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Comment by nonesuch49 | Hacker News Reader

We recently threw out everything we thought about surveillance, privacy, liberty, and learning through experience when it comes to our kids' access to the Internet. They now have no phone. The computer has a whitelist of sites it can visit and a few ports open for some games. It only gets used with the door open. I disable the Internet completely between the hours of 10pm and 6am. I am looking into even more big brother solutions. It's all theoretical until real stuff goes down. I'll admit to having thrown away my personal principles in regards to freedom and privacy to try to protect my kids.

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This is insanity. You cannot protect children forever. What will you do if your kids go to a friend’s house and have access to devices which are not heavily restricted? What if a friend comes over with their own similar device? As a child of parents who did similar things as you are doing, I can say confidently that it did not protect me, it created a resentment towards my parents, and it increased my motivation to break rules in general.

I believe this person to be trolling (I know, good faith and all that, but my spidy sense is tingling) but on this topic, I don't know how old you are but when I was a kid I didn't have 24/7 access to mutilation scat orgies on demand wherever I am. Last time I went to a porn site I didn't get asked my age, and several videos on the front page were filmed under the guise of siblings having sex.

I remember being in IRC chatrooms and having predators galore trying to get me to hang out with them. From my understanding, the problem hasn't gotten any better.

A parent would be smart to limit some internet access to their children. We ID at bars and brothels (where legal), the way I see it, the day my son is willing to learn to jump through hoops to access pornography is the day he is ready to watch pornography. I'm not all too concerned about them working around these things, but I'm concerned about easy unrestricted access.

You got what I was saying though I could have explained myself better. Kids do not and perhaps cannot understand the risks involved.

If you read more closely, you'll see that I said "recently" as in, "due to recent events." We did exactly as you say, taught our child as well as we could with full openness and honesty about the reality. It doesn't matter. Some kids will take that to heart and some won't. I'm not willing to risk my child's well-being simply because "they didn't do what I told them to" with something as nefarious as what's found on the Internet. As another commenter said, it's the ease of access and the flattening of risk that's problematic.

We will likely release some of these restrictions as our trust in our child and their recognition of the problem sinks in over the next few weeks. I would never consider an outright ban or prohibition because I agree it does have some of the affects you mention. Instead, this is a resetting of expectations for our child around what level of risk is acceptable.

They're using their friend's phones at school, unless you homeschool them.

sounds too extreme

I thought so too. I hoped I'd never have to be this way. It's not just stolen money from a bank account or a hacked Instagram. It could be life or death.

> It could be life or death.

What does this mean? Isn't it better to teach them how to be safe so when they grow up they will be safe? Instead of teaching them nothing but to not trust you?

Once your monitoring no longer exists on their devices, what do you think they'd do?

So say you have a 13 year old daughter. She's naive, horny as all hell, on discord surrounded by a bunch of boys and probably plenty of grown men asking her to send nudes, which is the same as asking her to produce child pornography for their enjoyment. And she will, absolutely, 100% send nudes before she turns 18, to somebody.

Now imagine she is asked to meet up.

Sure, teach them. Explain your rules. Make things clear. But there are real people on the internet. Nice people and dangerous people. Just like the real world. You don't let them run around going to brothels and bars before they're adults, the same applies to the internet. Once they're adults the monitoring stops, of course, just like the real world.

I absolutely agree that teaching them is important. But, 13 or 15 year old kids get taught stuff all the time that they completely ignore. Humans in general are bad at understanding possible risks when faced with what seems like easy short term success. Kids are an order of magnitude or two less capable of doing that.

This is a resetting for us and not a permanent state. Teaching often means letting someone fail, correcting that behavior, and then trying again. Teaching is never, "I say it and they do it."

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