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Comment by dmitryminkovsky | Hacker News Reader

> Ditto. My old got cellphone in 9th grade, and all usual ones are blocked via pihole at home.

Can’t they get around this by turning off Wi-Fi?

Yes, he can, and maybe he did (I can’t say with 100% certainty that that is not the case) but I believe that is where parents not using these social media comes into play. And, remember, Discord is allowed which I believe meets some of the needs.

Also, any excessive data usage would show up in the family plan, which gives me confidence.

I have always vocally expressed my hate for FB so maybe that helped.

But all kids are different, and maybe what worked here won’t work for everyone.

Thanks, was just wondering. I have a 3 year old and the prospect of raising him in today's tech environment is daunting. I can't imagine I'll have to deal with him having a smartphone, etc. It's terrible.

I have a younger kid and we have set expectations that no cell phone before high school,

I’m sure there’d be push back in middle school but we’ll be able to refer to the older kid. Fingers crossed..

Also, I had used the family thing with the older kid, so app installations required patent approval. So that at least forces usage of web apps if the kid is trying to bypass some restrictions, which in itself reduces the damage caused by these social networks.

Discord is social media too, though I would put it somewhere between HN and Facebook/Twitter in terms of harmfulness.

I actually think Discord is even lower on the social media pole in terms of potential harm than HN. The things that seem to be the source of negative effects of social media seem to boil down to 1. dopamine-inducing like/point systems, 2. endless content feeds, and 3. the number of people interacting.

HN has elements of all 3, but to a lesser degree than Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit.

Discord has the potential to have some of those to an extent, but especially if the user is simply using a server for them and their friends, practically none of those apply. It’s much closer to a simple group chat.

Well, it's not like group chat cannot have issues of its own (toxic admins, bullying... maybe not so much among friends, though as a teenager there's quite more risk to be paired with """friends"""), but you are right, I should perhaps (?) have left my concerns with Discord being a platform (closed, privately owned, for profit motive) that is US-based at the door in this specific discussion.

I put my own work around in for that. Wireguard VPN on the phone, that connects back to home. Tasker profiles to enable the Wireguard VPN connection anytime the wifi is not connect to the home network. Pihole blocking still active via that method.

Not if it has a VPN, like circle (which is what we use), installed.

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