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Comment by _nalply | Hacker News Reader

Thank you. This confirms my suspicion: Just take the hardware away.

I am lucky that my children accept the limits I impose on them. I think because they are not stupid and they sense that they need limits. It's not a struggle to take the hardware away. I even apologize to them when it's time to let the laptop go.

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We do take the devices at bedtime, in fact, I have a reminder on my phone that goes off at 9:30 pm every night (which I started after discovering the problem). But it’s not just about the late night usage, which is mostly curtailed but not perfectly given I’m not a perfect authoritarian. It’s more generally what he’s doing with it.

I don’t want him going down YouTube rabbit holes, developing a body image complex via Instagram, etc., at any time of day. It just seems strange to me that there’s this gaping hole in my parental oversight that was put there by our educational system.

For this, you're in a bit of a bind, and I too have run into this on my son's school issued chromebook. Blocking Instagram and Tiktok seem to be an easy enough solution at the firewall level (or DNS, using something like this: https://dnsadblock.com/block-social-media/). Youtube, however, is the tough one, as half the time the actual class material requires the use of Youtube embedded videos in the first place.

I'd raise the issue among the PTA -- it seems like something that if enough people get involved on you might get a workable solution figured out. Hope the other stuff helps though.

What if he is watching videos about quantum physics, and he might have been the next Einstein, if his parents didn't restrict his access to the information superhighway?

1 in 5000 views. You can bet 20% are TidePod challenges and blowing up swimming pools with dry ice.

I think part of it comes down to knowing your children well enough to know if this is likely.

In truth as someone with autism and ADHD I found myself down some pretty nasty rabbit holes if I wasn't at least given some guidance.

YT has a watch history so this “what if” can be easily tested. In case it’s true you can then supplement the internet superhighway with some relevant books on the subject.

Kids know how to clear the watch history. YouTube has been a real struggle for me.

My kids cleared the watch history then I would notice the history was empty so I’d talk to them about it.

Then the started clearing and then leaving playlists of “educational” stuff running over night to poison the history.

Kids are smart.

I haven’t found a real solution yet other than banning YouTube on everything but the tv in the family room.

It’s funny because classes assign YouTube videos and the kids have to sit there and watch ads before their assignment.

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