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Comment by Cthulhu_

12 days ago

> The solution is parents using the parental control feature on their children’s devices.

This is a stopgap at best, and to be blunt, it's naive. They can go on their friends' phones, or go to a shop and buy a cheap smartphone to circumvent the parental controls. If the internet is locked down, they'll use one of many "free" VPN services, or just go to school / library / a friend's place for unrestricted network access.

Parents can only do so much, realistically. The other parties that need to be involved are the social media companies, ISPs, and most importantly the children themselves. You can't stop them, but they need to be educated. And even if they're educated and know all about the dangers of the internet, they may still seek it out because it's exciting / arousing / etc.

I wish I knew less about this.

24 comments

Cthulhu_

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lesostep  12 days ago

>> This is a stopgap at best, and to be blunt, it's naive

Not if the rule includes easy rule circumvention. For example, if you could parent-control lock the camera roll to a white list of apps.

Want to post on social media so your friends would see? No can do, but you can send it to them through chat apps. Want to watch tik-tok? Go ahead. Want to post on tik-tok? It's easier to ask parent to allow it on the list, then circumvent, and then the parent would know that their child has a tik-tok presence, and — if necessary — could help the child by monitoring it.

The current options for parent control are very limited indeed. You can't switch most apps to readonly, even if you are okay with your child reading them — it's posting you are worried about.

But in ideal world there would be better options that would provide more privacy and security for the child, while helping parents restrict options if they fell their child isn't ready to use some of the functions.

  • zknow  12 days ago

    yeah I think there is a way to do this elegantly. I didn't have my own device until I was 20 or so actually, and it wasn't a big problem. As a young teenager I could use the family desktop for education and entertainment. I had online friends in my late teens I played games with, and would have done much more so if I had a more more powerful cpu lol. Should mention though, these friends were through in person networks on discord, so I wasn't really in the public square I guess.

    So I could explore things but not get into anything naughty.

    When I decided to get into software dev I got my own cpu and my own phone once I had a job in dev.

    Might seem pretty conservative but it worked, and I'm technical enough now. I wish I would have got into coding earlier but I've done alright so :shrug: Depending on the environment for my kids I'd move the timeline back a little, but not too much. Having too much time and just the unfiltered internet to fill it is too dangerous for young teens.

well_ackshually  12 days ago

In what universe do you live where children have enough disposable income to buy a smartphone ?

  • ninalanyon  12 days ago

    You can get a usable smartphone for well under 100 USD on AliExpress or a reasonable secondhand one from a reputable brand for about the same price here in Norway on online trading sites. Don't teenagers get pocket money or do weekend jobs any more? My sons were grown up by the time smartphones were affordable but No. 2 son bought his own Siemens C65 with saved up pocket money when he was in his early teens.

  • bsharper  12 days ago

    You only need $25-30. It'll be locked to a carrier, but that doesn't matter and is perhaps preferable (no monthly fee for a subsidized device) if you are able to use wifi. There's an ETA prime video which explores using a 2025 Moto 5G as handheld game console: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ad5BrcfHkY

    tl;dw it's quite capable for the money and would could easily get on social media apps/sites.

cowboylowrez  12 days ago

if you make smartphones an 18+ item like alcohol many of these problems would go away.

  • MSFT_Edging  12 days ago

    That would also spur the market to produce actually nice pure communication devices. Flip phones could stop being for people with AARP cards again and would give better options to adults who don't want the smart phone all the time.

  • littlecorner  12 days ago

    And have schools stop giving kids laptops or tablets. I wonder how much of the Chromebooks for school incitive was to develop a new market for Google

    • hparadiz  12 days ago

      It's wild seeing these opinions on hackernews of all places. Do we want future generations to know nothing about computing?

      I would not be here if I didn't get my start in my early teen years.

      7 replies →

ushtaritk421  12 days ago

Many parents of preteens and young teens that I know simply do not allow their childrend to use social media on their own devices. Doesn't sound like that bad a solution.