I cannot prevent the kid from seeing the marketplace.
I cannot prevent the kid from seeing installed games that are rated Mature. It won't let them play it, but it lists all the games installed in the XBox.
I cannot prevent them from downloading free stuff.
It was frustrating and clear to me that this wasn't designed for the benefits of parents.
I just want it to act like a console with a fixed set of games installed and no marketplace access.
In the US, the government is expressly prohibited from regulating video games sales on the basis of content, per the First Amendment (with an exception existing for pornography). This was the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Entertainment Merchant’s Association (2011).
And that's the problem. The US Constitution isn't Moses' 10 Commandments chiselled in stone. It can be changed and improved. To quote Jeff Jefferies: "That's why it's called an AMENDMENT!".
The fact that the US government is frozen in amber overall will be the downfall of the US.
A solution that works for nerd parents can be sold by those nerd parents to non-nerd parents if the platform wasn't specifically designed to prevent it.
Open hardware and free software is not about nerds.
> These are not implementation errors or miscommunication between different business units.
I don't think the companies such as Google*, Microsoft, Valve or Nintendo** have a Child Safety business unit.
If they did, the software they produce would work and I would be able set some sane settings once when creating a group of users which contain children.
What I am experiencing is user hostility when trying to limit who can chat or influence my children. The UI is usually horrible and some devices have no way of limiting or whitelisting what games can be played by children.
* Fuck you for not requiring TVs to implement the features required to use child users on TVs.
** Fuck you for making the of doing anything on the switch related to child-profiles a horrible experience.
And depending on the community you go to to ask questions, the likely response is, "just be a parent". Wanting seat belts made just for kids IS BEING A PARENT.
I read an interesting argument the other day that, because of how memory and perception of time works, childhood ends up being something like 40% of your lifespan in “experiential” terms. The stuff that happens to you over your first 20ish years loom large over your whole life and the memories of those times will be intense.
So, in a way, designing the world in a way that assumes childhood is a transitory thing that you’re just trying to usher kids through until they can get to the “real world” part of being an adult is just making everyone spend most of their experiential lives in a world not meant for them.
And because there are definitely benefits of Internet access. Saved games, for example.
But yeah, fair point. I should configure router to selectively enable/disable access to that device while the kid uses it to see how usable it is. It may just be good enough for his games
Actually, I don't know. It's certainly convenient that they do. You don't lose anything if your HD crashes. I should try running the games without Internet access to see if they also save them locally.
Can someone explain the problem with 'mature' rated games? As kids (under 10), we played Mortal Kombat and GTA III, laughing when we interacted with hookers in GTA. It was fun, and we had a great time playing these games. What's the issue? It's no different from playing with a wooden sword and shield.
We can quibble about the actual age but in principle I agree about GTA. That's because it's a game designed to be fun for kids.
Let me tell you about elements of games I'm thinking about:
A girl is bullied at school to the point of committing suicide. This isn't a game of vindication. Justice isn't served. Things aren't set right. It's just how things are.
Your brother committed suicide a year ago. As part of the game you have to deal with someone who blames you for it.
A couple has to deal with the grief of their baby drowning in the bathtub. It's not an abstract thing. You as the player have to ensure the baby drowns and set the conditions for it to happen, knowing full well this will be the outcome.
You're a scientist stuck in a weird dimension and trying to figure out how you got here. Well, you got here because you murdered your wife and kid and then killed yourself but before you did that you made a copy of yourself and your family in a virtual world. That plan didn't work out well.
Edit: Just in case anyone gets deceived, the games aren't about these things but they do explore them as part of the game. The point is a lot of modern mature games tackle very adult topics.
Don't knock it until you try it. 3 of the 4 games are highly rated, winning multiple awards. One frequently is mentioned on HN as one of the best games ever.
Games are a medium to tell stories. If you can conceive a TV show or movie tackling these themes there's no reason to think games should be exempt. In fact they are far superior in addressing these themes than movies are.
Ratings are very criticized by artists, eg as being fueled by conservative moms. For example, in the USA, movies with guns and explosion can be shown to younger audiences than nudity - seems very illogical.
Also, some anecdotes: lots of my friends were into GTA as kids, ie early teens, and turned out fine. Comparing to kids who didn't do so well, I consider the most important factors to br family, education, and finances, not violent multimedia.
With that being said, I'm sympathetic to limiting internet access due to communication with strangers, and extreme content (eg violent rethorics that appeal to action, not fantasy violence).
Okay. Society isn’t asking you to police how parents choose to parent. Not like this. It is reasonable for someone to want to be able to buy something advertised as having a certain feature without it being implemented with malicious deception. Nobody wants to have the “are bideo games good or bad?” debate again.
In my mind when I was 13 I played Carmageddon and GTA1
In reality I was 15 when they came out. The graphics in GTA weren't much different to Frogger. Doom and Quake involved blasting monsters, not people. Duke Nukem 3D, Halflife had very unrealistic looking people.
Todays games are very different in terms of visual quality, but even then, GTA is relatively mild compared to many games. You can hit a prostitute with a bat and kill her, but you can't drag a random person off the street and plunge their arm into a deep fat fryer.
I was against mandatory seatbelt laws at first because I disliked the intrusion.
That was it. My entire argument was (and I emphasize WAS) that I didn't like no gubment tell me what to do. If I wanted to be a damn fool and kill myself why would they care? It's a stupid act to try to outlaw stupidity.
Then I found out that seatbelt laws are actually about decreasing the financial burden of underinsured accident victims. The "gubment" doesn't care if you die, but they do care if they have to fund weeks of medical support before you die despite the treatment, or if you survive but are disabled and wind up on social security.
That realization made me give up.
It was always about saving money, not lives. With seatbelts and airbags you are more likely to either walk away uninjured or at least not so injured that you spend more than a few hours in the hospital.
So you’re trying to say it’s a survivorship bias? Well, I did turn right, and everyone I know from childhood has turned out alright as well, except for a few who had problematic parents. So games did not cause harm, but rather irresponsible parents (or, to be fair, parents with mental problems...).
What if these kind of games are a problem for kids with shit parents, or kids who are in a dark places for other reasons, like bullying? The same with like drugs, gore, or porn? Should we just ignore those kids? Or what do you propose?
Well, I think you’ve argued yourself into a corner there. Shit parents aren’t going to deny access to video games which are too mature for their children, so a rating system should isn’t going to help
I did it as a kid but I also understood that if my parents SAW me doing it I’d feel embarrassed and they might scold me. I think there is some character building benefit behind making sure that simulating or watching inappropriate behavior should have an air of seediness and illicitness to it, even if the kids are technically able to access the stuff.
But I will say the rating systems have not caught up to the reality of where the dangers of modern media are. I worry a LOT more about skinner-box mechanics, design choices that cultivate addictive personality traits, and communication systems that create openings for cyberbullying and grooming/sexual interactions with minors are much bigger problems that I feel the industry does basically nothing to even inform me about, let alone empower me to be able to manage it.
Based on another comment parent made, the Xbox was there before the kid, so presumably they don't want to handicap their own experience using it, just limit their kid's. Which should, by all respects, be a reasonable thing to want.
It's not an accident that its so hard to get this stuff right, I've heard countless stories like this from friends who are parents.
If the market wanted parents to be able to figure this out it would be getting it right. It's obviously a dark pattern that benefits everyone but the parents and their children. If more people stopped to think deeper about this they would and should be very disturbed by what this means.
It's nearly impossible to block YouTube on a smart TV without third party apps, even worse on non-android ones. And the app is not uninstallable. I don't think this is b-tier devs, feels like intentionall neglect.
Why does this have to be TV based and not baked into YouTube app ? Considering how addictive YouTube scrolling is, and how quickly algorithm captures kids it should be mandatory.
Parental controls and accessibility both suffer from the fact that they are good features to add but fundamentally do not drive revenue. They only exist in the average as much as is required by regulation.
No business would build wheelchair ramps unless they were made to, that's why we make them. There's no reason to not do the same for parental controls.
Given how easy it is for my 13yo daughter to get around screen time restrictions on iOS in ways I wouldn't believe are possible I'm not sure these people are even adults.
Change the region. Not time and date, that can be blocked by screentime. Change the region. Sometimes takes multiple attempts but it does work. I had to pay a bug bounty to my child to get them to tell me how they did it
> Apple has an engineering base that includes people who were recently children.
What?
I didn’t realize Apple with in the habit of hiring people straight out of high school instead of after going through enough university education that ends up with candidates in their early to mid 20s
Yep. They hire talent. University grads will work alongside red team folks that are maybe 22 years old and have been at Apple for two years. It's a thing.
I personally know more than one person who has a background along those lines.
I was more pointing out that 22+ year olds aren’t people who were “recently children” unless we’re continuing the trend of infantilizing adults farther into their 20s.
I was also under the impression that the faangs hired a larger % of post docs into their first industry job than most companies, so you’re also getting 27+ year olds as entry level engineers and scientists
I think someone who is 22 was 17 in the not that distant past.
Apple hires talent, they don't care about anything else. Again, I am speaking to things I know from my actual life and people I know in the physical world.
> Apple hires talent, they don't care about anything else. Again, I am speaking to things I know from my actual life and people I know in the physical world.
How many people do they hire without college degrees?
I am legitimately asking. I understand that was a thing in the tech world decades ago but my understanding was that big tech’s idea of “talent” has evolved to include mandatory education credentials like at least a bachelor’s degree if not further education.
18 is recently a kid
22 is someone whose been an adult for an entire Presidential term. I might be splitting hairs but I struggle to view that as “recent”
Edit: removed an unnecessarily aggressive paragraph that added nothing to the conversation
Where are the faangs hiring people with skills sans the credentials? Everyone I’ve talked to at faangs has basically described it being the next step after college for everyone they hire, other than Amazon
We don't see everything, and we don't see anything instantly, especially at this time of day/week/year. We've said many times that bots and LLM-generated comments are banned on HN but we can only take action if people use the mechanisms that have been in place for years – flagging bad comments and emailing us (hn@ycombinator.com) to draw our attention to things.
You remain an awful person. I am happy to go through any form of humanity/identity verification that staff want me to. My posts are written by me and never AI - I strongly oppose genAI.
All those companies are, or used to be, based in the US. Those 22 year olds have only been allowed to drink for a year so by one measure they were recently children.
Yeah, like Microsoft requesting that Firefox shall be (parentally) reviewed, while Edge happilly could connect to internet. Fixed by creating a local account.
It is sinister that this is overlooked by corporations by “accident”. What you are describing exactly what is sinister, that children’s safety controls and parents ability to decrease the risk comes last.
> If more people stopped to think deeper about this they would and should be very disturbed by what this means.
I've seen this first hand and yes, it's not sinister, getting dozens of services coordinated and permissioned under a single, easy to use, system is too much cognitive load for the team that inevitably gets tasked to do these things. Think about Privileged Access Management or Active Directory, but an 8 year old has to get it to work with a stay at home mom's 5 year old android device, and the PM's working on it can't think through second order effects (or even first order effects sometimes). And of course anything that negatively affects metrics will get rolled back (that part might be sinister).
Maybe companies could set up comprehensive granular APIs for managing device/store permissions and outsource the parental control software that actually manages the settings. This way a vendor is getting paid to make those settings comprehensible and effective, so they have an incentive to do it well. This would also allow conservative/overly cautious parents to buy different software than more permissive parents. So everyone gets the permission model they want.
>>"Here's what I want: an off switch. A single setting that says "this child cannot go online, communicate with strangers, spend money, or download anything without my explicit permission." Instead I get a maze, complex enough that when something goes wrong, I'm at fault for a tooltip I didn't hover over, a blog post I didn't read, a submenu I didn't find. Maybe that's by design. Maybe it's neglect. I don't know. "
When it happens only a few times, it might be neglect. This is absolutely by design.
And think again if you think any large corporation (beyond a few isolated individuals who will not be employed there for long) has any actual concern for your safety, or to get anything right beyond an appearance of safety and plausible deniability for the inevitable harm caused by their dark patterns.
The only winning move is not to play. Don't play and write about how awful it is. Send them the only message that they will hear. Stop giving them your money.
> Send them the only message that they will hear. Stop giving them your money.
Second order effects of this solution are not great either - being outside of the smartphone world means you're... outside. Network effects quickly push you out of social groups without neither you nor the group doing anything mean, it's just group dynamics.
The real issue is the device and services come in a package which cannot be separated or compartmentalized. It's basically impossible to say 'this device cannot access youtube/pornhub/...' because there's a million ways to get around restrictions.
Building 29 separate settings with confusing and overlapping effects is less work than making a single setting of: [Local Only]?
Seems to be a much larger amount of work to design, implement, and support a more-or-less dozen-step customer journey that does NOT work than just implementing a few switches. And that goes even if the switch must be designed-in from the beginning by designing operation for local-only operation.
Surely, implementing a simple block-all-strangers to send-to-bitbucket all communications attempts by accounts not already on the whitelist is easier than all these overlapping settings described?
Unless it is explained how building a much more complex system is easier and lower-cost than a simpler system with fewer controls, the default conclusion is it is intentional.
>>It is not a dark pattern, it is just "what is the minimum we can do to sell this without doing the curation work?"
Even if for the sake of discussion we treat it as laziness, a dark pattern created by accident is still a dark pattern. The customer is no less screwed into doing something they do not want and the company does want.
> Building 29 separate settings with confusing and overlapping effects is less work than making a single setting of: [Local Only]?
The 29 separate confusing overlapping effects is by design. A single "local only" switch would (so long as that switch is enabled) lock out all manner of potential future revenue and recurring rents, which these companies very much want to see hit the balance sheet.
So the 29 separate confusing overlapping settings is designed to frustrate you to the point that you allow what they want from the start, the ability of the device to generate future revenue (via both of one time sales and recurring rents on rental sales).
>>The 29 separate confusing overlapping effects is by design
>>designed to frustrate you to the point that you allow what they want from the start, the ability of the device to generate future revenue
And this explains why they are willing to do all the extra work to do it.
It is not even close to accidental or lazy — there is nothing accidental about the intention or going to the extra cost to build those dark patterns to screw the customers.
At the end of the day if the MTX group says no, it doesn't happen. Sales is always the most powerful group in an organization, sometimes even overriding compliance if they can get away with it.
>> Building 29 separate settings with confusing and overlapping effects is less work than making a single setting of: [Local Only]?
Yes, absolutely. 29 separate overlapping settings likely match up precisely to arguments in various APIs that are used. On the other hand, what does local only even mean? No wifi? No hardwired connection? LAN only? Connection to the internet for system updates but not marketplace? Something else? All with a specified outcome that requires different implementation depending on hardware version and needs to be tweaked everytime dependencies change.
Having a separate setting for unconditionally disabling all wireless communication would be helpful. The other stuff you mention can be separate settings if it is useful to have them. (A setting to unconditionally all disable wired connections is less important since you can just avoid connecting it.)
Let's start with this: Design the architecture so the core system works fine locally. Features requiring Internet connection are in separate modules, so they can be easily turned on/off, and designed so they are still primarily local.
E.g., store all current status locally and if requested another module sends it to the cloud, instead of cloud-first.
E.g.2, install updates by making a pull of all resources and then doing the update instead of requiring continuous communication.
Allow user control with options to completely shut off, whitelist, blacklist, etc.
Simple design decisions up front to make a software package meeting the user's local needs first, THEN allowing controlled access to the internet, under the USERS' control, instead of designing every feature to contact your servers first and compromising both usability and control at every step.
I’m not sure why some are struggling to understand this. A single "godmode" checkbox would only be possible if every element, the marketplace, the hardware, and the payment rails, were inside one ecosystem. The Switch is Nintendo, Minecraft is Microsoft, the credit card is Visa, and so on. There are simply too many moving parts, making a single killswitch nearly impossible to orchestrate.
And yet whenever the idea of changing this stuff at a societal level comes up, HN is filled with thought-deleting cries of "parents just need to be more responsible"
Usually when those discussions come up, there are plenty of people recognizing both that 1) parents do need to be more responsible, but also that 2) we need sane parental control systems. What we don't need is more bandaids that make it appear as if something is being done.
Parents are already plenty responsible. Societal expectation on parents are sky high and ever increasing. Meanwhile, the same people refuse to accept anything that would make parental responsibility easier.
> In 1965, mothers spent a daily average of 54 minutes on child care activities, while moms in 2012 averaged almost twice that at 104 minutes per day. Fathers’ time with children nearly quadrupled – 1965 dads spent a daily average of just 16 minutes with their kids, while today’s fathers spend about 59 minutes a day caring for them.
> Usually when those discussions come up, there are plenty of people recognizing both that 1) parents do need to be more responsible, but also that 2) we need sane parental control systems.
Dunno. My generation grew up to be generally fine people, without parental control software crap (and the poor sods who had parents insisting on it only became better hackers for it). Back then, there was things such as rottencom, 4chan or its various predecessors... there were countless instructions on how to make explosives or whatever readily available, hoards of porn (ever been to a LAN party and came home with less porn on your HDD than before?). And yes there were also alll the creeps.
The only thing that wasn't anywhere near as prevalent as today is all the gambling/mtx crap and AI slop. Hell even brainrot was a thing, half of the chan boards consisted of utterly weird memes that make "skibidi toilet" blush in comparison.
Yes. Even Harris, as unpopular as it gets with the youth (the whole being a cop thing), still got 13% more than Trump did [1].
If there is one group of voters to blame for the current situation in the US, it is Boomers and older. This age bucket not only skews heavily towards Trump, but also hoards by far the most wealth [2].
I should guess it is about liability more than anything else. They want to advertise and sell to children, but they don't want to be taken to court about it. Makes a tonne of sense from a profit perspective, especially as people under ~25 years of age are more susceptible to impulsivity and addiction due to the developing prefrontal cortex. From a sales perspective, the younger the better (as any parent can confirm).
I have been using (and contributing to) on an open source project called Zaparoo[1] that lets my kids (5-8) play retro games, watch videos, and listen to music using NFC cards. The whole thing runs on a Raspberry Pi running Batocera[2]. I program the cards using the mobile app and my kids like cutting and pasting the cover art on the cards.
All the media is local to my house- I am the librarian who curates the selection of media based on my kids interests, maturity, and my comfort. It feels like the only way forward.
This pervasive desire to block, protect, monitor, and control your children's online activities through nebulous supervision tools seems like a particularly American solution to a particularly American problem. Much like how little Timmy simply can't go out to play without a GPS anklet and an air tag behind each ear, so too can't he go online without a supervised account on a supervised device on a supervised connection.
Take an earnest interest in your child's activities, both online and offline. Guide them how to behave in strange, even weird and scary situations with strangers. Be the reliable adult in their life to whom they can tell when they encounter something unpleasant, online or offline. Under the guidance of a parent your children will be safer than behind any amount of protective layers that these so called child-safety apps provide, and they will also know how to help their friends to navigate risk and avoid danger.
Or put another way, if your child must eventually swim in the sea, would rather that they know how to swim, or strap a fifth flotation device onto their back?
Because I want a device for my kids to play games.
Not communicate.
Not buy stuff.
Just play (local) games.
Stuff like online communications will come at a later age. Absolutely no reason to start explaining that to a 5 year old.
And absolutely no reason to have all 3 bundled in one.
> Take an earnest interest in your child's activities, both online and offline. Guide them how to behave in strange, even weird and scary situations with strangers. Be the reliable adult in their life to whom they can tell when they encounter something unpleasant, online or offline. Under the guidance of a parent your children will be safer than behind any amount of protective layers that these so called child-safety apps provide, and they will also know how to help their friends to navigate risk and avoid danger.
Everything you just said is true for gun ownership as well!
Gun ownership isn't a terrible example honestly. I would have been probably 8 or so when I was allowed to traipse around in the woods near my dad's house with a BB gun, following extensive safety teaching of course. We would go out in the yard and shoot a shotgun and a rifle around that same age. People are probably not careful enough with guns right now in America given the stats, but it's not at all unreasonable in a rural context for a relatively young kid to be trusted with use of a firearm, even for short unsupervised periods. The real thing that a parent has to do (beyond still waiting until an appropriate age) is to extensively drill in the safety habits and proper use and know their kid well enough to determine whether they're ready for that responsibility.
Maybe the analogy here is you can buy only one kind of gun. That gun can load any ammunition. It’s easy for children to get their hands on anything from bb’s to BMG50. The gun has parental controls to allow selecting which ammunition the gun will accept. It’s up to the parents to decipher the difference between all the types, and the out-of-box default is all types are allowed.
Some commenters admonish parents for trying to use these parental controls at all. “Just be good parents and instruct your 6 year old not to use hollow point, 7.62mm, or fmj”
I think a car analogy would work better. I live in a civilised country and nether I nor my kids have access to guns ..
For example Nintendo:
The kids have access to the family car. It will allow anyone to drive it when they select a destination by speaking while sitting in the car.
The car is unlocked by default.
No way exists to limit destinations to their friends or relatives. "Drugs" takes the kids to the nearest drug dealer. "Alcohol" drives the kid to the nearest store and allows the kid to buy alcohol without any ID check.
Sure, but do you understand that it's perfectly reasonable to be able to buy a toy gun and not have to explain gun safety to them?
Or would you recommend that all toy guns have the ability to be dangerous and all parents should train them because of the prevalence of guns in society?
- Perhaps we have different ideas of the appropriate age to wean kids off of toys and teach them to use real (and sometimes dangerous) things. Today's discussion is about guns, but the same could be said for boats, motorcycles, woodworking equipment, etc. I would like my children to be well rounded and well equipped when they become adults. However, I acknowledge that this may not be normal anymore: Many families seem to be content with their teenagers playing games all day long (ironically, games with guns!)
- It sounds like you have the gun in a "toy" category. For my kids, guns are absolutely not in the toy category. They are tools, used for hunting and protection, and access to these tools comes with guard rails and significant responsibility. I would rather my kids never get used to guns as toys.
- This is bigger than just personal decisions: In my state, teenagers used to be allowed to work on construction sites in the summers. By the time they graduated, many of these guys had real skills they could support their family with. In our rush to protect kids, this kind of work is no longer taught in classes or available as summer work for young people. We have made it increasingly hard for young people to "grow up"!
> For my kids, guns are absolutely not in the toy category. They are tools, used for hunting and protection, and access to these tools comes with guard rails and significant responsibility.
The same is true for cars. Are you also against toy cars?
> By the time they graduated, many of these guys had real skills they could support their family with. In our rush to protect kids, this kind of work is no longer taught in classes or available as summer work for young people. We have made it increasingly hard for young people to "grow up"!
This is a totally different issue from access to games. Why couple the two? Are you implying one cannot be taught those skills if they have access to games?
> Are you implying one cannot be taught those skills if they have access to games?
Nah, I think games can be very valuable, especially communal, in-person games. I don't mind access to games at all... I think I look at the various forces around children and teens today, and it feels like we've taken away a lot of the things that were very valuable for development because they might be dangerous, and replaced them with replicas that are safe but lack some of the value and experience that came with the dangerous thing.
As an example, hunting games are safer than hunting, but hunting games do not teach you to be patient and still for hours, they do not teach gun safety, they do not teach you to stick it out when things get cold and uncomfortable. They do not teach you how to do something useful with the animal after you shot it, and there is no real cost to being sloppy and injuring but not killing an animal that is now suffering in the woods.
I'm sure you've heard people talk about the "infantilization" of young adults. What factors do you see behind this? How would you suggest we teach young people how to do hard things?
> I'm sure you've heard people talk about the "infantilization" of young adults. What factors do you see behind this? How would you suggest we teach young people how to do hard things?
I've heard of it but haven't seen any kind of consensus on it - or even whether it exists.
If it does, though, games hardly seem relevant. People were addicted to TV long before they had access to video games.
How big are your feet? Because the shoe horn you just used to squeeze your barely veiled disdain for parentting "choices" that aren't like yours into this thread about user-adversarial parental settings by major game system manufacturers was massive.
This thread was a follow-up to squibonpig's comment about the parental responsibility and the value of giving young people access to things that are dangerous when it's done with proper guidance. I agree with him, with the caveat that "the internet" is dangerous more like a city at night than a gun.
On a certain level, it’s also a question of different parenting philosophy.
> Stuff like online communications will come at a later age. Absolutely no reason to start explaining that to a 5 year old.
I agree, but I also see absolutely no reason why 5 years old children would have access to a gaming device. Pretty much any other activity I can imagine is better for them.
We got an Atari computer when I was 5. I was allowed to play Pac-Man and Donkey Kong for as long as I wanted. Turns out, those games were not designed by the same people who make slot machines, and they got frustrating pretty quickly and I chose to go do other things. This scenario not even being an option today is what most people are complaining about here.
> I agree, but I also see absolutely no reason why 5 years old children would have access to a gaming device. Pretty much any other activity I can imagine is better for them.
I suggest expanding your imagination skills. There are definitely worse activities, like watching TV.
And there's physical limit to how much physical activity one can be doing. There's definitely a point of diminishing returns there.
And the skills one can develop with carefully curated games are hard to reproduce in any entertaining manner.
I mean, sure, I could have him do math but it's a lot more boring.
Playing games is definitely an "and", not an "exclusive or" proposition.
I was given access to computer games at that age and I'm definitely appreciative for it. I only realized the value when I was well into my 30s.
> I did Math all the time with my 5 year old and he loved it, but then I also love math, and it's easy to make fun.
I have 4 kids; two of them also found math fun at age 5, the other two did not. I do not believe my ability to make math fun differed significantly between the attempts.
The could play physical games such as board games or card games or...
Computer games aren't really needed for anything special at 5 years old.
Digital skills can be developed much later and they can be developed really fast, plus if the parents are very computer literate, their kids will be waaay ahead of the average kid in the world, so this isn't a real concern.
My daughter, when she was 6 or 7, was terrified by certain things she accidentally found on YouTube, and asked me to have them filtered out. At 13, she already didn't need that, of course, but the notion of "kids" includes "small kids", who definitely should not be exposed to everything the Internet has to offer, or let to go out unsupervised.
I'm a parent of a 12 and a 6 year old and agree with what was written completely. "I do not feel in control" is to me a strange thing to say. Running after kids trying to save them is a losing battle. Instead they need to be equipped to make decisions on their own. If they are not ready for something, they should not use it. I cannot prepare them to drive a car, so I will certainly not buy them a Tesla self driving car and then complain it's inadequate.
Mostly because restriction was hard to implement before YouTube Kids was introduced, and I could not revise and download every cat video, or similar. There are limits to supervision.
You shouldn't constantly be hovering over your kids. Still, you don't want them to get in serious trouble. As a parent, you can curate the options they have without knowing exactly what they are doing. You can fill bookshelves with appropriate books, and if you see them reading on the couch, you don't need to know exactly what they're reading. Some people also are able to control where they live, what schools their kids go to, what friends you invite over to your house, etc.
One day your kid might have the friend over that you suspect might be trouble. You check in a little more often. Online is harder. You see them with the device, and without controls, what's going on could be almost anything.
Some kids only need the honor system, but others, especially younger ones, need hard restrictions. If the parent is reasonable and the kid grows up smart, they’ll be thankful later, which is why kids also get restricted offline.
Rough analogies:
- Not letting kids buy unlimited candy ~ not giving them unlimited screen time
- Preventing your kid from interacting with “bad” kids or going into unsafe neighborhoods ~ blocking “bad” websites
- Not letting your kid watch adult shows or go to adult places ~ automatically hiding NSWF content
On the last point: if you’re not careful and your kid is unlucky, they may find shocking and traumatizing content accidentally. This is true in real life but the internet moreso (vs safe neighborhoods), even today. e.g. I regularly hear reports about Instagram recommending gore seemingly out of nowhere, such as https://www.cbsnews.com/news/instagram-violence/ (Instagram seems particularly notorious for some reason).
You know where my child learned how to swim? A small pool, progressing from a hands-on adult to an arms-reach adult to lifeguards nearby. They may eventually swim in the sea, but they will have countless hours practice by then - most of them in a pool where they can stand up if they use their tiptoes.
I didn’t start by giving my kindergartener a lecture about the dangers of riptides and then let them navigate the risk of the ocean themselves as they learn to keep their head above water.
Granular parental controls are a way to create that kind of progression, allowing them gradually increasing autonomy within a managed environment.
While this is a sound theoritical advice, the real world has changed a lot.
Parents and elder siblings are not the only people kids interact with. For every parent mindful of dangers of unsupervised internet access, there are many parents who give unrestricted access to tiktok (and rest of the internet) because everyone other person does that, and then kids share.
Businesses don't care for the careful minority when they know such advices will be shared, silencing those who really care.
Even the feature name "parental control" is chosen to induce guilt in parents.
Because the situation is not symmetrical. The corporations and strangers have direct access to the child’s online presence and are constantly monitoring and hovering over them. If the corporations don’t want to lose that constant access then the parents react by being vigilant on their end. It _is_ the social contract set by the corporations.
Young kids exposed to overly attracting games cannot limit these activities by themselves. This has nothing to do with a lack of explanation, but rather with how the brains of young kids function. Thus, accessible parental controls with a simple mechanism that limits the access to games, blocks ads, disables marketplace access and sets a maximum gaming time per day are a much-needed tool that parents should have in their hands.
Young kids are usually also too young to get a phone or buy games themselves, so it's mostly the parents who let them play on their devices. By this I mean parents who hand their 3 year old a phone with YouTube at the dinner table.
It's also parents who get them their first phone and choose what kind of a phone to get them (it's not all that unusual to see kids with dumbphones anymore).
Of course there should be a way to limit things like transactions and screen time but it doesn't have to be this whole surveillance tech with GPS tracking, granular permissions, and revealing what the kid texted his friends on a given day.
>My generation grew up to be generally fine people,
Correct, because the devices are powerful and cheap.
The devices that tend to be made for kids directly are normally extremely underpowered and expensive for their capabilities and anything you want to add to it is expensive. Most people have an extra phone that still works
Particularly American? What does that mean? That parents in other countries are better than us? That they have more time, more know how, more wisdom? Sorry but that's stupid and insulting, which I suspect was your intent.
Not necessarily better, just less controlling. E.g. in Germany there exists an imperative to give children freedom despite dangers. Parents don't expect from themselves to be able to shield their chidren from all possible dangers either. Not sure if it's better, but it's a different parenting culture for sure.
It mostly extends to interactions in the physical world though - restricting children's use of digital devices is socially acceptable and expected
I have absolutely no faith in German intuitions regarding what is appropriate or inappropriate about the care of children. Ask me again in a century and I will reevaluate my opinion.
America is a huge place. You can't sample some professional city full of helicopter parents.
More nights than not, I have random neighborhood kids playing in my yard and eating dinner with us. Their parents don't seem to care, and neither do I. But I don't live in SF or NY, either. I don't mean to insinuate those cities are worse, I don't know, but cannot figure out where else that trope would come from.
Online grooming happens on a gigantic scale in Europe. It just doesn't get the headlines it should. And parents don't care to protect their children. They're busy.
> parents don't care to protect their children. They're busy.
That is horrifying. Dictatorial takeovers feed on vulnerable and naive kids. Mao's Red Guard, Hitler Youth, the Bolsheviks, the Komsomol ... the spread of communism and other evil forms of government has always been fueled in large part by youth organizations and organizing efforts.
Do you reject bicycle helmets and other safety apparatus because you take an interest in your child’s activities? They’re gonna have to learn to ride without falling off eventually anyway
I made the mistake of giving my child access to Roblox when he was 7, assuming that they did some sort of moderation. Luckily, the worst thing he found was a game that told him he was going to die that night. It scared the hell out of him. After doing a bit more research on Roblox, I decided to ban it from the household. I'm happy that I did, considering it seems that it's just a cesspool of predators.
It's fine and well to say the solution is to just be around more or take an interest in what they're doing, but that is hard to do with full time jobs, multiple kids, etc. Parental controls are supposed to exist to let the parents let their kids explore in a safe space. It's not about constant supervision or tracking, its more akin to hiring a babysitter rather than leave your children home alone.
Don't let people guilt trip you. It's not your job to patrol the streets for pedos. We as a society have created the police and a justice system for that.
It takes a village to raise a child. And it's about damn time that Silicon Valley takes some responsibility for this creature that they have created.
But still, there's going to be many who are not. I would rather good parental controls existed to make it easier for people to be better parents. Yes, maybe parental controls don't make the difference from bad to good, but they do make a positive difference for many.
However, it doesn't work for families where both parents have to work 2-3 jobs just to keep food on the table and the heat on all winter.
And no; poor families neither do nor should "just keep the kids from getting cellphones" or something (not that you would necessarily make that argument, but I've seen its like too many times on HN...).
Poor parents can certainly still "take an earnest interest", but they're much less likely to be able to be there...and, frankly, due to the stresses and pressures of Living While Poor, they're less likely to have the emotional bandwidth to communicate clearly and productively about these things, too.
Now, what is the answer? ...hell if I know. Being poor sucks, and there aren't always good ways around that.
I really want to sympathise with the author but this feels more like a one-sided rant piece than a constructive article.
For example, in one paragraph they complain that “I don’t want my son to get online” then literally the following paragraph they complain that they need a Switch Online membership to get their son online. If you want your Nintendo Switch to “behave like a Gameboy” then don’t get the online membership. It’s really that simple. But don’t complain that one is required to do this other thing than you literally just said you didn’t want to do.
I do agree that managing parental controls are painful. But the author clearly wrote their blog in a moment of rage and as a result of that, any useful messaging that could have been shared was lost.
I agree. As a parent it feels hard to sympathize with someone who outsourced their child’s app usage selection to another company and didn’t even bother to check what apps were allowed first. I visited the Gabb site they linked to and “Communication with strangers” is clearly listed as one of the tags they put on apps allowed on the phone. You’re supposed to review them as a parent, not just assume that 100% of the nearly 1000 apps they allow are exactly to your preferences.
I agree. Parents in the 21st century need to realize the call is coming from inside the house: it's their obligation to protect their child. Unsupervised usage without full due-diligence will lead to incidents like what the blog author describes.
The dilemma of online protection is a false crisis because parents would rather let their children play with fire than nurture their babies.
No, we've always had effective societal gatekeeping on what kids can access.
Cigarettes, liquor, porn, R-rated movies, all had general barriers to access for kids in the pre-internet world. Parents could rely on most store clerks not selling alcohol, tobacco, or adult magazines to a child. Parents did not have to hover over everything their child did. Was it perfect, of course not, but it worked fairly well and didn't require constant monitoring. You could let your kids go to the mall and be fairly sure that they would not be let in to an R-rated movie. They could ride their bikes to a convenience store and the worst thing they could buy was candy.
With online accounts and apps, everything needs review and permission. Every. Single. Thing. That is the main complaint in TFA. He wants a single device level setting so that he doesn't have to constantly vet everything.
This is precisely why many parents support age verification laws for social media and adult sites. Tech companies could have solved this on their terms but they just punted it to "parents" with an insane level of complexity, and the parents don't like it.
> Parents did not have to hover over everything their child did. Was it perfect, of course not, but it worked fairly well and didn't require constant monitoring.
Except kids from families without respectable parents would always be the ones to find access to alcohol, cigarettes, and porn. There were always a few kids in every class that had an older brother, uncle, or friend who would give them access to stuff they shouldn’t have.
It really wasn’t that different in the 80s in terms of parental responsibility.
> You could let your kids go to the mall and be fairly sure that they would not be let in to an R-rated movie. They could ride their bikes to a convenience store and the worst thing they could buy was candy.
Sure the old social there was the kid with porn mags and cigs in his treehouse, but you were never at his house 24/7 and that limited exposure almost inoculated against long term addictions and you experienced it with peer input. Parents would eventually isolate you from those bad elements due to neighbors gossiping and the like.
The new social is your neighbors don’t even know you have kids much less who they are talking too because they are on their phones and kids don’t have peer interactions because you don’t let them outdoors fearing people will report you are exposing them to a dangerous world.
Tech should absolutely have filled that void with a simple age appropriate pediatrician approved on/off with advanced controls available for those that want to tighten or loosen the reins.
I do not have kids, but would envision something like under 5 have no advertising and no network connection without a manual unlock, under 9 should only have access to content with heavy moderation and manual review of advertisements with only approved social contacts and parental alerts for potentially problem content, under 12 restrict unapproved contacts within local school district with problem content blocked with a manual unlock for a set duration, and for under 18 just do an machine learning scan on content and the kid can choose themselves if they want to reveal it with on device warnings about adult content, bullying, scams, and grooming with suggestions to discuss with parents.
> Parents would eventually isolate you from those bad elements due to neighbors gossiping and the like.
That’s my point. Some Parents now expect technology to do their parenting for them in ways they were expecting to do themselves previously.
> I do not have kids,
I do have kids. So my opinions are based on what I’ve personally seen work with my kinds and my peers.
Parental controls shouldn’t be seen as a way to absolve the parents of their responsibility to monitor what their kids consume.
Yeah there will be occasions when things slip through, but that’s always been a risk even before smartphones and the web. What matters is you’re there, as a parent, to ensure leaks are not tidal waves, and to ensure children develop responsible use of technology.
This has always been something parents have had to manage. Both in the 80s and equally so now. Blaming technology is just another way of saying “I’m too lazy to keep tabs on my children”
> No, we've always had effective societal gatekeeping on what kids can access.
Isn't there still a very simple one, hardware access. If the child doesn't have a smart phone of their own or computer in their bedroom then they cannot use them to get online unsupervised. This is about as simple on/off as you can get and very easy to moderate.
In my analogy that would be like forbidding your child from having a bike because they might go somewhere that would sell them beer, rather than simply a general, mostly-reliable prohibition on selling beer to kids.
Or, if you do let them have a bike, it requires you to follow them around everywhere to be sure they don't go to a liquor store.
It's a completely over the top level of control. Yes it would work but also do as much harm as good.
The bike analogy depends a lot on where you live. There are places where you would not let your kids ride anywhere they wanted without supervision and there are places where the opposite is true. The internet is one "place" and you'd need to adapt your bike analogy to that place.
It's the parents obligation to educate their child.
It's the child's obligation to use that education wisely.
There were no trackers on cars when I started driving at 15 so my parents drove with me for a few months and after that I was on my own. There were no gun laws against kids having guns when I was 7 so my dad showed me how to use one safely and after that I was set loose upon the countryside armed on my own. There were no ridiculous negligent standards/laws on the book when I was young about it being wrong for a kid to spend all day going up/down a creek so my dad showed me what all the venomous snakes looked like and how to use a compass and after that I was on my own.
I find disagreement with this new standard on parents. No, it's not the parents obligation to keep their child from ever making a horrible mistake. It's their obligation to educate them well and then set them loose with very few safeguards so they can actually slowly learn to be an adult. I am very much for showing kids how to use the internet responsibly, but I'm not of the opinion that parental controls are particularly desirable beyond an initial learning period.
Well written, and I agree with you on everything you wrote.
That said, "the internet" is a large place, and I think parents would find more clarity thinking of it the way they think of a physical place. In my mind, letting my son loose on the internet is not like letting him run around the woods unsupervised (which he does). It is more like dropping him off in a large city every night.
As you said, guidance is imperative, and in the real world we would not give only verbal guidance. We would, if we lived in the city, walk our kid to the library, the museum, the coffee shop, the park. We would talk about what parts of town to avoid. We would talk about what "free" means and about not trusting strangers and not just going into any door.
That last part is tricky. On the internet, every link is a door into a neighborhood, and there are a lot of neighborhoods even adults are not well prepared for.
I would add that it's society's responsibility to handle a child's transgressions with grace and humility, and to try to remember what it means to be "tried as an adult." Forgiveness isn't easy.
There is a survivor bias here. It ignores cases where parents or kids failed to be 100% wise. When we are talking about a whole population, we are gonna have unwise or unluck cases when we "set kids loose".
Which may be fine, I don't know whether the tightened control of both parenting and kids nowadays is better. But we have to recognise the cost that comes with doing something like that. There is less risk-taking right now, and bad consequences seem to be taken harder, in a way human life is valued more, which imo part of the reason of the shift. The mentality "let kids make their own mistakes" can be fine, but that comes with accepting the possibilities of negative consequences these mistakes may cause, and I feel that the main issue is that we frown upon these consequences as society much more.
> It's the child's obligation to use that education wisely.
I disagree because children, despite how precocious and "old-soul"ed, are not wise compared to online predators.
I appreciate your POV on allowing children to make their own mistakes; life is the best teacher. Yet, to make an analogy, a gun owner keeps their collection locked up not just for their protection but for their family's protection. Some lessons in life have steep prices and are one-way doors, and we should pass that hard-earned wisdom to the next generation without those costs.
Children are not wise compared to online predators, but they will notice when things are getting fishy. Maybe that's after they've made their first few silly mistakes (maybe they've given the predator their home address, several photographs, all their friends' contact details, and the one password they use for everything), but they will notice before anything seriously bad happens. But just because they'll notice, that doesn't mean they'll take an appropriate action; and it doesn't mean they won't be convinced that actually, it's fine. The child needs to know that they can come to you for advice, and that there will be no repercussions if the situation is benign, even if they've broken the rules: the concrete threat of (even mild) parental punishment for rule-breaking will be more salient than a mild situational suspicion.
"These are the rules, you are to follow the rules, breaking them would be foolish and breaking them in secret would be even more foolish, but they are always up for discussion, and if you do break them you can still come to me for advice without getting in trouble, and I'd much rather you tell me than that I find out on my own" is a principle that can be imparted to a child. You do actually have to tell it to them, though, in several different ways over a period of time, and you have to be consistent about it. Children aren't wise, but they are clever, they can spot patterns, and they'll tend to believe your actions over your words if the two conflict.
You do not want to set up a situation where a predator can blackmail a child using the threat of your punishment. Parent, yes, but parent consistently enough and well enough that such threats are an obvious bluff that the child knows to ignore (and report to you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46465829), and going online can be as safe for your child as playing in the local neighbourhood.
The rules for young children safely using the internet unsupervised would be extremely absurd for an adult: they include things like "do not use any search engines (ask me if you want a new website)" and "do not create accounts on services (without permission)". Young children must also be kept away from content aggregators, or anything with an automatic recommendation system (e.g. Pinterest, YouTube, modern news sites, Reddit, HN). But hyperlinks on proper webpages are perfectly safe: a child isn't going to end up anywhere they shouldn't by clicking on hyperlinks if they check the URLs first and avoid the places they aren't allowed, just like a child isn't going to end up anywhere they shouldn't, wandering the high street, if they know to avoid roads and building sites. You don't need to tell a 6-year-old "stay away from porn sites", just like you don't need to tell them "don't go in that sex shop", because (a) they won't find it; and (b) even if they do, there are more general rules ("never tell a computer system that you're over 13 if you're not, and ideally not even if you are") that'll prevent any harm from occurring.
And just as you'd have conversations with a child about "where have you been?", and have them show you their favourite spots occasionally, you should also do so with unsupervised internet activity. Unsupervised does not mean ignored, after all.
Laws disagree. Parents are at least in some cases legally and financially responsible for their children doings. Parental controls are necessary for children who don't want to or cannot control themselves regardless of the level of education they receive.
One of my uncles was asked to stop bringing his rifle to highschool because him and one of the teachers kept talking about hunting in the parking lot and getting to class late. The principle felt they were likely to at least make it in the building on time if they weren't chatting in the parking lot about their rifles/hunts/etc.
People used to have an insane amount of freedom and things generally went better.
I was in Cub Scouts in the early 90s and got a Swiss Army knife. I thought it would be cool to show it off to the kids on the bus. It got confiscated by the principal and I was suspended for one day. I think I got off light. I can’t imagine what would happen these days.
Absolutely, I would also walk down the public roads also to get from one field to another, nobody said anything. It was quite normal in the rural Midwest. You'll probably find lots of true stories online as well about kids arriving to school and checking their rifle with the principal at the beginning of class and then getting them back at the end of the day.
Check the gun with the principal?! No, you leave it on the gun rack in the back of the pickup, and lock the truck door like normal people at my high school. :-)
Dang, seems like a completely different world than the one I live in. Honestly I would prefer it if we were able to teach our kids personal responsibility to this level, I actually believe people can be that mature by age 7 and you know whether a kid is a rule breaker or not by that point.
> It's the parents obligation to educate their child.
> It's the child's obligation to use that education wisely.
In the real world, it’s the parents obligation to make an effort to protect their children. In extreme cases, parents can be found negligent if they don’t demonstrate that they’re taking reasonable steps to protect children and something bad happens as a result.
This doesn’t mean that extreme, draconian parenting is mandatory. It does, however, mean that some level of parental control is necessary on an age-adjusted basis. It’s not enough to say “I told them not to do that” and then wash your hands of the consequences when we’re talking about a pre-teen like in this article.
There is important truth in your post, yet you seem to miss the really important pieces that make this hard.
> It's the parents obligation to educate their child.
> It's the child's obligation to use that education wisely.
Two obvious things complicate this:
- You weren't taught how to use a real gun at 6 months old, right?
- Would it not follow from what you said above that if you had accidentally shot and killed yourself at age 7, then it would be your own fault and nobody else's? That seems (to me, at least) like an absurd conclusion.
I think about it like this: as a parent, my jobs include identifying when my child is capable of learning about something new, providing the guidance they need to learn it (which is probably not all up front, but involves some supervision, since it's usually an iterative process), allowing them to make mistakes, accepting some acceptable risks of injury, and preventing catastrophe. I'll use cooking as an example. My kids got a "toddler knife" very young (basically a wooden wedge that's not very sharp). We showed them how to cut up avocados (already split) and other soft things. As they get older, we give them sharper knives and trickier tasks. We watch to see if they're understanding what we've told them. We give more guidance as needed. It's okay if they nick themselves along the way. But we haven't given them a sharpened chef's knife yet! And if they'd taken that toddler knife and repeatedly tried to jam it into their sibling's eye despite "educating" them several times, while I wouldn't regret having made the choice to see if they were ready, I would certainly conclude that they weren't yet ready. That's on me, not them.
You allude to this when you say:
> I am very much for showing kids how to use the internet responsibly, but I'm not of the opinion that parental controls are particularly desirable beyond an initial learning period.
Yes, the goal should be to teach kids how to operate safely, not keep them from all the dangerous things. But I'd say that devices and the internet are more like "the kitchen". There are lots of different risks there and it's going to take many years to become competent (or even safe). Giving them an ordinary device would be like teaching my 2-year-old their first knife skills next to a hot stove in a restaurant kitchen with chefs flying around with sharp knives and hot pots. By contrast, without doing any particular child-proofing, our home kitchen is a much more controlled environment where I can decide which risks they're exposed to when. This allows me to supervise without watching every moment to see if they're about to stab themselves -- which also gives them the autonomy they need to really learn. The OP, like other parents, wants something similar from their device and the internet: to gradually expose elements of these things as the parents are able to usefully guide the children, all while avoiding catastrophe.
My daughter has always used a normal low end Android phone with the default parental controls. She only installs what I whitelist. It's really not that much effort.
Honestly, maybe the Gabb Phone marketing is lulling users into a false sense of security. If you still have to do the same legwork as the default Android experience, what's the point of their devices?
The issue is that the kid wants to play a game with his friends.
So that is "online" in the sense that it uses the internet.. but it isn't the same as a web browser, or an open store of every online app.
I run game servers for my nephew. I know he only adds his friends and I can keep a loose eye on them. I don't care if his friends talk about boobs or make penis jokes (they're 14), I only care that there aren't any predators.
This is a clear and meaningful distinction and it doesn't sound supported.
Yes, this is exactly the distinction I was struggling to articulate.
“Online” has collapsed into a single bucket that includes friends-only play, strangers, stores, chat, downloads, etc. What I want (and what you’re describing with running servers) is a way to scope online access: friends-only communication, no discovery, no stores, no strangers.
The frustrating part is that many platforms either (a) force these things to come as a bundle, so saying “yes” to playing with friends implicitly says “yes” to a much larger surface area; or (b) make the unbundling process so complex that well-meaning parents fail and exhausted parents give up.
> The issue is that the kid wants to play a game with his friends [...] This is a clear and meaningful distinction and it doesn't sound supported.
Clear how it could restrict to friends-only when connecting directly to another Nintendo Switch user, but a bit murky how it'd make that determination in cases like Minecraft where the client is connecting to a cross-platform user-hosted game server that is not associated with any Nintendo/Microsoft account.
Could work if you have the parents manually whitelist specific server IPs, as they could with router/firewall, though not sure if "could you whitelist 209.216.230.207 please?" would present a meaningful choice in most cases.
Yes, this parent seems to assume that all parents want the same restrictions. The reason that managing this stuff is complicated is that you actually have to think about what restrictions you want (if any), understand the implications, and then set options to achieve those restrictions. A surprising number of people aren’t willing to do that! They would rather tell companies “parent my children correctly” and then sue as soon as the company’s vision of “safety” doesn’t line up with their own.
In a country where you have parents with wildly different ideas about what constitutes “safety”, I have no idea why anyone thinks it is possible to set a single standard for this.
In what sense? I have a Switch 2 without NSO and it does not allow online play. It also, in the default configuration, needs to authenticate before even entering the online shop. In that scope, it doesn’t even need to have any parental controls.
I’m assuming the author was thinking Minecraft with the kid’s friends would be Peer2Peer or something. I doubt Switch has the power to host a Minecraft server, but I might be wrong.
See Smash, which is entirely Peer2Peer for the main gameplay, but requires a Switch Online membership to play for… what exactly? Hosting a database of player ratings and using it for matchmaking? There’s probably one server rack on each continent running the entirety of Smash online.
I appreciated it for the tone and rage. I’m not so concerned with the actual technology being discussed here, but rather the overwhelming exhaustion that we are all subjected to in managing our household devices. Not just parental controls, but privacy and ad blocking, or self hosting, etc. it all takes so much work and effort that we rarely have the time for i. Our already exhausting lives. I feel the rant perfectly captured that feeling. It was a worthy post.
I played a lot of Titanfall back in the day and had a lot of reservations about talking with other people's kids. Nothing really bad happened, and I had a lot of fun, but it was creepy.
I kinda enjoy that the matchmaker rooms in Beat Saber only allow you to emote with large body gestures and not say anything or even make hand gestures. I enjoy acting like a cartoon character to honor and recognize the other players (like choosing the song that I really hate because another player has asked for it five times in a row) and not getting involved in the mean bullshit you get in games like League of Legends. (It's fun to be in a private room with 2 or more players too where you can chat but then you are talking with people you picked which in my case are nice people)
My son and his friend created a new game called "the kick game" inside a certain online game where the real game was to trick the other players into kicking out other players that they didn't like or wanted to bully -- frequently the victims didn't understand the rules of this game at all. On Roblox they would find racist games where you cut down thousands of Zulu, just awful stuff.
Not to say I haven't had a good time with serious League players who communicate on Discord and have a positive team but I think communication features and UGC are often a disaster in games.
Not a child, but I have a Switch myself and I held off for a long time getting a membership. Of course you can do it, but the Switch will put up lots of passive aggressive roadblocks where it will let you know that you could use this additional feature in the game now if you just had a membership.
There are also unreasonable restrictions, like not being able to play user-created maps in Mario Maker unless you have a membership.
My daughter will not get a phone at all until she's at least 16 and probably finally actually needs one.
As for the Switch and Nintendo Online, I didn't find it confusing or difficult at all to set up a child's account, make sure they can't buy anything without my permission, and then I make sure my daughter knows what she can and can't do, and I keep an eye on it to make sure she follows my rules. I don't trust parental controls to do everything for me.
Now that said, Minecraft on the Switch is one gawd-awful frankenstein amalgamation of permissions and accounts run by Nintendo and Microsoft. I got that working but it's by far the worst experience I've ever dealt with to play a game, even single player.
> My daughter will not get a phone at all until she's at least 16 and probably finally actually needs one.
It’s all fine and dandy, until (i) you find that they’ve actually just saved up their pocket money and gifts for the last year and a half to buy the phone (age 11 in my daughter’s case) and that all the after school and weekend activities are being arranged on phones. Seeing your kids excluded from real-world activities is tough.
In our case, a combination of talking to the kids plus Apple parental controls offered a reasonable approach.
My daughters are younger than that, but A lot of the neighbor girls in who are in that age range got apple watches before phones. Which kind of makes sense, because it allows them to text, but keeps them off of apps and such.
It's true, and it can definitely be a problem. But I wasn't getting invited to in-person events because I wasn't contactable. Kids don't ring doorbells in 2025, they text people if they want to meet up.
Allowing these teenagers who are being bullied to explore spaces where they feel safe and comfortable seems like a good idea too though. As someone who was bullied in school, being online did not make that issue any worse, and allowed me to find friends I couldn't otherwise have.
Yet in the broader sense online bullying targeting other teenagers is a commonly cited problem, including in incidents of teen suicide. "It didn't make it worse for me" doesn't counteract what we provably know is occurring[0][1][2].
Young Teen suicide (10 to 14) has increased from roughly 1 per 100K in the early 2000s to now nearly 3 per 100K in the last five years. Older teen suicide (15-19) has increased from 6 per 100K to 11 per 100K over the same time period[3].
1 and 2 do not seem to suggest that cyberbullying is more harmful in this regard than other forms of bullying - and in fact only 3 seems to contrast these concepts at all.
> Sensitivity analyses suggested that cybervictimization only and both cyber- and face-to-face victimization were associated with a higher risk of suicidal ideation/attempt compared to face-to-face victimization only and no victimization; however, analyses were based on small n. In prospective analyses, cybervictimization was not associated with suicidal ideation/attempt 2 years later after accounting for baseline suicidal ideation/attempt and other confounders. In contrast, face-to-face victimization was associated with suicidal ideation/attempt 2 years later in the fully adjusted model, including cybervictimization.
In fact, reading 3, it looks like the highest prevalence of cyberbullying capped out at a whopping.... 16% of 15 year olds, with a sharp drop down to 7% just 2 years later.
I have to say, there's lots of things to worry about with kids going online. I just don't think bullying in particular is one of them.
As someone who was not popular and got bullied some in school, I think cyberbullying would have been worse since it comes home with you. I was in school when SMS was finally becoming widespread and something of the bullying happened through it, it sucked since I'm at home and getting reminded of shit at school.
I can't imagine today with 24/7 social media apps on the phone.
In my case, as you said it may not have exacerbated it, but for me it certainly perpetuated it.
A retreat into the online world seems like a comfort in difficult times but it is a retreat, and the longer you stay retreated, the less likely it is you'll regain the ground again.
This is going to show how naive I am. Because I am middle aged, do not have a cell phone, and still to this day just show up at people's houses unannounced if I want a social experience.
This still is possible for me, surely it is possible for kids.
> This still is possible for me, surely it is possible for kids.
I think there's a real generational divide here. What is normal in my parents generation (I'm in my early 30s) is not normal in roughly my generation downwards (which coincides both with mobile phone ownership amongst children/teens becoming common, and children/teens becoming much more restricted in how much freedom they had in terms of being allowed outside by themselves).
Even amongst people my age, people would consider weird and probably even rude if I turned up unannounced (a "What are you up to?" text message would probably be the norm). And I think that's more exaggerated amongst younger generations. Perhaps that's different if you live very close to your friends. But a lot of people don't.
I feel sorry for your daughter. 16 was very late to get one as far back as the late 90s - I was very glad to get one at 14 as it meant I wasn’t quite such a weirdo outcast.
I didn’t have a cell phone until I was 17, but still used the house phone to call and talk to friends. A house phone a parent can always listen in to conversations but still respect the child’s privacy. The child also knows that they can be listened in on and that their privacy is restricted.
The child may also learn about making social effort to keep in touch rather than relying on a beacon to ping them about social events.
16 is too late. You can’t teach your kids good maturity with communication devices through abstinence. You just have to watch what they do online. Which means reading their WhatsApp et al messages after they’ve gone to bed.
Yes there will be some problems created from them having devices, but parenting isn’t supposed to be easy, it’s supposed to be educational and supportive for the children. Which forced abstinence is not.
For us, it’s a system that’s worked well. So well, in fact, that our kids have felt comfortable coming to us when they see something concerning in a group chat rather than waiting for us to find it. And in return, we’ve learned to trust their judgement a lot more because they’ve demonstrated mature behaviour online.
You have it backwards, it’s not trying to catch my children doing bad things (though there is that benefit too). it’s more about ensuring that other people are not doing, or trying to do, bad things to my children.
I trust my own children but you’re right that I cannot guarantee that they’re not bullying others and deleting those messages. However I’d hope other parents are monitoring their children’s phone usage and would tell either me or the school if my child was causing issues. That’s how a healthy community of parents are supposed to work.
Also your comment has a tone of “kids can find a way to bypass parental oversight so why bother parenting in the first place?” I don’t if that is intentional or not. But it’s an attitude I have seen other parents adopt and, unsurprisingly, their kids are usually the little shits that cause trouble because they know there are zero repercussions.
A better way to frame this is supervised vs unsupervised access. And it depends on their age.
At 11 I wouldnt expect them to have unsupervised internet access. At 16 I might, but by the time they’re 16 I wouldn’t need to monitor their online activity so closely because they’ll have several years of trust and experience built up.
Assuming you go down the path of allowing online anything, seems like, after doing your best with parental controls, the most effective thing is time boxing screen usage. Only so much can happen in, say, 2-3 30 minute sessions throughout the day, and the chances of a kid deciding to blow their precious minutes responding to some random person seems much lower than if bored and checking messages idly. Being nearby during a healthy sample of sessions to have a pulse on what's going on helps too - usually pretty obvious what they are doing.
But I share the frustration of the author with how unreliable the controls are. Apple screen time controls routinely stop working - especially the one that only allows access to a finite list of websites. I need to check the browser history every week or so to confirm it is still working, and do some dance where I turn off controls, reboot, then turn back on every once in a while. The reason this particular control is important to me is that, even starting with something as pure as neil.fun, ads on that site have proven to be a few clicks away from semi-pornographic sites - it's terrible! And yet, turning off all internet access is such a coarse decision that limits access to things that are generally informational / fun / good (like neil.fun, or sports facts sites).
As you post, please be clear what age range child you are discussing.
There are a lot of posts here advocating strategies that make sense for a 10 year old but are ridiculous for a 15 year old.
Remember: once the children have friends with unrestricted cell phones (essentially all 14+ year olds in the us), there are many many more options for them to go online.
Also, I got my start as a “hacker” gaming, cheating, and doing less legal stuff … nothing like getting level 99 equipment to incentivize learning how to read/edit a hex dump. Be aware of unintended consequences when you (try to) cut a child off from computer use.
Having been involved with a reasonable number of problems, I’d say in the teen years negotiating and enforcing some kind of no-device sleep schedule is the most critical.
If I had an answer to the rest of the addictive behavior, I wouldn’t be here making this post.
With due respect, this comment conveys a position of privilege and surviver's bias. I, like you, eschewed online rules as a minor and I luckily benefitted from this time in my expertise. I was lucky. I didn't run into predators when using TF2, Runescape, or MySpace, but that doesn't mean the threat wasn't validated on with persons (children at the time) that fell through the cracks.
The story outlined, one of a child prodigy solo-navigating the gritty online world of pre-2000's, is old and tired. An active parent can support a child at all ages safely in these "hacker" moments that are described without giving them un-reined access to tools. A parent should be able to ask "how was your day today?" and get a truthful answer about online activity, just like the same question being asked at the end of the school day. It's out of curiosity and protection, and from a nurtured relationship.
I was one of those kids. I got a 300 baud modem the year after Wargames came out. It was a whole different world.
My wife and I disagreed about letting my son have my old desktop replacement laptop at a young age. Of course I said yes, based on my own experience, but my wife turned out to be right in the end. He got into some pretty dark places and the toxic relationships he developed with other people his age were bad enough and the trouble he got into was real and not hypothetical.
He's turned it around and is getting the support to do well relative to his Gen Z peers, but it took some harrowing experiences to get there.
My wife was right too. My kids ended up being unable to manage their device use at all, they developed seriously bad habits, lied and deceived extensively to gain access to devices, and repeatedly sacrificed relationships and trust for more screen time. There were years there where I thought surely they'd click with it and develop better habits, make better choices (with our guidance), and so on. Abstinence could be worse, right? Some exposure would be helpful and lead to useful conversations and so on.
The Internet, Internet access, and apps have changed since I was a kid. Despite their time on digital devices along with my efforts to teach them, my kids have no idea how computers work or how to use them very effectively. The skills they have developed to gain access to them were largely social engineering and lying. They exclusively waste time and brain cells when they're on screens.
One of my kids essentially can't have access to devices because he'll burn hours into the night playing really, really stupid games and watching porn. This is ALL he wants to do on phones or computers. Sometimes he will window shop.
You might think this is largely due to my failure to have insight into what my kids are doing and limiting access correctly, but that isn't the case. At first we were somewhat lenient and figured if they accessed things they shouldn't, we'd see it and have conversations. That was very early on. The conversations did nothing. I began putting severe restrictions on devices quite quickly because problems became evident quickly. I was a bit naive about it at first, my wife was not. We clashed a bit, but then device theft and social engineering started and I quickly aligned with her. Since then, many years ago, very little access has been on account of us not protecting devices properly. He is extremely good at gaining access when he's not supposed to, and extremely good at hiding it. It's like having an addict in the house.
He has no future in computers. He doesn't care about computers at all. He is incredibly compulsive, self-harming, and freely harms his relationships to get what he wants. This has been going on for about 5 years; he's 16 now, and I'm pretty scared for when he's out on his own and doesn't have anyone to protect him from himself. I think there will be some brutal lessons. Lost jobs, lost relationships, lost confidence and self esteem. I'm not looking forward to it.
I have no idea why I turned sneaking onto computers into a career rather than rotted away like they do. I wanted to learn to program. I was curious. My kids want to play NBA 2k and watch porn. That's about it.
Heroin is addictive. Physical compulsion is addiction. What you are talking about is not addiction. It shares some elements, but no one is breaking into cars so they can scroll Instagram.
Exactly. And what worries me is that they are essentially greasing the groove for these synapses, growing the neural network around deception and dishonesty. If they get into gambling in 5 years or so and happen to have a partner, they will already be somewhat adapted and practiced in hiding this activity quite effectively rather than seeking and accepting help. It's worrying. It's all foundational to very self-destructive habits from my perspective.
If your kid lies you might not get a truthful answer to that question in person or online.
You are actually expecting a lot from devices that you never had in the real world in the first place in order to mitigate a risk that is very scary but less likely to kill them than drugs and alcohol, swimming, bad driving, biking, getting hit by a car whilst walking, getting shot, or suicide.
People are freaking out over stranger danger not because it is by the numbers prevalent but because they feel like they can control it then find out the controls suck.
What if I started Bikesafe an always online dash cam / coach for your rider where AI would identify unsafe behaviour and coach your kid and virtually eliminate bike deaths. Would you feel more safe?
What if you read again and again that it didn't work because of how many accidents are caused by drivers or momentary mistakes.
First, I'm responding the more (politely) trivial remarks.
> drugs and alcohol, swimming, bad driving, biking, getting hit by a car whilst walking, getting shot, or suicide.
These are false equivalences-- when has a pool try to groom a child over the span of 3 years?
> What if I started Bikesafe an always online dash cam / coach for your rider where AI would identify unsafe behaviour and coach your kid and virtually eliminate bike deaths. Would you feel more safe?
This is wholesale the wrong approach. This is the parent absconding responsibility, which is my driving point of the problem.
Now to the main point:
> You are actually expecting a lot from devices that you never had in the real world in the first place ...
I'm not expecting anything from my devices because machines cannot be held accountable for human choices; a gun cannot be held accountable for being misused. The internet is a powerful tool and users should understand the ramifications of certain actions.
> If your kid lies you might not get a truthful answer to that question in person or online.
That's a parenting moment that one should relish retrospectively. To teach them good morals and values, to remind them that you love them, and that lying about safety processes can be very dangerous.
In reality, the whole "stranger danger" is way overblown and always has been. Most of the time, sexual predators are going to be either family or friends.
Sure there's 7% thats not, but a significant supermajority is family/friends. 59% were acquaintances, and 34% are family.
Edit: seriously, -1 cause I link to actual facts, rather than shitty emotional outbursts? Family and friends of family have always been the major list of suspects for child sex abuse. They're the ones who have time and access.
But somehow linking to cited facts is -1 central. Sigh.
> Also, I got my start as a “hacker” gaming, cheating, and doing less legal stuff … nothing like getting level 99 equipment to incentivize learning how to read/edit a hex dump. Be aware of unintended consequences when you (try to) cut a child off from computer use.
Yes, but no. I used to think the same, coming from the same background, and sometimes I still do but back in the day there was a big filter already (not everyone wanted or liked videogames or a PC), and we were not terminally online. Plus, for the average HNer there is a big survivorship bias on these topics because "I went earning 6 figures thanks to my experiences with computers back in the day".
Nowadays almost everyone has access to an Internet connected smartphone, owning it is not a feature in itself anymore and the vast majority are not entertained trying to hack it. So it becomes something just like any other thing relates to children/teenagers: use common sense, adapt to your kids behavior, strengths and weaknesses and don't stick to rigid rules proposed by someone else that doesn't know you, but keep those rules in mind as an inspiration.
> Be aware of unintended consequences when you (try to) cut a child off from computer use.
In the mid 90’s I got my first PC when I was 13 but my parents would not let me online. I ended up finding a way via nefarious means. I bought a 25’ telephone cord from Radio Shack and when my parents weren’t home I would unplug their bedroom phone. I discovered that if I ran the Prodigy installer it would connect to the Internet briefly to download the latest phone numbers in my area. I found that I could alt-tab out of the full screen installer and use the lnternet unfiltered for about 10 minutes or so before they kicked me off. This worked for about a year or so.
I then had to resort to stealing my parent’s credit card and signing up for free trials and cancelling them before the charges incurred. I eventually screwed up big time. I downloaded a “free porn” BBS dialer and it made an international call to South America and ran up the phone bill $300 or so. I lost my computer privileges for a couple of months. I guess the silver lining was when I turned 16, I immediately got a job and my drivers license so I could pay for my own phone line. I kept my grades up to maintain privileges and was a straight arrow since.
and I was groomed and raped at age 13 because I had unfettered access to AOL chat rooms
caution is necessary and kids can learn plenty without unrestricted access
I personally would have been better off without internet access, no knowledge of hex dumps would have been worth it. It's a little upsetting that you're using that as an example of why kids should have more permissive access.
You blame unfettered access to AOL chat, I blame your parents for giving you internet access and not teaching you to never share your real name or real address online. Mine taught me that early on. Later, I learned about proxies so I could further hide my approximate IP location from danger.
no I blame the rapist personally, predators exploit any tools they're able to
there was plenty of "you need to get your kids on computers so they can get the jobs of the future" in the 90s that parents fell into, and information about online predation was almost non-existent at the time - I didn't even have to share my home address or name, I was encouraged to meet this person at their church
mind you my guardian at the time didn't even graduate high school
I shouldn't have been given access to tools my parent didn't understand, but corporations still pressure this constantly today
I doubt even a single digit % of parents know what they're doing when giving kids free access to youtube for example... and recently the CEO of roblox called pedophiles an "opportunity"
The main point of childhood is to develop a solid basic humanity with good habits and a good moral compass. That means moral, intellectual, spiritual, and physical development. Good parenting and a good social environment support these. As such, these goods should be prioritized.
We know that children and teenagers are vulnerable to all sorts of filth that the internet makes available very easily, and indeed even inflicts without consent onto users. Porn, for example, was something that was more difficult to encounter before the internet, and when you did encounter it, it was in smaller amounts. Today, you are a URL away from an unlimited sea of it, and the ubiquity of mobile devices means restricting access is difficult. This makes parenting more challenging. And that's a more pernicious even if common problem. Social media and SFV cause all sorts of developmental harm without suffering the same stigmas as pornography or violence, and so its use continue with the full approval of the social environment.
(And age range here is not so important to discuss; pornography consumption and social media/SFV use is bad for everyone, including adults.)
> Be aware of unintended consequences when you (try to) cut a child off from computer use.
A corollary of what I wrote about is that you have to understand what matters. Becoming a "hacker" isn't the priority of childhood, and it's odd to prioritize that. It isn't worth anything if you are left screwed up by consuming bad content. (Nor does most of the most fruitful experimentation require constant and unfettered internet access. Without maturity and discipline, the internet easily becomes an enabler of shallow and superficial engagement. Deeper exploration is often best facilitated by disconnecting.) It's also senseless to appeal to exceptions.
However, I do think that the most important factor isn't parental controls, but the family environment, what parents teach their children, and the social groups your family and your children move around in. If parents are relying on technology as a substitute for their job as parents, then children will easily fall prey to all sorts of trash. But if children have parents who communicate clearly what they should and should not be doing, maintain a healthy and active family life, and model good behavior by example while penalizing bad behavior, then children will generally stick to good behaviors.
I think law has an important role to play. The former should support the latter. And more fundamentally, this requires a certain backtracking from the anything goes/do what feels good ethos of the contemporary moral landscape. Moral confusion is the biggest factor. Law is effectively a determination of general moral principles within certain socially and culturally concrete circumstances. As the old expression goes, lex iniusta non est lex (an unjust law is not a law). The point of the law is to guard the common good (which is what makes a society) and help steer people away from the bad and toward the good. We all need these to live good lives, and we need to finally put to rest the pernicious notion that the law is not about moral guidance and that all it exists for is to secure our "rights" to whatever we want, where the understanding of rights entails a destructive do what thou wilt relativism. True freedom is not the ability to do whatever you damn well please. It is the ability to do what is good, and to be able to do the good, one must be virtuous - a proper formation - that enables you to be good. Vice cripples our ability to be. A legal system and a society that is supportive of virtue and the good is good for its individual members. One that embraces a bullshit "neutrality" is an easy target for predatory exploitation. There is a great deal of money to be made from vice and stupidity. We become morally defenseless in the face of the wolves. Might becomes right, and in a culture of moral relativism, we internalize this tyrannical false principle.
By high school there is definitely an expectation that everyone has a phone. They will literally miss out on a normal method of communication between friends and classmates.
They miss out on the social group and then fade away from it and just become "that one guy in our class."
The last time I mentioned this several people argued that, "true friends would stick together" or some such. Well, if you already have those friends. But if you're in high school and finding yourself, you probably haven't met all of them yet.
A lot of both communication and organizing of social events happen through the phone. Kids without a phone (or some online method) will just be forgotten. This is just the reality.
Unrestricted access? That depends on the kid. We had them charge in the living room (no overnight use), and their computers were actual desktops in a single office in the house.
We never used filtering or tracking software. The one exception was blocking youtube (through /etc/hosts) for my youngest during covid when it was too big a distraction.
This is just generally true even as an adult. A lot of social events used to start out on text threads in the early 2000's and then moved on to Facebook Calendar by the mid 2000's and then Instagram and I don't even know how it would work now. But if you wanted to be in any particular social group you probably had to deal with the icky features of all of these social media apps just to do that. We needed a public square for our little villages everywhere and instead we got a man screaming at clouds and occasionally handing out invitations.
So much has moved to facebook and it's eternally frustrating. Facebook has its own priorities, and I get the last minute "hey! meet here" things the next day.
You think that missing out on talking to high schoolers is worse than missing out on the harms of smartphones?
We must have very different views of the world. I would never let a child for whom I am responsible have a smartphone. They are not required, despite what you may have been told.
I’m an adult and I’ve been experimenting with leaving mine behind when I go out. It’s more than fine.
I'm sitting here from the perspective of having 2 adult children -- both graduating early, and my youngest who enters high school next year. They all got phones starting with 9th grade (14 at the start of the school year). Generally speaking they charged the phones downstairs.
I literally addressed the problems of missing out for high schoolers. The social event they'll miss on its own may not be a big deal. But the missed opportunities to make and deepen friendships is a big deal.
As an adult, you have your friend/peer group already. You and your friends are far less likely to do things spontaneously and far more likely to be courteous and thoughtful to invite someone along. A high school teen has middle school friends and is probably discovering their peer group. A huge portion of that discovery becomes unavailable without a phone.
Say they just finished up with band and everyone chats online, "hey meet up at the pizza place." Your kid will be left out. That's the firm reality. They won't know about it. It's the opportunity cost of meeting and learning other kids which will be missed, not the riveting conversations themselves.
> They are not required, despite what you may have been told.
Required? no. Central to the social fabric that binds them, unfortunately yes.
I'm fairly confident in my methods as I'm 2 for 2 graduating conscientious adults from college.
You think a high school freshman shouldn't have a cell phone? Their friends a year older are driving and they may want to do activities with them, and it's a good idea they have a reliable means of communication to their parents in case they need to come pick them up.
While I agree that being this age doesn’t automatically warrant having a smartphone, any kid who has an allowance can buy a bargain-basement Android phone to use over wifi. And smartphones are very concealable.
(IMHO, once a kid has figured out how to do this, they have earned the privilege. It’s part of growing up.)
A responsible and forward-thinking parent could provide a Graphene OS smartphone if the kid absolutely insists on having one, to limit the privacy damage.
The issues with the Nintendo Switch are, I think, just Nintendo being perennially bad at anything involving the internet. Remember Friend Codes?
They've definitely gotten better, but they're still kind of living in 2008. I'm not sure why a company full of software engineers can't figure this out.
I do find it odd there's no option to outright disable the internet (except for software updates). Perhaps the best solution is to not give your child the wifi password? Or for a more technical solution, block the Switch's MAC address in the router.
> I'm not sure why a company full of hardware and software engineers still can't figure this out.
Seeing other Japanese companies account systems (Square Enix and Rakuten, for example), the only conclusion I can draw is that the Japanese dev industry does not consider clear account management to be important.
Nintendo really has no incentive to improve. They make money hand over fist selling half-baked titles to their combined market of actual undiscerning children, and rabid fanboy manchildren who will praise any first party Nintendo title as a 10/10 every single time.
They're phoning it in, coasting on old IP and goodwill earned decades ago. Animal Crossing had less dialogue options than the Gamecube version that preceded it by two decades. Smash at mid-high levels is still plagued by lag switching cheaters. BOTW was okay, but clearly overrated by people who had never played any sort of open world game before. TOTK being lauded as a 10/10 (fine, 9.5/10 on MetaCritic) was laughable given how empty the game world was, how janky the construction mechanics were for those silly machines, and how boring and childish the puzzles were. I stopped playing Pokemon 15+ years ago but come on, the graphics of the Switch games looking worse than some of the DS editions...
TOTK was the final nail for me, I vowed to never purchase another Nintendo game or piece of hardware and I haven't. I just couldn't square my actual player experience of a janky, boring game with the rabid fanboys crowing about Nintendo doing it again.
I don't know if this works for anyone other than our family but when we were raising our kids we solved this by the simple of expedient that gaming and computer use was done with us as parents present. Full stop.
It was not a solo activity for our kids. We could directly view everything they were doing online the entire time.
Advice like this only works for specific age ranges.
When I was a kid I had a friend whose parents, or mom rather, went to similar lengths to ensure all gaming was monitored closely by her. She would turn the game console off if she saw anything she decided was not to her liking.
This was all fair when we were 7-8, but she insisted on doing it well into his teenage years. This level of extreme control and micromanagement was not good for their relationship or his personal development, to put it mildly.
Every time I read HN comments from parents declaring their child will not have a phone until they turn 16 (another comment in this thread) or how they’ll lock their kids out of games and social media completely I think back to my friend whose mom was extremely controlling in the same way.
Young kids need tight controls, but this needs to be loosened as they age. Parenting discussions really need to come with age ranges because what’s appropriate changes so fast from year to year.
I agree, the point of making usage monitored early on is so that you can train your child in what to do when they encounter stuff online. As that training has occured then you can begin to loosen the restriction and give them more freedom. This is the job of parenting. You are teaching your child how to safely and productively engage with the world and the younger they are the more of your time and attention this requires. If you don't teach them someone else might and that lesson may haunt them for the rest of their life.
I'm sorry you feel like it's out of reach of so many. We definitely had to sacrifice a number of things to make it happen. It's not like it was necessarily easy. Unless you are in the unfortunate position of being an only parent this can be an area where you have choice. You can:
1. Ask your school to change their policies. Coordinate with other parents.
Make it clear to the school that if they don't start to enforce these policies then you will hold the school directly responsible for any harm that comes to your child in the environment they create.
2. Pick different schools. (Home School, Private school) if you can afford it. Charter schools may be an option.
Both of these require sacrifice on your part and neither are easy. But no one should ever think parenting is easy.
When I was a kid, my Sega Genesis was connected to the TV in my parents bedroom. It made it impossible to play without their knowledge or when they were asleep.
It's so bizarre to me that in "The Land of the Free", 18 year olds, who are considered old enough to go to war, are not allowed to drink. Especially because this isn't some archaic law from the 18th or 19th centuries but instead from 1984 and only came about after the federal government withheld funds to force the states' hands over a period of 4 years.
It's not a federal law, you can buy and drink alcohol at 18 in the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico for instance, so definitely possible to drinking at 18 legally in the USA. I don't know if there is a federal drinking age but it's definitely not above 18.
Also in I want to say about half the states (could be wrong here, but at least a few), it is legal to drink well below 18 in a private home.
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Example, wisconsin:
>Can an underage person possess and consume alcohol beverages on licensed premises?
Yes. Persons under age 21 may possess and consume alcohol beverages if they are with their parents, guardians or spouses of legal drinking age; but this is at the discretion of the licensee. The licensed premises may choose to prohibit consumption and possession of alcohol beverages by underage persons. (Sec. 125.07(1), Wis. Stats.)
The drinking laws in at least ~half the USA are a lot looser than most people think. If the parents are ok with it the kid can generally drink somehow.
It’s essentially a federal law - if a state wants to get full federal funding for highways, they have to have a law restricting alcohol purchase and public consumption to 21+. It’s from the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984.
Drinking is an archaic caveman activity that newer generations dont really care about, observed on a global trend. GenX and older millennials ring this bell continuously for a crowd that doesn't care. Shouldn't you focus on issues that actually impact and hurt people instead of trying to point out some "inconsistency" about the usage of the land of the free slogan that no one ever brings up in any conversation about america?
Drinking is taking a nosedive because larger segments of society are shut-in losers, who are not engaging in real-world social spaces which are lubricated with alcohol. That's 95% of the reason, the rest is people smoking when they would have been drinking.
The fall in alcohol consumption is directly tied to a fall in socialization writ-large. That isn't a win, it's a tragedy.
Yes, your entire post screams "older generation knows better, newer generation stupid losers" in unifying accompaniment with my initial caveman comparison. It's always interesting seeing the divide of generational vs cultural values from the point of view of people in the country, and the absolute insistence that their values represent one side vs representing the other. If you're observant, you get to witness in real time the cold and deafening silence of society moving on and losing interest with whatever hill-of-the-week people want to dramatically die on through over performant thrashing about. I mentally frame this timeline and context to be the equivalent of a child tantrumming in a grocery store while everyone else is just focused on shopping and going home, except I get to stop and point and laugh every once and a while in moments like this one. The death of stoner culture and commercialization of THC as a product instead of a lifestyle was pretty similar.
And they can have sex legally when they are 16. But oh noes if 2 16 year olds send nudes to each other. Then, somehow, is "child" sexual assault images.
Frankly, these half-assed laws disenfranchise an already not-permitted-to-vote populace. But somehow these "kids" can be declared as adults if they are 16 and having sex or courts deem them 'adults', but simultaneously find them to be parental property.
Glad I dont have children. The situation is a toxic cesspool.
And then, we pretend we are surprised why the majority of adults don't care about privacy.
Why would they? They grew up being 100% controlled with 0 privacy. They don't even know it doesn't have to be like that. Then, it was their parents violating their privacy, now it's government and corporations.
Privacy is a privilege granted relative to age and maturity.
Most 5-year olds should be allowed to close the bathroom door while doing their business, they should not be permitted to access the internet privately.
A five year old is not prepared to engage online with privacy. They have not had the necessary training yet. They will not get that training unless you are there to show them how to negotiate that world. They will not magically learn how to protect themselves if you just leave them to figure it out themselves.
I was never controlled in any way that may remotely violate my privacy. In fact, glad that nothing ever happened to me, because it could have. But for a long time I was not worried about my online visibility…
When I grew up my parents literally had no understanding of what the internet was, nor what I was doing on it. That wasn't a problem because all the rest of the upbringing they did prepared me well to handle every situation I encountered there. There approach was to let me and my brothers learn early how to judge situations and risk ourselves and trusted us to set those boundaries ourselves.
This meant while other kids were constantly insecure how to handle a specific situation, we knew quite well (in comparison) what was totally harmless and where you had to get careful. Thus we were the only kids who jumped into water from bridges, but also the only kids in my village who never broke any bone during our entire childhood.
If you want your kid to be safe, isn't the best way to do it to teach your kid how to make the decision what is safe themselves? Otherwise they have to always rely on a parents (or other figures of authority) to make that judgment for them. But the parents aren't always around and if they call everything unsafe, potentially nothing is.
I agree with you so much. Great parenting is education, not restriction. I don't want my kid to not talk to strangers because I told him its something bad that you shouldn't do. He won't talk to strangers because he understands the implications and what can happen.
A kid with no education and restricted access will just find a way to do whatever he wants to do. A kid with good education and unrestricted access will know to steer away from bad stuff and talk to adults when he finds something strange.
One of the proudest moments of my grandfather (in my household, he was the most tech savy) was when I found a way to "bypass" an restriction program around age 11. From then on he decided I "outgrew" this kind of limits and just gave me unlimited access to the family computer and the internet.
But years later he confessed, the "click" moment for him was not that I could bypass the restriction, but that I trusted him enough to show him and that I self-reported the situation. And this is pure education and has nothing to do with restrictions.
I read so many parents here that want to "educate" their children but want to offload that work to some service or program instead of putting the work in. You prefer spending 5 hours configuring your child's nintendo switch rather than sitting down with him for 1 hour to explain to him what he can encounter on the internet, how he should behave and react and building the bond needed for him to trust you enough to come to you when needed.
The thing many parents get wrong about education is to think that the kid learns what you tell it. You tell the kid X is dangerous, so now the kid learned X is dangerous. That is not how it works at all. What the kid learns is that it can't be trusted to judge danger itself, since always when it tries to do something itself found okay a panicked adult will tell it this was dangerous.
The lesson isn't the meaning of the words you say to your kids, the lesson is how what you say relates to them and what they observe you doing. And this isn't just about this example of traching them to make a sound judgement, this can be expanded to nearly every educational problem one could have with their kid.
E.g. extremely commonly you will find kids who develop bad behavior despite their parents "telling them not to" will not only witness the bad behavior by their parents, but will be ignored, ridiculed, disrespected or mistrusted whenever they do in fact behave well.
And it all boils down to the simple notion that you can't just tell your kid a thing and expect that to be the lesson.
Family Link is kind of funny like that as well. As a parent you can limit which apps your child can use, and even how long they can use them. My child is above the age we can monitor their every move, but they're below the age where we can trust they won't spend all day playing games when they need to study. So that feature is nice.
Except you have to allow the Google app. And you have to allow it unrestricted time. That's not all that bad yet, though not great. The annoying thing is that Google loves their little easter eggs. So the child is procrastinating by playing Pacman, Snake, that stupid Dino run game, and what not. Courtesy of the makers of the parental controls.
Similarly, the Play Store cannot be limited and so for a kid it's easy to spend time on promotional app videos there. So the app limits are mostly useless, since you have to fully lock the phone to disable this.
I age restrict, block chat with everyone and monitor friend requests weekly. They are not allowed to play in their rooms.
Education is the biggest thing. They come to me if someone asks to be their friend. They don’t accept gifts from strangers and I explain that it’s the same as real world.
It’s a constant process that is always changing. Same as any other parenting job I suppose
It's easy to say "oh, this is just enterprise controls, and your family is an enterprise."
But then I remember every time I've had to delve into actual enterprise administration, and yeah that's its own full-time job.
Side rant: when will businesses acknowledge that an account might be owned by two people (spouses, for example) and allow separate logins for the same account? Their terms of service almost always prohibit sharing passwords, and because the lost password flow would require sharing an email address, you didn't want to do that anyway.
On the other hand it’s easy to say “just give me enterprise level controls but in an easy and intuitive interface”
I’m not saying that’s not possible, but if you have somehow figured the “right” abstractions and interface to achieve this in an incredible simple and sensible yet just as powerful and complete way that any parent can manage it, then you’d make a killing in enterprise sales. It’s not like enterprise IT admins love Group Policy or any random Joe can be a Linux sysadmin.
I agree. There was a while when I, the sweet summer child that I am, hoped that the late 90s-early 00s crop of founders would start families of their own and naturally steer their companies toward the family-as-enterprise-but-actually-usable model. I'm still waiting.
The comment section seems to be divided between "don't police your children" and "absolutely police everything your children do".
Parental controls are absolutely necessary, yet they won't be enough by themselves. Payment systems are really robust but there's still fraud. If there's prey, there will be predators.
Education and clear rules are absolutely necessary, yet they won't be enough by themselves. There's people that's very evil and also very clever. You can educate and trust your 12yo to understand 80% of it, yet for the remaining 20% you have to be there.
And, oh boy, the issue about parental controls being incredibly complicated is 100% by design. Simple and sensible parental controls would make exploitative business models like Roblox go bankrupt overnight.
That's correct. The current state of parental controls is compliance (the option exists somewhere, good luck finding it, maybe it even works), not usefulness.
You could, I dunno, trust your son, communicate with him, and let him make decisions for himself? If instead of wasting all your time on scam products trying to isolate him from the world, you'd spent the same time teaching him to navigate the world, you wouldn't have had any problems, and he would be better prepared for adult life when he doesn't have someone breathing down his shoulder. Just my 2c.
I completely empathize with the author. I had that same reaction years ago when I discovered strangers were sending unsolicited pictures to my nine year old through DuoLingo! Made me sick.
> ...It also unlocks access to the Nintendo eShop, which I cannot disable. I can set his eShop spending limit to zero, sure. But I can't block free downloads. So to let my son play online Minecraft with his friends, I have to open him up to an unrelated store full of content I can't possibly evaluate. That's the deal. Take it or leave it.
Hoooooboy you're in for a treat once you see the deals on all the weird "hentai" and "ecchi" softcore games on eShop that Nintendo let past the lotcheck process.
Seems like a trusted non-profit should spearhead a working group to come up with clear requirements and recommendations. This parental control spec would be clear for developers to implement instead of each team guessing what should and should not be allowed. This could then be 3rd party verified and parents could rest a little easier. (All of the above has probably been tried in previous instantiations of the Matrix.)
Not to avoid the point of the article, but GroupMe is sometimes used for academic purposes. In the 2010s I used it in school for clubs, sports, and group activities, so that may be why it wasn't blocked.
I don't mean to sound like the stereotypical "I did X and turned out fine" but...
I grew up with an internet access on my computer in my room without anybody watching over my back and without any restrictions and nothing bad really happened. Meanwhile these days some people around me with children around the 10-15 range seem think their children cannot be trusted and restrictions are absolutely essential.
Has the internet really changed that much in the last decade or two? Or are people and media just talking about the dangers more?
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Also, what happens to these kids when they reach adulthood and the guard rails come off?
Has anybody tried an alternative like teaching children about the actual dangers, how to recognize manipulation, etc? I have a feeling many people (including children) don't really learn unless they get hurt so the best we can do it making sure they do get hurt but only a little.
E.g. let them get scammed in a game instead of real life. Or pretend to be a stranger and try to befriend them, seeing if they fall for it?
I think the difference is that the parents of today are _you_. _They_ grew up with unrestricted internet access, because their parents didn't.
I think that pornography is poison and my parents didn't know that I had access to it. "Not my kid!", they said. But my generation says, "It's every. single. kid."
> Has anybody tried an alternative like teaching children about the actual dangers, how to recognize manipulation, etc?
Another poison is alcohol. Some people think that letting their kids access alcohol in their house is reasonable. I think it is better to wait until your brain is more developed before trying alcohol. First experiences with alcohol at a later age tends to enable people to have a less worse relationship with alcohol.
The internet has changed incredibly in the last two decades, and has almost nothing in common with the internet of two decades ago. Predators of all varieties are everywhere; many of them are billion-dollar companies. Scams are everywhere.
Getting scammed in RuneScape is probably a good learning experience, but is RuneScape still the only game that's like the old experience of RuneScape? That and Minecraft I suppose, but you can't really filter out servers in Minecraft.
Lots of people are in this thread saying "ah, just tell your children not to get groomed / not to watch disturbing content". They're kids. They are going to disobey their parents. There's no one here arguing we don't need to teach kids these things. But, like how when you're learning to drive you start in a parking lot with a crappy car, we need a way to make a relatively safe place for them to learn. Parental controls are currently failing to do that.
Furthermore, where you and I and median commenter on HN might be an engaged, attentive parent, there's lots of parents out there who are not. Having a good, easy-to-setup version of these controls that a less engaged parent will actually turn on would make a positive impact on those children who aren't receiving the teaching you suggest.
I'm stuck with my son not able to play minecraft from his nintendo account anymore though it used to work. I'm just getting an unhelpful error message and all permissions should be enough. Parental control is a joke. Deezer has kids accounts but you can just switch to another account. Spotify kids was a joke when I used it, poor discoverability, poor cataloge specifically if you care about childrens audio books.
Google family link is also kinda weird. As a parent I don't want to restrict the time per app or total usage time. I want to limit usage of a group of apps. E.g. i don't want to limit spotify but I want to limit the total play time of certain games.
So I agree with the sentiment of the post. But maybe I should consider the route from my child hood: unrestricted access. At least I know, in contrast to my parents, what is out there.
Try the XBox app on your phone, I managed to find settings there once that unlocked Minecraft.
I'd like a flag for messaging apps called "turn off images and video". Sure, my kid might get called nasty names in plain text, but would not get beheading or bestiality videos or underage schoolmate pics.
One thing you can do: glue the device into a dock, hook it up to the family TV then set the expectations that they can only use it when an adult is around (or take the power adaptor when you leave if you need to be strict about it).
But the author is right, it should be easy to set appropriate limits out of the box.
In the journey from CEO mandate "build a product that gives parents control" to developer implementation, "parents want control" somehow turns into "What parents want is extremely fine-grained controls," which isn't the same thing.
So a bunch of product managers brainstorm a huge list of ways that parents might want "control," hand that off to some developers, and voila: Everything becomes way too complicated for everybody and the company is able to say they offer "control" while abdicating their stated obligation of giving parents the "safe" product that the parents expect.
No, I think CEO mandate goes "Build parental controls" and PMs all shake their heads and go "No problem". It hits the developers, they go Too long to do it properly and PM goes "Nah, we just prefer MVP only so we can say we have it and move on". it's also never really touched again so as features get added on, Parental Controls is poorly thought about last minute implementation.
To fix this, it's going to have to be legislation so financial incentives are present.
I have a wonderful collection of retro consoles and games that I let my nephews play when I babysit without much worry or trouble. Sure some of it is considered obscene, offensive, gory for today’s standard, but I can definitively say the internet and connected games are far worse but let the modern parent be fooled.
I prevented a lot of IRL fighting over the holidays. I tell them, if they want to fight each other that they can only do so in game (their preferred fighting game is primal rage) and it gets their aggression and hyperactive tendency out. Beyond fighting games they love to battle out in racing simulators like Daytona USA or controller swap Crash Bandicoot and Sonic. They have Switch 2 at home and can play it here as well but it’s not sick as Neo Geo, Sega Genesis/Saturn, NES, GameCube, PlayStation, Virtual Boy, and many others. 67
The biggest benefit of offline gaming is that friends interact IRL. You either get invited or invite friends and have real interaction, share snacks, etc. which often leads to outdoor activities when gaming is a bore or over. We need to bring that back. If the companies are unwilling it’s time to hack the offline switch or speak with our wallet.
I got my son a Miyoo mini, a cheap but decent emulator. I had zero headaches and was able to curate the game list as I thought fit. There’s no online (even thouh the device has wifi) for now and worked as expected, kid plays, gets bored and lets the device down. I will not let my kid play games online because that’s a too big of a risk to addiction or priming for this later. Minecraft has potential for addiction.
By the way, I got one miyoo mini for myself and enjoy pico-8 quite a bit that I started making games myself, together with my kid and chatgpt assistance. Call me old school but I know what’s good for my own kid.
People who decide to implement such bad tech are probably childless, or so much into their company, instead of their family, that they barely see their own children.
The same people who joke about the uselessness of "moral".
You might be right they are distracted (mostly by capital). It’s a chicken and egg problem. You have to build the platform to stop the abuse on the platform.
The otherside is hands off parenting. I think after about 2 children, parents tend to get tired of being so restrictive there for the youngest gets what they want and other stereotypes.
In the end it’s probably not about the tightness so much as remaining involved and honest and open with your child.
If you don't want your child watching specific shows despite an appropriate age rating, have you considered only letting them watch it while you're with them?
When my child was three, he really liked to watch 'spidey and his amazing friends'. But unfortunately, when he watched it he would emulate some of the bad behaviors from the show, pretend to be one of the bad guys and act out. Easy solution right, we just won't watch the show anymore, we don't leave him alone to watch TV by himself anyways.
Well, on Disney plus, you can't simply hide the show. Even if you remove it from your "recently watched" or whatever, it will show up in preview cards and search results and I'm categories. It became a big friction point, whatever he would see it he would want to watch it. And when Grandma would come over and babysit him, he would ask for it and she'd put it on for him despite our wishes.
So, since then, I've spun up a jellyfin server and ditched Disney plus. If we don't like a show we just remove it, and then it's simply not an option.
It’s also extremely hard saying no to certain shows to my kids, and it would be much easier to just not have them there.
I’m pretty sure the politically oriented people at Disney want this to your kids watch as much of the content as possible, and especially the new ones.
Although it's a lot more effort, if you care a lot about specific things being shown to your children, you could set up your own media server.
You could digitize an existing BluRay or DVD collection and allow your kids to view films and TV using a streaming service-like interface. These days most of the solutions don't even require you to transcode the films, you just RIP them to an ISO and put them on an accessible Samba share and as long as you rename the files to something approximate to the title of the film it'll fetch the metadata for you.
It's even worse if your subscription is packaged with Hulu. Then all the Hulu kids stuff gets pulled in automatically, which includes all kinds of garbage that I very much do not want my daughter watching. All the YouTube-based influencer kid shows with little kids who show off new toys and extravagant vacations each episode.
My only solution was to unsubscribe from Hulu, which stinks because they do have some good stuff.
It really is the epitome of enshitification considering how easy it would be to implement a block button at the very least.
I think it's an abdication of parental responsibility to let a child use Internet-connected devices without adult supervision.
Nothing connected to the Internet can protect children from seeing information they couldn't see (as determined by culture/familial mores), meeting potentially exploitative strangers, being exposed to a highly curated stream of marketing content and targeted AI messaging (including social media feeds).
I believe that Internet sites and apps should not have age controls.
I believe that physical Internet access (computer, phone, TV, etc) should require an adult ID to purchase (but not logged, like cigarettes, alcohol, etc) l and the the owner of the device is responsible for its use.
If they hand it over to a minor and they are harmed, then the original adult is liable (like alcohol).
This holds someone with material motive accountable. And it becomes jurisdiction-specific accountability (location of the device).
And in the case of parents, if they allow their kids to use one of the parent's devices then they are responsible for how the kid uses it. And directly responsible for how it's used, what's allowed and what's not.
You can't trust a mega+corp with protecting your kids.
> Nintendo Switch Online (not really another account, mind you, but a membership) involves a recurring fee. It also unlocks access to the Nintendo eShop, which I cannot disable. I can set his eShop spending limit to zero, sure. But I can't block free downloads. So to let my son play online Minecraft with his friends, I have to open him up to an unrelated store full of content I can't possibly evaluate. That's the deal. Take it or leave it.
You don't need to pay for Nintendo Switch Online to get access to the eShop, you just need a Nintendo Account. I made one for myself and one for my son, and neither stays logged in. My wife and I have the passwords for both, and will not give him his password until he's older. Meaning one of us needs to be there for any purchases, free or otherwise.
He has access to the Minecraft marketplace, but can't add funds to it without us. We did not use our MS accounts, and didn't make one for him, so he can't play Minecraft online. But you know what, I'm totally ok with that. He can still invite a friend over and play together in person (which he does do).
My overall response with this stuff is to think about the lax parenting typical in the 80s or so and compare it. Kids much younger were allowed to run amok outside, and crime rates are much lower today. Are the same instincts that perhaps rightly perhaps wrongly compel people to keep a closer eye on their kids in the real world being applied to the digital one?
This HN post fits into the category of "Pithy blog title with casually anecdotal content."
Software companies will never earnestly attempt to protect children because that action ("acknowledging children are in danger by using our product") acknowledges risk and introduces liability. (VCs hate that shit, especially Silicon Valley VCs.) In the United States, decades ago, laws were introduced to induce accountability of online platforms in regard to IP and child protection laws in the context of user generated content (forums, markets, chatrooms). Basically, these websites/corporations bulked at the weight of accountability ("how are we to monitor every user's action all the time?", "We'll be sued immediately by trolls.", etc.). The parties involved eventually came to a resolution that there's a "notice period" that organizations use to enforce this behavior on its communities.
If I were to write a blog titled "Parent Controls Aren't for Parents", my opening salvo would be "They are minimal-effort guardrails to protect corporations from being sued by negligent parents for post-incident harm."
I know about these but they require a lot more technical know-how to set up and getting ROMs is legally questionable. Your kid's friends are probably not playing those games either. They aren't a good option for most people.
I identify with so much of what's in this article - especially the rage that has the author giving serious, coldblooded thought to just destroying the Switch.
The Minecraft stuff in particular reads like some kind of standup comedy bit where the joke is that the joke goes on way too long. It is genuinely insane what it takes to get a kid online these days, to the point where I honestly don't know how families without some poor technical sadsap can even manage to get it done.
I find it particularly infuriating that Nintendo - who are supposed to be the "family friendly" gaming company, and who lock down a lot of things in variously annoying ways, seems to offer no way to block or disable the Youtube app.
The way this stuff is handled in my house (and let me be clear that this is extremely imperfect) is that I block Youtube and various other sites at the network level. This is really not a total solution - there are many good reasons for the kids to get on Youtube and so I'm often asked to open the gates for a while. Threading the needle in a manner that allows my kids to get the benefits of the net without the huge number of downsides is virtually impossible.
My 17 yo, and me, are still suffering for poor account choices I made when he was young. My 10 yo will only ever have to remember his birth year is the same as mine when asked in regards to any of his accounts created by me.
The complexity and frustration are in no way accidental. A carefully designed, obfuscated, and Byzantined process designed for exactly this effect.
> You're supposed to be so beaten down, so utterly depleted of will, that you just cave. [...] You disable a bunch of parental controls you don't really understand. You let your kid play his damn game. You become the ideal customer.
Exactly so. Parental controls, privacy settings, permission to show ads and collect infinite tracking data… The machine is working exactly as intended. Maybe there are sentiments that "the parents should have some control" and maybe there are some laws about protecting children or protecting consumer privacy. But hey, what if actually using any of those mechanisms was mind-bendingly difficult and annoying? What if your control were only available downstairs, in the unlighted cellar, at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard." We'd still be in compliance, right? Heh heh. Yeah. That's the ticket!
Reminds me when Facebook added “privacy” controls, that were virtually impossible to find, difficult to understand, and confusing to give a false sense of security.
It says, on the Gabb app directory the author linked, "Communication with Strangers" in a warning bubble directly below the "GroupMe" listing title. Not to forget the giant box saying "However, some apps allow user-shared content or access to mature material. Apps enabling contact with strangers also pose risks. Families should discuss app usage regularly." right below the app search bar.
Regarding the games console, his problem seems to mainly be the two conflicting account systems offered by two separate vendors, not the parental controls themselves (although I agree the situation in that circumstance is unfortunate). A quick Google search also directed me to an easy step by step guide to doing many of the things (such as the restriction of purchases and free downloads on the Nintendo game store) that he claimed to be impossible.[2]
This is written in a very dramatic manner*, especially with the whole "You're supposed to be so beaten down, so utterly depleted of will, that you just cave. You sign up for Nintendo Online. You disable a bunch of parental controls you don't really understand. You let your kid play his damn game. You become the ideal customer." paragraph, that it feels almost like it's purely written to goad legislation.
Technology is amazing and I want to raise my children in such a way that they learn to use it to improve and enrich their lives.
Video games are amazing. Art has never been easier to create. Being able to spend time with your friends when they are not physically present is incredible. There are so many great podcasts for children.
But silicon valley seems directly opposed to enabling the best technology uses without also requiring exposure to the worst.
Please, can I just let my son listen to music when he goes to bed without also being forced to expose him to some off-brand tiktok hamfisted haphazardly into the app with no way to disable.
Can I let him watch great YouTube channels without the feed automatically funneling him towards absolute garbage.
Something as simple as per app time limits are seemingly impossible for Google or Apple to implement.
It's exhausting to navigate when you don't want to be draconian and just ban everything out right, as if that's even realistic.
Not sure about Google but Apple has per-app time limits, per-app type time limits, overall screen time limits, time of day limits, parental review before app install, parental review before purchases can be made, etc. I've found it to be quite robust in managing my kids' access to the internet.
I’m continually impressed by my 12 year old son’s ability to get around those restrictions. He recently got around his time limit with Brawl Stars by having his friends sending him Brawl Stars view links via WhatsApp. This opens links using Safari’s underlying engine (SFSafariViewController), which does not get considered by the safari app time block.
The biggest trap parents fall into is they buy devices assuming there will be ways to enforce parental controls on them. The reality is it's impossible to do on many devices, and extremely difficult to get right on the remaining ones. Many of the platforms offering "parental controls" just do lip service and provide a false sense of security.
I see folks saying no access to phones until 16, and others arguing how that will absolutely crush a kid's ability to do stuff socially. Why not just have a 'home' phone? you can use the phone in shared spaces at home, but cannot take it into your room or go to school with it.
unless you send your child to private school where all parents enforce such rule, your kid (that is 12+ year old) is going to be ostracize by majority of peers that have such phone. This is completely different environment comparing to times when we were growing up.
We are a “low screen” homeschooling family. We have a babysitting phone for my daughters to take to babysitting jobs and a landline. At our local pool in the summer, my kids meet neighborhood kids, exchange numbers, but my kids say, “it’s a landline, no texting.” The response: “You just have a landline?!? You can’t text?!?” in a tone of disgust. Every time. Fortunately, we have a community of homeschooling & religious community friends who are raising their kids similarly. But every time a kid’s friend gets a cellphone, texting becomes the medium of socialization, and they drop us. My kids will be the 1% of their generation who can talk on the phone.
What if we teach children how to navigate the real world, instead of the digital equivalent of "baby proofing the house"? You don't lock away the kitchen knives from a 12 year old, you teach them how to use them safely.
While we're on the topic, our school-issued Chromebooks allow unfettered access to YouTube. Yes, some of it is educational, but the kids can just click on the next video until they get what they want. Very convenient for you, Google Ads.
Parental controls aren't a good substitution for awareness, deep meaningful connection with your child, giving them a rich and fulfilling offline life, teaching them how to navigate dangers rather than isolating them from reality.
Hold on to your kids[1] and instead of having to spy on them you will know them.
Yes, Parental controls could, in theory, provide many many more protections. But given the trajectory of tech, capitalism, and the USA at large (and the culture it exports), I do not see that pragmatically happening to a relevant degree by the time I have children.
Do you have kids? I'm guessing you don't, because the answer is pretty obvious to those of us who do - the vast majority of parents seem to give not one single fuck about what their kids do with technology. I've known families who have a cell phone - a dedicated device - for their four year old.
My armchair diagnosis is that parents who are just a little bit older than me (I'm 34) and especially parents who didn't grow up as nerds just don't see the problem. Among the class of people who spend their time on Substack or Hacker News the horror of the modern net and its affect on childhood are well understood at this point. Among "normal people" you will definitely get weird looks if you suggest that this stuff is terrible for your kids.
My kids (4 and 6) have a "dedictated" iPhone, a iPad with the pencil, and a MacBook Air. But they were just hand me downs. They don't get to use them unless we let them, but we mostly use them to learn how to type, write, draw, play learning games, Khan Academy, and to mess around in general.
They also call or text aunts/uncles/cousins/grandparents. I feel like it has helped them with reading and just the exercise of trial and error to figure out how it works is beneficial.
Haven’t needed to delve into parental controls yet though.
> They don't get to use them unless we let them, but we mostly use them to learn how to type, write, draw, play learning games, Khan Academy, and to mess around in general.
That seems fine to me. What I'm referring to above is that the kid literally just has an iPhone with, as far as I can see, virtually no restriction. I imagine you would not let your kids use their device to scroll through Youtube Shorts for an unsupervised 2 hours, for example.
Just like it's hard for me to find the right balance of benefit to downside in technology for my kids, it's also hard to strike a balanced tone when discussing my feelings on this stuff. Every time I write something about this problem online I feel like I'm coming off as some authoritarian luddite - which I'm definitely not. I want my kids to get the benefits of technology. Any bright future for them is almost sure to include the need to engage with the net.
Instilling the values that allow for that is the hard part.
> That seems fine to me. What I'm referring to above is that the kid literally just has an iPhone with, as far as I can see, virtually no restriction. I imagine you would not let your kids use their device to scroll through Youtube Shorts for an unsupervised 2 hours, for example.
Yes, they aren’t allowed to watch youtube shorts at all (nor do either of the parents), but we’ll look up nature or physics videos, and if they want to watch a video on repeat, we use yt-dlp to download and they watch via infuse. But again, not of their own accord. When it’s time to play outside or elsewhere, it’s time to do that. And no devices at meal time, even if they see other kids at the same table with them.
I guess my point was that the devices are immensely powerful tools for learning and communication, so I try to teach them how. But they also play games with non gambling mechanics (thank god for Apple Arcade).
This is key, in my experience. I've told my kids that if they catch me scrolling shorts or reddit, they have the right to confiscate my phone. A big part of instilling the values I referenced above is embodying them myself. (obviously, but it bears repeating).
> But they also play games with non gambling mechanics
This is important too. There's so much genuinely great media out there - TV shows, video games, movies, books. It's not that I don't want my kids to experience that stuff - I just want them to learn how to focus on the stuff that's quality rather than the stuff that is slop.
There is enough general public concern about minors having access to online pornography that jurisdictions all over the world are passing age restrictions but I think the HN discussion is one sided.
That is, HN users see the costs, the difficulty, the privacy concerns, etc. But they're also dismissive of the harm, which in terms of the young Gen Z men that I know personally is real. I can't attribute online pornography 100% but the damage includes criminal convictions, falling victim to "blackpill" ideology and other false answers to gendered problems and frequently people giving up on work and love.
I collect ero images and restrictions would personally be a hassle for me, I can't say I am against pornography in general, but I've got some concerns about pornography today. I think advocates are stuck in the 1970s when it was tamer and much less prevalent than it is today -- it's entirely different for a teen to have a few issues of Penthouse or Hustler than it is today.
I think the story of how it relates to relationship satisfaction is nuanced. Personally I think OnlyFans is a cancer. I want to feel special in a fantasy, and not as the biggest simp in a room full of hundreds of simps. (And this is healthy narcissism [1], not pathological narcissism. In good sex or sex with love, somebody thinks you are special)
I'm not sure what the answer is but I can see it both ways and that seems rare on HN.
Yeah, I think this is a sort of similar issue to the kind of thing I describe above, where parents of a certain generation / certain technical background might not be fully aware of the sorts of harm that can come in through technological channels.
I would never actually do this, but there's a part of me that would like to just give my kids a magazine to hide under their bed, or even some sort of curated private video site on the LAN, just to allow for some expression of natural puberty urges in a way that is ... if not "healthy," per se, then at least "harm reduced?" Obviously that idea in practice would be way too weird to consider, lol.
But this comes back to the balance thing I was talking about on my other post in this topic. Full abstinence is probably practically impossible and I'm not sure it's even the right approach. The other end of the spectrum - throwing the kids into the waters of Pornhub, OnlyFans, and whatever the TikTok equivalent of porn is (surely that exists, right?) - that seems pretty fraught too. The taboo nature of this discussion makes things harder - but I have tried to overcome the weird feeling and have fairly frank discussions about these sorts of things with my oldest.
You’re getting downvoted but I agree that this person has a communication problem with their child. And it isn’t because the kid figured out how to use the device.
I'm wondering if a firewall is a solution here. Don't mess around with the stupid device settings. Just block the Xbox store, and then presumably Minecraft uses different server IPs, so you can let those through.
> And when I finally—finally—tried to test online play, Minecraft told me I would need to loosen the parental controls (it did not say which) and create a Nintendo Switch Online account for my son.
I'm a bit confused by this section. It seems to me that the author
1. Turned off online.
2. Bought a game that could be played in single-player or online
3. Got mad that online didn't work because it was turned off
4. Turned online back on
5. Got mad that online was turned on.
6. Dealt with this anger by yelling at his children
I actually don't understand what the author was trying to accomplish here
I am opposed to the whole concept of these "parental controls". Instead of a bond of trust, between a parent and their child, the surveillance economy has gave us the ability to experience the top of the surveillance pyramid ourselves. As Google and Meta spy on the world, we spy on little Timmy. In fact, you are a bad parent if you don't spy on little Timmy.
I really can't wrap my head around how asking "how was your day" has evolved into "I saw on your GPS tracker you walked a different route to school today... Do you have something to tell me?" If you look at everyone who is now joining the work force and all, the coming generations, you'll see the thing they lack most is independence.
You obviously don't have kids. You can't trust a child's judgement because they don't have the experience to exercise good judgement. Your job as a parent is to look out for them while helping them develop.
It seems like the industry is going to be forced to rediscover and implement capability based security models and process isolation by consumer demand.
It is impossible for the average user to reason about a different security model for each app, the only way for anyone to be confident about what a program is not doing is to move to a world where apps don't work by default, and a list of boxes need to be checked which enable network or file access and cause features to work.
Apple is the closest to the right answer here, but enabled-by-default and opt-out has to go away.
By buying a child a locked down device - a hostile device that few would have accepted for themselves as a child - they marked them as 'being a child' rather than blending in with the rest of the people on the Internet.
By marking them this way, they advertise the child to the predators of the world.
This is someone who is twelve. They aren't six. Life involves risk. Stop playing with account controls and let the person play Minecraft. This really isn't that hard.
Having thoughts about physically breaking a child's holiday gifts - of doing that in front of them - is suggestive of being a pretty awful person. You can't figure out something that the child does not want, so you want to break their stuff?
How much longer do you intend to keep this routine up? Is your objective for them to go no contact? What are you seeking here?
I'm kind of with you on this one. 12yo is old enough to understand the rules (assuming they were clearly set) and if he/she was willingly communicating with a stranger, that phone should get the hammer with no replacement whatsoever. I've seen this done, it works.
I am not even sure where you get "smashing a device violently in front of a child" comes from. He said gets the hammer as in he would perma destroy it.
Anyway I tend to agree for the most part anyway. I was just making a guess about your age irl based on what you said. However some other data actually indicates you are likely gen-x.
What I believe the author did was instead of teaching their child that they may not talk to strangers, they believed there just is a magic button to have these strangers not exist.
You can't control or decide what predators will do. And very likely won't be able to imagine the extent of every single of their convoluted predatory practices by yourself.
So instead of trying to cover every possible theoretical danger, setting clear rules and boundaries with your kid sounds like a way more sensible and pragmatic approach.
And nobody said kids should be punished or held fully accountable on their first mistake.
Of all of the uses for AI/LLMs, setting parental controls feels like it would be such a massive net win for everyone involved.
Instead, LLMs are being used to replace support people at the larger platforms (e.g. X Box) with the clear goal of "make it HARDER to get support" (or as patio11 would say "their goal is to get you off the phone as quickly as possible ")
This was a tough read. On one end I want to hold this parent accountable...and he should be held accountable for any negligence on his part. As noted, Gabb does indicate that GroupMe facilitates communication with strangers. Because, well, it’s a messaging app like any other.
I don’t want to digress too far, but you know what I had when I was young and wanted to talk about books? Libraries. That’s beside the point but somewhere is a point to be made and I don’t want to pry into this man’s personal life beyond what he’s already shared about this ugly experience. But I imagine that few things can deter a predator like a swarm of librarians.
“I could almost hear the crack. Could almost see that OLED display splintering into a thousand pieces. The little Joy-Cons skittering across the floor. My son's face. My wife's face. The stunned silence.”
He should've broken the Switch. Anyone who’s ever destroyed electronics knows how cathartic it is. Men are only afforded so many opportunities to display healthy acts of aggression in front of their wives and children. Of course never towards them.
“What I did was announce, in a voice louder than necessary, that nobody was to ask me about anything Minecraft-related on the Nintendo Switch for a minimum of two weeks.”
I suppose that’ll do.
“Here's what I want: an off switch. A single setting that says "this child cannot go online, communicate with strangers, spend money, or download anything without my explicit permission." Instead I get a maze, complex enough that when something goes wrong, I'm at fault for a tooltip I didn't hover over, a blog post I didn't read, a submenu I didn't find. Maybe that's by design. Maybe it's neglect. I don't know.
What I know is this. My son just wants to play video games and talk to his friends. I just want to keep him safe. Somewhere between those two things, I'm supposed to become an expert in the convoluted parental control schemes of Gabb, Nintendo, Microsoft, and Xbox, while a stranger's Christmas morning texts sit in my son's phone history.”
Again. It’s easy for me to blame this dude because I live in a world where this sort of scenario is wholly unlikely and to a great degree his experience explains why that is the case for me. But this story was too well put together. I never thought that a curl one liner and a bash script could emote a form of anger that I empathize with so readily.
I hope this inspires him to question the extent to which he’s relegated parental controls in other areas, if it’s at all the case elsewhere. Either destroy them or set firmer boundaries and raise your expectations for yourself and whatever third parties he sees fit to be held responsible for his household and their affairs. It may take another 12 years or so...but your sons should thank you if you’re successful.
Parental controls are all about illusion of control. In reality the kids all know how to get around them. Try just try to block Gmail. It’s impossible. Gmail is the gateway to kids getting on services they aren’t supposed to be on.
Gmail can circumvent almost any security feature even if you set up a profile on iPhone (which is not documented and good luck with that). This is definitely not an accident.
Don’t mean to pick on Google; Apple is also bad, iPhone parental controls are very leaky. My son found a way to jailbreak his phone to completely unlock screen time and disable all parental controls.
Any of the consoles are also bad, PS4, etc… although it is possible to block stuff that PS4 can do via a firewall.
> A single setting that says "this child cannot go online, communicate with strangers, spend money, or download anything without my explicit permission."
I understand the problem domain - some people try to exploit and take advantage of kids. That's a problem, I get it.
At the same time, I still think children should not be assumed to be idiots. I remember we oldschool people, when we were young, we played Quake at university campus (we could only play on holidays because one friend had the key to the room, it was a side room though; on saturday other students were not there, so we had a full room with about 30 computers in the 1990s era). We were about 15 years old, so granted, no more young kids. And the technology wasn't quite as advanced, so I am not saying this is 1:1 comparable. But young kids today often have smartphones. They have the internet non-stop. I don't think parental censorship works as a model here. Again, I get it that too young kids are too trusting, and there are creeps - but there is not really an alternative to having kids go through thought processes and understand the issues here. In warcraft 3, young gamers were quite competitive and good. So if they can learn to be better than older people, they will have no real difficulty understanding predators. (Again, it depends on the age; but if your kid is 6 years old, why can there only be games that are played online? Plus it is just chatting right? I remember playing games at the yahoo website, we chatted too. I don't think that was a problem per se. The website makes it sound as if everyone and everything has that problem. I don't think this is the case.)
Edit: Others pointed out the age range problem. I agree. So, which age range are we talking about? Is the age even mentioned on the website?
Edit2: Ah yes, 12 years old. Sorry but at 12 years old, I am having a hard time buying into the "predators exploit him every time". That seems to be ... strange. His son would probably object to the claim he made on the website here aka slandering - perhaps.
The issue is, and always will be, 3rd party trust. You cannot assume your child is safe using XYZ until you thoroughly audit the app/game/device and enumerate all their loopholes, plug-ins, and rushed updates. The sensical method would be a device-wide deny all firewall rule, where no TCP connection is allowed in or out without explicit parental consent. E.g. Alice wants to chat with Bob via chatmonkey. Approve this one time connection? Good luck finding anything on the market that supports and enforces this very sane level of parental control.
It's almost like connected infrastructure is inherently unsafe.
I stand by "your kid, your problem". I don't want any kid to be "unsafe", but commonsense went out the window when schools started to require the internet.
The true "safe" option is not allowing any of this until your child is old enough to understand the risks... so 18? 25?
All I'm saying is there is no route to prevent all bad things (or even most) and people who say otherwise are generally selling you something.
Or instead of turning parental controls on, instead teach your children how to identify bad stuff online. That way, they can catch people (peers OR adults) doing or asking really bad stuff. And teaching also has great benefits of lasting a lifetime.
Well, except for doing parental controls on your boomer parents TV, blocking Fox news. Thats a good usage of it. You're not going to defeat propaganda believability with boomers. So blocking is best bet.
> Well, except for doing parental controls on your boomer parents TV, blocking Fox news. Thats a good usage of it. You're not going to defeat propaganda believability with boomers. So blocking is best bet.
What an odd viewpoint. "It's bad to use limit your children's access to the internet in any way, but trying to stop other adults from accessing things I deem to be wrong are good!"
Just recently did this with XBox.
I cannot prevent the kid from seeing the marketplace.
I cannot prevent the kid from seeing installed games that are rated Mature. It won't let them play it, but it lists all the games installed in the XBox.
I cannot prevent them from downloading free stuff.
It was frustrating and clear to me that this wasn't designed for the benefits of parents.
I just want it to act like a console with a fixed set of games installed and no marketplace access.
These are not mistakes.
These are not implementation errors or miscommunication between different business units.
What you are witnessing is an intentional setting of a revenue dial to the maximum allowable setting that still permits the original sale.
This is why you have government regulation. It’s not perfect, but at least a government is accountable to something other than a profit motive.
In the US, the government is expressly prohibited from regulating video games sales on the basis of content, per the First Amendment (with an exception existing for pornography). This was the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Entertainment Merchant’s Association (2011).
And that's the problem. The US Constitution isn't Moses' 10 Commandments chiselled in stone. It can be changed and improved. To quote Jeff Jefferies: "That's why it's called an AMENDMENT!".
The fact that the US government is frozen in amber overall will be the downfall of the US.
It's not set in stone, its just used as an excuse. Or a thought terminating cliche.
From OP:
> the First Amendment (with an exception existing for pornography)
The text is not
> Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, except for showing boobs on TV, which would be a heinous crime and worthy of deportation
There are many exceptions to "freedom of speech".
A console is a computer controlled by a corporation. No other result could be expected.
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A solution that works for nerd parents can be sold by those nerd parents to non-nerd parents if the platform wasn't specifically designed to prevent it.
Open hardware and free software is not about nerds.
> Let’s not make this into a nerd culture war thing about, what?
I'm not making it into anything, I'm just identifying the root cause.
Well, the sale was to me. The kid came later. :-)
> These are not implementation errors or miscommunication between different business units.
I don't think the companies such as Google*, Microsoft, Valve or Nintendo** have a Child Safety business unit.
If they did, the software they produce would work and I would be able set some sane settings once when creating a group of users which contain children.
What I am experiencing is user hostility when trying to limit who can chat or influence my children. The UI is usually horrible and some devices have no way of limiting or whitelisting what games can be played by children.
* Fuck you for not requiring TVs to implement the features required to use child users on TVs.
** Fuck you for making the of doing anything on the switch related to child-profiles a horrible experience.
They may not label the BU as such, but they certainly have policies on these types of interactions...sometimes abhorrently so: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2025/11/22/meta-strike-p...
And depending on the community you go to to ask questions, the likely response is, "just be a parent". Wanting seat belts made just for kids IS BEING A PARENT.
Children are quite literally the future of the human race.
A fact childless nerds have forgotten.
I read an interesting argument the other day that, because of how memory and perception of time works, childhood ends up being something like 40% of your lifespan in “experiential” terms. The stuff that happens to you over your first 20ish years loom large over your whole life and the memories of those times will be intense.
So, in a way, designing the world in a way that assumes childhood is a transitory thing that you’re just trying to usher kids through until they can get to the “real world” part of being an adult is just making everyone spend most of their experiential lives in a world not meant for them.
> marketplace access
The sole reason this devide exists is to put marketplace before your kid's eyes. They won't let you disable it.
Same goes for the Google Family Link. There is no way to prevent kid accessing Google Play Store and spam You with requests...
At least with those requests you can disable notifications and nothing else happens.
Question: why do you give the device access to the internet?
“Fortunately, we have a product for people who aren't able to stay connected; it's called Xbox 360” -- Don Mattrick
Because I too use the XBox.
And because there are definitely benefits of Internet access. Saved games, for example.
But yeah, fair point. I should configure router to selectively enable/disable access to that device while the kid uses it to see how usable it is. It may just be good enough for his games
You can't even save games without an internet connection? sheesh...
people can't even listen to music without internet, so this isn't surprising xD
You can. The same devices that run Spotify will happily play your mp3 collection.
I can. You can. Spotify users though?
Too dumb
Spotify allows you to download songs for offline (requiring a phone home once a month) and play local files.
I'm far from a Spotify advocate but no need to be inflammatory and misinformed.
Worth adding this option is available for premium accounts only.
Of course. It's available for customers, not products.
Because products need to see ads, check in and report usage and ad consumption.
Spotdl.......
Actually, I don't know. It's certainly convenient that they do. You don't lose anything if your HD crashes. I should try running the games without Internet access to see if they also save them locally.
Sounds like the parent(s) use it as well
> I cannot prevent the kid from seeing installed games that are rated Mature.
Can someone explain the problem with 'mature' rated games? As kids (under 10), we played Mortal Kombat and GTA III, laughing when we interacted with hookers in GTA. It was fun, and we had a great time playing these games. What's the issue? It's no different from playing with a wooden sword and shield.
We can quibble about the actual age but in principle I agree about GTA. That's because it's a game designed to be fun for kids.
Let me tell you about elements of games I'm thinking about:
A girl is bullied at school to the point of committing suicide. This isn't a game of vindication. Justice isn't served. Things aren't set right. It's just how things are.
Your brother committed suicide a year ago. As part of the game you have to deal with someone who blames you for it.
A couple has to deal with the grief of their baby drowning in the bathtub. It's not an abstract thing. You as the player have to ensure the baby drowns and set the conditions for it to happen, knowing full well this will be the outcome.
You're a scientist stuck in a weird dimension and trying to figure out how you got here. Well, you got here because you murdered your wife and kid and then killed yourself but before you did that you made a copy of yourself and your family in a virtual world. That plan didn't work out well.
Edit: Just in case anyone gets deceived, the games aren't about these things but they do explore them as part of the game. The point is a lot of modern mature games tackle very adult topics.
It's been a long time since I kept current on games.
Reading these descriptions, I have only one comment:
What the *HELL*?!!?!!!
Don't knock it until you try it. 3 of the 4 games are highly rated, winning multiple awards. One frequently is mentioned on HN as one of the best games ever.
Games are a medium to tell stories. If you can conceive a TV show or movie tackling these themes there's no reason to think games should be exempt. In fact they are far superior in addressing these themes than movies are.
I follow some games but have 0 idea about those. Are those telltale/telltale-like story games?
I didn't want to name some of them because of spoilers.
Two of the games are made by former Telltale employees.
One of them is What Remains of Edith Finch (not much of a spoiler - plenty of other great stuff in the game).
Go type this into perplexity: "Are there any health studies about what exposure to pornography does to childhood development?"
Here's another good one: "Are there any health studies about what exposure to violence or horror does to childhood development?"
There is a reason that rating systems exist and that we shelter children from these things.
The pre-rebuttal that you posted "this was common in my childhood" is no indicator that this was a healthy behavior for you or the masses.
That's an even weaker argument: AI and ratings.
Ratings are very criticized by artists, eg as being fueled by conservative moms. For example, in the USA, movies with guns and explosion can be shown to younger audiences than nudity - seems very illogical.
Also, some anecdotes: lots of my friends were into GTA as kids, ie early teens, and turned out fine. Comparing to kids who didn't do so well, I consider the most important factors to br family, education, and finances, not violent multimedia.
With that being said, I'm sympathetic to limiting internet access due to communication with strangers, and extreme content (eg violent rethorics that appeal to action, not fantasy violence).
Okay. Society isn’t asking you to police how parents choose to parent. Not like this. It is reasonable for someone to want to be able to buy something advertised as having a certain feature without it being implemented with malicious deception. Nobody wants to have the “are bideo games good or bad?” debate again.
In my mind when I was 13 I played Carmageddon and GTA1
In reality I was 15 when they came out. The graphics in GTA weren't much different to Frogger. Doom and Quake involved blasting monsters, not people. Duke Nukem 3D, Halflife had very unrealistic looking people.
Todays games are very different in terms of visual quality, but even then, GTA is relatively mild compared to many games. You can hit a prostitute with a bat and kill her, but you can't drag a random person off the street and plunge their arm into a deep fat fryer.
My dad says the same thing about seatbelts.
I was against mandatory seatbelt laws at first because I disliked the intrusion.
That was it. My entire argument was (and I emphasize WAS) that I didn't like no gubment tell me what to do. If I wanted to be a damn fool and kill myself why would they care? It's a stupid act to try to outlaw stupidity.
Then I found out that seatbelt laws are actually about decreasing the financial burden of underinsured accident victims. The "gubment" doesn't care if you die, but they do care if they have to fund weeks of medical support before you die despite the treatment, or if you survive but are disabled and wind up on social security.
That realization made me give up.
It was always about saving money, not lives. With seatbelts and airbags you are more likely to either walk away uninjured or at least not so injured that you spend more than a few hours in the hospital.
I’d strongly encourage you to spend an iota of time outside the US.
I'd strongly encourage you to cease assuming you know anything about someone outside of what is expressly listed to you.
So you’re trying to say it’s a survivorship bias? Well, I did turn right, and everyone I know from childhood has turned out alright as well, except for a few who had problematic parents. So games did not cause harm, but rather irresponsible parents (or, to be fair, parents with mental problems...).
What if these kind of games are a problem for kids with shit parents, or kids who are in a dark places for other reasons, like bullying? The same with like drugs, gore, or porn? Should we just ignore those kids? Or what do you propose?
Well, I think you’ve argued yourself into a corner there. Shit parents aren’t going to deny access to video games which are too mature for their children, so a rating system should isn’t going to help
I did it as a kid but I also understood that if my parents SAW me doing it I’d feel embarrassed and they might scold me. I think there is some character building benefit behind making sure that simulating or watching inappropriate behavior should have an air of seediness and illicitness to it, even if the kids are technically able to access the stuff.
But I will say the rating systems have not caught up to the reality of where the dangers of modern media are. I worry a LOT more about skinner-box mechanics, design choices that cultivate addictive personality traits, and communication systems that create openings for cyberbullying and grooming/sexual interactions with minors are much bigger problems that I feel the industry does basically nothing to even inform me about, let alone empower me to be able to manage it.
Based on another comment parent made, the Xbox was there before the kid, so presumably they don't want to handicap their own experience using it, just limit their kid's. Which should, by all respects, be a reasonable thing to want.
Microsoft really needs to let parents have their cake, too.
Just buy a second XBox what’s the problem?
(This is sarcasm, just to be clear)
An increasing number of games are requiring always-online or online-on-boot validation, so this option is becoming less reasonable.
Don't worry, next gen devices will come with a 5G device embedded that will always allow access to the market place and online gambling store.
It's not an accident that its so hard to get this stuff right, I've heard countless stories like this from friends who are parents.
If the market wanted parents to be able to figure this out it would be getting it right. It's obviously a dark pattern that benefits everyone but the parents and their children. If more people stopped to think deeper about this they would and should be very disturbed by what this means.
I disagree. I think it is an “accident” that stems from organizations rather than anything sinister.
Companies generally want good parental controls, but let’s face it, it’s not the cash cow or particularly interesting.
This leads to understaffed teams of b-list developers with high churn, hence the overly confusing and half-baked features.
It's nearly impossible to block YouTube on a smart TV without third party apps, even worse on non-android ones. And the app is not uninstallable. I don't think this is b-tier devs, feels like intentionall neglect.
LG let's me put a PIN on apps like YouTube, so the kids can't watch it alone.
Why does this have to be TV based and not baked into YouTube app ? Considering how addictive YouTube scrolling is, and how quickly algorithm captures kids it should be mandatory.
My PS5 has play time built in.
Your kids will figure out that PIN.
Parental controls and accessibility both suffer from the fact that they are good features to add but fundamentally do not drive revenue. They only exist in the average as much as is required by regulation.
No business would build wheelchair ramps unless they were made to, that's why we make them. There's no reason to not do the same for parental controls.
I would easily believe that Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc., explicitly staff these teams with childless adults.
Given how easy it is for my 13yo daughter to get around screen time restrictions on iOS in ways I wouldn't believe are possible I'm not sure these people are even adults.
How does she get around the restrictions? I'm not aware of a way to do that on iPhone
Change the region. Not time and date, that can be blocked by screentime. Change the region. Sometimes takes multiple attempts but it does work. I had to pay a bug bounty to my child to get them to tell me how they did it
uninstall app when limit runs out, reinstall used to work.
Apple has an engineering base that includes people who were recently children.
Think about it that way: why would they make things harder for who they were in the very recent past.
> Apple has an engineering base that includes people who were recently children.
What?
I didn’t realize Apple with in the habit of hiring people straight out of high school instead of after going through enough university education that ends up with candidates in their early to mid 20s
Yep. They hire talent. University grads will work alongside red team folks that are maybe 22 years old and have been at Apple for two years. It's a thing.
I personally know more than one person who has a background along those lines.
I was more pointing out that 22+ year olds aren’t people who were “recently children” unless we’re continuing the trend of infantilizing adults farther into their 20s.
I was also under the impression that the faangs hired a larger % of post docs into their first industry job than most companies, so you’re also getting 27+ year olds as entry level engineers and scientists
I think someone who is 22 was 17 in the not that distant past.
Apple hires talent, they don't care about anything else. Again, I am speaking to things I know from my actual life and people I know in the physical world.
> Apple hires talent, they don't care about anything else. Again, I am speaking to things I know from my actual life and people I know in the physical world.
How many people do they hire without college degrees?
I am legitimately asking. I understand that was a thing in the tech world decades ago but my understanding was that big tech’s idea of “talent” has evolved to include mandatory education credentials like at least a bachelor’s degree if not further education.
18 is recently a kid
22 is someone whose been an adult for an entire Presidential term. I might be splitting hairs but I struggle to view that as “recent”
Edit: removed an unnecessarily aggressive paragraph that added nothing to the conversation
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Where are the faangs hiring people with skills sans the credentials? Everyone I’ve talked to at faangs has basically described it being the next step after college for everyone they hire, other than Amazon
Ah, too late to edit but this is another sub year account making statements like
> 22 is recently a kid. We have nothing further to discuss; you are unreasonable.
Using a semicolon correctly while claiming another human held position is unreasonable. Definitely regular human activity.
@dang, is this forum just going to be humans talking with a forest of bots are you guys going to have any moderation
We don't see everything, and we don't see anything instantly, especially at this time of day/week/year. We've said many times that bots and LLM-generated comments are banned on HN but we can only take action if people use the mechanisms that have been in place for years – flagging bad comments and emailing us (hn@ycombinator.com) to draw our attention to things.
You remain an awful person. I am happy to go through any form of humanity/identity verification that staff want me to. My posts are written by me and never AI - I strongly oppose genAI.
All those companies are, or used to be, based in the US. Those 22 year olds have only been allowed to drink for a year so by one measure they were recently children.
Workaholic office cultures tend to filter out adults with kids by default so it doesn’t need to be an explicit effort.
> Companies generally want good parental controls
Nope, parental controls are fucked up since ages. And this is by design, and not because of some "b-list developers".
> Companies generally want good parental controls
Yeah, like Microsoft requesting that Firefox shall be (parentally) reviewed, while Edge happilly could connect to internet. Fixed by creating a local account.
It is sinister that this is overlooked by corporations by “accident”. What you are describing exactly what is sinister, that children’s safety controls and parents ability to decrease the risk comes last.
> If more people stopped to think deeper about this they would and should be very disturbed by what this means.
I've seen this first hand and yes, it's not sinister, getting dozens of services coordinated and permissioned under a single, easy to use, system is too much cognitive load for the team that inevitably gets tasked to do these things. Think about Privileged Access Management or Active Directory, but an 8 year old has to get it to work with a stay at home mom's 5 year old android device, and the PM's working on it can't think through second order effects (or even first order effects sometimes). And of course anything that negatively affects metrics will get rolled back (that part might be sinister).
We're not sinister, we just have these metrics that we prioritize at all costs, up to and including child well-being!
Maybe companies could set up comprehensive granular APIs for managing device/store permissions and outsource the parental control software that actually manages the settings. This way a vendor is getting paid to make those settings comprehensible and effective, so they have an incentive to do it well. This would also allow conservative/overly cautious parents to buy different software than more permissive parents. So everyone gets the permission model they want.
Exactly
>>"Here's what I want: an off switch. A single setting that says "this child cannot go online, communicate with strangers, spend money, or download anything without my explicit permission." Instead I get a maze, complex enough that when something goes wrong, I'm at fault for a tooltip I didn't hover over, a blog post I didn't read, a submenu I didn't find. Maybe that's by design. Maybe it's neglect. I don't know. "
When it happens only a few times, it might be neglect. This is absolutely by design.
And think again if you think any large corporation (beyond a few isolated individuals who will not be employed there for long) has any actual concern for your safety, or to get anything right beyond an appearance of safety and plausible deniability for the inevitable harm caused by their dark patterns.
The only winning move is not to play. Don't play and write about how awful it is. Send them the only message that they will hear. Stop giving them your money.
> Send them the only message that they will hear. Stop giving them your money.
Second order effects of this solution are not great either - being outside of the smartphone world means you're... outside. Network effects quickly push you out of social groups without neither you nor the group doing anything mean, it's just group dynamics.
The real issue is the device and services come in a package which cannot be separated or compartmentalized. It's basically impossible to say 'this device cannot access youtube/pornhub/...' because there's a million ways to get around restrictions.
> When it happens only a few times, it might be neglect. This is absolutely by design.
Not sure if I want to call it by design.
It is not a dark pattern, it is just "what is the minimum we can do to sell this without doing the curation work?"
Building 29 separate settings with confusing and overlapping effects is less work than making a single setting of: [Local Only]?
Seems to be a much larger amount of work to design, implement, and support a more-or-less dozen-step customer journey that does NOT work than just implementing a few switches. And that goes even if the switch must be designed-in from the beginning by designing operation for local-only operation.
Surely, implementing a simple block-all-strangers to send-to-bitbucket all communications attempts by accounts not already on the whitelist is easier than all these overlapping settings described?
Unless it is explained how building a much more complex system is easier and lower-cost than a simpler system with fewer controls, the default conclusion is it is intentional.
>>It is not a dark pattern, it is just "what is the minimum we can do to sell this without doing the curation work?"
Even if for the sake of discussion we treat it as laziness, a dark pattern created by accident is still a dark pattern. The customer is no less screwed into doing something they do not want and the company does want.
> Building 29 separate settings with confusing and overlapping effects is less work than making a single setting of: [Local Only]?
The 29 separate confusing overlapping effects is by design. A single "local only" switch would (so long as that switch is enabled) lock out all manner of potential future revenue and recurring rents, which these companies very much want to see hit the balance sheet.
So the 29 separate confusing overlapping settings is designed to frustrate you to the point that you allow what they want from the start, the ability of the device to generate future revenue (via both of one time sales and recurring rents on rental sales).
YES, Thank you!
>>The 29 separate confusing overlapping effects is by design
>>designed to frustrate you to the point that you allow what they want from the start, the ability of the device to generate future revenue
And this explains why they are willing to do all the extra work to do it.
It is not even close to accidental or lazy — there is nothing accidental about the intention or going to the extra cost to build those dark patterns to screw the customers.
At the end of the day if the MTX group says no, it doesn't happen. Sales is always the most powerful group in an organization, sometimes even overriding compliance if they can get away with it.
>> Building 29 separate settings with confusing and overlapping effects is less work than making a single setting of: [Local Only]?
Yes, absolutely. 29 separate overlapping settings likely match up precisely to arguments in various APIs that are used. On the other hand, what does local only even mean? No wifi? No hardwired connection? LAN only? Connection to the internet for system updates but not marketplace? Something else? All with a specified outcome that requires different implementation depending on hardware version and needs to be tweaked everytime dependencies change.
Having a separate setting for unconditionally disabling all wireless communication would be helpful. The other stuff you mention can be separate settings if it is useful to have them. (A setting to unconditionally all disable wired connections is less important since you can just avoid connecting it.)
>>what does local only even mean?
Let's start with this: Design the architecture so the core system works fine locally. Features requiring Internet connection are in separate modules, so they can be easily turned on/off, and designed so they are still primarily local.
E.g., store all current status locally and if requested another module sends it to the cloud, instead of cloud-first.
E.g.2, install updates by making a pull of all resources and then doing the update instead of requiring continuous communication.
Allow user control with options to completely shut off, whitelist, blacklist, etc.
Simple design decisions up front to make a software package meeting the user's local needs first, THEN allowing controlled access to the internet, under the USERS' control, instead of designing every feature to contact your servers first and compromising both usability and control at every step.
I’m not sure why some are struggling to understand this. A single "godmode" checkbox would only be possible if every element, the marketplace, the hardware, and the payment rails, were inside one ecosystem. The Switch is Nintendo, Minecraft is Microsoft, the credit card is Visa, and so on. There are simply too many moving parts, making a single killswitch nearly impossible to orchestrate.
Of course, making one single switch for everything in that complex system is absurd. Which is why this is something no one is talking about here.
We are only talking about the architecture, setup, and options for each particular game.
Because raging online at evil corporations feels better than facing the complexity of the world
That, or an open standard.
Well, this is the company that builds Teams.
One axis is if they even want to make parental controls work, which they may well not want to but rather wish to just check some checkboxes.
But the company that builds Teams and Windows 11: I think it's entirely plausible they can't.
In the absence of consumer protection laws, this kind of abuse is to be expected.
And yet whenever the idea of changing this stuff at a societal level comes up, HN is filled with thought-deleting cries of "parents just need to be more responsible"
Yeah -- alongside cries of "why isn't anyone having children anymore?"
Usually when those discussions come up, there are plenty of people recognizing both that 1) parents do need to be more responsible, but also that 2) we need sane parental control systems. What we don't need is more bandaids that make it appear as if something is being done.
Parents are already plenty responsible. Societal expectation on parents are sky high and ever increasing. Meanwhile, the same people refuse to accept anything that would make parental responsibility easier.
A supporting citation:
> In 1965, mothers spent a daily average of 54 minutes on child care activities, while moms in 2012 averaged almost twice that at 104 minutes per day. Fathers’ time with children nearly quadrupled – 1965 dads spent a daily average of just 16 minutes with their kids, while today’s fathers spend about 59 minutes a day caring for them.
https://news.uci.edu/2016/09/28/todays-parents-spend-more-ti...
1-2 hours a day? That does seem sky-high...
It is double of what they spent in 1965 for moms. It is actually quite a huge chunk of a day, enough to make parents isolated and overworked.
And yes, expectations on parents are sky high compared to before. From small stuff to large stuff.
The thing is that parents need to raise functioning adults.
Now in modern society that means that children NEED access to computers and the internet.
From HN you just get the usual "raise your child as Amish" bullshit. Not very useful.
> Usually when those discussions come up, there are plenty of people recognizing both that 1) parents do need to be more responsible, but also that 2) we need sane parental control systems.
Dunno. My generation grew up to be generally fine people, without parental control software crap (and the poor sods who had parents insisting on it only became better hackers for it). Back then, there was things such as rottencom, 4chan or its various predecessors... there were countless instructions on how to make explosives or whatever readily available, hoards of porn (ever been to a LAN party and came home with less porn on your HDD than before?). And yes there were also alll the creeps.
The only thing that wasn't anywhere near as prevalent as today is all the gambling/mtx crap and AI slop. Hell even brainrot was a thing, half of the chan boards consisted of utterly weird memes that make "skibidi toilet" blush in comparison.
>My generation grew up to be generally fine people,
[Look at current voters in the US]
Ya sure about that?
Yes. Even Harris, as unpopular as it gets with the youth (the whole being a cop thing), still got 13% more than Trump did [1].
If there is one group of voters to blame for the current situation in the US, it is Boomers and older. This age bucket not only skews heavily towards Trump, but also hoards by far the most wealth [2].
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patte...
[2] https://www.empower.com/the-currency/life/average-net-worth-...
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I should guess it is about liability more than anything else. They want to advertise and sell to children, but they don't want to be taken to court about it. Makes a tonne of sense from a profit perspective, especially as people under ~25 years of age are more susceptible to impulsivity and addiction due to the developing prefrontal cortex. From a sales perspective, the younger the better (as any parent can confirm).
I have been using (and contributing to) on an open source project called Zaparoo[1] that lets my kids (5-8) play retro games, watch videos, and listen to music using NFC cards. The whole thing runs on a Raspberry Pi running Batocera[2]. I program the cards using the mobile app and my kids like cutting and pasting the cover art on the cards.
All the media is local to my house- I am the librarian who curates the selection of media based on my kids interests, maturity, and my comfort. It feels like the only way forward.
That said I feel YouTube Kids does a pretty good job IF you change to curate only mode: https://abparenting.substack.com/p/effective-youtube-kids
[1]: https://zaparoo.org [2]: https://batocera.org
I’ve set up a gaming raspberry pi for mine too. I suspect it only works for little kids. Someday they’ll realise that supertux isn’t cool
This pervasive desire to block, protect, monitor, and control your children's online activities through nebulous supervision tools seems like a particularly American solution to a particularly American problem. Much like how little Timmy simply can't go out to play without a GPS anklet and an air tag behind each ear, so too can't he go online without a supervised account on a supervised device on a supervised connection.
Take an earnest interest in your child's activities, both online and offline. Guide them how to behave in strange, even weird and scary situations with strangers. Be the reliable adult in their life to whom they can tell when they encounter something unpleasant, online or offline. Under the guidance of a parent your children will be safer than behind any amount of protective layers that these so called child-safety apps provide, and they will also know how to help their friends to navigate risk and avoid danger.
Or put another way, if your child must eventually swim in the sea, would rather that they know how to swim, or strap a fifth flotation device onto their back?
Because I want a device for my kids to play games.
Not communicate.
Not buy stuff.
Just play (local) games.
Stuff like online communications will come at a later age. Absolutely no reason to start explaining that to a 5 year old.
And absolutely no reason to have all 3 bundled in one.
> Take an earnest interest in your child's activities, both online and offline. Guide them how to behave in strange, even weird and scary situations with strangers. Be the reliable adult in their life to whom they can tell when they encounter something unpleasant, online or offline. Under the guidance of a parent your children will be safer than behind any amount of protective layers that these so called child-safety apps provide, and they will also know how to help their friends to navigate risk and avoid danger.
Everything you just said is true for gun ownership as well!
Gun ownership isn't a terrible example honestly. I would have been probably 8 or so when I was allowed to traipse around in the woods near my dad's house with a BB gun, following extensive safety teaching of course. We would go out in the yard and shoot a shotgun and a rifle around that same age. People are probably not careful enough with guns right now in America given the stats, but it's not at all unreasonable in a rural context for a relatively young kid to be trusted with use of a firearm, even for short unsupervised periods. The real thing that a parent has to do (beyond still waiting until an appropriate age) is to extensively drill in the safety habits and proper use and know their kid well enough to determine whether they're ready for that responsibility.
Maybe the analogy here is you can buy only one kind of gun. That gun can load any ammunition. It’s easy for children to get their hands on anything from bb’s to BMG50. The gun has parental controls to allow selecting which ammunition the gun will accept. It’s up to the parents to decipher the difference between all the types, and the out-of-box default is all types are allowed.
Some commenters admonish parents for trying to use these parental controls at all. “Just be good parents and instruct your 6 year old not to use hollow point, 7.62mm, or fmj”
I think a car analogy would work better. I live in a civilised country and nether I nor my kids have access to guns ..
For example Nintendo:
The kids have access to the family car. It will allow anyone to drive it when they select a destination by speaking while sitting in the car. The car is unlocked by default.
No way exists to limit destinations to their friends or relatives. "Drugs" takes the kids to the nearest drug dealer. "Alcohol" drives the kid to the nearest store and allows the kid to buy alcohol without any ID check.
Sure, but do you understand that it's perfectly reasonable to be able to buy a toy gun and not have to explain gun safety to them?
Or would you recommend that all toy guns have the ability to be dangerous and all parents should train them because of the prevalence of guns in society?
A few thoughts:
- Perhaps we have different ideas of the appropriate age to wean kids off of toys and teach them to use real (and sometimes dangerous) things. Today's discussion is about guns, but the same could be said for boats, motorcycles, woodworking equipment, etc. I would like my children to be well rounded and well equipped when they become adults. However, I acknowledge that this may not be normal anymore: Many families seem to be content with their teenagers playing games all day long (ironically, games with guns!)
- It sounds like you have the gun in a "toy" category. For my kids, guns are absolutely not in the toy category. They are tools, used for hunting and protection, and access to these tools comes with guard rails and significant responsibility. I would rather my kids never get used to guns as toys.
- This is bigger than just personal decisions: In my state, teenagers used to be allowed to work on construction sites in the summers. By the time they graduated, many of these guys had real skills they could support their family with. In our rush to protect kids, this kind of work is no longer taught in classes or available as summer work for young people. We have made it increasingly hard for young people to "grow up"!
> For my kids, guns are absolutely not in the toy category. They are tools, used for hunting and protection, and access to these tools comes with guard rails and significant responsibility.
The same is true for cars. Are you also against toy cars?
> By the time they graduated, many of these guys had real skills they could support their family with. In our rush to protect kids, this kind of work is no longer taught in classes or available as summer work for young people. We have made it increasingly hard for young people to "grow up"!
This is a totally different issue from access to games. Why couple the two? Are you implying one cannot be taught those skills if they have access to games?
> Are you implying one cannot be taught those skills if they have access to games?
Nah, I think games can be very valuable, especially communal, in-person games. I don't mind access to games at all... I think I look at the various forces around children and teens today, and it feels like we've taken away a lot of the things that were very valuable for development because they might be dangerous, and replaced them with replicas that are safe but lack some of the value and experience that came with the dangerous thing.
As an example, hunting games are safer than hunting, but hunting games do not teach you to be patient and still for hours, they do not teach gun safety, they do not teach you to stick it out when things get cold and uncomfortable. They do not teach you how to do something useful with the animal after you shot it, and there is no real cost to being sloppy and injuring but not killing an animal that is now suffering in the woods.
I'm sure you've heard people talk about the "infantilization" of young adults. What factors do you see behind this? How would you suggest we teach young people how to do hard things?
> I'm sure you've heard people talk about the "infantilization" of young adults. What factors do you see behind this? How would you suggest we teach young people how to do hard things?
I've heard of it but haven't seen any kind of consensus on it - or even whether it exists.
If it does, though, games hardly seem relevant. People were addicted to TV long before they had access to video games.
Unsupervised access to most dangerous tools can wait until they're teenagers. Dangerous tools shouldn't be the only option.
How big are your feet? Because the shoe horn you just used to squeeze your barely veiled disdain for parentting "choices" that aren't like yours into this thread about user-adversarial parental settings by major game system manufacturers was massive.
This thread was a follow-up to squibonpig's comment about the parental responsibility and the value of giving young people access to things that are dangerous when it's done with proper guidance. I agree with him, with the caveat that "the internet" is dangerous more like a city at night than a gun.
90's Consoles are available on eBay or most video games shops :)
Turns out what was fun for you at age 5 will be fun for your kids at age 5. Just the same as The Cat In The Hat is still a beloved book.
I personally have found this to be the absolute winner of a solution.
On a certain level, it’s also a question of different parenting philosophy.
> Stuff like online communications will come at a later age. Absolutely no reason to start explaining that to a 5 year old.
I agree, but I also see absolutely no reason why 5 years old children would have access to a gaming device. Pretty much any other activity I can imagine is better for them.
We got an Atari computer when I was 5. I was allowed to play Pac-Man and Donkey Kong for as long as I wanted. Turns out, those games were not designed by the same people who make slot machines, and they got frustrating pretty quickly and I chose to go do other things. This scenario not even being an option today is what most people are complaining about here.
> I agree, but I also see absolutely no reason why 5 years old children would have access to a gaming device. Pretty much any other activity I can imagine is better for them.
I suggest expanding your imagination skills. There are definitely worse activities, like watching TV.
And there's physical limit to how much physical activity one can be doing. There's definitely a point of diminishing returns there.
And the skills one can develop with carefully curated games are hard to reproduce in any entertaining manner.
I mean, sure, I could have him do math but it's a lot more boring.
Playing games is definitely an "and", not an "exclusive or" proposition.
I was given access to computer games at that age and I'm definitely appreciative for it. I only realized the value when I was well into my 30s.
> And there's physical limit to how much physical activity one can be doing
Do you hang out with many 5 year olds? They're made of energy.
> I could have him do math but it's a lot more boring
I did Math all the time with my 5 year old and he loved it, but then I also love math, and it's easy to make fun.
> I did Math all the time with my 5 year old and he loved it, but then I also love math, and it's easy to make fun.
I have 4 kids; two of them also found math fun at age 5, the other two did not. I do not believe my ability to make math fun differed significantly between the attempts.
Fair points, but understand that this is a multidimensional issue, with each dimension being a continuum.
I know plenty of people using the exact same arguments to argue that kids should not waste time with Lego. There are better physical activities.
people are definitely crazy.
It's no crazier than saying the same things for video games. :-)
The could play physical games such as board games or card games or...
Computer games aren't really needed for anything special at 5 years old.
Digital skills can be developed much later and they can be developed really fast, plus if the parents are very computer literate, their kids will be waaay ahead of the average kid in the world, so this isn't a real concern.
Honest question: are you a parent?
My daughter, when she was 6 or 7, was terrified by certain things she accidentally found on YouTube, and asked me to have them filtered out. At 13, she already didn't need that, of course, but the notion of "kids" includes "small kids", who definitely should not be exposed to everything the Internet has to offer, or let to go out unsupervised.
I'm a parent of a 12 and a 6 year old and agree with what was written completely. "I do not feel in control" is to me a strange thing to say. Running after kids trying to save them is a losing battle. Instead they need to be equipped to make decisions on their own. If they are not ready for something, they should not use it. I cannot prepare them to drive a car, so I will certainly not buy them a Tesla self driving car and then complain it's inadequate.
Honest question (from a parent): why was your six year old using YouTube unrestricted and unsupervised?
Mostly because restriction was hard to implement before YouTube Kids was introduced, and I could not revise and download every cat video, or similar. There are limits to supervision.
You shouldn't constantly be hovering over your kids. Still, you don't want them to get in serious trouble. As a parent, you can curate the options they have without knowing exactly what they are doing. You can fill bookshelves with appropriate books, and if you see them reading on the couch, you don't need to know exactly what they're reading. Some people also are able to control where they live, what schools their kids go to, what friends you invite over to your house, etc.
One day your kid might have the friend over that you suspect might be trouble. You check in a little more often. Online is harder. You see them with the device, and without controls, what's going on could be almost anything.
Some kids only need the honor system, but others, especially younger ones, need hard restrictions. If the parent is reasonable and the kid grows up smart, they’ll be thankful later, which is why kids also get restricted offline.
Rough analogies:
- Not letting kids buy unlimited candy ~ not giving them unlimited screen time
- Preventing your kid from interacting with “bad” kids or going into unsafe neighborhoods ~ blocking “bad” websites
- Not letting your kid watch adult shows or go to adult places ~ automatically hiding NSWF content
On the last point: if you’re not careful and your kid is unlucky, they may find shocking and traumatizing content accidentally. This is true in real life but the internet moreso (vs safe neighborhoods), even today. e.g. I regularly hear reports about Instagram recommending gore seemingly out of nowhere, such as https://www.cbsnews.com/news/instagram-violence/ (Instagram seems particularly notorious for some reason).
Why on earth would you let your kid use instagram??
You know where my child learned how to swim? A small pool, progressing from a hands-on adult to an arms-reach adult to lifeguards nearby. They may eventually swim in the sea, but they will have countless hours practice by then - most of them in a pool where they can stand up if they use their tiptoes.
I didn’t start by giving my kindergartener a lecture about the dangers of riptides and then let them navigate the risk of the ocean themselves as they learn to keep their head above water.
Granular parental controls are a way to create that kind of progression, allowing them gradually increasing autonomy within a managed environment.
While this is a sound theoritical advice, the real world has changed a lot. Parents and elder siblings are not the only people kids interact with. For every parent mindful of dangers of unsupervised internet access, there are many parents who give unrestricted access to tiktok (and rest of the internet) because everyone other person does that, and then kids share.
Businesses don't care for the careful minority when they know such advices will be shared, silencing those who really care.
Even the feature name "parental control" is chosen to induce guilt in parents.
Because the situation is not symmetrical. The corporations and strangers have direct access to the child’s online presence and are constantly monitoring and hovering over them. If the corporations don’t want to lose that constant access then the parents react by being vigilant on their end. It _is_ the social contract set by the corporations.
Meanwhile in the EU: growing effort to simply outright ban social media for under-16s.
It's really not unique. America might be high on the list and a bit weird about it, but it is most definitely not alone.
> to a particularly American problem
The Internet and mobile phones are not a particularly American problem. They’re literally everywhere.
Young kids exposed to overly attracting games cannot limit these activities by themselves. This has nothing to do with a lack of explanation, but rather with how the brains of young kids function. Thus, accessible parental controls with a simple mechanism that limits the access to games, blocks ads, disables marketplace access and sets a maximum gaming time per day are a much-needed tool that parents should have in their hands.
Young kids are usually also too young to get a phone or buy games themselves, so it's mostly the parents who let them play on their devices. By this I mean parents who hand their 3 year old a phone with YouTube at the dinner table.
It's also parents who get them their first phone and choose what kind of a phone to get them (it's not all that unusual to see kids with dumbphones anymore).
Of course there should be a way to limit things like transactions and screen time but it doesn't have to be this whole surveillance tech with GPS tracking, granular permissions, and revealing what the kid texted his friends on a given day.
>My generation grew up to be generally fine people,
Correct, because the devices are powerful and cheap.
The devices that tend to be made for kids directly are normally extremely underpowered and expensive for their capabilities and anything you want to add to it is expensive. Most people have an extra phone that still works
Particularly American? What does that mean? That parents in other countries are better than us? That they have more time, more know how, more wisdom? Sorry but that's stupid and insulting, which I suspect was your intent.
Not necessarily better, just less controlling. E.g. in Germany there exists an imperative to give children freedom despite dangers. Parents don't expect from themselves to be able to shield their chidren from all possible dangers either. Not sure if it's better, but it's a different parenting culture for sure.
It mostly extends to interactions in the physical world though - restricting children's use of digital devices is socially acceptable and expected
In Germany, the state intentionally put children in the custody of pedophiles: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/07/26/the-german-exp...
I have absolutely no faith in German intuitions regarding what is appropriate or inappropriate about the care of children. Ask me again in a century and I will reevaluate my opinion.
America is a huge place. You can't sample some professional city full of helicopter parents.
More nights than not, I have random neighborhood kids playing in my yard and eating dinner with us. Their parents don't seem to care, and neither do I. But I don't live in SF or NY, either. I don't mean to insinuate those cities are worse, I don't know, but cannot figure out where else that trope would come from.
Europeans have trouble understanding in part because social trust is still high in many parts of Europe due to regional monoculturalism.
"Horrific betrayal..."
Online grooming happens on a gigantic scale in Europe. It just doesn't get the headlines it should. And parents don't care to protect their children. They're busy.
> parents don't care to protect their children. They're busy.
That is horrifying. Dictatorial takeovers feed on vulnerable and naive kids. Mao's Red Guard, Hitler Youth, the Bolsheviks, the Komsomol ... the spread of communism and other evil forms of government has always been fueled in large part by youth organizations and organizing efforts.
Relevant paper: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1950882
[flagged]
White covers a large varity of different cultures. Even something smaller like German covers many different cultures.
Why did you edit out the part about being "as racist as they come?"
Come now, stand behind your principles.
>Come now, stand behind your principles.
Are we 100% sure that the edit wasn't a result of a reevaluation of "principles"?
I realised that I didn't need my racism credentials to argue that white people have no shortage of paedophiles.
Fun fact: in spite of only comprising about 60% of the US population, whites account for over 80% of federal child pornography offenders.
Do you reject bicycle helmets and other safety apparatus because you take an interest in your child’s activities? They’re gonna have to learn to ride without falling off eventually anyway
I made the mistake of giving my child access to Roblox when he was 7, assuming that they did some sort of moderation. Luckily, the worst thing he found was a game that told him he was going to die that night. It scared the hell out of him. After doing a bit more research on Roblox, I decided to ban it from the household. I'm happy that I did, considering it seems that it's just a cesspool of predators.
It's fine and well to say the solution is to just be around more or take an interest in what they're doing, but that is hard to do with full time jobs, multiple kids, etc. Parental controls are supposed to exist to let the parents let their kids explore in a safe space. It's not about constant supervision or tracking, its more akin to hiring a babysitter rather than leave your children home alone.
Don't let people guilt trip you. It's not your job to patrol the streets for pedos. We as a society have created the police and a justice system for that.
It takes a village to raise a child. And it's about damn time that Silicon Valley takes some responsibility for this creature that they have created.
Yes, people should be good parents.
But still, there's going to be many who are not. I would rather good parental controls existed to make it easier for people to be better parents. Yes, maybe parental controls don't make the difference from bad to good, but they do make a positive difference for many.
This is good advice.
However, it doesn't work for families where both parents have to work 2-3 jobs just to keep food on the table and the heat on all winter.
And no; poor families neither do nor should "just keep the kids from getting cellphones" or something (not that you would necessarily make that argument, but I've seen its like too many times on HN...).
Poor parents can certainly still "take an earnest interest", but they're much less likely to be able to be there...and, frankly, due to the stresses and pressures of Living While Poor, they're less likely to have the emotional bandwidth to communicate clearly and productively about these things, too.
Now, what is the answer? ...hell if I know. Being poor sucks, and there aren't always good ways around that.
I really want to sympathise with the author but this feels more like a one-sided rant piece than a constructive article.
For example, in one paragraph they complain that “I don’t want my son to get online” then literally the following paragraph they complain that they need a Switch Online membership to get their son online. If you want your Nintendo Switch to “behave like a Gameboy” then don’t get the online membership. It’s really that simple. But don’t complain that one is required to do this other thing than you literally just said you didn’t want to do.
I do agree that managing parental controls are painful. But the author clearly wrote their blog in a moment of rage and as a result of that, any useful messaging that could have been shared was lost.
I agree. As a parent it feels hard to sympathize with someone who outsourced their child’s app usage selection to another company and didn’t even bother to check what apps were allowed first. I visited the Gabb site they linked to and “Communication with strangers” is clearly listed as one of the tags they put on apps allowed on the phone. You’re supposed to review them as a parent, not just assume that 100% of the nearly 1000 apps they allow are exactly to your preferences.
I agree. Parents in the 21st century need to realize the call is coming from inside the house: it's their obligation to protect their child. Unsupervised usage without full due-diligence will lead to incidents like what the blog author describes.
The dilemma of online protection is a false crisis because parents would rather let their children play with fire than nurture their babies.
No, we've always had effective societal gatekeeping on what kids can access.
Cigarettes, liquor, porn, R-rated movies, all had general barriers to access for kids in the pre-internet world. Parents could rely on most store clerks not selling alcohol, tobacco, or adult magazines to a child. Parents did not have to hover over everything their child did. Was it perfect, of course not, but it worked fairly well and didn't require constant monitoring. You could let your kids go to the mall and be fairly sure that they would not be let in to an R-rated movie. They could ride their bikes to a convenience store and the worst thing they could buy was candy.
With online accounts and apps, everything needs review and permission. Every. Single. Thing. That is the main complaint in TFA. He wants a single device level setting so that he doesn't have to constantly vet everything.
This is precisely why many parents support age verification laws for social media and adult sites. Tech companies could have solved this on their terms but they just punted it to "parents" with an insane level of complexity, and the parents don't like it.
> Parents did not have to hover over everything their child did. Was it perfect, of course not, but it worked fairly well and didn't require constant monitoring.
Except kids from families without respectable parents would always be the ones to find access to alcohol, cigarettes, and porn. There were always a few kids in every class that had an older brother, uncle, or friend who would give them access to stuff they shouldn’t have.
It really wasn’t that different in the 80s in terms of parental responsibility.
> You could let your kids go to the mall and be fairly sure that they would not be let in to an R-rated movie. They could ride their bikes to a convenience store and the worst thing they could buy was candy.
That’s still true now.
Sure the old social there was the kid with porn mags and cigs in his treehouse, but you were never at his house 24/7 and that limited exposure almost inoculated against long term addictions and you experienced it with peer input. Parents would eventually isolate you from those bad elements due to neighbors gossiping and the like.
The new social is your neighbors don’t even know you have kids much less who they are talking too because they are on their phones and kids don’t have peer interactions because you don’t let them outdoors fearing people will report you are exposing them to a dangerous world.
Tech should absolutely have filled that void with a simple age appropriate pediatrician approved on/off with advanced controls available for those that want to tighten or loosen the reins.
I do not have kids, but would envision something like under 5 have no advertising and no network connection without a manual unlock, under 9 should only have access to content with heavy moderation and manual review of advertisements with only approved social contacts and parental alerts for potentially problem content, under 12 restrict unapproved contacts within local school district with problem content blocked with a manual unlock for a set duration, and for under 18 just do an machine learning scan on content and the kid can choose themselves if they want to reveal it with on device warnings about adult content, bullying, scams, and grooming with suggestions to discuss with parents.
> Parents would eventually isolate you from those bad elements due to neighbors gossiping and the like.
That’s my point. Some Parents now expect technology to do their parenting for them in ways they were expecting to do themselves previously.
> I do not have kids,
I do have kids. So my opinions are based on what I’ve personally seen work with my kinds and my peers.
Parental controls shouldn’t be seen as a way to absolve the parents of their responsibility to monitor what their kids consume.
Yeah there will be occasions when things slip through, but that’s always been a risk even before smartphones and the web. What matters is you’re there, as a parent, to ensure leaks are not tidal waves, and to ensure children develop responsible use of technology.
This has always been something parents have had to manage. Both in the 80s and equally so now. Blaming technology is just another way of saying “I’m too lazy to keep tabs on my children”
> No, we've always had effective societal gatekeeping on what kids can access.
Isn't there still a very simple one, hardware access. If the child doesn't have a smart phone of their own or computer in their bedroom then they cannot use them to get online unsupervised. This is about as simple on/off as you can get and very easy to moderate.
In my analogy that would be like forbidding your child from having a bike because they might go somewhere that would sell them beer, rather than simply a general, mostly-reliable prohibition on selling beer to kids.
Or, if you do let them have a bike, it requires you to follow them around everywhere to be sure they don't go to a liquor store.
It's a completely over the top level of control. Yes it would work but also do as much harm as good.
The bike analogy depends a lot on where you live. There are places where you would not let your kids ride anywhere they wanted without supervision and there are places where the opposite is true. The internet is one "place" and you'd need to adapt your bike analogy to that place.
Until the school assigns online homework, homework that takes 3 hours a night
I didn't say no computer/internet access. They could do their homework on a computer in a common room.
and then they reset the settings regularly and you have to redo it.
It's the parents obligation to educate their child.
It's the child's obligation to use that education wisely.
There were no trackers on cars when I started driving at 15 so my parents drove with me for a few months and after that I was on my own. There were no gun laws against kids having guns when I was 7 so my dad showed me how to use one safely and after that I was set loose upon the countryside armed on my own. There were no ridiculous negligent standards/laws on the book when I was young about it being wrong for a kid to spend all day going up/down a creek so my dad showed me what all the venomous snakes looked like and how to use a compass and after that I was on my own.
I find disagreement with this new standard on parents. No, it's not the parents obligation to keep their child from ever making a horrible mistake. It's their obligation to educate them well and then set them loose with very few safeguards so they can actually slowly learn to be an adult. I am very much for showing kids how to use the internet responsibly, but I'm not of the opinion that parental controls are particularly desirable beyond an initial learning period.
Well written, and I agree with you on everything you wrote.
That said, "the internet" is a large place, and I think parents would find more clarity thinking of it the way they think of a physical place. In my mind, letting my son loose on the internet is not like letting him run around the woods unsupervised (which he does). It is more like dropping him off in a large city every night.
As you said, guidance is imperative, and in the real world we would not give only verbal guidance. We would, if we lived in the city, walk our kid to the library, the museum, the coffee shop, the park. We would talk about what parts of town to avoid. We would talk about what "free" means and about not trusting strangers and not just going into any door.
That last part is tricky. On the internet, every link is a door into a neighborhood, and there are a lot of neighborhoods even adults are not well prepared for.
I would add that it's society's responsibility to handle a child's transgressions with grace and humility, and to try to remember what it means to be "tried as an adult." Forgiveness isn't easy.
There is a survivor bias here. It ignores cases where parents or kids failed to be 100% wise. When we are talking about a whole population, we are gonna have unwise or unluck cases when we "set kids loose".
Which may be fine, I don't know whether the tightened control of both parenting and kids nowadays is better. But we have to recognise the cost that comes with doing something like that. There is less risk-taking right now, and bad consequences seem to be taken harder, in a way human life is valued more, which imo part of the reason of the shift. The mentality "let kids make their own mistakes" can be fine, but that comes with accepting the possibilities of negative consequences these mistakes may cause, and I feel that the main issue is that we frown upon these consequences as society much more.
Ah yeah, it's the parent's responsibility, the child's and probably the pet's as well, the only one who has no responsibility is the tech industry.
> It's the child's obligation to use that education wisely.
I disagree because children, despite how precocious and "old-soul"ed, are not wise compared to online predators.
I appreciate your POV on allowing children to make their own mistakes; life is the best teacher. Yet, to make an analogy, a gun owner keeps their collection locked up not just for their protection but for their family's protection. Some lessons in life have steep prices and are one-way doors, and we should pass that hard-earned wisdom to the next generation without those costs.
Children are not wise compared to online predators, but they will notice when things are getting fishy. Maybe that's after they've made their first few silly mistakes (maybe they've given the predator their home address, several photographs, all their friends' contact details, and the one password they use for everything), but they will notice before anything seriously bad happens. But just because they'll notice, that doesn't mean they'll take an appropriate action; and it doesn't mean they won't be convinced that actually, it's fine. The child needs to know that they can come to you for advice, and that there will be no repercussions if the situation is benign, even if they've broken the rules: the concrete threat of (even mild) parental punishment for rule-breaking will be more salient than a mild situational suspicion.
"These are the rules, you are to follow the rules, breaking them would be foolish and breaking them in secret would be even more foolish, but they are always up for discussion, and if you do break them you can still come to me for advice without getting in trouble, and I'd much rather you tell me than that I find out on my own" is a principle that can be imparted to a child. You do actually have to tell it to them, though, in several different ways over a period of time, and you have to be consistent about it. Children aren't wise, but they are clever, they can spot patterns, and they'll tend to believe your actions over your words if the two conflict.
You do not want to set up a situation where a predator can blackmail a child using the threat of your punishment. Parent, yes, but parent consistently enough and well enough that such threats are an obvious bluff that the child knows to ignore (and report to you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46465829), and going online can be as safe for your child as playing in the local neighbourhood.
The rules for young children safely using the internet unsupervised would be extremely absurd for an adult: they include things like "do not use any search engines (ask me if you want a new website)" and "do not create accounts on services (without permission)". Young children must also be kept away from content aggregators, or anything with an automatic recommendation system (e.g. Pinterest, YouTube, modern news sites, Reddit, HN). But hyperlinks on proper webpages are perfectly safe: a child isn't going to end up anywhere they shouldn't by clicking on hyperlinks if they check the URLs first and avoid the places they aren't allowed, just like a child isn't going to end up anywhere they shouldn't, wandering the high street, if they know to avoid roads and building sites. You don't need to tell a 6-year-old "stay away from porn sites", just like you don't need to tell them "don't go in that sex shop", because (a) they won't find it; and (b) even if they do, there are more general rules ("never tell a computer system that you're over 13 if you're not, and ideally not even if you are") that'll prevent any harm from occurring.
And just as you'd have conversations with a child about "where have you been?", and have them show you their favourite spots occasionally, you should also do so with unsupervised internet activity. Unsupervised does not mean ignored, after all.
Laws disagree. Parents are at least in some cases legally and financially responsible for their children doings. Parental controls are necessary for children who don't want to or cannot control themselves regardless of the level of education they receive.
Thank you. I couldn’t have said it better.
You were loose with a gun at age 7?!
Some kids grow up in families who hunt. It’s not super common but also isn’t unheard of.
One of my uncles was asked to stop bringing his rifle to highschool because him and one of the teachers kept talking about hunting in the parking lot and getting to class late. The principle felt they were likely to at least make it in the building on time if they weren't chatting in the parking lot about their rifles/hunts/etc.
People used to have an insane amount of freedom and things generally went better.
I was in Cub Scouts in the early 90s and got a Swiss Army knife. I thought it would be cool to show it off to the kids on the bus. It got confiscated by the principal and I was suspended for one day. I think I got off light. I can’t imagine what would happen these days.
Absolutely, I would also walk down the public roads also to get from one field to another, nobody said anything. It was quite normal in the rural Midwest. You'll probably find lots of true stories online as well about kids arriving to school and checking their rifle with the principal at the beginning of class and then getting them back at the end of the day.
Check the gun with the principal?! No, you leave it on the gun rack in the back of the pickup, and lock the truck door like normal people at my high school. :-)
(Also rural Midwest, and a long time ago).
We did that stuff too in rural Washington. The vast vast majority of people don't mess with anyone, let alone children.
Dang, seems like a completely different world than the one I live in. Honestly I would prefer it if we were able to teach our kids personal responsibility to this level, I actually believe people can be that mature by age 7 and you know whether a kid is a rule breaker or not by that point.
> It's the parents obligation to educate their child.
> It's the child's obligation to use that education wisely.
In the real world, it’s the parents obligation to make an effort to protect their children. In extreme cases, parents can be found negligent if they don’t demonstrate that they’re taking reasonable steps to protect children and something bad happens as a result.
This doesn’t mean that extreme, draconian parenting is mandatory. It does, however, mean that some level of parental control is necessary on an age-adjusted basis. It’s not enough to say “I told them not to do that” and then wash your hands of the consequences when we’re talking about a pre-teen like in this article.
There is important truth in your post, yet you seem to miss the really important pieces that make this hard.
> It's the parents obligation to educate their child.
> It's the child's obligation to use that education wisely.
Two obvious things complicate this:
- You weren't taught how to use a real gun at 6 months old, right?
- Would it not follow from what you said above that if you had accidentally shot and killed yourself at age 7, then it would be your own fault and nobody else's? That seems (to me, at least) like an absurd conclusion.
I think about it like this: as a parent, my jobs include identifying when my child is capable of learning about something new, providing the guidance they need to learn it (which is probably not all up front, but involves some supervision, since it's usually an iterative process), allowing them to make mistakes, accepting some acceptable risks of injury, and preventing catastrophe. I'll use cooking as an example. My kids got a "toddler knife" very young (basically a wooden wedge that's not very sharp). We showed them how to cut up avocados (already split) and other soft things. As they get older, we give them sharper knives and trickier tasks. We watch to see if they're understanding what we've told them. We give more guidance as needed. It's okay if they nick themselves along the way. But we haven't given them a sharpened chef's knife yet! And if they'd taken that toddler knife and repeatedly tried to jam it into their sibling's eye despite "educating" them several times, while I wouldn't regret having made the choice to see if they were ready, I would certainly conclude that they weren't yet ready. That's on me, not them.
You allude to this when you say:
> I am very much for showing kids how to use the internet responsibly, but I'm not of the opinion that parental controls are particularly desirable beyond an initial learning period.
Yes, the goal should be to teach kids how to operate safely, not keep them from all the dangerous things. But I'd say that devices and the internet are more like "the kitchen". There are lots of different risks there and it's going to take many years to become competent (or even safe). Giving them an ordinary device would be like teaching my 2-year-old their first knife skills next to a hot stove in a restaurant kitchen with chefs flying around with sharp knives and hot pots. By contrast, without doing any particular child-proofing, our home kitchen is a much more controlled environment where I can decide which risks they're exposed to when. This allows me to supervise without watching every moment to see if they're about to stab themselves -- which also gives them the autonomy they need to really learn. The OP, like other parents, wants something similar from their device and the internet: to gradually expose elements of these things as the parents are able to usefully guide the children, all while avoiding catastrophe.
My daughter has always used a normal low end Android phone with the default parental controls. She only installs what I whitelist. It's really not that much effort.
Honestly, maybe the Gabb Phone marketing is lulling users into a false sense of security. If you still have to do the same legwork as the default Android experience, what's the point of their devices?
It is, they denied WhatsApp and Discord in their app stores for good reason but allowed GroupMe? That's a choice and not what I would call a good one.
The issue is that the kid wants to play a game with his friends.
So that is "online" in the sense that it uses the internet.. but it isn't the same as a web browser, or an open store of every online app.
I run game servers for my nephew. I know he only adds his friends and I can keep a loose eye on them. I don't care if his friends talk about boobs or make penis jokes (they're 14), I only care that there aren't any predators.
This is a clear and meaningful distinction and it doesn't sound supported.
Yes, this is exactly the distinction I was struggling to articulate.
“Online” has collapsed into a single bucket that includes friends-only play, strangers, stores, chat, downloads, etc. What I want (and what you’re describing with running servers) is a way to scope online access: friends-only communication, no discovery, no stores, no strangers.
The frustrating part is that many platforms either (a) force these things to come as a bundle, so saying “yes” to playing with friends implicitly says “yes” to a much larger surface area; or (b) make the unbundling process so complex that well-meaning parents fail and exhausted parents give up.
jonathaneunice put the incentives behind this more sharply than I did here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46465547
> The issue is that the kid wants to play a game with his friends [...] This is a clear and meaningful distinction and it doesn't sound supported.
Clear how it could restrict to friends-only when connecting directly to another Nintendo Switch user, but a bit murky how it'd make that determination in cases like Minecraft where the client is connecting to a cross-platform user-hosted game server that is not associated with any Nintendo/Microsoft account.
Could work if you have the parents manually whitelist specific server IPs, as they could with router/firewall, though not sure if "could you whitelist 209.216.230.207 please?" would present a meaningful choice in most cases.
Specifically for Minecraft, Realms works for this: I subscribe, I allow my children and friends to access our instance via gamer tag.
Users on the same network can access each others' worlds, at least between XBox and Android, so multi-device in the same building works too.
Console minecraft does not allow connecting to self hosted 3rd party servers
Yes, this parent seems to assume that all parents want the same restrictions. The reason that managing this stuff is complicated is that you actually have to think about what restrictions you want (if any), understand the implications, and then set options to achieve those restrictions. A surprising number of people aren’t willing to do that! They would rather tell companies “parent my children correctly” and then sue as soon as the company’s vision of “safety” doesn’t line up with their own.
In a country where you have parents with wildly different ideas about what constitutes “safety”, I have no idea why anyone thinks it is possible to set a single standard for this.
Part of the point is that you cannot use it without it being online. This is a big difference between the Switch and Switch 2.
In what sense? I have a Switch 2 without NSO and it does not allow online play. It also, in the default configuration, needs to authenticate before even entering the online shop. In that scope, it doesn’t even need to have any parental controls.
I’m assuming the author was thinking Minecraft with the kid’s friends would be Peer2Peer or something. I doubt Switch has the power to host a Minecraft server, but I might be wrong.
See Smash, which is entirely Peer2Peer for the main gameplay, but requires a Switch Online membership to play for… what exactly? Hosting a database of player ratings and using it for matchmaking? There’s probably one server rack on each continent running the entirety of Smash online.
I appreciated it for the tone and rage. I’m not so concerned with the actual technology being discussed here, but rather the overwhelming exhaustion that we are all subjected to in managing our household devices. Not just parental controls, but privacy and ad blocking, or self hosting, etc. it all takes so much work and effort that we rarely have the time for i. Our already exhausting lives. I feel the rant perfectly captured that feeling. It was a worthy post.
Generally I worry about online gaming.
I played a lot of Titanfall back in the day and had a lot of reservations about talking with other people's kids. Nothing really bad happened, and I had a lot of fun, but it was creepy.
I kinda enjoy that the matchmaker rooms in Beat Saber only allow you to emote with large body gestures and not say anything or even make hand gestures. I enjoy acting like a cartoon character to honor and recognize the other players (like choosing the song that I really hate because another player has asked for it five times in a row) and not getting involved in the mean bullshit you get in games like League of Legends. (It's fun to be in a private room with 2 or more players too where you can chat but then you are talking with people you picked which in my case are nice people)
My son and his friend created a new game called "the kick game" inside a certain online game where the real game was to trick the other players into kicking out other players that they didn't like or wanted to bully -- frequently the victims didn't understand the rules of this game at all. On Roblox they would find racist games where you cut down thousands of Zulu, just awful stuff.
Not to say I haven't had a good time with serious League players who communicate on Discord and have a positive team but I think communication features and UGC are often a disaster in games.
Not a child, but I have a Switch myself and I held off for a long time getting a membership. Of course you can do it, but the Switch will put up lots of passive aggressive roadblocks where it will let you know that you could use this additional feature in the game now if you just had a membership.
There are also unreasonable restrictions, like not being able to play user-created maps in Mario Maker unless you have a membership.
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My daughter will not get a phone at all until she's at least 16 and probably finally actually needs one.
As for the Switch and Nintendo Online, I didn't find it confusing or difficult at all to set up a child's account, make sure they can't buy anything without my permission, and then I make sure my daughter knows what she can and can't do, and I keep an eye on it to make sure she follows my rules. I don't trust parental controls to do everything for me.
Now that said, Minecraft on the Switch is one gawd-awful frankenstein amalgamation of permissions and accounts run by Nintendo and Microsoft. I got that working but it's by far the worst experience I've ever dealt with to play a game, even single player.
> My daughter will not get a phone at all until she's at least 16 and probably finally actually needs one.
It’s all fine and dandy, until (i) you find that they’ve actually just saved up their pocket money and gifts for the last year and a half to buy the phone (age 11 in my daughter’s case) and that all the after school and weekend activities are being arranged on phones. Seeing your kids excluded from real-world activities is tough.
In our case, a combination of talking to the kids plus Apple parental controls offered a reasonable approach.
My daughters are younger than that, but A lot of the neighbor girls in who are in that age range got apple watches before phones. Which kind of makes sense, because it allows them to text, but keeps them off of apps and such.
I had a cell phone before my parents. Paid cash for a TracFone when I was 16 or 17 and used that to sell weed. Where there's a will, there's a way.
Heh. When I was in high school, cell phones and pagers were banned based on the assumption that only drug dealers could afford them.
Yep. Even 20 years ago, phones were basically necessary to have a social life in high school. It’s where everything got planned.
My daughter is 14. Still no phone. You can make this work.
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My parents did the no phone until 16 rule, and it was awful. Completely cut me off socially.
The "socially" part is the problem though. A lot of bullying occurs via those social media platforms that teenagers are using.
It's true, and it can definitely be a problem. But I wasn't getting invited to in-person events because I wasn't contactable. Kids don't ring doorbells in 2025, they text people if they want to meet up.
A lot of bullying occurs in any environment teenagers exist en masse.
Right; which is why allowing teenagers to be safe at home instead of exposed to it 24/7 is a smart choice.
Allowing these teenagers who are being bullied to explore spaces where they feel safe and comfortable seems like a good idea too though. As someone who was bullied in school, being online did not make that issue any worse, and allowed me to find friends I couldn't otherwise have.
Yet in the broader sense online bullying targeting other teenagers is a commonly cited problem, including in incidents of teen suicide. "It didn't make it worse for me" doesn't counteract what we provably know is occurring[0][1][2].
Young Teen suicide (10 to 14) has increased from roughly 1 per 100K in the early 2000s to now nearly 3 per 100K in the last five years. Older teen suicide (15-19) has increased from 6 per 100K to 11 per 100K over the same time period[3].
[0] https://www.jmir.org/2018/4/e129/
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12230417/
[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32017089/
[3] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db471.htm
1 and 2 do not seem to suggest that cyberbullying is more harmful in this regard than other forms of bullying - and in fact only 3 seems to contrast these concepts at all.
> Sensitivity analyses suggested that cybervictimization only and both cyber- and face-to-face victimization were associated with a higher risk of suicidal ideation/attempt compared to face-to-face victimization only and no victimization; however, analyses were based on small n. In prospective analyses, cybervictimization was not associated with suicidal ideation/attempt 2 years later after accounting for baseline suicidal ideation/attempt and other confounders. In contrast, face-to-face victimization was associated with suicidal ideation/attempt 2 years later in the fully adjusted model, including cybervictimization.
In fact, reading 3, it looks like the highest prevalence of cyberbullying capped out at a whopping.... 16% of 15 year olds, with a sharp drop down to 7% just 2 years later.
I have to say, there's lots of things to worry about with kids going online. I just don't think bullying in particular is one of them.
As someone who was not popular and got bullied some in school, I think cyberbullying would have been worse since it comes home with you. I was in school when SMS was finally becoming widespread and something of the bullying happened through it, it sucked since I'm at home and getting reminded of shit at school.
I can't imagine today with 24/7 social media apps on the phone.
In my case, as you said it may not have exacerbated it, but for me it certainly perpetuated it.
A retreat into the online world seems like a comfort in difficult times but it is a retreat, and the longer you stay retreated, the less likely it is you'll regain the ground again.
Social media is not the same thing as social communication.
This is going to show how naive I am. Because I am middle aged, do not have a cell phone, and still to this day just show up at people's houses unannounced if I want a social experience.
This still is possible for me, surely it is possible for kids.
> This still is possible for me, surely it is possible for kids.
I think there's a real generational divide here. What is normal in my parents generation (I'm in my early 30s) is not normal in roughly my generation downwards (which coincides both with mobile phone ownership amongst children/teens becoming common, and children/teens becoming much more restricted in how much freedom they had in terms of being allowed outside by themselves).
Even amongst people my age, people would consider weird and probably even rude if I turned up unannounced (a "What are you up to?" text message would probably be the norm). And I think that's more exaggerated amongst younger generations. Perhaps that's different if you live very close to your friends. But a lot of people don't.
That seems like a great strategy if your goal is for your child to be the weird kid that has no friends.
There are pros and cons to that goal.
I feel sorry for your daughter. 16 was very late to get one as far back as the late 90s - I was very glad to get one at 14 as it meant I wasn’t quite such a weirdo outcast.
I didn’t have a cell phone until I was 17, but still used the house phone to call and talk to friends. A house phone a parent can always listen in to conversations but still respect the child’s privacy. The child also knows that they can be listened in on and that their privacy is restricted.
The child may also learn about making social effort to keep in touch rather than relying on a beacon to ping them about social events.
16 is too late. You can’t teach your kids good maturity with communication devices through abstinence. You just have to watch what they do online. Which means reading their WhatsApp et al messages after they’ve gone to bed.
Yes there will be some problems created from them having devices, but parenting isn’t supposed to be easy, it’s supposed to be educational and supportive for the children. Which forced abstinence is not.
> Which means reading their WhatsApp et al messages after they’ve gone to bed.
Do they know you do this? Otherwise this seems like a very effective way to create trust issues in your kids.
Of course they do. You should be open and honest.
For us, it’s a system that’s worked well. So well, in fact, that our kids have felt comfortable coming to us when they see something concerning in a group chat rather than waiting for us to find it. And in return, we’ve learned to trust their judgement a lot more because they’ve demonstrated mature behaviour online.
Are you sure the kids aren't learning to delete the messages?
You have it backwards, it’s not trying to catch my children doing bad things (though there is that benefit too). it’s more about ensuring that other people are not doing, or trying to do, bad things to my children.
I trust my own children but you’re right that I cannot guarantee that they’re not bullying others and deleting those messages. However I’d hope other parents are monitoring their children’s phone usage and would tell either me or the school if my child was causing issues. That’s how a healthy community of parents are supposed to work.
Also your comment has a tone of “kids can find a way to bypass parental oversight so why bother parenting in the first place?” I don’t if that is intentional or not. But it’s an attitude I have seen other parents adopt and, unsurprisingly, their kids are usually the little shits that cause trouble because they know there are zero repercussions.
Yeah I’m pretty sure invading your kids privacy like that is setting you up for worse trouble.
A better way to frame this is supervised vs unsupervised access. And it depends on their age.
At 11 I wouldnt expect them to have unsupervised internet access. At 16 I might, but by the time they’re 16 I wouldn’t need to monitor their online activity so closely because they’ll have several years of trust and experience built up.
If they're 10, tell them that literally anything they type into their device is being stored for parental review. No expectation of privacy.
Obviously, this'll have to change at around 16, but those conversations need to happen anyway.
Then you are a terrible parent and your kids will get their social activities through detention as they can't do homework.
Assuming you go down the path of allowing online anything, seems like, after doing your best with parental controls, the most effective thing is time boxing screen usage. Only so much can happen in, say, 2-3 30 minute sessions throughout the day, and the chances of a kid deciding to blow their precious minutes responding to some random person seems much lower than if bored and checking messages idly. Being nearby during a healthy sample of sessions to have a pulse on what's going on helps too - usually pretty obvious what they are doing.
But I share the frustration of the author with how unreliable the controls are. Apple screen time controls routinely stop working - especially the one that only allows access to a finite list of websites. I need to check the browser history every week or so to confirm it is still working, and do some dance where I turn off controls, reboot, then turn back on every once in a while. The reason this particular control is important to me is that, even starting with something as pure as neil.fun, ads on that site have proven to be a few clicks away from semi-pornographic sites - it's terrible! And yet, turning off all internet access is such a coarse decision that limits access to things that are generally informational / fun / good (like neil.fun, or sports facts sites).
neil.fun is porn ads
neal.fun is what I think you meant to link
Well that’s a bit ironic in regards to the pro-Parental Controls argument. Pornography is just a typo away…
Ha whoops. But yes, the ads on the neal site I meant to link to had the aforementioned problem
Dear All,
As you post, please be clear what age range child you are discussing.
There are a lot of posts here advocating strategies that make sense for a 10 year old but are ridiculous for a 15 year old.
Remember: once the children have friends with unrestricted cell phones (essentially all 14+ year olds in the us), there are many many more options for them to go online.
Also, I got my start as a “hacker” gaming, cheating, and doing less legal stuff … nothing like getting level 99 equipment to incentivize learning how to read/edit a hex dump. Be aware of unintended consequences when you (try to) cut a child off from computer use.
Having been involved with a reasonable number of problems, I’d say in the teen years negotiating and enforcing some kind of no-device sleep schedule is the most critical.
If I had an answer to the rest of the addictive behavior, I wouldn’t be here making this post.
With due respect, this comment conveys a position of privilege and surviver's bias. I, like you, eschewed online rules as a minor and I luckily benefitted from this time in my expertise. I was lucky. I didn't run into predators when using TF2, Runescape, or MySpace, but that doesn't mean the threat wasn't validated on with persons (children at the time) that fell through the cracks.
The story outlined, one of a child prodigy solo-navigating the gritty online world of pre-2000's, is old and tired. An active parent can support a child at all ages safely in these "hacker" moments that are described without giving them un-reined access to tools. A parent should be able to ask "how was your day today?" and get a truthful answer about online activity, just like the same question being asked at the end of the school day. It's out of curiosity and protection, and from a nurtured relationship.
I was one of those kids. I got a 300 baud modem the year after Wargames came out. It was a whole different world.
My wife and I disagreed about letting my son have my old desktop replacement laptop at a young age. Of course I said yes, based on my own experience, but my wife turned out to be right in the end. He got into some pretty dark places and the toxic relationships he developed with other people his age were bad enough and the trouble he got into was real and not hypothetical.
He's turned it around and is getting the support to do well relative to his Gen Z peers, but it took some harrowing experiences to get there.
My wife was right too. My kids ended up being unable to manage their device use at all, they developed seriously bad habits, lied and deceived extensively to gain access to devices, and repeatedly sacrificed relationships and trust for more screen time. There were years there where I thought surely they'd click with it and develop better habits, make better choices (with our guidance), and so on. Abstinence could be worse, right? Some exposure would be helpful and lead to useful conversations and so on.
The Internet, Internet access, and apps have changed since I was a kid. Despite their time on digital devices along with my efforts to teach them, my kids have no idea how computers work or how to use them very effectively. The skills they have developed to gain access to them were largely social engineering and lying. They exclusively waste time and brain cells when they're on screens.
One of my kids essentially can't have access to devices because he'll burn hours into the night playing really, really stupid games and watching porn. This is ALL he wants to do on phones or computers. Sometimes he will window shop.
You might think this is largely due to my failure to have insight into what my kids are doing and limiting access correctly, but that isn't the case. At first we were somewhat lenient and figured if they accessed things they shouldn't, we'd see it and have conversations. That was very early on. The conversations did nothing. I began putting severe restrictions on devices quite quickly because problems became evident quickly. I was a bit naive about it at first, my wife was not. We clashed a bit, but then device theft and social engineering started and I quickly aligned with her. Since then, many years ago, very little access has been on account of us not protecting devices properly. He is extremely good at gaining access when he's not supposed to, and extremely good at hiding it. It's like having an addict in the house.
He has no future in computers. He doesn't care about computers at all. He is incredibly compulsive, self-harming, and freely harms his relationships to get what he wants. This has been going on for about 5 years; he's 16 now, and I'm pretty scared for when he's out on his own and doesn't have anyone to protect him from himself. I think there will be some brutal lessons. Lost jobs, lost relationships, lost confidence and self esteem. I'm not looking forward to it.
I have no idea why I turned sneaking onto computers into a career rather than rotted away like they do. I wanted to learn to program. I was curious. My kids want to play NBA 2k and watch porn. That's about it.
The Internet now mostly consists of short-form garbage and dark patterns.
Also,
> He is incredibly compulsive, self-harming, and freely harms his relationships to get what he wants.
This probably indicates deeper psychological issues that aren't solely related to Internet addiction.
You were born in an era where the internet wasn't as addictive as it is nowadays.
Heroin is addictive. Physical compulsion is addiction. What you are talking about is not addiction. It shares some elements, but no one is breaking into cars so they can scroll Instagram.
They are lying and stealing from their parents to “scroll instagram”
Exactly. And what worries me is that they are essentially greasing the groove for these synapses, growing the neural network around deception and dishonesty. If they get into gambling in 5 years or so and happen to have a partner, they will already be somewhat adapted and practiced in hiding this activity quite effectively rather than seeking and accepting help. It's worrying. It's all foundational to very self-destructive habits from my perspective.
If your kid lies you might not get a truthful answer to that question in person or online.
You are actually expecting a lot from devices that you never had in the real world in the first place in order to mitigate a risk that is very scary but less likely to kill them than drugs and alcohol, swimming, bad driving, biking, getting hit by a car whilst walking, getting shot, or suicide.
People are freaking out over stranger danger not because it is by the numbers prevalent but because they feel like they can control it then find out the controls suck.
What if I started Bikesafe an always online dash cam / coach for your rider where AI would identify unsafe behaviour and coach your kid and virtually eliminate bike deaths. Would you feel more safe?
What if you read again and again that it didn't work because of how many accidents are caused by drivers or momentary mistakes.
Would you feel only as unsafe as before or worse?
First, I'm responding the more (politely) trivial remarks.
> drugs and alcohol, swimming, bad driving, biking, getting hit by a car whilst walking, getting shot, or suicide.
These are false equivalences-- when has a pool try to groom a child over the span of 3 years?
> What if I started Bikesafe an always online dash cam / coach for your rider where AI would identify unsafe behaviour and coach your kid and virtually eliminate bike deaths. Would you feel more safe?
This is wholesale the wrong approach. This is the parent absconding responsibility, which is my driving point of the problem.
Now to the main point:
> You are actually expecting a lot from devices that you never had in the real world in the first place ...
I'm not expecting anything from my devices because machines cannot be held accountable for human choices; a gun cannot be held accountable for being misused. The internet is a powerful tool and users should understand the ramifications of certain actions.
> If your kid lies you might not get a truthful answer to that question in person or online.
That's a parenting moment that one should relish retrospectively. To teach them good morals and values, to remind them that you love them, and that lying about safety processes can be very dangerous.
Arguably this can increase the risk of death by suicide, quite a bit.
In reality, the whole "stranger danger" is way overblown and always has been. Most of the time, sexual predators are going to be either family or friends.
https://rainn.org/facts-statistics-the-scope-of-the-problem/...
93% of victims under 18 know their abuser.
Sure there's 7% thats not, but a significant supermajority is family/friends. 59% were acquaintances, and 34% are family.
Edit: seriously, -1 cause I link to actual facts, rather than shitty emotional outbursts? Family and friends of family have always been the major list of suspects for child sex abuse. They're the ones who have time and access.
But somehow linking to cited facts is -1 central. Sigh.
First, that statistic sources a study from 2000, a time when zero children had smartphones and approximately zero children played online games.
Second, even if the statistic wasn't obsolete, a groomed kid knows their abuser by definition.
I understand what you're trying to get at and suspect you're right, but the comment does not make your case well.
Keep in mind, this study is only physical sexual abuse.
Internet has opened up an entire world of virtual sexual abuse.
> Also, I got my start as a “hacker” gaming, cheating, and doing less legal stuff … nothing like getting level 99 equipment to incentivize learning how to read/edit a hex dump. Be aware of unintended consequences when you (try to) cut a child off from computer use.
Yes, but no. I used to think the same, coming from the same background, and sometimes I still do but back in the day there was a big filter already (not everyone wanted or liked videogames or a PC), and we were not terminally online. Plus, for the average HNer there is a big survivorship bias on these topics because "I went earning 6 figures thanks to my experiences with computers back in the day".
Nowadays almost everyone has access to an Internet connected smartphone, owning it is not a feature in itself anymore and the vast majority are not entertained trying to hack it. So it becomes something just like any other thing relates to children/teenagers: use common sense, adapt to your kids behavior, strengths and weaknesses and don't stick to rigid rules proposed by someone else that doesn't know you, but keep those rules in mind as an inspiration.
> Be aware of unintended consequences when you (try to) cut a child off from computer use.
In the mid 90’s I got my first PC when I was 13 but my parents would not let me online. I ended up finding a way via nefarious means. I bought a 25’ telephone cord from Radio Shack and when my parents weren’t home I would unplug their bedroom phone. I discovered that if I ran the Prodigy installer it would connect to the Internet briefly to download the latest phone numbers in my area. I found that I could alt-tab out of the full screen installer and use the lnternet unfiltered for about 10 minutes or so before they kicked me off. This worked for about a year or so.
I then had to resort to stealing my parent’s credit card and signing up for free trials and cancelling them before the charges incurred. I eventually screwed up big time. I downloaded a “free porn” BBS dialer and it made an international call to South America and ran up the phone bill $300 or so. I lost my computer privileges for a couple of months. I guess the silver lining was when I turned 16, I immediately got a job and my drivers license so I could pay for my own phone line. I kept my grades up to maintain privileges and was a straight arrow since.
Why are you addressing HN like a headmaster addressing schoolchildren?
and I was groomed and raped at age 13 because I had unfettered access to AOL chat rooms
caution is necessary and kids can learn plenty without unrestricted access
I personally would have been better off without internet access, no knowledge of hex dumps would have been worth it. It's a little upsetting that you're using that as an example of why kids should have more permissive access.
You blame unfettered access to AOL chat, I blame your parents for giving you internet access and not teaching you to never share your real name or real address online. Mine taught me that early on. Later, I learned about proxies so I could further hide my approximate IP location from danger.
no I blame the rapist personally, predators exploit any tools they're able to
there was plenty of "you need to get your kids on computers so they can get the jobs of the future" in the 90s that parents fell into, and information about online predation was almost non-existent at the time - I didn't even have to share my home address or name, I was encouraged to meet this person at their church
mind you my guardian at the time didn't even graduate high school
I shouldn't have been given access to tools my parent didn't understand, but corporations still pressure this constantly today
I doubt even a single digit % of parents know what they're doing when giving kids free access to youtube for example... and recently the CEO of roblox called pedophiles an "opportunity"
The main point of childhood is to develop a solid basic humanity with good habits and a good moral compass. That means moral, intellectual, spiritual, and physical development. Good parenting and a good social environment support these. As such, these goods should be prioritized.
We know that children and teenagers are vulnerable to all sorts of filth that the internet makes available very easily, and indeed even inflicts without consent onto users. Porn, for example, was something that was more difficult to encounter before the internet, and when you did encounter it, it was in smaller amounts. Today, you are a URL away from an unlimited sea of it, and the ubiquity of mobile devices means restricting access is difficult. This makes parenting more challenging. And that's a more pernicious even if common problem. Social media and SFV cause all sorts of developmental harm without suffering the same stigmas as pornography or violence, and so its use continue with the full approval of the social environment.
(And age range here is not so important to discuss; pornography consumption and social media/SFV use is bad for everyone, including adults.)
> Be aware of unintended consequences when you (try to) cut a child off from computer use.
A corollary of what I wrote about is that you have to understand what matters. Becoming a "hacker" isn't the priority of childhood, and it's odd to prioritize that. It isn't worth anything if you are left screwed up by consuming bad content. (Nor does most of the most fruitful experimentation require constant and unfettered internet access. Without maturity and discipline, the internet easily becomes an enabler of shallow and superficial engagement. Deeper exploration is often best facilitated by disconnecting.) It's also senseless to appeal to exceptions.
However, I do think that the most important factor isn't parental controls, but the family environment, what parents teach their children, and the social groups your family and your children move around in. If parents are relying on technology as a substitute for their job as parents, then children will easily fall prey to all sorts of trash. But if children have parents who communicate clearly what they should and should not be doing, maintain a healthy and active family life, and model good behavior by example while penalizing bad behavior, then children will generally stick to good behaviors.
I think law has an important role to play. The former should support the latter. And more fundamentally, this requires a certain backtracking from the anything goes/do what feels good ethos of the contemporary moral landscape. Moral confusion is the biggest factor. Law is effectively a determination of general moral principles within certain socially and culturally concrete circumstances. As the old expression goes, lex iniusta non est lex (an unjust law is not a law). The point of the law is to guard the common good (which is what makes a society) and help steer people away from the bad and toward the good. We all need these to live good lives, and we need to finally put to rest the pernicious notion that the law is not about moral guidance and that all it exists for is to secure our "rights" to whatever we want, where the understanding of rights entails a destructive do what thou wilt relativism. True freedom is not the ability to do whatever you damn well please. It is the ability to do what is good, and to be able to do the good, one must be virtuous - a proper formation - that enables you to be good. Vice cripples our ability to be. A legal system and a society that is supportive of virtue and the good is good for its individual members. One that embraces a bullshit "neutrality" is an easy target for predatory exploitation. There is a great deal of money to be made from vice and stupidity. We become morally defenseless in the face of the wolves. Might becomes right, and in a culture of moral relativism, we internalize this tyrannical false principle.
Parent: All I want is an off switch!
HN: No no no let me stop you right there
Why would a 15 year old warrant a mobile phone, much less an unrestricted one?
By high school there is definitely an expectation that everyone has a phone. They will literally miss out on a normal method of communication between friends and classmates.
They miss out on the social group and then fade away from it and just become "that one guy in our class."
The last time I mentioned this several people argued that, "true friends would stick together" or some such. Well, if you already have those friends. But if you're in high school and finding yourself, you probably haven't met all of them yet.
A lot of both communication and organizing of social events happen through the phone. Kids without a phone (or some online method) will just be forgotten. This is just the reality.
Unrestricted access? That depends on the kid. We had them charge in the living room (no overnight use), and their computers were actual desktops in a single office in the house.
We never used filtering or tracking software. The one exception was blocking youtube (through /etc/hosts) for my youngest during covid when it was too big a distraction.
This is just generally true even as an adult. A lot of social events used to start out on text threads in the early 2000's and then moved on to Facebook Calendar by the mid 2000's and then Instagram and I don't even know how it would work now. But if you wanted to be in any particular social group you probably had to deal with the icky features of all of these social media apps just to do that. We needed a public square for our little villages everywhere and instead we got a man screaming at clouds and occasionally handing out invitations.
So much has moved to facebook and it's eternally frustrating. Facebook has its own priorities, and I get the last minute "hey! meet here" things the next day.
You think that missing out on talking to high schoolers is worse than missing out on the harms of smartphones?
We must have very different views of the world. I would never let a child for whom I am responsible have a smartphone. They are not required, despite what you may have been told.
I’m an adult and I’ve been experimenting with leaving mine behind when I go out. It’s more than fine.
I'm sitting here from the perspective of having 2 adult children -- both graduating early, and my youngest who enters high school next year. They all got phones starting with 9th grade (14 at the start of the school year). Generally speaking they charged the phones downstairs.
I literally addressed the problems of missing out for high schoolers. The social event they'll miss on its own may not be a big deal. But the missed opportunities to make and deepen friendships is a big deal.
As an adult, you have your friend/peer group already. You and your friends are far less likely to do things spontaneously and far more likely to be courteous and thoughtful to invite someone along. A high school teen has middle school friends and is probably discovering their peer group. A huge portion of that discovery becomes unavailable without a phone.
Say they just finished up with band and everyone chats online, "hey meet up at the pizza place." Your kid will be left out. That's the firm reality. They won't know about it. It's the opportunity cost of meeting and learning other kids which will be missed, not the riveting conversations themselves.
> They are not required, despite what you may have been told.
Required? no. Central to the social fabric that binds them, unfortunately yes.
I'm fairly confident in my methods as I'm 2 for 2 graduating conscientious adults from college.
You think a high school freshman shouldn't have a cell phone? Their friends a year older are driving and they may want to do activities with them, and it's a good idea they have a reliable means of communication to their parents in case they need to come pick them up.
Not having a phone will most likely make your child a social pariah.
They MIGHT be one of the few hyper-social ones that thrives despite being left out of online circles but they are the exception.
While I agree that being this age doesn’t automatically warrant having a smartphone, any kid who has an allowance can buy a bargain-basement Android phone to use over wifi. And smartphones are very concealable.
(IMHO, once a kid has figured out how to do this, they have earned the privilege. It’s part of growing up.)
A responsible and forward-thinking parent could provide a Graphene OS smartphone if the kid absolutely insists on having one, to limit the privacy damage.
Cause practically speaking, school requires that. They will pointificate about devices, but simultaneously create rules that make them necessary.
The issues with the Nintendo Switch are, I think, just Nintendo being perennially bad at anything involving the internet. Remember Friend Codes?
They've definitely gotten better, but they're still kind of living in 2008. I'm not sure why a company full of software engineers can't figure this out.
I do find it odd there's no option to outright disable the internet (except for software updates). Perhaps the best solution is to not give your child the wifi password? Or for a more technical solution, block the Switch's MAC address in the router.
> I'm not sure why a company full of hardware and software engineers still can't figure this out.
Seeing other Japanese companies account systems (Square Enix and Rakuten, for example), the only conclusion I can draw is that the Japanese dev industry does not consider clear account management to be important.
Nintendo really has no incentive to improve. They make money hand over fist selling half-baked titles to their combined market of actual undiscerning children, and rabid fanboy manchildren who will praise any first party Nintendo title as a 10/10 every single time.
...I mean. I would argue the reason they make money hand over fist is because (most!) of their games aren't half baked, at all.
They're phoning it in, coasting on old IP and goodwill earned decades ago. Animal Crossing had less dialogue options than the Gamecube version that preceded it by two decades. Smash at mid-high levels is still plagued by lag switching cheaters. BOTW was okay, but clearly overrated by people who had never played any sort of open world game before. TOTK being lauded as a 10/10 (fine, 9.5/10 on MetaCritic) was laughable given how empty the game world was, how janky the construction mechanics were for those silly machines, and how boring and childish the puzzles were. I stopped playing Pokemon 15+ years ago but come on, the graphics of the Switch games looking worse than some of the DS editions...
TOTK was the final nail for me, I vowed to never purchase another Nintendo game or piece of hardware and I haven't. I just couldn't square my actual player experience of a janky, boring game with the rabid fanboys crowing about Nintendo doing it again.
I don't know if this works for anyone other than our family but when we were raising our kids we solved this by the simple of expedient that gaming and computer use was done with us as parents present. Full stop.
It was not a solo activity for our kids. We could directly view everything they were doing online the entire time.
Advice like this only works for specific age ranges.
When I was a kid I had a friend whose parents, or mom rather, went to similar lengths to ensure all gaming was monitored closely by her. She would turn the game console off if she saw anything she decided was not to her liking.
This was all fair when we were 7-8, but she insisted on doing it well into his teenage years. This level of extreme control and micromanagement was not good for their relationship or his personal development, to put it mildly.
Every time I read HN comments from parents declaring their child will not have a phone until they turn 16 (another comment in this thread) or how they’ll lock their kids out of games and social media completely I think back to my friend whose mom was extremely controlling in the same way.
Young kids need tight controls, but this needs to be loosened as they age. Parenting discussions really need to come with age ranges because what’s appropriate changes so fast from year to year.
I agree, the point of making usage monitored early on is so that you can train your child in what to do when they encounter stuff online. As that training has occured then you can begin to loosen the restriction and give them more freedom. This is the job of parenting. You are teaching your child how to safely and productively engage with the world and the younger they are the more of your time and attention this requires. If you don't teach them someone else might and that lesson may haunt them for the rest of their life.
I frankly would prefer just not gaming at all, than being ashamed in front of all my friends.
Also you have to consider the ramifications of such behavior if that gets public, I mean could possibly be the source of bullying and what not.
As a child we were de incentivized to playing games with the computer. The schema was:
A) computer you can have, because is useful beyond playing, consoles, no way. Forget it “that is stupidizing BS”
B) No money for games. Other SW would be bought, but rarely games.
That moved us to start spending time with other things in the computer, like programming our own games.
Of course today that is all difficult to impossible, by design, without ostracizing the kids.
Congratulations that you had that luxury.
Sounds barely realistic, when school are using iPads, education is one URL away from entertainment crack and parental controls on iOS are a joke.
I'm sorry you feel like it's out of reach of so many. We definitely had to sacrifice a number of things to make it happen. It's not like it was necessarily easy. Unless you are in the unfortunate position of being an only parent this can be an area where you have choice. You can:
1. Ask your school to change their policies. Coordinate with other parents. Make it clear to the school that if they don't start to enforce these policies then you will hold the school directly responsible for any harm that comes to your child in the environment they create.
2. Pick different schools. (Home School, Private school) if you can afford it. Charter schools may be an option.
Both of these require sacrifice on your part and neither are easy. But no one should ever think parenting is easy.
When I was a kid, my Sega Genesis was connected to the TV in my parents bedroom. It made it impossible to play without their knowledge or when they were asleep.
That's essentially the rule in our house. No screens not visible to other members of the family.
In US, we restrict alcohol kids until they're 21. Pornography is poison.
It's so bizarre to me that in "The Land of the Free", 18 year olds, who are considered old enough to go to war, are not allowed to drink. Especially because this isn't some archaic law from the 18th or 19th centuries but instead from 1984 and only came about after the federal government withheld funds to force the states' hands over a period of 4 years.
It's not a federal law, you can buy and drink alcohol at 18 in the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico for instance, so definitely possible to drinking at 18 legally in the USA. I don't know if there is a federal drinking age but it's definitely not above 18.
Also in I want to say about half the states (could be wrong here, but at least a few), it is legal to drink well below 18 in a private home.
-------------
Example, wisconsin:
>Can an underage person possess and consume alcohol beverages on licensed premises? Yes. Persons under age 21 may possess and consume alcohol beverages if they are with their parents, guardians or spouses of legal drinking age; but this is at the discretion of the licensee. The licensed premises may choose to prohibit consumption and possession of alcohol beverages by underage persons. (Sec. 125.07(1), Wis. Stats.)
The drinking laws in at least ~half the USA are a lot looser than most people think. If the parents are ok with it the kid can generally drink somehow.
https://www.revenue.wi.gov/Pages/FAQS/ise-atundrg.aspx#undrg...
It’s essentially a federal law - if a state wants to get full federal funding for highways, they have to have a law restricting alcohol purchase and public consumption to 21+. It’s from the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984.
The issue isn't drinking; if the motor vehicle operator age was 21, then the drinking age could be 16. But it isn't.
Drinking is an archaic caveman activity that newer generations dont really care about, observed on a global trend. GenX and older millennials ring this bell continuously for a crowd that doesn't care. Shouldn't you focus on issues that actually impact and hurt people instead of trying to point out some "inconsistency" about the usage of the land of the free slogan that no one ever brings up in any conversation about america?
Drinking is taking a nosedive because larger segments of society are shut-in losers, who are not engaging in real-world social spaces which are lubricated with alcohol. That's 95% of the reason, the rest is people smoking when they would have been drinking.
The fall in alcohol consumption is directly tied to a fall in socialization writ-large. That isn't a win, it's a tragedy.
Yes, your entire post screams "older generation knows better, newer generation stupid losers" in unifying accompaniment with my initial caveman comparison. It's always interesting seeing the divide of generational vs cultural values from the point of view of people in the country, and the absolute insistence that their values represent one side vs representing the other. If you're observant, you get to witness in real time the cold and deafening silence of society moving on and losing interest with whatever hill-of-the-week people want to dramatically die on through over performant thrashing about. I mentally frame this timeline and context to be the equivalent of a child tantrumming in a grocery store while everyone else is just focused on shopping and going home, except I get to stop and point and laugh every once and a while in moments like this one. The death of stoner culture and commercialization of THC as a product instead of a lifestyle was pretty similar.
I thought you could go into a store on post and buy alcohol at 18.
And they can have sex legally when they are 16. But oh noes if 2 16 year olds send nudes to each other. Then, somehow, is "child" sexual assault images.
Frankly, these half-assed laws disenfranchise an already not-permitted-to-vote populace. But somehow these "kids" can be declared as adults if they are 16 and having sex or courts deem them 'adults', but simultaneously find them to be parental property.
Glad I dont have children. The situation is a toxic cesspool.
So no smartphones?
Neutered smartphone with zero internet access and apps locked down like North Korea.
We also lock up our alcohol, as many parents have chosen to do for generations.
Nope. More people should be like this.
And then, we pretend we are surprised why the majority of adults don't care about privacy.
Why would they? They grew up being 100% controlled with 0 privacy. They don't even know it doesn't have to be like that. Then, it was their parents violating their privacy, now it's government and corporations.
Privacy is a privilege granted relative to age and maturity.
Most 5-year olds should be allowed to close the bathroom door while doing their business, they should not be permitted to access the internet privately.
A five year old is not prepared to engage online with privacy. They have not had the necessary training yet. They will not get that training unless you are there to show them how to negotiate that world. They will not magically learn how to protect themselves if you just leave them to figure it out themselves.
That description of "100%" means the lack of privacy they're objecting to is one going a lot lot past five years old.
Your first comment didn't mention age, so they made a comment about a broader interpretation of the idea.
I was never controlled in any way that may remotely violate my privacy. In fact, glad that nothing ever happened to me, because it could have. But for a long time I was not worried about my online visibility…
I do not agree at all with this conclusion.
Encourage voice chat, so you can hear what they are saying too :)
When I grew up my parents literally had no understanding of what the internet was, nor what I was doing on it. That wasn't a problem because all the rest of the upbringing they did prepared me well to handle every situation I encountered there. There approach was to let me and my brothers learn early how to judge situations and risk ourselves and trusted us to set those boundaries ourselves.
This meant while other kids were constantly insecure how to handle a specific situation, we knew quite well (in comparison) what was totally harmless and where you had to get careful. Thus we were the only kids who jumped into water from bridges, but also the only kids in my village who never broke any bone during our entire childhood.
If you want your kid to be safe, isn't the best way to do it to teach your kid how to make the decision what is safe themselves? Otherwise they have to always rely on a parents (or other figures of authority) to make that judgment for them. But the parents aren't always around and if they call everything unsafe, potentially nothing is.
I agree with you so much. Great parenting is education, not restriction. I don't want my kid to not talk to strangers because I told him its something bad that you shouldn't do. He won't talk to strangers because he understands the implications and what can happen.
A kid with no education and restricted access will just find a way to do whatever he wants to do. A kid with good education and unrestricted access will know to steer away from bad stuff and talk to adults when he finds something strange.
One of the proudest moments of my grandfather (in my household, he was the most tech savy) was when I found a way to "bypass" an restriction program around age 11. From then on he decided I "outgrew" this kind of limits and just gave me unlimited access to the family computer and the internet.
But years later he confessed, the "click" moment for him was not that I could bypass the restriction, but that I trusted him enough to show him and that I self-reported the situation. And this is pure education and has nothing to do with restrictions.
I read so many parents here that want to "educate" their children but want to offload that work to some service or program instead of putting the work in. You prefer spending 5 hours configuring your child's nintendo switch rather than sitting down with him for 1 hour to explain to him what he can encounter on the internet, how he should behave and react and building the bond needed for him to trust you enough to come to you when needed.
The thing many parents get wrong about education is to think that the kid learns what you tell it. You tell the kid X is dangerous, so now the kid learned X is dangerous. That is not how it works at all. What the kid learns is that it can't be trusted to judge danger itself, since always when it tries to do something itself found okay a panicked adult will tell it this was dangerous.
The lesson isn't the meaning of the words you say to your kids, the lesson is how what you say relates to them and what they observe you doing. And this isn't just about this example of traching them to make a sound judgement, this can be expanded to nearly every educational problem one could have with their kid.
E.g. extremely commonly you will find kids who develop bad behavior despite their parents "telling them not to" will not only witness the bad behavior by their parents, but will be ignored, ridiculed, disrespected or mistrusted whenever they do in fact behave well.
And it all boils down to the simple notion that you can't just tell your kid a thing and expect that to be the lesson.
Family Link is kind of funny like that as well. As a parent you can limit which apps your child can use, and even how long they can use them. My child is above the age we can monitor their every move, but they're below the age where we can trust they won't spend all day playing games when they need to study. So that feature is nice.
Except you have to allow the Google app. And you have to allow it unrestricted time. That's not all that bad yet, though not great. The annoying thing is that Google loves their little easter eggs. So the child is procrastinating by playing Pacman, Snake, that stupid Dino run game, and what not. Courtesy of the makers of the parental controls.
Similarly, the Play Store cannot be limited and so for a kid it's easy to spend time on promotional app videos there. So the app limits are mostly useless, since you have to fully lock the phone to disable this.
The Roblox ones are a bit of a minefield too.
I age restrict, block chat with everyone and monitor friend requests weekly. They are not allowed to play in their rooms.
Education is the biggest thing. They come to me if someone asks to be their friend. They don’t accept gifts from strangers and I explain that it’s the same as real world.
It’s a constant process that is always changing. Same as any other parenting job I suppose
Roblox is hostile to these controls - best not to even enter the ecosystem.
Ideally (in the broad sense, meaning not realistic) is to not enter any “ecosystem”.
But yeah… easier said than done.
It is strange to deny children this reality and then expect them to participate in capitalism.
It's easy to say "oh, this is just enterprise controls, and your family is an enterprise."
But then I remember every time I've had to delve into actual enterprise administration, and yeah that's its own full-time job.
Side rant: when will businesses acknowledge that an account might be owned by two people (spouses, for example) and allow separate logins for the same account? Their terms of service almost always prohibit sharing passwords, and because the lost password flow would require sharing an email address, you didn't want to do that anyway.
On the other hand it’s easy to say “just give me enterprise level controls but in an easy and intuitive interface”
I’m not saying that’s not possible, but if you have somehow figured the “right” abstractions and interface to achieve this in an incredible simple and sensible yet just as powerful and complete way that any parent can manage it, then you’d make a killing in enterprise sales. It’s not like enterprise IT admins love Group Policy or any random Joe can be a Linux sysadmin.
I agree. There was a while when I, the sweet summer child that I am, hoped that the late 90s-early 00s crop of founders would start families of their own and naturally steer their companies toward the family-as-enterprise-but-actually-usable model. I'm still waiting.
The comment section seems to be divided between "don't police your children" and "absolutely police everything your children do".
Parental controls are absolutely necessary, yet they won't be enough by themselves. Payment systems are really robust but there's still fraud. If there's prey, there will be predators.
Education and clear rules are absolutely necessary, yet they won't be enough by themselves. There's people that's very evil and also very clever. You can educate and trust your 12yo to understand 80% of it, yet for the remaining 20% you have to be there.
And, oh boy, the issue about parental controls being incredibly complicated is 100% by design. Simple and sensible parental controls would make exploitative business models like Roblox go bankrupt overnight.
There's just no market for parental controls.
> I want to limit time spent > I want to limit money spent > After 8 years it's an adult account anyway (10 -> 18)
That's correct. The current state of parental controls is compliance (the option exists somewhere, good luck finding it, maybe it even works), not usefulness.
> yet for the remaining 20% you have to be there.
Shouldn't you trust your children, to come to you in that 20%?
How they will identify that 20% if the previous comment was referring to them actually not being able (yet) to understand it?
You could, I dunno, trust your son, communicate with him, and let him make decisions for himself? If instead of wasting all your time on scam products trying to isolate him from the world, you'd spent the same time teaching him to navigate the world, you wouldn't have had any problems, and he would be better prepared for adult life when he doesn't have someone breathing down his shoulder. Just my 2c.
I completely empathize with the author. I had that same reaction years ago when I discovered strangers were sending unsolicited pictures to my nine year old through DuoLingo! Made me sick.
> ...It also unlocks access to the Nintendo eShop, which I cannot disable. I can set his eShop spending limit to zero, sure. But I can't block free downloads. So to let my son play online Minecraft with his friends, I have to open him up to an unrelated store full of content I can't possibly evaluate. That's the deal. Take it or leave it.
Hoooooboy you're in for a treat once you see the deals on all the weird "hentai" and "ecchi" softcore games on eShop that Nintendo let past the lotcheck process.
And remember that this is the brand historically known for curating its game library.
Seems like a trusted non-profit should spearhead a working group to come up with clear requirements and recommendations. This parental control spec would be clear for developers to implement instead of each team guessing what should and should not be allowed. This could then be 3rd party verified and parents could rest a little easier. (All of the above has probably been tried in previous instantiations of the Matrix.)
Not to avoid the point of the article, but GroupMe is sometimes used for academic purposes. In the 2010s I used it in school for clubs, sports, and group activities, so that may be why it wasn't blocked.
The author of article seems under the impression that parental controls allows parents to stop having to assess risk for themselves.
The problem is that most parents are not competent to assess the risk. The environment is different to the one we grew up in.
I don't mean to sound like the stereotypical "I did X and turned out fine" but...
I grew up with an internet access on my computer in my room without anybody watching over my back and without any restrictions and nothing bad really happened. Meanwhile these days some people around me with children around the 10-15 range seem think their children cannot be trusted and restrictions are absolutely essential.
Has the internet really changed that much in the last decade or two? Or are people and media just talking about the dangers more?
---
Also, what happens to these kids when they reach adulthood and the guard rails come off?
Has anybody tried an alternative like teaching children about the actual dangers, how to recognize manipulation, etc? I have a feeling many people (including children) don't really learn unless they get hurt so the best we can do it making sure they do get hurt but only a little.
E.g. let them get scammed in a game instead of real life. Or pretend to be a stranger and try to befriend them, seeing if they fall for it?
I think the difference is that the parents of today are _you_. _They_ grew up with unrestricted internet access, because their parents didn't.
I think that pornography is poison and my parents didn't know that I had access to it. "Not my kid!", they said. But my generation says, "It's every. single. kid."
> Has anybody tried an alternative like teaching children about the actual dangers, how to recognize manipulation, etc?
Another poison is alcohol. Some people think that letting their kids access alcohol in their house is reasonable. I think it is better to wait until your brain is more developed before trying alcohol. First experiences with alcohol at a later age tends to enable people to have a less worse relationship with alcohol.
> Or pretend to be a stranger and try to befriend them, seeing if they fall for it?
That seems like a great way to destroy any trust in you your child might have.
The internet has changed incredibly in the last two decades, and has almost nothing in common with the internet of two decades ago. Predators of all varieties are everywhere; many of them are billion-dollar companies. Scams are everywhere.
Getting scammed in RuneScape is probably a good learning experience, but is RuneScape still the only game that's like the old experience of RuneScape? That and Minecraft I suppose, but you can't really filter out servers in Minecraft.
Yes, the internet has changed that much.
https://www.wired.com/story/youtube-for-kids-videos-problems...
Lots of people are in this thread saying "ah, just tell your children not to get groomed / not to watch disturbing content". They're kids. They are going to disobey their parents. There's no one here arguing we don't need to teach kids these things. But, like how when you're learning to drive you start in a parking lot with a crappy car, we need a way to make a relatively safe place for them to learn. Parental controls are currently failing to do that.
Furthermore, where you and I and median commenter on HN might be an engaged, attentive parent, there's lots of parents out there who are not. Having a good, easy-to-setup version of these controls that a less engaged parent will actually turn on would make a positive impact on those children who aren't receiving the teaching you suggest.
I'm stuck with my son not able to play minecraft from his nintendo account anymore though it used to work. I'm just getting an unhelpful error message and all permissions should be enough. Parental control is a joke. Deezer has kids accounts but you can just switch to another account. Spotify kids was a joke when I used it, poor discoverability, poor cataloge specifically if you care about childrens audio books.
Google family link is also kinda weird. As a parent I don't want to restrict the time per app or total usage time. I want to limit usage of a group of apps. E.g. i don't want to limit spotify but I want to limit the total play time of certain games.
So I agree with the sentiment of the post. But maybe I should consider the route from my child hood: unrestricted access. At least I know, in contrast to my parents, what is out there.
Try the XBox app on your phone, I managed to find settings there once that unlocked Minecraft.
I'd like a flag for messaging apps called "turn off images and video". Sure, my kid might get called nasty names in plain text, but would not get beheading or bestiality videos or underage schoolmate pics.
Thanks for the hint, but wasn't able to make it work yet.
God that would be sweet. Especially if it was controlled at the OS level.
One thing you can do: glue the device into a dock, hook it up to the family TV then set the expectations that they can only use it when an adult is around (or take the power adaptor when you leave if you need to be strict about it).
But the author is right, it should be easy to set appropriate limits out of the box.
Here's what I think is happening:
Market research says "Parents want control."
In the journey from CEO mandate "build a product that gives parents control" to developer implementation, "parents want control" somehow turns into "What parents want is extremely fine-grained controls," which isn't the same thing.
So a bunch of product managers brainstorm a huge list of ways that parents might want "control," hand that off to some developers, and voila: Everything becomes way too complicated for everybody and the company is able to say they offer "control" while abdicating their stated obligation of giving parents the "safe" product that the parents expect.
No, I think CEO mandate goes "Build parental controls" and PMs all shake their heads and go "No problem". It hits the developers, they go Too long to do it properly and PM goes "Nah, we just prefer MVP only so we can say we have it and move on". it's also never really touched again so as features get added on, Parental Controls is poorly thought about last minute implementation.
To fix this, it's going to have to be legislation so financial incentives are present.
I have a wonderful collection of retro consoles and games that I let my nephews play when I babysit without much worry or trouble. Sure some of it is considered obscene, offensive, gory for today’s standard, but I can definitively say the internet and connected games are far worse but let the modern parent be fooled.
I prevented a lot of IRL fighting over the holidays. I tell them, if they want to fight each other that they can only do so in game (their preferred fighting game is primal rage) and it gets their aggression and hyperactive tendency out. Beyond fighting games they love to battle out in racing simulators like Daytona USA or controller swap Crash Bandicoot and Sonic. They have Switch 2 at home and can play it here as well but it’s not sick as Neo Geo, Sega Genesis/Saturn, NES, GameCube, PlayStation, Virtual Boy, and many others. 67
The biggest benefit of offline gaming is that friends interact IRL. You either get invited or invite friends and have real interaction, share snacks, etc. which often leads to outdoor activities when gaming is a bore or over. We need to bring that back. If the companies are unwilling it’s time to hack the offline switch or speak with our wallet.
I got my son a Miyoo mini, a cheap but decent emulator. I had zero headaches and was able to curate the game list as I thought fit. There’s no online (even thouh the device has wifi) for now and worked as expected, kid plays, gets bored and lets the device down. I will not let my kid play games online because that’s a too big of a risk to addiction or priming for this later. Minecraft has potential for addiction.
By the way, I got one miyoo mini for myself and enjoy pico-8 quite a bit that I started making games myself, together with my kid and chatgpt assistance. Call me old school but I know what’s good for my own kid.
Me too! I used the "Five Game Handheld" setup. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2rMB5z9dQw
Sounds good. I have about 250 favourite games though.
People who decide to implement such bad tech are probably childless, or so much into their company, instead of their family, that they barely see their own children.
The same people who joke about the uselessness of "moral".
You might be right they are distracted (mostly by capital). It’s a chicken and egg problem. You have to build the platform to stop the abuse on the platform.
The otherside is hands off parenting. I think after about 2 children, parents tend to get tired of being so restrictive there for the youngest gets what they want and other stereotypes.
In the end it’s probably not about the tightness so much as remaining involved and honest and open with your child.
Last time I checked disney plus doesn't have any option to hide specific shows. None. You either let your child watch everything, or nothing.
At least netflix allows me to hide certain shows...
You can block by age rating quite easily it seems.
https://help.disneyplus.com/en-GB/article/disneyplus-parenta...
If you don't want your child watching specific shows despite an appropriate age rating, have you considered only letting them watch it while you're with them?
Allow me to give my anecdotal experience.
When my child was three, he really liked to watch 'spidey and his amazing friends'. But unfortunately, when he watched it he would emulate some of the bad behaviors from the show, pretend to be one of the bad guys and act out. Easy solution right, we just won't watch the show anymore, we don't leave him alone to watch TV by himself anyways.
Well, on Disney plus, you can't simply hide the show. Even if you remove it from your "recently watched" or whatever, it will show up in preview cards and search results and I'm categories. It became a big friction point, whatever he would see it he would want to watch it. And when Grandma would come over and babysit him, he would ask for it and she'd put it on for him despite our wishes.
So, since then, I've spun up a jellyfin server and ditched Disney plus. If we don't like a show we just remove it, and then it's simply not an option.
Blocking by age rating takes out the majority of the classic Disney movies and shows. They only consider the newer CGI stuff "child-friendly".
age rating is not how I would categorise shows.
It’s also extremely hard saying no to certain shows to my kids, and it would be much easier to just not have them there.
I’m pretty sure the politically oriented people at Disney want this to your kids watch as much of the content as possible, and especially the new ones.
Although it's a lot more effort, if you care a lot about specific things being shown to your children, you could set up your own media server.
You could digitize an existing BluRay or DVD collection and allow your kids to view films and TV using a streaming service-like interface. These days most of the solutions don't even require you to transcode the films, you just RIP them to an ISO and put them on an accessible Samba share and as long as you rename the files to something approximate to the title of the film it'll fetch the metadata for you.
It's even worse if your subscription is packaged with Hulu. Then all the Hulu kids stuff gets pulled in automatically, which includes all kinds of garbage that I very much do not want my daughter watching. All the YouTube-based influencer kid shows with little kids who show off new toys and extravagant vacations each episode. My only solution was to unsubscribe from Hulu, which stinks because they do have some good stuff. It really is the epitome of enshitification considering how easy it would be to implement a block button at the very least.
I think it's an abdication of parental responsibility to let a child use Internet-connected devices without adult supervision.
Nothing connected to the Internet can protect children from seeing information they couldn't see (as determined by culture/familial mores), meeting potentially exploitative strangers, being exposed to a highly curated stream of marketing content and targeted AI messaging (including social media feeds).
I believe that Internet sites and apps should not have age controls.
I believe that physical Internet access (computer, phone, TV, etc) should require an adult ID to purchase (but not logged, like cigarettes, alcohol, etc) l and the the owner of the device is responsible for its use.
If they hand it over to a minor and they are harmed, then the original adult is liable (like alcohol).
This holds someone with material motive accountable. And it becomes jurisdiction-specific accountability (location of the device).
And in the case of parents, if they allow their kids to use one of the parent's devices then they are responsible for how the kid uses it. And directly responsible for how it's used, what's allowed and what's not.
You can't trust a mega+corp with protecting your kids.
> " and no easy way to make this thing function like an old-school Game Boy and just let a kid have fun with a game cartridge"
Have you considered buying them an old-school gameboy?
I went through some of this myself.
> Nintendo Switch Online (not really another account, mind you, but a membership) involves a recurring fee. It also unlocks access to the Nintendo eShop, which I cannot disable. I can set his eShop spending limit to zero, sure. But I can't block free downloads. So to let my son play online Minecraft with his friends, I have to open him up to an unrelated store full of content I can't possibly evaluate. That's the deal. Take it or leave it.
You don't need to pay for Nintendo Switch Online to get access to the eShop, you just need a Nintendo Account. I made one for myself and one for my son, and neither stays logged in. My wife and I have the passwords for both, and will not give him his password until he's older. Meaning one of us needs to be there for any purchases, free or otherwise.
He has access to the Minecraft marketplace, but can't add funds to it without us. We did not use our MS accounts, and didn't make one for him, so he can't play Minecraft online. But you know what, I'm totally ok with that. He can still invite a friend over and play together in person (which he does do).
My overall response with this stuff is to think about the lax parenting typical in the 80s or so and compare it. Kids much younger were allowed to run amok outside, and crime rates are much lower today. Are the same instincts that perhaps rightly perhaps wrongly compel people to keep a closer eye on their kids in the real world being applied to the digital one?
This HN post fits into the category of "Pithy blog title with casually anecdotal content."
Software companies will never earnestly attempt to protect children because that action ("acknowledging children are in danger by using our product") acknowledges risk and introduces liability. (VCs hate that shit, especially Silicon Valley VCs.) In the United States, decades ago, laws were introduced to induce accountability of online platforms in regard to IP and child protection laws in the context of user generated content (forums, markets, chatrooms). Basically, these websites/corporations bulked at the weight of accountability ("how are we to monitor every user's action all the time?", "We'll be sued immediately by trolls.", etc.). The parties involved eventually came to a resolution that there's a "notice period" that organizations use to enforce this behavior on its communities.
If I were to write a blog titled "Parent Controls Aren't for Parents", my opening salvo would be "They are minimal-effort guardrails to protect corporations from being sued by negligent parents for post-incident harm."
A GameBoy would have been cheaper, offline and worked without an account. Yet the author chose to spend his money on the Switch2.
What's the market to learn from this? You're saying one thing but voting with your wallet.
I agree with you but you can't just go out and buy a Gameboy anymore. And gaming is more of a social activity now where you'll need internet access.
They're called retro handhelds and you can get them for ~$30-40 at the low end, which can apparently run up through Playstation 1.
In the $200-300 range (so still less than a Switch 2), you can apparently run up through Switch and maybe PS3.
I know about these but they require a lot more technical know-how to set up and getting ROMs is legally questionable. Your kid's friends are probably not playing those games either. They aren't a good option for most people.
I identify with so much of what's in this article - especially the rage that has the author giving serious, coldblooded thought to just destroying the Switch.
The Minecraft stuff in particular reads like some kind of standup comedy bit where the joke is that the joke goes on way too long. It is genuinely insane what it takes to get a kid online these days, to the point where I honestly don't know how families without some poor technical sadsap can even manage to get it done.
I find it particularly infuriating that Nintendo - who are supposed to be the "family friendly" gaming company, and who lock down a lot of things in variously annoying ways, seems to offer no way to block or disable the Youtube app.
The way this stuff is handled in my house (and let me be clear that this is extremely imperfect) is that I block Youtube and various other sites at the network level. This is really not a total solution - there are many good reasons for the kids to get on Youtube and so I'm often asked to open the gates for a while. Threading the needle in a manner that allows my kids to get the benefits of the net without the huge number of downsides is virtually impossible.
My 17 yo, and me, are still suffering for poor account choices I made when he was young. My 10 yo will only ever have to remember his birth year is the same as mine when asked in regards to any of his accounts created by me.
Controls can never replace parenting, no matter how good they make them.
The complexity and frustration are in no way accidental. A carefully designed, obfuscated, and Byzantined process designed for exactly this effect.
> You're supposed to be so beaten down, so utterly depleted of will, that you just cave. [...] You disable a bunch of parental controls you don't really understand. You let your kid play his damn game. You become the ideal customer.
Exactly so. Parental controls, privacy settings, permission to show ads and collect infinite tracking data… The machine is working exactly as intended. Maybe there are sentiments that "the parents should have some control" and maybe there are some laws about protecting children or protecting consumer privacy. But hey, what if actually using any of those mechanisms was mind-bendingly difficult and annoying? What if your control were only available downstairs, in the unlighted cellar, at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard." We'd still be in compliance, right? Heh heh. Yeah. That's the ticket!
Reminds me when Facebook added “privacy” controls, that were virtually impossible to find, difficult to understand, and confusing to give a false sense of security.
It says, on the Gabb app directory the author linked, "Communication with Strangers" in a warning bubble directly below the "GroupMe" listing title. Not to forget the giant box saying "However, some apps allow user-shared content or access to mature material. Apps enabling contact with strangers also pose risks. Families should discuss app usage regularly." right below the app search bar.
Regarding the games console, his problem seems to mainly be the two conflicting account systems offered by two separate vendors, not the parental controls themselves (although I agree the situation in that circumstance is unfortunate). A quick Google search also directed me to an easy step by step guide to doing many of the things (such as the restriction of purchases and free downloads on the Nintendo game store) that he claimed to be impossible.[2]
This is written in a very dramatic manner*, especially with the whole "You're supposed to be so beaten down, so utterly depleted of will, that you just cave. You sign up for Nintendo Online. You disable a bunch of parental controls you don't really understand. You let your kid play his damn game. You become the ideal customer." paragraph, that it feels almost like it's purely written to goad legislation.
[1] https://gabb.com/app-guide/
[2] https://industrywired.com/gaming/how-to-set-up-parental-cont...
* I do empathize with his situation, but much of it seems to be brought upon by his own ignorance and unwillingness to research.
Beasthacker is a hilarious identity to assume for someone so keen on using tech that does the parenting for them.
Hardly a comment worth singing up to HN to post.
All of your comments are gold and worth signing up to post. You’re an intellectual no one can touch. Oooh look at you and your comment worthiness.
Womp womp
Reading this reminds me how much parenting must suck in 2026.
This is such a sore spot for me.
Technology is amazing and I want to raise my children in such a way that they learn to use it to improve and enrich their lives.
Video games are amazing. Art has never been easier to create. Being able to spend time with your friends when they are not physically present is incredible. There are so many great podcasts for children.
But silicon valley seems directly opposed to enabling the best technology uses without also requiring exposure to the worst.
Please, can I just let my son listen to music when he goes to bed without also being forced to expose him to some off-brand tiktok hamfisted haphazardly into the app with no way to disable.
Can I let him watch great YouTube channels without the feed automatically funneling him towards absolute garbage.
Something as simple as per app time limits are seemingly impossible for Google or Apple to implement.
It's exhausting to navigate when you don't want to be draconian and just ban everything out right, as if that's even realistic.
As a kid I always hated it when parents/schools locked things down. Getting free of the parental controls becomes a game.
So I've never imagined myself wanting to do parental controls. But I might change my mind when my kid is old enough to play with screens.
Not sure about Google but Apple has per-app time limits, per-app type time limits, overall screen time limits, time of day limits, parental review before app install, parental review before purchases can be made, etc. I've found it to be quite robust in managing my kids' access to the internet.
I’m continually impressed by my 12 year old son’s ability to get around those restrictions. He recently got around his time limit with Brawl Stars by having his friends sending him Brawl Stars view links via WhatsApp. This opens links using Safari’s underlying engine (SFSafariViewController), which does not get considered by the safari app time block.
I'll have to look into that, thanks
The biggest trap parents fall into is they buy devices assuming there will be ways to enforce parental controls on them. The reality is it's impossible to do on many devices, and extremely difficult to get right on the remaining ones. Many of the platforms offering "parental controls" just do lip service and provide a false sense of security.
Yes, parental controls are probably for corporations. So they can say they did something and it's not their fault.
I wonder if kids aren't safer in online spaces where there's very little expectation that the person on the other end is a child. Like here.
I see folks saying no access to phones until 16, and others arguing how that will absolutely crush a kid's ability to do stuff socially. Why not just have a 'home' phone? you can use the phone in shared spaces at home, but cannot take it into your room or go to school with it.
unless you send your child to private school where all parents enforce such rule, your kid (that is 12+ year old) is going to be ostracize by majority of peers that have such phone. This is completely different environment comparing to times when we were growing up.
It's the same environment
by environment I mean back then we didn't have smartphones, social media, internet.
It's the same environment without the tech.
We are a “low screen” homeschooling family. We have a babysitting phone for my daughters to take to babysitting jobs and a landline. At our local pool in the summer, my kids meet neighborhood kids, exchange numbers, but my kids say, “it’s a landline, no texting.” The response: “You just have a landline?!? You can’t text?!?” in a tone of disgust. Every time. Fortunately, we have a community of homeschooling & religious community friends who are raising their kids similarly. But every time a kid’s friend gets a cellphone, texting becomes the medium of socialization, and they drop us. My kids will be the 1% of their generation who can talk on the phone.
What if we teach children how to navigate the real world, instead of the digital equivalent of "baby proofing the house"? You don't lock away the kitchen knives from a 12 year old, you teach them how to use them safely.
While we're on the topic, our school-issued Chromebooks allow unfettered access to YouTube. Yes, some of it is educational, but the kids can just click on the next video until they get what they want. Very convenient for you, Google Ads.
Parental controls aren't a good substitution for awareness, deep meaningful connection with your child, giving them a rich and fulfilling offline life, teaching them how to navigate dangers rather than isolating them from reality.
Hold on to your kids[1] and instead of having to spy on them you will know them.
Yes, Parental controls could, in theory, provide many many more protections. But given the trajectory of tech, capitalism, and the USA at large (and the culture it exports), I do not see that pragmatically happening to a relevant degree by the time I have children.
[1] - https://www.amazon.com/Hold-Your-Kids-Parents-Matter/dp/0375...
Your son is talking to his friends in this book chat, and playing Minecraft with them. How do other parents go about governing this?
Sounds like either they’ve figured out these parental controls, and might have some tips for you. Or they trust their kids with fewer controls.
Do you have kids? I'm guessing you don't, because the answer is pretty obvious to those of us who do - the vast majority of parents seem to give not one single fuck about what their kids do with technology. I've known families who have a cell phone - a dedicated device - for their four year old.
My armchair diagnosis is that parents who are just a little bit older than me (I'm 34) and especially parents who didn't grow up as nerds just don't see the problem. Among the class of people who spend their time on Substack or Hacker News the horror of the modern net and its affect on childhood are well understood at this point. Among "normal people" you will definitely get weird looks if you suggest that this stuff is terrible for your kids.
My kids (4 and 6) have a "dedictated" iPhone, a iPad with the pencil, and a MacBook Air. But they were just hand me downs. They don't get to use them unless we let them, but we mostly use them to learn how to type, write, draw, play learning games, Khan Academy, and to mess around in general.
They also call or text aunts/uncles/cousins/grandparents. I feel like it has helped them with reading and just the exercise of trial and error to figure out how it works is beneficial.
Haven’t needed to delve into parental controls yet though.
> They don't get to use them unless we let them, but we mostly use them to learn how to type, write, draw, play learning games, Khan Academy, and to mess around in general.
That seems fine to me. What I'm referring to above is that the kid literally just has an iPhone with, as far as I can see, virtually no restriction. I imagine you would not let your kids use their device to scroll through Youtube Shorts for an unsupervised 2 hours, for example.
Just like it's hard for me to find the right balance of benefit to downside in technology for my kids, it's also hard to strike a balanced tone when discussing my feelings on this stuff. Every time I write something about this problem online I feel like I'm coming off as some authoritarian luddite - which I'm definitely not. I want my kids to get the benefits of technology. Any bright future for them is almost sure to include the need to engage with the net.
Instilling the values that allow for that is the hard part.
> That seems fine to me. What I'm referring to above is that the kid literally just has an iPhone with, as far as I can see, virtually no restriction. I imagine you would not let your kids use their device to scroll through Youtube Shorts for an unsupervised 2 hours, for example.
Yes, they aren’t allowed to watch youtube shorts at all (nor do either of the parents), but we’ll look up nature or physics videos, and if they want to watch a video on repeat, we use yt-dlp to download and they watch via infuse. But again, not of their own accord. When it’s time to play outside or elsewhere, it’s time to do that. And no devices at meal time, even if they see other kids at the same table with them.
I guess my point was that the devices are immensely powerful tools for learning and communication, so I try to teach them how. But they also play games with non gambling mechanics (thank god for Apple Arcade).
> (nor do either of the parents)
This is key, in my experience. I've told my kids that if they catch me scrolling shorts or reddit, they have the right to confiscate my phone. A big part of instilling the values I referenced above is embodying them myself. (obviously, but it bears repeating).
> But they also play games with non gambling mechanics
This is important too. There's so much genuinely great media out there - TV shows, video games, movies, books. It's not that I don't want my kids to experience that stuff - I just want them to learn how to focus on the stuff that's quality rather than the stuff that is slop.
There is enough general public concern about minors having access to online pornography that jurisdictions all over the world are passing age restrictions but I think the HN discussion is one sided.
That is, HN users see the costs, the difficulty, the privacy concerns, etc. But they're also dismissive of the harm, which in terms of the young Gen Z men that I know personally is real. I can't attribute online pornography 100% but the damage includes criminal convictions, falling victim to "blackpill" ideology and other false answers to gendered problems and frequently people giving up on work and love.
I collect ero images and restrictions would personally be a hassle for me, I can't say I am against pornography in general, but I've got some concerns about pornography today. I think advocates are stuck in the 1970s when it was tamer and much less prevalent than it is today -- it's entirely different for a teen to have a few issues of Penthouse or Hustler than it is today.
I think the story of how it relates to relationship satisfaction is nuanced. Personally I think OnlyFans is a cancer. I want to feel special in a fantasy, and not as the biggest simp in a room full of hundreds of simps. (And this is healthy narcissism [1], not pathological narcissism. In good sex or sex with love, somebody thinks you are special)
I'm not sure what the answer is but I can see it both ways and that seems rare on HN.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthy_narcissism
Yeah, I think this is a sort of similar issue to the kind of thing I describe above, where parents of a certain generation / certain technical background might not be fully aware of the sorts of harm that can come in through technological channels.
I would never actually do this, but there's a part of me that would like to just give my kids a magazine to hide under their bed, or even some sort of curated private video site on the LAN, just to allow for some expression of natural puberty urges in a way that is ... if not "healthy," per se, then at least "harm reduced?" Obviously that idea in practice would be way too weird to consider, lol.
But this comes back to the balance thing I was talking about on my other post in this topic. Full abstinence is probably practically impossible and I'm not sure it's even the right approach. The other end of the spectrum - throwing the kids into the waters of Pornhub, OnlyFans, and whatever the TikTok equivalent of porn is (surely that exists, right?) - that seems pretty fraught too. The taboo nature of this discussion makes things harder - but I have tried to overcome the weird feeling and have fairly frank discussions about these sorts of things with my oldest.
Might this be an example of healthy narcissism? https://theonion.com/monk-gloats-over-yoga-championship-1819...
You’re getting downvoted but I agree that this person has a communication problem with their child. And it isn’t because the kid figured out how to use the device.
Leaving a link to Common Sense Media which has been helpful for me to understand some of these new fangled things I don't use...
https://www.commonsensemedia.org/
I'm wondering if a firewall is a solution here. Don't mess around with the stupid device settings. Just block the Xbox store, and then presumably Minecraft uses different server IPs, so you can let those through.
> And when I finally—finally—tried to test online play, Minecraft told me I would need to loosen the parental controls (it did not say which) and create a Nintendo Switch Online account for my son.
I'm a bit confused by this section. It seems to me that the author
1. Turned off online.
2. Bought a game that could be played in single-player or online
3. Got mad that online didn't work because it was turned off
4. Turned online back on
5. Got mad that online was turned on.
6. Dealt with this anger by yelling at his children
I actually don't understand what the author was trying to accomplish here
I am opposed to the whole concept of these "parental controls". Instead of a bond of trust, between a parent and their child, the surveillance economy has gave us the ability to experience the top of the surveillance pyramid ourselves. As Google and Meta spy on the world, we spy on little Timmy. In fact, you are a bad parent if you don't spy on little Timmy. I really can't wrap my head around how asking "how was your day" has evolved into "I saw on your GPS tracker you walked a different route to school today... Do you have something to tell me?" If you look at everyone who is now joining the work force and all, the coming generations, you'll see the thing they lack most is independence.
You obviously don't have kids. You can't trust a child's judgement because they don't have the experience to exercise good judgement. Your job as a parent is to look out for them while helping them develop.
> You can't trust a child's judgement because they don't have the experience to exercise good judgement.
How can a child get any experience, if they are only ever exposed to perfect make-believe fairyland?
It seems like the industry is going to be forced to rediscover and implement capability based security models and process isolation by consumer demand.
It is impossible for the average user to reason about a different security model for each app, the only way for anyone to be confident about what a program is not doing is to move to a world where apps don't work by default, and a list of boxes need to be checked which enable network or file access and cause features to work. Apple is the closest to the right answer here, but enabled-by-default and opt-out has to go away.
If you don't want your kid to go online, don't buy them a Nintendo Switch Online membership. Or give them a handheld like a Miyoo Mini without WiFi.
Going on a tangent, didn’t realize until recently that Quora has publicly accessible porn aka adult content that anyone can view without an account.
The Gabb thing is the fault of the parent.
By buying a child a locked down device - a hostile device that few would have accepted for themselves as a child - they marked them as 'being a child' rather than blending in with the rest of the people on the Internet.
By marking them this way, they advertise the child to the predators of the world.
This is someone who is twelve. They aren't six. Life involves risk. Stop playing with account controls and let the person play Minecraft. This really isn't that hard.
Having thoughts about physically breaking a child's holiday gifts - of doing that in front of them - is suggestive of being a pretty awful person. You can't figure out something that the child does not want, so you want to break their stuff?
How much longer do you intend to keep this routine up? Is your objective for them to go no contact? What are you seeking here?
Im also coming to the conclusion that video game consoles (and smartphones, and ipads,...) are not for children.
What was the punishment for the 12 year old? This will tell us everything we need to know about this story.
I'm kind of with you on this one. 12yo is old enough to understand the rules (assuming they were clearly set) and if he/she was willingly communicating with a stranger, that phone should get the hammer with no replacement whatsoever. I've seen this done, it works.
> that phone should get the hammer with no replacement whatsoever.
Trying to scare children into following rules does not and will not end well.
> I've seen this done, it works.
You think it works because the child has realized that they will need to be better at hiding their actions in the future.
user: GaryBluto created: 3 months ago
Can you actually refute anything I'm saying without having to resort to ad hominems?
I believe in discipline but smashing a device violently in front of a child is not the way to go about things.
I am not even sure where you get "smashing a device violently in front of a child" comes from. He said gets the hammer as in he would perma destroy it.
Anyway I tend to agree for the most part anyway. I was just making a guess about your age irl based on what you said. However some other data actually indicates you are likely gen-x.
Well, I know what you mean but the parent comment kinda suggests accountability isn't really a thing.
What I believe the author did was instead of teaching their child that they may not talk to strangers, they believed there just is a magic button to have these strangers not exist.
If that's the case, then rules weren't clearly stated, if stated, at all.
Kids make mistakes. You do not want predators to use the threat of your punishment as a lever on your kid.
You can't control or decide what predators will do. And very likely won't be able to imagine the extent of every single of their convoluted predatory practices by yourself.
So instead of trying to cover every possible theoretical danger, setting clear rules and boundaries with your kid sounds like a way more sensible and pragmatic approach.
And nobody said kids should be punished or held fully accountable on their first mistake.
If you apply this concept broadly you will see this isnt a great philosophy.
This post makes it clear to me that you should not be giving devices such as the Switch to children.
Of all of the uses for AI/LLMs, setting parental controls feels like it would be such a massive net win for everyone involved.
Instead, LLMs are being used to replace support people at the larger platforms (e.g. X Box) with the clear goal of "make it HARDER to get support" (or as patio11 would say "their goal is to get you off the phone as quickly as possible ")
> Hey Gemini, I don't want my kid to chat with strangers on the internet. He needs to be online to play Fortnite on his Switch. How do I do this?
Seems simple enough to me
This was a tough read. On one end I want to hold this parent accountable...and he should be held accountable for any negligence on his part. As noted, Gabb does indicate that GroupMe facilitates communication with strangers. Because, well, it’s a messaging app like any other.
I don’t want to digress too far, but you know what I had when I was young and wanted to talk about books? Libraries. That’s beside the point but somewhere is a point to be made and I don’t want to pry into this man’s personal life beyond what he’s already shared about this ugly experience. But I imagine that few things can deter a predator like a swarm of librarians.
“I could almost hear the crack. Could almost see that OLED display splintering into a thousand pieces. The little Joy-Cons skittering across the floor. My son's face. My wife's face. The stunned silence.”
He should've broken the Switch. Anyone who’s ever destroyed electronics knows how cathartic it is. Men are only afforded so many opportunities to display healthy acts of aggression in front of their wives and children. Of course never towards them.
“What I did was announce, in a voice louder than necessary, that nobody was to ask me about anything Minecraft-related on the Nintendo Switch for a minimum of two weeks.”
I suppose that’ll do.
“Here's what I want: an off switch. A single setting that says "this child cannot go online, communicate with strangers, spend money, or download anything without my explicit permission." Instead I get a maze, complex enough that when something goes wrong, I'm at fault for a tooltip I didn't hover over, a blog post I didn't read, a submenu I didn't find. Maybe that's by design. Maybe it's neglect. I don't know.
What I know is this. My son just wants to play video games and talk to his friends. I just want to keep him safe. Somewhere between those two things, I'm supposed to become an expert in the convoluted parental control schemes of Gabb, Nintendo, Microsoft, and Xbox, while a stranger's Christmas morning texts sit in my son's phone history.”
Again. It’s easy for me to blame this dude because I live in a world where this sort of scenario is wholly unlikely and to a great degree his experience explains why that is the case for me. But this story was too well put together. I never thought that a curl one liner and a bash script could emote a form of anger that I empathize with so readily.
I hope this inspires him to question the extent to which he’s relegated parental controls in other areas, if it’s at all the case elsewhere. Either destroy them or set firmer boundaries and raise your expectations for yourself and whatever third parties he sees fit to be held responsible for his household and their affairs. It may take another 12 years or so...but your sons should thank you if you’re successful.
Parental controls are all about illusion of control. In reality the kids all know how to get around them. Try just try to block Gmail. It’s impossible. Gmail is the gateway to kids getting on services they aren’t supposed to be on.
Gmail can circumvent almost any security feature even if you set up a profile on iPhone (which is not documented and good luck with that). This is definitely not an accident.
Don’t mean to pick on Google; Apple is also bad, iPhone parental controls are very leaky. My son found a way to jailbreak his phone to completely unlock screen time and disable all parental controls.
Any of the consoles are also bad, PS4, etc… although it is possible to block stuff that PS4 can do via a firewall.
When the fix is to buy a SteamDeck and emulate switch
> A single setting that says "this child cannot go online, communicate with strangers, spend money, or download anything without my explicit permission."
I understand the problem domain - some people try to exploit and take advantage of kids. That's a problem, I get it.
At the same time, I still think children should not be assumed to be idiots. I remember we oldschool people, when we were young, we played Quake at university campus (we could only play on holidays because one friend had the key to the room, it was a side room though; on saturday other students were not there, so we had a full room with about 30 computers in the 1990s era). We were about 15 years old, so granted, no more young kids. And the technology wasn't quite as advanced, so I am not saying this is 1:1 comparable. But young kids today often have smartphones. They have the internet non-stop. I don't think parental censorship works as a model here. Again, I get it that too young kids are too trusting, and there are creeps - but there is not really an alternative to having kids go through thought processes and understand the issues here. In warcraft 3, young gamers were quite competitive and good. So if they can learn to be better than older people, they will have no real difficulty understanding predators. (Again, it depends on the age; but if your kid is 6 years old, why can there only be games that are played online? Plus it is just chatting right? I remember playing games at the yahoo website, we chatted too. I don't think that was a problem per se. The website makes it sound as if everyone and everything has that problem. I don't think this is the case.)
Edit: Others pointed out the age range problem. I agree. So, which age range are we talking about? Is the age even mentioned on the website?
Edit2: Ah yes, 12 years old. Sorry but at 12 years old, I am having a hard time buying into the "predators exploit him every time". That seems to be ... strange. His son would probably object to the claim he made on the website here aka slandering - perhaps.
But profits!
The issue is, and always will be, 3rd party trust. You cannot assume your child is safe using XYZ until you thoroughly audit the app/game/device and enumerate all their loopholes, plug-ins, and rushed updates. The sensical method would be a device-wide deny all firewall rule, where no TCP connection is allowed in or out without explicit parental consent. E.g. Alice wants to chat with Bob via chatmonkey. Approve this one time connection? Good luck finding anything on the market that supports and enforces this very sane level of parental control.
To concur, the principle with guarding your children is the same as the principle of guarding your software systems.
Defense in depth. Multiple layers. Calender reminders to audit devices, usage, and look at router logs. Check in with your kids.
It's almost like connected infrastructure is inherently unsafe. I stand by "your kid, your problem". I don't want any kid to be "unsafe", but commonsense went out the window when schools started to require the internet.
The true "safe" option is not allowing any of this until your child is old enough to understand the risks... so 18? 25?
All I'm saying is there is no route to prevent all bad things (or even most) and people who say otherwise are generally selling you something.
Welcome to parenthood in 2026. I can't walk into a Chapters or book fair with my kid without the tentacles of the game industry reaching him.
That academics are failing worldwide due to overexposure to screens is the least surprising thing I can imagine.
Another issue is how many apps now seem to have "chat with strangers" features built in to them.
Or instead of turning parental controls on, instead teach your children how to identify bad stuff online. That way, they can catch people (peers OR adults) doing or asking really bad stuff. And teaching also has great benefits of lasting a lifetime.
Well, except for doing parental controls on your boomer parents TV, blocking Fox news. Thats a good usage of it. You're not going to defeat propaganda believability with boomers. So blocking is best bet.
"I'm a cute girl of your age. Here are some nudes. Wanna send me some too?"
Bam, lost.
> Well, except for doing parental controls on your boomer parents TV, blocking Fox news. Thats a good usage of it. You're not going to defeat propaganda believability with boomers. So blocking is best bet.
What an odd viewpoint. "It's bad to use limit your children's access to the internet in any way, but trying to stop other adults from accessing things I deem to be wrong are good!"
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