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Comment by midhhhthrow | Hacker News Reader

I wish people would stop asking the government to raise their children. I am a parent. If you are a parent, start acting like one and watch your kids a lot more closely. Or better yet, actually spend time with them and stop using iPads as a baby sitter. I know this is harsh and may get downvoted but pared really need to start taking more responsibility on these matters

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No one in the history of the internet has ever gotten downvoted for criticizing modern parenting.

I do not, in any way, support this bill. It's idiotic. I do, however, have some sympathy for parent who are not technically savvy, do not know how to block unpleasant content from the internet, and do not watch their kids all the time. If they did watch their kids all the time they'd be called helicopter parents so there's really no winning.

When my daughter watches stuff online. I watch with her so we can discuss and interact with each other, aka quality time. That’s not helicopter parenting

When your daughter is 14 or 15 years old, are you still going to watch all her online stuff with her? Or are you going to give her some privacy? And are you confident she'll be mature enough at 14 to handle all online content?

At a certain point you’ll have to trust your youngster to make their own decisions on online content , mid teens seems like A good time to do that

You watch everything she watches and then discuss everything she watches? Sheesh, if I was your kid I'd find that pretty overbearing. How about letting her have her own headspace?

I'd be more motivated to sneak around my internet activity just so I could watch something embarrassing like Smurf cartoons.

At age 7 you should be watching everything with your kid. If that’s too much then they’re watching too much video content.

You've mentioned two extremes - 7 year olds should be completely supervised, 14/15 year olds can make their own decisions.

Do you think there ages between 7 and 14 when kids should be allowed to watch videos unsupervised and kids should have some form of filtering they don't see inappropriate content? If so, who will provide that filtering? You probably can because you post to HN but not every parent will have that skillset

There is a huge difference between a 7 year old and a 15 year old. Massive difference in maturity

You're quite right. There's a huge difference between coddling and teaching valuable life skills (like critical thought).

> I do, however, have some sympathy for parent who are not technically savvy, do not know how to block unpleasant content from the internet, and do not watch their kids all the time.

The parent ostensibly purchased that device from a business. That's where you apply the fix, not to the internet in general. This is like trying to put the cat back in the bag by legislative fiat.. I expect the same results.

I’d wager that most support for bills like these doesn’t come from people worrying for their own kids so much as wanting to have control over how other people’s kids are parented.

Charitably, they want to protect neglected kids. Uncharitably, they think they know what’s right for everyone and want to institutionalize it.

But most of supporters probably either have no kids, adult kids, or kids who they think they parent well enough to not be in danger.

That sounds like a fairly mainstream opinion, particularly on this website

This site loves authoritarianism. Look at how quickly comments get flagged if they go against popular thing. Heck this comment, if not already shadow banned, will be removed within 3 hours of its posting, provided your comment rises high enough.

You aren't shadowbanned yet at least.

I think shadow bans are applied to accounts rather than comments on this site.

TBH "this site loves authoritarianism" seems a bit over-dramatic. But I guess we'll see what happens...

I understand your ideals... but in-practice many many children don't have engaged, or even present parents. The older I get the more I believe people conflate having kids as raising kids.

I don't believe we're on a path for this to get better either.

This is why I'm generally in support over codified + regulated child protection acts, especially the online ones.

I really like the idea of significant mandatory family education prior to a marriage license being issued.

We need to move beyond the “it’s a melting pot, everyone has their own way” and realize that people are making babies with little understanding of how to do more than keep them alive.

There is a whole field of early childhood development and another in early childhood education and none of it is taught except to specialists.

edit: I realize this is imperfect but I believe it is better than doing nothing or regulating actual reproduction (however you propose to do that).

Am I correct to say that you're literally advocating for a nanny-state then? A state that is charged entirely with taking care of children (and by extension adults)?

You're being hyperbolic.

I said "This is why I'm generally in support over codified + regulated child protection acts, especially the online ones." This is clearly not advocating for a "nanny-state." I'll rephrase in case I was misunderstood: I am generally in support of online child protection acts.

> Am I correct to say

I think it's clear you've already made your mind up by pushing what I said to such extreme examples: "nanny-state," and claiming I'm advocating for the government to fully take care of children/adults.

That's quite an extension.

The problem is, that in today's world, more and more time has been taken away from people because they have to work much more in order to survive the same way. Putting a kid on an iPad or the TV for an hour while you have a meeting is almost necessary. Not as many people live in a close-knit neighborhood, either, so help is non-existent for many. I know my wife and I struggle to find time to spend with our son since we both have to work. The only good thing for us is we both work from home, so we don't have an additional requirement to commute for several more hours or have to find a sitter or daycare too often. We still sometimes have to hire help to watch him when we both have busy days/weeks.

You folks (not specific to the OP here) have to stop assuming everyone has the same amount of free time as you do, or perhaps some of you folks don't have kids and don't realize just how much time and effort they are!

Yeah but why do kids need to be online at all? For millions of years kids never had computers and they grew up just fine. In fact they grew up with fewer cases of depression etc. I’ve got a kid and I don’t let them online unless I’m there interacting with them, doing stuff together. Maybe I’ll let them watch for 15min for a job well done but not for hours on end

> For millions of years kids never had computers and they grew up just fine. In fact they grew up with fewer cases of depression etc. I’ve got a kid and I don’t let them online unless I’m there interacting with them, doing stuff together. Maybe I’ll let them watch for 15min for a job well done but not for hours on end

For millions of years kids never had running water in the home and they grew up just fine. In fact they grew up with fewer cases of depression etc. I’ve got a kid and I don’t let them use a sink, bathtub, or toilet unless I’m there interacting with them, doing stuff together. Maybe I’ll let them watch for 15min for a job well done but not for hours on end.

I hear you, when I was a kid I was outside a ton.

Here's what I think, but every parent needs to decide for themselves: like it or not, the Internet is an integral part to socializing today. Not allowing your children to socialize this way will hinder their social development, especially when you have no control over them in 0-18 years from now. They need to be able to learn about how to behave on the 'net from a young age, with good supervision and guidance. Sometimes it's good to prevent a child from doing something harmful, and perhaps limiting their screen time in certain ways is necessary, however an extreme version of what you say (15 minutes) is definitely going to hobble their social lives at some point.

Kids need to be doing what other kids the same age are doing. What that is has obviously changed throughout history with technology etc. Which doesn't mean I think it's perfectly fine to let them spend hours online or doing anything sedentary (even reading books) for extended periods every day, but stopping your kids from taking part in activities all their friends/classmates do isn't likely to be good for them either.

There are parental control options on about every popular platform. There is no water in the “protect the kids” argument here, all that can be done on the client side for parents that want to limit what their kids see.

Unless I'm reading this wrong - this bills attempts to give children privacy from their parents?

"Provide an “obvious signal” if parents can monitor their kids’ activities online. How does this intersect with COPPA?"

Are they saying they are going to warn the kids that their parents can check up on them?

Are they utterly insane, or did I read this wrong?

So you'd be fine with a shop set up next to your kids' school specifically to sell alcohol to them? Because that's essentially how social media works right now.

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