Ask HN: At what age would you let your kids to the real Internet? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: At what age would you let your kids to the real Internet?

13 pointsBrajeshwar18 comments

Inside the home, they are under a Firewall, AdGuarded, and even DNS-cleansed. They haven’t seen the real internet. When is it a good time to loosen up when outside or even at home?

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I grew up in the nascent days of the wider available internet and it had much less guard rails than it does these days, which in some sense enabled me to be curious and learn the things that got me to where I am now.

I guess it could go wrong and turn my kid into a monster, but how can you win if you don't play?

Having kids is an iterative process anyway, just keep making them and it will work out :)

Back then, we don't have billion/trillion dollar companies doing psysop on children.

That is really worse than darknet content and all kinds of porn and most kind of other not family-friendly stuff. The worst threat on Internets is something the easiest to end with.

When you feel your kid shows a strong sense of autonomy/responsibility.

I don't know when that will be, but if there's one thing I do know it's probably not until double digit age or early teen years.

I have no intention of giving my kids free-reign of infinite feeds of content. They can however do whatever they want in their time allowed on the internet, but it will be reviewed occasionally to make sure it's not going down a bad path like some of the horror stories I've heard from other parents.

Before they have access to the internet outside of your home.

Either you teach them, or the world does.

I would leave the Internet at your house protected as is, but I would have a second computer with no protected Internet. That's the one you sit down with your child and teach them at.

Not positive yet. Mine's 10 and still doesn't.

Probably will loosen up some by middle school...maybe age 12ish?

The thought still terrifies me, though.

Whenever they can figure out how to dial into the completely unreliable modem bridge I would set up for them.

4 yo because that was a time I felt my first information hunger, I can even remember some books I have read at that time.

Way more interesting question is how to get a decent censoreship to the kid at the age X. F.e. I would not introduce kid to Tor before maybe 7 yo.

You were reading at age 4?

They probably were - I read the newspaper at breakfast every morning beginning at age 5 until I went off to college. For some people, learning to read is a process. For others, it's more of an instant epiphany. I've seen two year olds who were doing a pretty good job on Dick and Jane, so it isn't unrealistic to think by 4 they were clicking right along. There is probably someone here on HN who has researched all of this and could tell us more about the steps young minds go through and what works better / worse.

Me too. Any parent can teach their kids to read. Read to them at bed time and angle the book so the kid can follow along. I started reading Dr. Seuss at around age 3 or 4 and by age 6 I was reading illustrated medical texts. I didn't become a scholar or anything. But I did develop a very independent mind. This was 22 years before the common www.

Another me too here.

According to my parents, supposedly at 3. My oldest son did as well.

My favorite books at this age were encyclopedias, because their content is the easiest to attach to a young person's reality map. Although stupid stories for children I consumed as well, not least because the СЭС encyclopedia [1] weighed maybe 10% of my weight.

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

Sure. Encyclopedias, programming books (ZX Spectrum BASIC manual - didn't understand it much back then though, that came around 6-7 y/o)... And of course story books too.

Absolutely

Youtube is bad enough sometimes.

It is sooooo good for parent's short-term goal like to shut up the yeller for a hour or too. But YT for a baby is a poison which slowly disables an ability to learn. If you are a 3 years old kid and most hours you have spent were hours eyeballing "youtube for kids" that I have a disaster news - you are an idiot. If it is needed for a kid to watch some moving pictures from Internent - pleace not "for kids" and not tiktok. YT for adults is enough teethless tbh.

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