Comment by scop
4 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.
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.
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!
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.
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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.
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.
> 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.
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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...
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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.
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.
Nothing beats "othering" the out-group members to really pull the tribe together!
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My family didn't exactly say "better," but they meant it.
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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.
I think you're on to something...
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.
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.
<< 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.
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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.
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> 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.
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?
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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.
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.
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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.
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...
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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.
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.
> The only thing that I've learned, this is all in line with California’s state-approved computer literacy recommendations.
That's seriously fucked up!
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.
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There is a sister thread on HN currently asking why people homeschool. Welcome to the conversation.
> 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.
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.
It's not that simple. Had I cut my daughter off and not allowed a phone, she would never have made the connections with the good friends she has. I am convinced these phones are troubling our youth but cutting them off is not advised.
> Gorilla in the room are other f*ng parents
That's why some people prefer home schooling
“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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXx2nq6dmpg
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.
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”.
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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.
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.
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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”.
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.
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.
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.
I like it! Thanks for the explanation of your process.
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.
> 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.
This complex is deserved.
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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.
How do you explain these kind of ideas to a three-year-old?
#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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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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!
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.
How far along this path are your kids?
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.
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.
Thanks. When you homeschool how do you create enough opportunities for social development?
I can only see this working if they're being homeschooled.
What does it mean to "handle online media?" How is it you would say "most adults" fall short of this?
"analog->digital path" thank you!
Excellent suggestions. I'd add
5. Teach them impulse control and practice delayed gratification.