scop
2 days ago
Four thoughts:
1. I've developed a analog->digital path for my kids. Before they can get a music player, they get a CD player. Before they get video games, they get board games. And then, for video games, before they get Super Mario Odyssey they get the original Super Mario Bros. Each of these "first they get" is a long period. Years long. Give them something that has limitations so they can truly explore it. Find the nooks and crannies of something. Make up their own weird little things within that limitation. And then, back to music, I want my kids to know what a musical album is, know how to savor the highs and the lows, how sometimes certain tracks mean more to you based on your mood or life-stage, then just an endless playlist of newness.
2. The gorilla in the room is that most adults can barely handle online media.
3. The other gorilla in the room is porn. Again, see #2.
4. The classic philosophers placed Prudence as the queen of virtues. What is prudence? It is essentially the ability to grasp reality. Why did they say that was most important? Because you couldn't use any of the other virtues if your didn't have a good grasp of reality (e.g. fortitude would be foolhardiness if you ran into a ill-conceived death thinking you were being brave).
You need to make sure you and your kids are able to grasp reality, not just the appearance of it.
ozim
2 days ago
Gorilla in the room are other f*ng parents.
You can prevent as much as you want but then kids go to school nd everyone else has accounts they should not have or devices they should not have and your kids are angry at you because now you are the bad guy.
lolinder
2 days ago
The best thing my parents ever did for me was cultivate a sense of familial superiority.
Other families had the TV on all the time, but we read books instead because we were 'better'. Other kids did drugs and drank, but we were better than that. Peer pressure didn't have much of an impact on me because I was raised to believe that I was better than 'that' for most values of 'that'. And my parents never had to force me on any of this—they just invited me to be a part of their exclusive club.
There might be a way around this that doesn't involve cultivating a mild condescension towards peers, but I can say from experience that the condescension does work!
rachofsunshine
2 days ago
My family did this too. It did make me a condescending asshole, but worse than that, it taught me to be paralyzingly afraid of doing The Wrong Thing.
Did it protect me from driving drunk when I was in college? Yeah, but it also "protected" me from having a healthy social life because I couldn't engage with any sort of normal behavior. Did it protect me from getting on drugs? Yeah, but it also "protected" me from getting on desperately needed psychiatric medication because that was for Other People, Who Are Too Weak To Handle Their Problems Properly. Did it protect my parents from sleeping around? Yeah, but it also locked them into a miserable marriage for half their lives, leaving both them and their children with heaping scoops of extra trauma.
Maybe that trade-off is worth it, but if you're going down this route, make sure your kids know how to experiment and screw up sometimes, too.
I'm inclined to say that a better solution is to recognize that none of us exist in a vacuum. When our societies are full of toxicity and manipulation and brainrot, we can't escape those things without cutting off a part of ourselves. Sometimes we have to do that, but ultimately what we need is a healthy culture to live in - and if we don't have one, we should be working to make one.
iforgot22
2 days ago
It worked for me. The one negative side effect was a bit of arrogance, which I actively worked on in college. It was also crucial to figure out that some kids were better than me, and it was better to hang around them.
There was also an "everybody has problems" support group at school that they kept encouraging us to join, but I said nah, I don't have problems. Most of the kids in that group ended up with depression.
juliusgeo
2 days ago
I am someone who was raised with a very similar set of values. I was homeschooled, and often believed that "public-schooled" kids had a worse, more limited set of values. I was not allowed to use computers till I was in 11th grade, and dove into reading as an alternative. Very little screen time, but I ended up with a lot of issues that did not even begin manifesting until I was an adult. I would urge you to re-examine your beliefs around this topic. It is too easy to elide the issues by reframing them as "a bit of arrogance". Based on my own experience, listening to the people around me, they are not experiencing it as "a bit" of arrogance. It is too easy, almost intoxicatingly so, to believe that you are better than those struggling. As long as you frame your own struggles as unique, you will deprive yourself of both 1) commiseration and 2) knowledge on how to progress past. Rather than say "everybody who sought solutions to their issues had issues", ask the question "how many people that did have issues did not seek solutions".
iforgot22
2 days ago
Homeschooling is too far for my liking. Kids really need to be around other kids. If anything, my siblings and I needed a bit more of that, because our neighborhood had 0 kids and my parents kept forcing us to hang out with their adult friends. But it was still ok, we still had real enough childhoods.
I started going to Catholic church in college, against my parents' wishes. I realized that everyone does have problems. But that high school support group was the classic where... idk a nice way to say this, kids self-diagnosed mental problems to feel special. It wasn't about self-improvement.
juliusgeo
2 days ago
I can understand your POV perhaps surprisingly well, as my father was secular growing up and then chose to join Protestantism in college (against his parents wishes). I wonder if at the end of the day it's just teenagers wanting to rebel. My dad's parents were secular, so he became Christian, and I became secular again. I can definitely relate to not enjoying support groups where the suffering is "valorized" to a certain extent. I think I was mostly reacting to the sentiment of superiority in general, but that is also an interesting case because it is pretty clear that families like that tend to have better outcomes overall (at least in monetary terms). My POV is that WASP culture in general breeds these perspectives, and also reinforces them because of the monetary and social inertia.
iforgot22
2 days ago
The flip flopping of religion is maybe just that. It wasn't really the case for me, cause my parents were Catholic but became quietly atheist, and I didn't know until they started complaining to me. But it happens a lot.
It seems to work for WASP. Superiority (or I guess family pride) is also big where my parents are from, Iraq and Iran. But my parents didn't take it in moderation, so the outcome wasn't good in the end for them.
graemep
a day ago
> Kids really need to be around other kids
they do not have to do that in school. My (home educated) kids did lots of classes and activities where they met other kids. A lot of schools tell kids "you are not here to socialise!" and have strict rules about what you do when which also limits interaction (at least here in the UK)>
iforgot22
a day ago
They can also get some of this from non-school activities, but personally I would want it to happen during those ~7 hours they spend every day in school too. They'll even interact with other kids during class, just in an educational way (I hope).
graemep
a day ago
Agreed. I was thinking more of home educated kids like mine who do not have a fixed seven hour day (you can cover what you do in school in a much shorter time if being taught one to one or teaching yourself).
onecommentman
2 days ago
I think you trivialize the benefit of avoiding early-life-damaging activities like alcohol (one in six to one in ten drinkers become problem drinkers, destroying lives, drunk driving), drugs (visit an NA meeting or walk down certain streets in San Francisco), and early unwanted pregnancies (smashing dreams or leading to the morally challenging road of abortion).
The struggles of single parenthood for both the child-rearing parent and the children of divorce are very real and well-documented, much less the trauma of the actual divorce process. (Why would you wish that on your parents and yourself?) Methinks you trivialize this too.
Keeping you away from illegal drugs meant you had the opportunity to get properly prescribed and managed psychiatric medication instead of the too-common path of self-medicating with the recreational drug-du-jour, with much worse long-term consequences.
You had it good kid — there are millions of Americans who will happily explain why they wish they could have traded places with you. You know the YOLO fad passed so quickly because kids realized the permanent scars left by “experimenting”, especially if there are no rich parents to pick up the pieces.
There is a continuum between “living in a vacuum” (whatever that is) and swimming in human equivalent of sewage. You do have options: get out of the cesspool to pleasanter environments (which very much do exist everywhere…a vacuum analogy is bizarre), stay in the cesspool and try to drain it (noble but often misguided…there’s a new dump everyday), wallow in the cesspool (with various coping strategies), or by wallowing in the cesspool become one more contribution to it.
Often finding an alternative healthy culture is more effective than fixing a dysfunctional one…great truth of the 1970s. People happily cut off “a part of ourselves” all the time. Oncologists, for example, for big bucks and grateful patients. A tumor is a more useful analogy than a vacuum, in my experience.
And there really is no such thing as “culture” at the individual level, but many different shifting subcultures, overlapping, spawning, growing and waning. You pays your money and take your choice.
anthk
2 days ago
On sex, sex is healthy, but you need contraceptives.
Alcohol it's a drug, with a literal letal withdrawal (delirium tremens). That's right. But I can't agree with your prudeness on sex.
I wish the American people began behaving like Europeans where sex is not taken like a drug or something harmful at all since decades.
If any, pregnancies are a thing because of the lack of sex education and safe learning/practicing.
rachofsunshine
2 days ago
I'm not saying that this more conservative/cautious style of parenting has no value, or even that it is on net the wrong approach. I'm saying that it has costs of its own that are important to recognize and potentially devastating.
> The struggles of single parenthood for both the child-rearing parent and the children of divorce are very real and well-documented
The question isn't "does it suck to be a single parent or the child thereof". It's "is it worse than the alternative?" This is "people who see a doctor are more likely to die"-style reasoning that conflates a preexisting problem with an imperfect solution.
Kids need examples of loving and trusting relationships. That's how they learn how to build them themselves. They learn conflict resolution, compromise, and communication by observing their parents' relationship. And when that relationship is at best one of civil distance, a child can't learn what they need to learn. It's even worse when - as in my case - the kid is the channel through which a lot of the marital conflict plays out.
When my parents finally did split up (after I was already an adult), it was a relief to everyone involved. They're both better off. If they ever tried to get back together, I'm pretty sure I and my brothers and sisters would go slap them and tell them to not do the dumb thing.
> Keeping you away from illegal drugs meant you had the opportunity to get properly prescribed and managed psychiatric medication instead of the too-common path of self-medicating with the recreational drug-du-jour, with much worse long-term consequences.
Yes, but you're leaving out the part where unmanaged mental illness almost killed me before I got on properly prescribed and managed psychiatric medication. In almost every timeline but this one, it probably did kill me.
> You know the YOLO fad passed so quickly because kids realized the permanent scars left by “experimenting”, especially if there are no rich parents to pick up the pieces.
I take a different lesson from this. I think your point about "no rich parents to pick up the pieces" is one of the reasons that millennials and zoomers are struggling: we/they've grown up in a competitive world that doesn't allow them room for normal human error.
Making mistakes - or the safety to make them - is a critical part of growing as a person. It's an investment, the same way a company invests in R&D. It pays dividends. But it has short term costs you can't pay if you're always trying to make ends meet.
Yes, there are experiments you shouldn't perform because their costs outweigh their benefits, but most youthful indiscretions are not irreversibly damaging. One way to tell is that many of the richest and most powerful people around had fairly wild youths and tended to be fairly aggressively risk-taking.
MichaelZuo
a day ago
> Kids need examples of loving and trusting relationships. That's how they learn how to build them themselves. They learn conflict resolution, compromise, and communication by observing their parents' relationship.
Since when? Many kids grew up learning these things from interacting with other kids, or via the school of hard knocks.
I doubt it’s even 80% of the population that learned primarily from observing their parents.
mixmastamyk
9 hours ago
Maybe you’re expecting too much from pithy life advice to avoid bad habits? It’s not a silver bullet guaranteed to solve serious problems such as mental illness.
ckz
2 days ago
Agreed. So much of it is identity (going back to James Clear in Atomic Habits). "I'm not a smoker" is more powerful than "I'm trying to quit".
"We just don't watch Youtube on our phones in this house." [and you work to develop that into healthy self-confidence rather than ego]
Growing up homeschooled, we had the same simmering sense of pride in not doing what others (e.g. "public schoolers" did). Never had a rebellious teen phase, etc. Some families overdid it, but...idk...I'm still quite close to my parents, so I never felt stifled.
It makes it -very- natural in life to focus on what my SO and I think are optimal and more or less disregard what's normal.
moomoo11
2 days ago
This truly works.
And honestly we live in a competitive, entropic world. Why some people so sensitive? Maybe because it’s true?
So yes. Some people are better than others, not due to some intrinsic features but because they cultivate some self defining attributes that set them apart from the rest.
I know there are definitely trashy, destructive, and self-imposed low class people. I don’t associate with them. I am not bothered nor do I lose sleep thinking about them. There are others who have everything but decide to be losers and awful people. Again, not my problem and not my associations. Maybe we work together. But we aren’t friends beyond whatever means to an end.
They chose whatever they did today. I did what I chose today and I’ll be going to sleep happy af and refreshed for tomorrow.
Another day to crush and a life to enjoy.
And I yearn to be even better tomorrow.
No drugs. No junk food. Discipline. Experiences over screen addiction. Learning and growing. Cherishing life and its fine moments. Not every day is perfect, but at least each day is constructive.
jaapz
2 days ago
That's one way to make everyone around your kids hate them.
You don't have to put yourself arrogantly above others to still teach your kids values. IMHO, not doing that probably breeds a better moral value system...
gosub100
2 days ago
Agreed. There's a certain age where kids will parrot back whatever you tell them, to whoever they feel like telling. "My parents say you don't value your kids because you let them play video games all day" is a very efficient way to lose friends and alienate people.
worik
2 days ago
> The best thing my parents ever did for me was cultivate a sense of familial superiority.
Odd!
It was the worst thing my parents did for me, I believed them.
Took a long time to realise I am, we were, quite ordinary.
superfrank
2 days ago
Same.
I think cultivating a sense of superiority is the wrong approach and could lead to other unhealthy behaviors. Cultivating a sense of self esteem and self acceptance is a better approach, IMO.
"I don't drink because I'm better than you" seems like a problematic mindset. "I don't drink because I don't want to and I'm comfortable with that choice, but it's okay if you want to do something different" seems like a much healthier mindset.
lolinder
2 days ago
> "I don't drink because I don't want to and I'm comfortable with that choice, but it's okay if you want to do something different" seems like a much healthier mindset.
Possibly. It's certainly a healthier place to arrive at, and it's where I'm at now as an adult. But I'm unsure if it's a strong enough position to get a kid through the intense peer pressures of middle and high school.
The difficulty that I see is that in order to truly hold that position as you describe it you have to have a really strong sense of self, which adolescents pretty much by definition don't have. Our brains aren't fully developed until 25, and in the developing stages our own sense of identity is pretty weak, and in those weak stages we all reach out for something larger than ourselves to hold on to.
The 'superiority' approach (which I put in air quotes because no one ever actually said "we're better", it was a very subtle thing) gives the adolescent a strong identity they can adopt while they're still molding one of their own—it gives them a tribe to which they already belong. You can work with them from there to have empathy for people in other tribes, but if you give them something thinner and less tribal right away, even if it's healthier in an adult, I would expect them to end up drawn to a tribe offered by their peers.
iforgot22
2 days ago
"You do you" doesn't work at some point. The drinking kids will exclude the one kid who refuses, even if only passively (sober surrounded by drunk). It really matters who the peers are. Fortunately, there are always ways to find new peers.
BytesAndGears
2 days ago
What about the harder ones that come up? A personal choice like that is easy, but
“I don’t drink when I know I’ll have to drive home because…”
It’s harder to empathize with those who do drink in that situation
slantaclaus
2 days ago
It’s definitely not something that you should do on purpose
jacobgkau
2 days ago
> "I don't drink because I don't want to and I'm comfortable with that choice, but it's okay if you want to do something different"
That was basically my high-horse libertarian mindset in high school when I saw other kids using cannabis-- I straight-up said to at least one, "I'm not going to do that, but I don't mind if you do." I thought I was being socially liberal and polite.
Spoiler alert, everyone else "wanted to do something different" and no longer cared about me after I respectfully removed myself from "the cool stuff" without condemning it. Today, I'm much more vocally negative towards cannabis users.
ropable
2 days ago
Nothing beats "othering" the out-group members to really pull the tribe together!
mitchellst
a day ago
I know this is a flip dismissal.
But it illustrates one of my deeply held beliefs pretty well: there are things that are virtuous at small scale that are disastrous at large scale, and vise versa.
In society "othering" out-groups leads to many wrongs. But it's hard to argue there's much evil in cultivating a sense of family pride. The vice turns to virtue at very small scale.
I believe in giving more help to those who need it. But does that mean I should skip Christmas presents for my kids because there are people starving in [insert poor country or war zone]? The virtue becomes vice at small scale.
A unified theory of moral behavior is actually hard to come by.
robertlagrant
2 days ago
> "othering" the out-group members
This statement is othering me.
gosub100
2 days ago
Politics 101
theoreticalmal
a day ago
This is SUCH an interesting comment. There’s a “homeschooling” post elsewhere in HN with a comment that espoused the exact opposite view as this one: raise your kids with humility and openness to other people and families.
glangdale
2 days ago
I'm sure you are a great person and all that, but in my experience, this particular recipe has produced absolute legions of smug, arrogant people who are nowhere near as smart as they think they are. Many of these people were dangerously unprepared for a world where they weren't the smartest person in the room in a not-very-smart room.
iforgot22
2 days ago
My family didn't exactly say "better," but they meant it.
lolinder
2 days ago
Yeah, I put 'better' in scare quotes because we didn't use that word exactly, but that was definitely the idea. I realize now that that's the opposite of what a quote usually means, but too late now!
theoryaway
2 days ago
Same experience for me
For my case though, they refused to give smartphone access to me(despite multiple requests).They instead encouraged me to use laptop, while my friends were buying new smartphone while joining college.
siavosh
2 days ago
I think you're on to something...
ceejayoz
2 days ago
Yup. "Why didn't my kid get invited to that birthday? Oh, it was organized on Snapchat..."
We have a no phones in the bedroom and no phones past a certain time rule, but disconnecting entirely makes one a social pariah.
dyingkneepad
a day ago
The one I heard was: "Dad, can you show me Minecraft? All my friends keep talking about Minecraft, but I don't understand it. I want to know more about Minecraft".
If you don't give the stuff to your kids, they get socially excluded.
The best we can do is to teach them how to use stuff in moderation. Show them how excessive usage can go bad: there are plenty of examples around, all the time.
iugtmkbdfil834
2 days ago
<< disconnecting entirely makes one a social pariah.
Maybe, maybe not. The real question is.. do I really want my kid to associate with kids that are so heavily invested in social media. I know my personal answer to this. I even know my SO answer and the upcoming battles ahead.
ceejayoz
2 days ago
It’s widespread enough your question boils down to “do I really want my kid to have friends”.
iugtmkbdfil834
2 days ago
I will tell you what I told my colleague as to whether I am sad that having a big dog prevents family reunions or boyfiends coming over. Sometimes things just work out in our favor.
avereveard
2 days ago
There's almost zero chance for that pretend scenario to happen, kid and parents intermingle all the time at drop off and other school activities, kids are pretty vocal about their birthday and who they want to be present, and their parents will find a way to get the message across, and the kid will know from school interactions anyway if they are invited, and relay the info to the parent.
ceejayoz
2 days ago
Drop off in my area is a line of cars. No mingling. Activities are great if the kids share one, but plenty of friends don’t. By high school, parents tend not to be doing the organizing at all. Outside birthdays, the same thing happens with “hey wanna come over?” ad-hoc scenarios.
It isn’t a pretend scenario. We had to loosen up rules because it was happening to our kids.
asoneth
2 days ago
> everyone else has accounts they should not have or devices they should not have
You can start the conversation with other parents at kindergarten pickup.
Each grade at our school has a pledge that kids & parents can sign to wait until eighth grade to let them have a smartphone. This can be as simple as a shared spreadsheet or a dedicated site like https://www.waituntil8th.org
My kids are still young but from what I've heard from families with older kids is that holding the line gets increasingly hard as they approach 8th grade. You have to be prepared to socially exclude families that let their underage children use smartphones or social media, the same way you wouldn't invite a family that lets their middle-schooler drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes to your kid's birthday party.
While you can never get everyone to agree to anything, as long as your kids have a critical mass of friends who don't have smartphones then not having one won't make them an outcast.
aczerepinski
2 days ago
All of my kid’s sixth grade friends have smartphones. No exceptions. If I excluded those families my kid wouldn’t be allowed to have friends. Best I can do is take the other kids phones away after a certain number of screen hours at my house.
Limiting screen time is an exceptionally challenging task because of the many loopholes and bugs in parental controls, and my lack of direct control over the chromebooks the schools issue.
Do you really think you can predict your kids future friends correctly and lobby the correct set of parents during kindergarten years?
asoneth
a day ago
> All of my kid’s sixth grade friends have smartphones
My condolences. I agree that it's too late once you hit a tipping point and a critical mass of their friends have smartphones. At that point you have to fall back to weaker backup defenses like parental controls and limiting screen time. The point of Wait Until 8th is to provide a little more time to let them form their own self-image and build up their ability to manage their attention and information diet.
> Do you really think you can predict your kids future friends correctly and lobby the correct set of parents during kindergarten years?
Instead of trying to predict the "correct" set you can just lobby everyone. Our public school has about a hundred kids per grade from K through 8th. Parents bring it up not just at school pickup but on playdates, the local listserv, the PTO newsletter, when new families move to the neighborhood, etc.
Apparently several older grades have managed to hold the line such that most kids in that grade didn't have smartphones until high school, and many didn't even have smartwatches or dumbphones.
aczerepinski
11 hours ago
I moved from the east coast to the Midwest during the pandemic. Any lobbying I would have done during early elementary years would have gone to waste.
And even if I hadn’t moved I would have had to lobby at not just my elementary school but the other two schools that feed into the same middle school.
herewulf
2 days ago
It's okay to be "the bad guy". They're your kids, not your friends. Too many parents want to be buddies with their kids these days. That's just setting everyone up for failure.
My wife and I have a loving relationship with our kids but they are quite clear on the fact that we are not equals. The distinction will lessen as they reach adulthood and prove their responsibility.
tisdadd
2 days ago
I know that I have a great friendship as an adult with my parents, in part because they were parents while I was growing up. I had a friend ask what I would do in a situation and I wanted to yell be a parent! Said something nicer, but basically gently pointed out that sometimes that means giving up things you may want to do to show a good example. For instance, if you are always on social media then of course they will want to be too. Right now, you are the biggest influence on your children's life, even when they do not like something now that does not mean they will not thank you later. Anyway, I was debating building a house that wouldn't allow radio waves in so that everything has to be approved. One of the quotes I like is, "It is not the things that I had as a child that makes me the man I am today, but the things I did not." Went on a bit of a tangent, but I just wanted to encourage that for most of history it was considered good for children to learn to interact well not with their peers but with their elders. This helps firm realistic expectations of what the majority of life will be like, the opposite of social media and much of the internet. Also, remember that if you address a topic with your child first you are the trusted expert, rather than someone else, in their minds.
skydhash
a day ago
Pretty much this. My farther was strict on on the kind of behavior he did not tolerate (and made them explicit early). No compromises. We were aware of the lines and the closer we tread to them, the more he took on the role of authority. But after we became adult and there was no need for that authority role, we became quite good friends with each other. My mother rarely had to take up on that role, but there was still clear separation between children and parents.
ericmcer
2 days ago
Exactly, I see all these idealized strategies around social media and children but the reality is nothing is going to overcome the peer pressure of being 12 years old and the only kid at school without a phone.
Until schools and government restrict phone ownership in a real way, parents are going to keep giving phones to their 8 year olds.
figers
2 days ago
We choose an apple watch for this reason, that way we can still call them / locate them, they are part of their friends iMessage groups, but no social media apps are possible...
feistypharit
2 days ago
We just got Apple Watches for our 11 and 13 year olds. It is a decent middle ground, as up to now we’ve been very limiting of their screen time.
Our district has strict blocks in place at school, but most kids still already have phones. We did it for that reason and so so we don’t introduce phones at the same time they start driving (which is when we figured they’d actually need it)
One thing I wasn’t quite prepared for is kids use huge group chats that result in hundreds of messages a day. Learned how to mute discussions really quick. You can also limit access to groups with parental controls.
Key is talking to your kids regularly and helping them navigate life. Real and digital.
dchichkov
2 days ago
Another Gorilla is the schools, teachers and state-approved recommendations, that extend their reach even into private schools.
Imagine my frustration one day, when I've discovered that my kindergartner has full access to a brand-new, shiny iPad during class. Despite complaints from parents, the teacher refused to reduce iPad usage (or even activate Screen Distance and Screen Time controls on the iPad, or share usage statistics).
The only thing that I've learned, this is all in line with California’s state-approved computer literacy recommendations.
sersi
2 days ago
We specifically decided against the school that was closest to us because they give iPads in first grade. Even if the school is good, convenient and very well ranked, I don't want my kid to have a tablet until much later. I despise tablets because of the focus on consumption versus tinkering and creation and I think it's a distraction in a classroom that shouldn't be there.
I do give my son access to a computer but it's a based on misterfpga running the amiga core. Set up in such a way that he can explore and discover how things work from a time when computers were still relatively open.
glangdale
2 days ago
100% this. Our kids were required to bring laptops to school for no particularly good reason, then allowed to zombie out on them in the library during lunch and free periods. Infuriating.
dchichkov
2 days ago
I understand that it is mostly regulated at the state level. I'm not sure about other states, but The Computer Science Standards for California Public Schools (Kindergarten through Grade Twelve) also tend to be followed by private schools. So they can claim their programs meet state requirements.
This brings computers into the classroom, and once they’re available, it is a slippery slope. It is easier for teachers to have students use semi-gamified "educational" apps rather than engage themselves.
Example for K-2 - https://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/documents/csstandards.pdf:
K-2.CS.1 Select and operate computing devices that perform a variety of tasks accurately and quickly based on user needs and preferences.
K-2.CS.2 Explain the functions of common hardware and software components of computing systems.
K-2.CS.3 Describe basic hardware and software problems using accurate terminology.
K-2.NI.4 Model and describe how people connect to other people, places, information and ideas through a network.
...
K–2 K-2.AP.12 Create programs with sequences of commands and simple loops, to express ideas or address a problem
K-2.IC.20 Describe approaches and rationales for keeping login information private, and for logging off of devices appropriately
glangdale
2 days ago
Yes, we have similar metrics in NSW (Australia). Agreed on the dynamics. There are also a lot if fairly feral edutech entrepreneurs playing special interest capture here - they obviously care more about selling their dubious education novelties than any one group cares about keeping them out. So our kids' schools are littered with semi-functioning "smart whiteboards" and a host of broken edutech apps.
dmitrygr
2 days ago
There is a sister thread on HN currently asking why people homeschool. Welcome to the conversation.
bigstrat2003
2 days ago
> and your kids are angry at you because now you are the bad guy.
Kids have been angry at their parents for parenting decisions since time immemorial. I don't think it's actually a big deal.
palata
2 days ago
Agreed, you can't prevent them from having access to social media.
What you can do, though, is show them that there are tons of better things to do than swiping on their phone for hours. I don't know many kids who would rather watch videos than actually do something cool.
ekianjo
2 days ago
> Gorilla in the room are other f*ng parents
That's why some people prefer home schooling
ikiris
2 days ago
“Devices or accounts they should not have”
Just because you think your kids should be limited to the Bible or no phones or no social media or no d&d or whatever arbitrary limits / moral panic you impose, does not extend those limits to other kids in any moral fashion. Those kids have full rights to have whatever they have and you are indeed the bad guy for your arbitrary limits if they are not common or inhibiting socially.
ericmcer
2 days ago
What there is 100% a precedent for prohibiting certain activities from minors because their brains are undeveloped.
In the future we will view a child spending hours a day on Tiktok how we currently view a kid smoking cigarettes. It is creating an entire generation of anxious, ADHD addled kids who struggle with school and focused work of any kind.
ikiris
2 days ago
[citation needed] for evidence that somehow TikTok is at all responsible for causing adhd
ekianjo
2 days ago
It may not cause ADHD but it is certainly not doing anything good to their brains
snovymgodym
2 days ago
Infinite feeds designed to learn the user's preferences and then show them endless content are bad for your attention span.
Doesn't have to be TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, etc. are all the same thing.
kridsdale1
2 days ago
Bruh we have a decade of Research on this. Go type some words in to Google Scholar.
ikiris
2 days ago
The closest thing I can find is in the floods cause rain sense, so please post the links
To put this in perspective, people said the same moral panic about tv and that has also been rigorously proven false yet disagreed with by laymen.
speakfreely
2 days ago
Radio was the original moral panic. Then television. Then video games. Now we're on to social media. But this time feels different. Why? Because even the adults are noticing they can't control themselves. Their attention in other things is suffering. Our brains are being trained to seek short dopamine hits from reels instead of entering a real flow state that solves fulfilling challenges.
Social media reel scrolling creates a "potato chip" kind of flow state... it seems to satisfy you in the moment, but even after you've consumed more than you thought you would, you're still unsatisfied. The introduction of a new medium is not novel, but the magnitude of the effect is.
ozim
2 days ago
TV and early computer games were not designed to drive addiction.
Well tv was looking for ways to attract people and also game makers.
But it wasn’t like it is with social media YT specifically designed to suck as much attention as possible. Games nowadays are include much more addictive mechanics like loot boxes.
hsbauauvhabzb
2 days ago
TV is vastly different, it’s tailored to demographics of watchers and at the time the understanding of psychology when it comes to marketing and retention was substantially less developed than it is now.
jacobgkau
2 days ago
These days, it also serves to encourage people to build worldviews around fictional scenarios much the same as social media encourages building worldviews around fictional information.
hsbauauvhabzb
2 days ago
Implying it wasn’t always that way?
jacobgkau
a day ago
As you said, the psychology of marketing and retention is far more widespread today than it was when TV was invented. Would you agree news stations today report differently than they did 50 years ago? That's a very obvious transition. The transition of how fictional programming has changed is less obvious, but still there-- and the amount people watch (and allow it to shape their personalities) has changed, too.
aczerepinski
2 days ago
ADHD is a real neurological condition that people are born with; not something learned via an app. Post links to research please.
randunel
2 days ago
No, those kids can't have whatever they have if they're under 13, 14 or 18, depending on what it is that they have.
iugtmkbdfil834
2 days ago
They can.. if one of the following is true:
1. Their parents are doing exceptionally bad job 2. Their parents are doing exceptionally good job
Sadly, there is no way to tell, because not all kids are created equal. I know my parents had to basically remove our PC from our home ( how many parents have that option today? ) to put me and my siblings in line.
Unfortunately, this only adds to the problem, because bad parents tend to think they are great and vice-versa.
stephenhuey
2 days ago
Do you have children? We are not bad parents just because we prohibit our children from doing something that is a "common" practice for many other kids in our circles. As for inhibiting socially, do you realize that multiple major publications have just been putting out articles in the past month about adults isolating more than ever? If anything, social media is a contributing factor to that social decline. I'm grateful my kids are young, and were not born a decade earlier because many kids I know that were born around that time have suffered with smartphone access. These are not arbitrary standards--it is a widely understood problem.
rahimnathwani
2 days ago
I find the overall approach fascinating, but I chuckled at this part because CDs are digital:
"I've developed a analog->digital path for my kids. Before they can get a music player, they get a CD player."
If anyone wants to start with analogue, perhaps start with vinyl, then cassette tape, and then CD. I had a cassette player before a record player, but vinyl seems easier to grok because you can use a steel needle to hear the sound, instead of the cartridge and amplifier.
j7ake
2 days ago
I , of course, allow them to only sing music with their voices. Later we introduce percussive instruments, violin, and harpsichord.
By 18 they will be introduced to the piano forte.
javier123454321
2 days ago
The generous interpretation of analog in this case refers to the physicality of the CD, not the encoding of the information. It's about creating habits that instill presence and intentionality, not being a Luddite.
rahimnathwani
2 days ago
Yeah that point wasn't lost on me.
Maybe it's due to my age, but CDs don't seem that analog to me.
A few things CDs don't have that tapes and/or vinyl do:
- gradual degradation from repeated use
- need for maintenance (e.g. cleaning vinyl with a brush, or occasionally splicing a broken tape[0])
- time and effort needed to move to the next song or replay the current one (and my first tape deck didn't have a rewind button, so I had to eject the tape, flip the cassette, forward, then flip back and hope I had gotten to roughly the right point)
- the ability to directly manipulate the medium, e.g. using a hand to move the record slightly faster, or using a pencil to wind a tape
stephenhuey
2 days ago
I get what scop meant. Family vehicles had cassette or 8-track players when I was a kid and I figured out how to use my parents' record player, but for the purposes of what he was getting at, CDs are a more "analog" experience than streaming music, and give you a feel for what playing an album is like. You have to physically put in and remove the disc to change the music, whereas streaming gives you any song at your fingertips.
kridsdale1
2 days ago
I think it’s fair enough to call a CD analog because the data stream is nothing for than wave amplitudes. It doesn’t use a Fourier transform or compression or require “software”.
jedmeyers
2 days ago
It does require a digital to analog converter, though.
lifefeed
2 days ago
I like the idea of vinyl for kids too, because of how tactile it is, but man, begin with a cheap player and cheap records. No matter how old they are, they will play with it like a toy.
The good news is my father's old slightly warped prog rock records are finally getting a lot of use.
Dwedit
2 days ago
Would not suggest vinyl for kids. That's a needle on the record player, it scratches everything up. Not easy to aim the arm to the beginning of the track.
Tapes are more foolproof. If you put them in the wrong way, the player won't close. And even though you can damage the actual tape part by mishandling it, you're not all that likely to do so.
Carrok
2 days ago
Buy some cheap records and let them have fun. Many turntables have a push button start, no need to aim anything.
scop
2 days ago
Heh, you’re indeed right. I use analog in a very loose sense, perhaps better said as “tactile”. As in “I take a CD out of the case, I open my player, I put the CD in the case, I use physical buttons to move one track at a time”.
Trasmatta
2 days ago
Are they allowed to play games at other kid's houses? Like, if they're at their friend's house and everyone is playing Super Smash Bros together, but they haven't "graduated" out of the board game phase, will they get in trouble for joining in?
In theory I like your idea, but there are so many "edge cases" that make it a challenging thing to implement, and something that could backfire if its too strict.
scop
2 days ago
Good question. Yes they can play. The main absolute no-go activity with friends is something with exploration on the internet. That includes things like YT kids. But, hey you want to play Smash Bros even though we don’t at home, sure have fun!
These are not hard and fast rules, more of a system. Our youngest plays video games much younger than our oldest kid, since we have video games in the house now and didn’t with your first. However, I still make sure my youngest is getting plenty of tactile/analog play in as the majority of time spent.
ckz
2 days ago
This is how we handle it as well. We were at friends' last night and the older kids had the N64 out. The older kids reported that ours just wanted to be read to the whole time, but early doses of things we intend to introduce anyway (video games predating modern addictive mechanics) are fine at that frequency.
We are mindful of potential Pandora's boxes though. You can't ban everything unhealthy without causing long term issues. You strive though to only introduce things when they're developmentally ready to cope with it, even if that means restrictions on yourself as an adult.
You work to constantly provide good examples via your own life, compelling narratives, etc. of people who exemplify the virtues you want to instill. That's how you help shape (the best you can) the life of someone with an innate identity to, when necessary, "just say no", or simply be uninterested in and unswayed by things that don't conform to their value system.
They aren't stifled by rules and wrestling with temptation--not valuing YT Kids is just who they are.
Trasmatta
2 days ago
I like it! Thanks for the explanation of your process.
AstralStorm
2 days ago
This is way too slow and thus will be only effective in baiting your kids to try it early or harder. Or give them an anti-tech superiority complex which is counterproductive.
I'd say you need to start actually explaining how things work on these more advanced platforms immediately, as well as healthy patterns in use so they do not get sucked into it forever. And that these things are tools. It can be done ELI3, though it's not easy. There are resources abound.
Mr-Frog
2 days ago
> anti-tech superiority complex which is counterproductive
I didn't have a phone until significantly after my peers, so I used our family computer, Instagram's undocumented API, and a variety of SMS forwarding solutions to keep in touch with my friends, which I think definitely sparked my interest in hacking and a career in software.
I developed a superiority complex, but it was more anti-conformity and pro-hacking than anything.
kridsdale1
2 days ago
This complex is deserved.
scop
2 days ago
My kids play Minecraft and Sonic all the time these days. The key is my kids have developed a sense of how some things are different than others and that is good and also bad. It’s a system that allows and encourages discussion.
Dwedit
2 days ago
How do you explain these kind of ideas to a three-year-old?
ckz
2 days ago
#1 is exactly what we're doing with ours. The little one understands cassettes and the concept of an audiobook or a Welles radio drama (sometimes MP3/CD, but I record custom cassettes too).
I have a millenium-era iMac set up as the family computer in anticipation of introductory computing when old enough (probably soon) and learning that digital entertainment is a state of mind and place you go to for a time, and then shut down and do something else. It's in the living room and off, so right now we're just building familiarity with it and exploring the keyboard, mouse, etc. and mimicking dad. Currently the little one -loves- the physical interaction of a typewriter and requests one more than a keyboard (but loose keyboards are fun too!).
The TV is a projector screen that recedes into the ceiling. Total screen time for them in the home right now over the past ~2.5y is probably...3 hours? Maybe?
My daily driver mobile is a black and white PDA and almost never a phone. I don't think my toddler has -ever- asked me for my phone and certainly wouldn't think to request, e.g. a video on it. Entertainment comes from our books, legos, and trains.
My theory is an accelerated progression through history. Mastering technology means understanding where it came from. It takes the shine off the modern rectangle of doom if you can place it in time and space and your first habits aren't built around it.
To @ozim's point, the issue is what has been normalized in broader society and so, yeah, we've clearly figured out touchscreens and plenty of local places for kids have unnecessary TVs. The concerns of other kids/parents introducing things to ours too early is mitigated by building a core [home]school and social group who shares enough common values. The differences between our respective households become learning opportunities for everyone.
What's fantastic is that I can go to the grocery store or sit in a restaurant for an hour and a half (and even better, two flights with a layover--with effort) with no tantrum from a toddler and no technology. Just...not even a thought that enters.
ryandrake
2 days ago
> 2. The gorilla in the room is that most adults can barely handle online media.
I think this is the huge one. Kids can spot hypocrisy easily. You can't convince a kid to not get addicted to social media if you yourself are addicted. Just like children of smokers know their smoking parents telling them not to smoke are full of shit.
I do it by 1. not using social media and 2. when I do use my phone, set a good example by visibly using it for a specific purpose, putting it down after I'm done doing the task. Rather than just sitting there like a zombie scrolling and "consuming content." I'm deliberately trying not to normalize sitting there scrolling your phone, oblivious to the world around you. You can't hide this entirely because every time you go out into the world, you see adults everywhere zoned out mesmerized by their phones.
Benjamin_Dobell
2 days ago
> Just like children of smokers know their smoking parents telling them not to smoke are full of shit.
Wait. Surely these aren't the same. My dad smoked and always told us he'd kick our ass if we started smoking. From as young as I can remember, I understood it was bad and that he was addicted, he had tried, and would continue to try to quit numerous times. He didn't often smoke in front of us when we were young. He passed away before my own kids were born. Emphphysema. At no stage in my life did I ever have any desire to smoke.
However, parents using their phone in front of their kids all the time. Well it's not obviously harming them, as far as the kids are concerned. There are also plenty of legitimate uses for technology. Kids can't discern between the two. Heck adults regularly can't.
Smoking by comparison is pretty freaking obviously a bad idea.
mc3301
2 days ago
Just a thought: watching a parent leave to have a cigarette outside or something, from a child's perspective, isn't hugely damaging. The kid can't understand addiction nor lung cancer (and so on), so the kid's perception of "smoking = bad" is mostly only on how the kid themself feels.
With a phone, the kid can fell ignored, unheard, unengaged with the addicted parent for hours at a time, every single day.
Maybe kids will grow up thinking "hey, I don't wanna be a phone zombie like my daddy was," or something.
nytesky
2 days ago
I begged my parents to quit smoking for a decade, and they finally did when I was 12.
I am so sensitive and triggered to smoke even as a middle aged man, it just smells so awful to me, even the hint on a smokers clothes makes me gag.
Now we have pot, which apparently I can smell across state lines?? And through my cars hepa filter? Devils weed indeed.
jacobgkau
2 days ago
It's insane to me the bandwagon that's developed around cannabis after the bandwagon around tobacco turned out to have been so devastating. "Surely we're smarter this time," everyone thinks.
stephenhuey
2 days ago
My wife reminds me of this. And as you both pointed out, it's not just social media, but the algorithmically fueled addiction to endless content. A relative told me their teenagers have to use Chromebooks in middle school, and all quizzes and tests and homework are done on the computer. Not only that, but if they finish a quiz or test in the classroom, they're allowed to sit there and watch YouTube right there in the classroom until the period is over! When I was in middle school, that free time was precious to me because I used it to make a dent in my homework so I'd have less to do after school. It boggles my mind that school administrators would have no clue that kids should have not unfettered access to stuff like YouTube in school. As a guy who has to work on computers most of the time, I'm very grateful my childhood had plenty of analog time, and life in the great outdoors on a daily basis!
mwigdahl
a day ago
When my oldest was going into middle school the district started providing devices for the kids to use in class. There was breathless hype about how this would usher in a new age of technological competence and improved pedagogy. I asked the district IT folks in attendance what types of controls they had in place to prevent misuse -- watching YouTube, open browsing of the web, etc. They had literally nothing in place.
You can guess how that went.
I love Vernor Vinge's works, but the worst prediction of his ever, just 180 degrees totally in the wrong direction, was _Rainbow's End_'s treatment of technology in education. His take (and this was as late as 2006!) was that unfettered access to technology would turn elementary students into a cohort of genius autodidacts. Fast forward to 2025 (coincidently the date the book is set in) and unfettered access to technology has turned children into feed-consuming zombies.
ta1243
2 days ago
How far along this path are your kids?
blackeyeblitzar
2 days ago
What do you do when other kids are on social media or have advanced devices early? Your own kids will get exposed to those and be upset that they don’t have the same things or the same access to social media. Maybe they’ll even create secret profiles and build a wall between themselves and their parents. I feel like it’s hard to keep society away from one’s own children.
scop
2 days ago
First of all we foster a very strong community of likeminded friends from school, church, and other activities. We don’t all see eye to eye on every little thing, but we have generally the same goal. Second of all is that we talk to our kids about it, we try and make these things a conversation.
FWIW we were homeschooling for quite awhile but they now go to a school that has a No-Phone policy.
blackeyeblitzar
2 days ago
Thanks. When you homeschool how do you create enough opportunities for social development?
racl101
a day ago
I can only see this working if they're being homeschooled.
Dweller1622
a day ago
What does it mean to "handle online media?" How is it you would say "most adults" fall short of this?
mrnaught
2 days ago
"analog->digital path" thank you!
thisislife2
2 days ago
Excellent suggestions. I'd add
5. Teach them impulse control and practice delayed gratification.