> "About half the 10 year olds I know (which is more than a few) have phones with no filters on them."
This is on parents (and how they are educated around parenthood) IMO. Notice the comment about Reddit, even with all the sanitization it's ridiculously easy to find very hardcore (in every sense of the word) stuff.
In the same way that you hold hands when you walk past a busy street, you cannot expect the internet to be a safe place. As a parent you have the responsibility here.
I felt it was better to teach them that 'there's stuff out there you can't unsee', because I realized they were one sleepover away from getting around any filter I could put in front of them.
This is how it worked for us. Parents did what they could to block PC access, but me and my brother managed to break them all to do what kids do online. At certain point, you have to actually talk with your kids even if it is the kind of 'smoke that cigar until you are sick' approach. Naturally, my dad being my dad, took a different tack. He just picked the PC and took it to his shop.
Different times. Needless to say, I don't think I will be able to try the same approach.
Yes, great, this is in line with my point. I'm not saying you should take control of the internet but you are responsible for how they interact with it.
Growing up my father believed playing the GTA would be detrimental to my development. He banned them from our home and told the parents of my friends not to let me play those games at their house, if they said they wouldn't enforce that rule I wasn't allowed over.
Didn't matter, I played the games to completion at friend's houses because their parents didn't really give a crap.
Looking back, I think the only way my father could have reasonably stopped me from playing these games would have been to isolate me from my friends and wreck our relationship. Now luckily, we're pretty sure no harm was done in this case, but the point is that there's not actually that much parents can do to limit access to content if other parents aren't similarly vigilant.
>Growing up my father believed playing the GTA would be detrimental to my development.
Almost all parents think that, COD included. But I think recent studies said that video game violence does not influence kids and teens to commit real life violence. At least kids and teens today play Minecraft and Roblox which are to lesser extent violent than GTA and COD.
I rather have my kids playing GTA than stuff like Candycrush or whatever mobile game is popular now. At least GTA requires some amount of brain activity.
It’s crazy to me that “just exercise complete control over what your kids do and see” is touted like it’s not the start of a black mirror episode.
> In the same way that you hold hands when you walk past a busy street
This logic isn’t scale dependent and I know you have a line somewhere before “it totally fine to have landmines in random patches of grass — parents responsibility!” Where is it?
Seems to me that most black mirror episodes are about the loss or restriction of freedom. I can't imagine a black mirror episode that starts with giving the protagonist autonomy and freedom instead of preventing it.
Your alternative I presume is just to treat everyone like a small child equally so that nobody can see anything potentially painful or commit any thought crimes (the ends etc etc). Certainly the internet is very hard to regulate with children but maybe they just shouldn't be spending so much time on it. It's much harder to keep track of 15v hours of usage a day vs 1 or 2. But again that's a personal responsibility thing. If a child gets hit by a car we examine the circumstances surrounding it, the logical conclusion most people would assume is not to sue the car manufacturer to prevent the operation of their vehicles. There's definitely a balance between corporate and personal responsibility but I'm strongly against the childification of the internet and apps that is occurring. It doesn't matter that most people don't understand something, if you prevent them from observing or utilizing it you're effectively enforcing that ignorance.
We should not be enforcing such restrictions. Any restriction may benefit some children, but will rob everyone of the ability to learn how to discern good from bad. We should not be training total reliance. Encountering difficulty is an essential part of human existence
> I can't imagine a black mirror episode that starts with giving the protagonist autonomy and freedom instead of preventing it.
I was confused by how your comment related to what you were replying to, until I realized you just assumed that a child can't possibly be deserving of any autonomy at all, or even be considered a protagonist.
Thank you, I was so confused I didn't know how to reply to them. I was like "but we're specifically talking about taking away all autonomy from kids. This is the opposite."
It's super wild to me that there are so many people who parenting as "I own this child" and not "I am the proximate caretaker of this independent person."
Please note that I didn't say anything like that and you're making an assumption. The other option is teaching your child to be safe, as you would when they are old enough to stop holding hands.
You don't hold 10 years old hands when crossing the street. At that age, they are going through streets alone when they go to scool or club or visit friends.
> At that age, they are going through streets alone when they go to scool or club or visit friends.
In the united states, this stopped being socially acceptable sometime time in the past 20 years. Letting your kids walk to school before high-school (13/14) is considered child abuse by many. Not everywhere, not everyone. But there has been a huge shift in views around what kind of out-of-the-home-unsupervised activity is seen as normal.
In Switzerland 5 years old walk unsupervised. Literally. Every August/September there is big campaign for drivers "be careful inexperienced kids on the roads" with billboards and what not. That is it.
It might be other extreme. But it does seem to me that if you are not letting them navigate world until 13, you are probably harming their development.
Is that true? In Germany in most cities children walk to school alone when they start elementary school at 6 years old. They are only accompanied by the parents for the first few weeks when they start school.
Unfortunately, disastrously, it is more or less true, yeah.
Here's a recent episode of the podcast 99% Invisible, about the Japanese TV show about toddlers running their "first errand" alone (which has become popular in the USA via netflix, perhaps because it seems so wild in the US?), and comparing US (and apparently Canadian) physical landscapes for children. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/first-errand/
The episode touches on the fact that in Japan dropping off your children to school by car is generally prohibited, with a principal explaining why. I have heard this is true in Germany. It is definitely not true in the USA -- and the US physical and social landscape has been built in such a way it would be largely impossible. It's a disaster.
This is on parents (and how they are educated around parenthood) IMO. Notice the comment about Reddit, even with all the sanitization it's ridiculously easy to find very hardcore (in every sense of the word) stuff.
In the same way that you hold hands when you walk past a busy street, you cannot expect the internet to be a safe place. As a parent you have the responsibility here.