen how quickly the political situation can change -- it's easy to imagine a dictator using this knowledge to purge undesirables.
But other countries are already doing that. That is the reality in which we live. My wife and I are doing IVF in June, and with any luck, I'll have the opportunity to help guide a new soul into the world. I feel that my main responsibility is to prepare them to lead the happiest life they can -- all else being equal, optimizing your family tree for happiness seems like a reasonable approach.
Cutting out "the entire future" in the name of protecting one's children isn't something that I'm particularly interested in trying. To each their own; but someday my kiddo is going to realize that I can't protect her, the same way my father can't protect me from ruining my life by tweeting out certain combinations of words. I want her to be prepared to take advantage of the world, not hide her from it.
I'll be bookmarking this comment. In 14 years, I suspect I won't feel the same way when she's running around with the local boys. Parents don't share in the upside, only the downside, so it's hard to resist the urge to shut down their behavior and box them up for their own protection.
It's good we'll have data points on both approaches. I don't know that the author's approach would be bad, but it's hard to imagine myself being who I am today if I were their kid.
(One of the neat things about IVF is that you can choose the gender of your children. Deciding to have a daughter was a very "we live in the future" moment.)
My browser with 20 tabs open is a game of 'kill the tab that is burning the CPU'. I have to have task manager open at all times. I'm effectively dual-tasking between work and managing browser tabs eating CPU. And I have a beefy laptop. This is with browser addons that block tons of trackers.
While in gemspace, I can open the same amount of tabs and never worry about CPU usage. And that's by design. I'm not saying that gemspace solves the same problems as the web. Of course not, we are talking about fully functioning apps here! But it lets me interact with content (what websites used to be) without worrying about tracking by bigTech nor CPU usage. It's a big win.
FFS people, don't you value eyesight of your kids? I ruined my eyesight by staring at smartphone displays in last 12 years (it was also my work for few years), so I am very vary what can smartphone usage cause.
Please correct the tile to "from" . Reading the original title made me think that a start-up guy moved to big tech for his children.
He never takes it to school, by the way. Despite his phone, we can still never reach him. He mostly uses it to watch YouTube at home, and for chatting with his friends, he relies almost entirely on Discord, which he's got on his laptop.
At least I'm glad he's not into TikTok/Facebook/Instachat and that sort of crap. To reach him, they'd have to launch an antisocial network.
A point of note though, I never really trust these "I have no accounts and then I get a video of my son!" It's the same as that story "I talked about product X and the next time I go online I see an ad!". I hear them so little that I think they can probably be completely explained by coincidence.
But is limiting the solution? When they become adults, they can do what they want, what would be the best way to teach them healthy habits? I'm not convinced keeping the kids away from phones as long as possible it THE solution (maybe part of it?) We keep them away from heroine, from alcohol to a degree (although for me that started at 14-15). Maybe the state should put out stronger advice and forbid them in schools perhaps...
But we are also addicts, and I got my first phone at 17 (it was this one [0], still, sms could be pretty addictive, not much compared to what can be done now). So that didn't really work. Maybe what we really see as problematic will become normal over time? I mean, looking at a small screen is not nice, but if it's in your glasses or VR? At least it is less bad for posture and eyes. It will perhaps be more addictive even, so immersive... Maybe overtime we'll get to evolutionary pressures even, you can get most things you want in VR except food and procreation... Or can we, man where are we going...
[0]: https://www.gsmchoice.com/en/catalogue/ericsson/gf768/galler...
If you block their exposure and/or don't trust them, they're going to rebel and it'll be counterproductive for everyone.
source: have a 7 year old daughter who does the exact opposite of what I ask her to do.
We're raising our kids to question everything. The literal standing rule in our house is - "if there isn't a reason for the rule, it's arbitrary and should be fought".
This has come with consequences (it's certainly annoying to have to explain that NO THE ROAD IS NOT FOR PLAYING IN) but it also has ensured these little kids critically think about everything.
Authoritarian parental behaviors only breed sneaky kids. Source: me and my childhood.
Open and honest communication, acknowledging your own shortcomings, and identifying where you can and cannot help. This is the only way.
It is fascinating seeing the morning transition from fidgety-ness to wanting to explore the real world.
I now feel bad for those trapped all week doom scrolling (no break!).
Life can be so much more, and I am thankful for my ancestors passing on this practical wisdom for leading a fuller life, even as the world has changed…
This is the feeling I, and many others I know, have as well. You try to do some things here and there (using FF with UBO and DDG and no Google account and browsing FB in separate container and whatnot) and hope it improves privacy, but in the end you just don't really know whether it works or not. The way modern websites/apps/tracking/... work is way out of my field and I cannot be bothered to figure out whether the measures I do take, actually do improve privacy, let alone to what extent. As a result, I kinda gave up and assume that whatever I do is probably tracked and possibly linked to my persona. I don't like the feeling of that assumption, nor being tracked, yet day in day out I'm on the internet again. Because after all it kicks too wonderful to not do it.
Now that's a sign of good parenting. Often times parents will lose sight of the fact that their kids are people too. Their brains and personalities aren't really developed enough yet to cope with certain things, so it's easy for adults to dismiss the potential for learning they do have. Children are like sponges that absorb any information you put in front of them. If you don't parent them, the internet will.
I strongly recommend sitting them down and calmly telling them all of the reasons, in detail, why they shouldn't want an electronic tracking device and why you're making this decision for them. Children are pretty smart and they'll probably understand most of it.
When my parents tried to shield me from stuff, that never worked. I would just ask a friend, 'Hey, can I borrow your phone?"
Since you have pre-teens, being a role model is probably the best you can do - boycott them in all your life. Yes, it's hard to refuse to use both Android and iOS, Slack, Github, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, Zoom, TikTok, LinkedIn and their ilk even in your work - but at some point one has to take some responsibilities !
Especially that there's an opportunity for someone in the infocom industry these days with the rebirth of ("real") Linux smartphones.
(Note that this doesn't remove all the issues with social media, just most of them.)
And at least that's a great improvement over the old BankID that forced you to use Windows.
But even both of those are massive improvements over the old days of constant in-person appointments (and delays), paper forms, etc.
I think it's the lesser evil tbh. Go live in Germany to experience the hassle of a technologically backward society (cash-only, paper forms and no widespread online authentication, in-person bureaucracy, widespread use of faxes or letters for service changes, etc.)
I do wish the EU/European governments would invest in Linux and FOSS to develop competitors to the US though. Atm we're basically a US colony, and tech salaries and opportunities reflect that.
And at this point using cash, checks, and other paper alternatives is clearly a lesser evil than being forced (to stay) on Android or iOS.
To follow the post smartphones now are like party cards of the nazi-fascist era, in the past they are just a means for those regimes to discriminate citizens, now they are "active" instead of "passive" they are not just a discrimination tool, the original social score, they are active surveillance devices that can monitor much of any human life, but reasons for me to live the city have gone far beyond that tech aspect:
- IMVHO cities now and especially in the near future are not anymore human aggregate for productivity, service and sociability but open internment camps, where very few can materially control and rule many more humans, like an intensive farm, outside cities it's just not equally possible, a dictatorship can disrupt services and life outside but not much surveilling and oppress a spread population.
- seen the public aspects of the Green New Deal it was clear to me that cities will be just receptacle of poverty and pain: we can't evolve a dense city so an already made city is doomed, no well done insulation and appropriate energy saving design, no room for renewables etc while energy costs skyrocketing and that's not just a matter of cost, also a matter of physical availability of a service. Without electricity in a dense city there is no room for individual citizens to backup.
- density issues already surpass the advantages and foreseeable and (fore)seen unrest will naturally be much bigger in cities than outside.
- in any cases being in a served enough area the investment keep it's value reasonably well in almost all cases.
Smartphones and "virtual/surveilled" life vs a less constrained and less artificial one is an important but marginal aspect...
Forcing that lifestyle upon other people like children will not succeed. They will see it as a personal crusade of you. As soon as they are old enough, they will get their smartphones and use social media heavily.
Better talk to them about the issues of smartphones and social media and let them decide. If they care about privacy, great! Help them to configure their devices. If not, let them go. You cannot control their lifes forever.
The problem is that these issues are hard to understand and properly value for adults... let alone children at 7 and 9.
Addiction. Privacy. Freedom of expression. Popularity contests and identity. Economies of Scale. Value of attention.
Damn hard to understand. And we really didn't cover the tech part. We have zero chances to convince adults away from the tech bubble. They don't get it, and don't want to get it. That includes the mom of my children unfortunately. So giving them the arguments and telling them 'it's your choice' won't work. They are too young to understand this.
These things exist and they aren't going away. Kids need to be familiar with them in order to understand the world they will live in. They need to build up tolerances and cooping strategies for spam and online teasing and addiction to it. If you just ban them from it, they'll have no familiarity and no immunity to its temptations. As with everything, moderation is the key.
Oh and the eSim plan is super cheap $79/year for unlimited calls and text.
https://github.com/a13o/disengaged/blob/master/CODE_OF_ETHIC...
Check what your kid does online and how much they do it. You would be naturally inclined to do the exactly same thing in real life if real life contained as much stuff and different kinds of people as the internet does.
This is almost the same as "I was talking to someone about wanting to buy a gaming PC then I saw ads for gaming PC. They must be listening to my conversations". Nah, some people got told to figure out the patterns of people who go on to buy a gaming PC and someone figured it out. Just like how LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, figure out people you may know because you share a data point or two.
having my kids be seen 100 random viewers world wide is one thing, having the same video shared with all my neighbors is quite another.
there are enough examples of nosy neighbors in the US calling the police on things they don't like. look up free range parenting right here on hackernews.
noone is going to bother about a few kids filming themselves spraying graffiti at the local park, except some people who live at the park.
if an algorithm amplifies local activities to everyone around, then the wrong kind of people will find out.
it's the very definition of gossip that is being facilitated here. the assumption that when something is interesting for a pew people, it's probably interesting for everyone else in the area.
it was probably a similar algorithm that motivated people to turn into lynch-mobs in some places in asia.
it's likely this kind of realization that spooked the OP.
Who are the wrong kind of people?
The biggest perk of living somewhere where cellphone service is spotty as hell is that you don't rely on having service.
It's a bit like talking about buying better gas masks and forcing your kids to wear them, when we should be advocating for stricter emission standards.
I'm not sure if "registered" refers to having created a user account or being logged in while browsing.
Either way, if it is only "think" and not know exactly, good luck evading more subtle tracking.
However I agree with article.
Dopamine optimized algorithims designed to put you in a false reality full of only content you are willing to engage with the most, is one of the most toxic and addictive propaganda tool humans have ever created... and it is sold to the highest bidder. Behavior changes as a service.
It isn't on page 83 on my list. It is number one.
I understand just how manipulative addictive and dangerous the internet can be now. I've grown to be really paranoid about my own internet privacy. I think I would still allow my kid to use the internet unrestricted. I got into some shit I shouldn't have as a kid but it was overwhelmingly a positive impact.
That said, I would try and be very engaged in what my kid is doing on the internet in a supportive way so I would know if I needed to step in. I would schedule offline activities for them to limit screen time. I'd also try and steer them more heavily towards gaming which have social aspects to it, but less likely to cause self-esteem issues or rage-bait you than the social media platforms
We will however give them access to all sorts of entertainment their friends won't have access to. They can play with my large collection of mechanical puzzles, or read from our large collection of books. I can teach them to build and fly FPV aircraft, how to solder and make their own electronics, how to pick locks, how to write their own software, compile their own desktop operating system, how to build their own computers, how to build their own electric skateboard, how to setup a digital music player, how to navigate with a map, how to yoyo, do magic tricks, play board and card games, or play with any of the 20+ retro game consoles I have hooked up at any time. Anything they want to learn we will make the time to help them learn.
Parents who say "I don't want my kid to be unpopular, so I will give them a smartphone" represent a mentality I feel is toxic to society IMO. Would you also give a child weed/tobacco/booze to share with their friends to make them cooler too?
If anything, helping a kid grow up with a more diverse and balanced introduction to technology will help them have a perspective few from their generation will have that in turn may offer them significant advantages. Will they eventually learn to make their own money and buy a phone anyway? Probably. They will however have learned to not be dependent on it.
I get by just fine without a phone and I have a rich social life, endless hobbies to keep my mind engaged, and I own and run a b2b company. "I could never give up my phone" is addiction speaking, and knowingly encouraging kids to share in your adult addictions is even worse.
but that doesn't mean i am addicted to social media stuff, just using messaging for the most part. but also, i grew up before smartphones and i learned to be somewhat disciplined about computer and tv use. my kids are unfortunately not getting the same experience.
I check matrix messages and emails and keep up with people and make plans to meet them when I am in my office, or in a stable location on a laptop.
When I am on in the car, taking a walk, at dinner with my family... I don't need to be reachable at that moment. Society teaches you you need to be reachable every moment of every day, but the people around you will adapt to your communication cadence. The few that won't are not worth your time anyway.
The world will get by without being able to reach you for a few hours at a time, and the mental health wins of not being constantly anxious checking messages 100x a day can't be understated.
that only works because you have alternative ways to communicate with those people. those alternatives are not available here. also as a foreigner i am also expected to do as the locals do, so my argument to use something else holds no sway whatsoever.
The world will get by without being able to reach you for a few hours at a time
and it does. but i don't need to give up my smartphone to achieve that. my notifications are all silent (except for family) and i check messages when i feel like it, not when someone tries to reach me.
If you are fine with surveillance capitalism, then that is your choice, but if you have ethical problems with it, then you owe it to yourself to avoid living a lifestyle you find unethical. You absolutely have a choice to do something about it. No one physically forces you to hit "yes" on the Facebook license agreement.
Personally, when I find someone that has ethical convincing I don't share, like a vegan, I at least take the time to understand their view, and ensure I don't create situations where they can't live their convictions. I respect people with conviction so long as it does not harm others. Maybe in order to be friends with a vegan I don't eat at BBQ restaurants as often, and they in turn use Matrix or email to communicate with me.
Humans are often very accommodating of ethical preferences if you have the conviction to share them.
Personally if I somehow found myself in a country where literally everyone refused to interact with me unless I accepted the Facebook terms of service, I would suspect I am in a cult and GTFO at almost all costs.
If that is indeed the situation you are stuck in, I hope you find a way out of it.
not everyone has the option to leave their country. in fact most people don't have that option. and for those that can leave, in most cases family means leaving is not a decision they can make by themselves.
and even if they could use alternative ways to communicate, if facebook were the only way to keep in touch with some family members, then refusing that would in itself be unethical.
so talking about what is an ethical choice here is really really difficult.
also, leaving is fine if you only want to communicate with people that agree with you. but if you want to reach out to others, you have to meet them where they are. FOSS or the awareness about surveillance capitalism is not going to spread much further if we refuse to communicate with people who won't accommodate our preferences.
It's fine to decide this for yourself, but it's a different thing to isolate your kids. It's hard for a lot of them to connect with peers and where you dad has surveillance capitalism paranoia that won't help.
I think this deliberateness unavoidably leads to being a Luddite. The dominant force in human history is the continual development of new technology and it's integration into day to day human life, and human adaptation to that technology. We adapt to technology both quickly, via culture and training of children, and less quickly via genetic evolution.
Walking away from a technology that the vast majority of humanity embraces might be adaptive, both in terms of the individual and in terms of survival of the fittest, if that technology leads to the users becoming dramatically less fit. Rejecting the use of lead utensils is a great example of an adaptive rejection of a new technology.
Fine, you might rightly argue, this isn't about survival or evolution, it's about the quality of your life. It's hard to argue against that, and reasonable limits on the use of technology for children that can't regulate behavior to optimize their own health is certainly necessary. However, beyond that, abandoning technology in a more holistic way is no different than being Amish-lite. You are being deliberate about what technologies you accept into your day to day life, and this is admirable. However, it is also Amish-lite in that it is very likely to also be a form of freeloading.
The Amish are very much freeloading on their host society. They do not contribute to defense, nor do they utilize resources they control efficiently. Without the efficient utilization of resources of their host society, which allows for such things as large standing armies and fighter jets, they would have long ago been killed or displaced and their land taken. Rejection of Tik-Tok seems very unlikely to lead to any significant freeloading, but rejection of something like 'owning a cell phone' certainly does. As the rest of the world adapts it's culture and day to day life to what having a small pocket computer networked to every other computer unlocks, dramatic new ways of doing things will be unlocked, and new efficiencies will be found which will enrich everyone, including to some extent the Luddites, who are not participating in it. If there are enough of them, old ways of doing things will be maintained to profit from them, whereas if they participated the old ways of doing things (for example calling a phone number to order a pizza, and many more things, and things we haven't anticipated yet) could fall by the wayside.
Certainly you have a right to be a digital Luddite, but I don't believe there is any reason to think that this will give you a better outcome, by any measure, than just participating in the societal evolution would, and if done in a large scale way it is just being Amish with a different default threshold date for acceptable technologies.
sure it restricts me from doing certain things at certain times, but it does not increase my dependence on others compared to having a mobile phone.
please elaborate.
Lets make a specific example: lets say in 2028, 98% of pizzas are ordered via clicking on a phone app. Over at the pizza place, nobody is on the phone full time, just to punch phone orders into the computer system. As a result, pizza places run with 1 less full time person every shift. Pizzas are cheaper to make, competition leads to pizzas being slightly cheaper than they otherwise would have been. Even though you still phone in to the pizza place to make your order, you get the lower price. This is freeloading, since you didn't participate in any of activities that led to the lower price. (yes I realize you could have used a computer but this is just meant to show an example of how widespread phone use can lead to benefits for everyone, even non phone users)
Lets say that everyone is .1% more efficient at picking up their kids from places kids need to be picked up at because they can just navigate to their GPS coordinates every time. Less idling and less driving around looking for them means less energy consumption, and less wear and tear on vehicles. This reduces demand for energy in several ways, which means lower energy costs for you, even though you continue to drive around parking lots trying to figure out where your kids are and why they aren't where you agreed ahead of time, or idling for AC and waiting for them to walk to where you agreed from the far side of the mall.
There are a lot of ways that having a communication/data link to the world allows for new more efficient ways of doing things, and probably these will continue to compound, and taking the benefits (various efficiency improvements) without the costs (suffering downsides of having a smartphone) is the definition of freeloading.
now my argument is that i don't see this as a bad thing. yes, maybe some people get an advantage here without contributing themselves, but the alternative is that we stop improving our lives for fear that someone might get a better life without contributing themselves.
that kind of thinking seems to be very common in the US and it prevents a lot of potentially good development.
some people would prefer to suffer rather than allowing others to get an advantage.
we really need to get away from that. as long as we ourselves get an advantage from some development we need to stop worrying if others get an advantage without contributing.
the reality is that my life can't get better if i don't work to make life better for everyone around me, regardless if they like it or not.
but there is another issue that i have with complaints about freeloaders. we don't know if they are freeloaders. we don't know if that person that refuses to buy a smartphone isn't putting that money towards some other good cause. we don't know if that person avoids that pizza app because they happen to know that it contains spyware. or if that parent searching their kids went to the extra effort of getting a very energy efficient car, and the solar panels on their roof that frequently send electricity into the grid and that make up for the wasted energy of searching their kids once in a while many times over.
we don't know if someone is really a freeloader or a contributor.
and it's impossible to come up with an equation that could tell us.
but that ends up arguing against diversity. what we are missing is that the cellphone refusers are developing or keeping alive alternative ways to communicate, and who knows when we'll need those. we don't actually want 100% adoption of every technology. we need that diversity and room for new technologies to replace old ones.
the amish may refuse cellphones, but maybe their refusal opens the door for new communication tools that are in line with amish ideals that end up improving the life of anyone else who adopts those new tools.
and those people who still use phone calls to order pizza, well, they happen to make sure that phone ordering keeps working with the real beneficiary being that blind or handicapped person that has trouble navigating the pizza app.
The Amish decided that technology developed after 1600 or so was dangerous for humanity and needed to be carefully avoided. None of us agree with that. 200,000 years ago some of our ancestors' relatives were probably terrified of fire. In 400 years the idea that it is somehow dangerous to use whatever they have on whatever their equivalent to our smartphones and tiktok is will seem rediculous to them, just like you disagree with the Amish that it is important to avoid buttons on clothes lest you become a slave to vanity.
our dependency on technology is so absolute and deep that any failure can have serious consequences for an individual.
we need that minority that refuses or avoids certain technology as a test for our fallback options.
i was also told to pay using the phone, which i would not do either. that was more of a communication issue, the person at the counter asked me to hand her my phone so she could initiate the payment, presumably because she felt that it was to complicated to tell me how to do it. when i refused, she sent me to another counter where i could pay in cash, which effectively caused me to verify that a fallback system that didn't rely on a phone was available and working.
I'm not completely convinced by your argument either : what happened to the hacker ethos ? Why do you assume that this time progress is going to come from big sclerotic companies rather than from the usual free (including free-loading) fringe groups ?
(Speaking of which, if we fuck up our civilization badly enough, the Amish look to be in a pretty good position to be the basis for the next one ! (Efficiency being antinomic with resilience.))
The history of the amish is being chased from place to place. I think they are admirable and very special, but they would not fair well in a period of serious instability.