I saw a post recently about someone setting up parental controls – screentime, blocked sites, etc. – and it made me wonder.
In my childhood, my free time was very flexible. Within this low-pressure flexibility I was naturally curious, in all directions – that meant both watching brainteaser videos, and watching Gmod brainrot. I had little exposure to video games other than Minecraft which ran poorly on my machine, so I tended to surf Flash games and YouTube.
Strikingly, while watching a brainteaser video, tiny me had a thought:
I’m glad my dad doesn’t make me watch educational videos like the other kids in school have to.
For some reason, I wanted to remember that to “remember what my thought process was as a child” so that memory has stuck with me.
Onto the meat: if I had had a capped screentime, like a timer I could see, and knew that I was being watched in some way, I’d feel pressure. For example,
10 minutes left. Oh no. I didn’t have fun yet. I didn’t have fun yet!!
Oh no, I’m gonna get in so much trouble for watching another YTP…
and maybe that pressure wouldn’t have made me into an independent, curious kid, to the person I am now. Maybe it would’ve made me fearful or suspicious instead. I was suspicious once, when one of my parents said “I can see what you browse from the other room” – so I ran the scientific method to verify if they were. (I wrote “HI MOM” on Paint, and tested if her expression changed.)
So what about now? Were we too free, and now it’s our job to tighten the next generation? I said “butthead” often. I loved asdfmovie, but my parents probably wouldn’t have. I watched SpingeBill YTPs (at least it’s not corporatized YouTube Kids).
Or differently: do we watch our kids without them knowing? Write a keylogger? Or just take router logs? Do we prosecute them like some sort of panopticon, for their own good?
Or do we completely forgo this? Take an Adventure Playground approach?
Of course, I don’t expect a one-size-fits-all answer. Where do you stand, and why?
When my kid started out using the internet, it was over-the-shoulder supervision to start out, then slowly dropping to in-the-room supervision (the PC in the living room), and progressively less over time, with the clearly stated proviso that I would occasionally be glancing over history just to make sure he wasn’t getting caught up in anything horrible, but that I wouldn’t be going into any kind of detail. At 13, he got his own PC in his room, and I left him to it.
I’m a very firm believer that you don’t attempt technical solutions to administrative problems. Privacy is important and monitoring is shit. You equip your kid with the tools and the supervised-experience to make good decisions, and once they can balance by themselves you let go of the bike.
Teach them to do dangerous things safely, that’s parenting in a nutshell.
(actually to clear up a misconception: to teach a kid to ride a bike, you hold the shoulders, not the bicycle. With the extra feedback they can actually compensate and learn to balance; if you hold the bike itself it just weirdly fights them and their cerebellum never gets it)
That makes a lot of sense! Definitely much less friction in that approach – clearly delineated boundaries, decently low pressure, and secure trust without the ethical quandary.
…don’t attempt technical solutions to administrative problems.
Good advice.
Kids will happily brainrot away for hours and hours. Adults have the capacity to get themselved to stop. But kids will watch Spiderman and Elsa shit on YouTube all day if they can
Of course you need to limit it some, then again I wouldn’t give an ipad to a 5 year old
Or you can be like those people on TikTok that pull their kids out of school and let them “guide their own learning.”
I don’t remember what they called this cutting edge method.
They probably don’t have ipads
My parents treated my device access something they had to keep a keen eye on. They were good at manually making sure I wasn’t sitting around having my brain rot, but their spying on what I was doing into my teens left me with some trust issues.
They briefly tried to use technological solutions to control my access and monitor me, but all that served was to make me very good at circumventing them. Outsourcing parenting to a computer program doesn’t work, and kids notice when you try.
I’ve never understood screentime that works like, 1 hour of computer+TV+phone allowed per day. You can’t even finish a movie in that… I’m glad my parents were lenient on me in that sense, and I was trustworthy too since I didn’t do anything bad.
My upbringing was extremely “do what you want, but deal with the consequences.”
“You can watch an R-rated horror movie, but don’t come to me if you can’t sleep at night”-type of situation.
My impression has generally been that my freedom to do what I want let me learn a lot about decision making, responsibility, curiosity, and modern survival skills like Googling things. I’m genuinely baffled by how poorly some people my age use the computer and find things on Google, and I somewhat suspect many of them probably simply haven’t had the opportunity to explore technology on their own. And a lot of my hobbies were developed exactly because I allowed to do what I wanted when I was a child.
As for children doing stupid shit and searching up things that aren’t appropriate for their age, my thought has generally been, why is it the parent’s role to keep that from the child? I strongly believe that a parent’s role is to prepare the child to be a functional adult, not to baby them.
I acknowledge that all children are different, and perhaps there are some cases in which having parental controls would help. But I think my life would be duller if I were raised with parental controls.
Edit: having read some of the other comments, I think there’s 2 aspects to the question of parental control. The first is the aspect of children learning about age-inappropriate things, which I’ve mainly been focusing on. The other is the aspect of discipline and management (ie, preventing your children from spending 12 hours on YouTube). I think people have made interesting points about this aspect, and I respect their opinions. I personally agree with BananaKing’s take that parental controls is the wrong tool for the job. Train your children properly and you shouldn’t need to use parental controls to control their screen time.
Your stance on the age-inappropriate reminds me of what @southsamurai commented! I’ve definitely seen a lot of “Don’t protect your child too hard by concealing the inappropriate from them” lately. I wonder how many modern parents are shifting to that ideal.
“Kids respond well to being treated seriously.” (from Vox, “Why safe playgrounds aren’t great for kids”, 3:17)
You mention that there are some cases where parental controls would help, but you also mentioned that, (1) regarding inapproriacy, you shouldn’t baby children and (2) regarding screen time, BananaKing’s take is the best route. Doesn’t that cover both aspects of where parental controls would be used? What cases would you say parental controls would help with?
Well, I’m just covering my bases. I can’t personally imagine an instance in which it would be helpful, but human nature (and especially human nature of children) can be really hard to predict and I won’t deny that I might have missed a case in which it could be helpful.
If I were a parent; I’d only install a DNS filter against malware/ads to any device my kid uses until my kid is capable of understanding how to detect one. While I can teach them how to use the internet; it should be up to my kids to determine what they decide to do with it in the end.
But I do know the risks of having an infiltrated device on my local network; and I’m not having that.
i dont have children, but the “patental control” feature of nextdns improved my own mental health a LOT. probably would not use it on my kids tho, they wouldnt even know something like the internet exists lol.
I think we should give parents the tools to raise their children as they see fit and the freedom to be able to make that choice.
This right here. Every kid is different and parents should know what they need and be allowed the freedom to choose what’s right for them.
We have a 11 and 13 year old and neither are capable of disconnecting. I mean literally. They will skip sleep, meals and restroom breaks if given that level of freedom. So we have time limits. Reasonable ones in my opinion but still limits.
Also, I work in tech and one of the kids is extremely savvy at pushing boundaries and getting around my security , so I make it a game and give them the freedom to break limits in a controlled environment. This builds trust and teaches them at the same time.
Trust but verify and provide what’s best for your own kids.
That’s fair. Subscribing to a singular doctrine doesn’t make sense, and there are lots of culture gaps to acknowledge.
What about for you specifically? To what extent would you/do you digitally monitor your kids (if you have any or not)?
Me specifically?
I don’t think digital monitoring is needed and I think it’ll stop a lot of teachable moments that will help out later in their lives but I do have friends who monitor their child’s cell phones to the extent of using GPS to see if they are speeding.
I always want to teach those kids what a faraday cage is.
Hah! Faraday Cage, nice. Location spoofs too!
Interestingly, the route my mother took was, when I went off to college, she asked me if she could track me. We discussed privacy (who has my location?) and security (Is the protection endeavor proportionate to the threat chance?), and I demonstrated a basic location spoof (I am in control of my data).
In the end, we agreed to allow some monitoring.
That’s different of course – it’s a rare (I think) circumstance and consent, and isn’t quite parental control, as both parties had equal grounds to form said consent.
I wonder if such a conversation could happen among younger children. 12 to 13 y/os maybe? Depends of course.
I have a host list on my router. That always seemed like plenty (I block gambling and malware)
I think watching over kids without them knowing is the key. Time limit is stupid in my opinion. Obviously porn sites and other appropriate sites will be blocked network wide and when the time comes I’ll slowly teach the child how to circumvent the measures and even create their own.
As you have pointed out, feeling under pressure will definitely detrimental for the child development so it’s best to avoid that.
Someone downvoted you but I’d like to hear differing opinions, so I upvoted.
By teaching the child how to circumvent these measures, what do you mean by that? Do you teach them to break your router rules? And when would you do that – when they appear mature enough to you? Of course, there’s the chance that they don’t like tech.
Imaginarily, my kid and I could have some arms-race fun, but I don’t know how realistic that is.
What do you mean by that?
Literally teach them how to! When I deem them mature enough, of course.
Of course, there’s the chance that they don’t like tech.
I’m pretty confident that they will. If I get to raise the kid as I see fit. But you know I’m not expecting them to be a hobbyist or anything. Knowing small things like circumventing network blocks might be important in the future weather that would in a school enviroment or an oppresive regime. The latter of which is getting closer in my country to reality each passing day.
You gotta ride the wave and you can’t let the dragon drag on. The best “parental control” is a helpful and active parent in the life of their child.
The internet isnt what it used to be. Sure it was never perfect but the neo-nazi pipeline is very real and is embedded into the “fun” kids content. Id say that controls to prevent seeing that content is required. Let them have fun content just make sure it isnt turning them into a monster. This is no simple task tho.
I definitely agree. Back then, the bad stuff was often more… innocent, grassroots-ish? (With exceptions.) Like, if you stumbled on a cartel beheading then no one was trying to sell anything to you.
Nowadays it’s markedly more corporate – there is ad revenue in constructing an extremist pipeline, and anyone can see how content has sprung up to assume that vacuum. (Try opening a private browser tab and watching only Ben Shapiro videos. The algorithm will eventually point you to Trump conspiracy videos with AI voiceovers. Last time I did this was before Cambridge Analytica changed their name to Emerdata though so I’m not sure if it’s the same.)
One thing: you mentioned that there was a pipeline in “‘fun’ kids content”. I’ve only seen stuff like that directed at early, questioning teens (the Discord offensive-jokester type) – does this “‘fun’ kids content” thing target even younger ages now? Because I’ve yet to hear of that.
A lot of it starts to get them pretty young. Like 10-12. Its embedded in video game content a lot. The ages are getting younger and younger as kids tend to be influenced by other kids a bit older than them. So it trickles down that way. Altho i see early teens as kids too so i was talking about them too when i said that. A lot of it comes from socializing with other kids that have been influenced by it too.
screen time? my opinion: sleep is good
