
Ask HN: How do I make sure my kids are safe online? - permanent_job
Inspired by a recent post (&quot;Ask HN: How do I make sure my non-technical parents are safe online?&quot;). Any tips, trick, software suggestions are welcome.
======
jedberg
I'll tell you one thing not to do. Don't require that they share their
passwords with you.

Everyone I know whose parents had their passwords had a second set of secret
accounts, and felt like they had to hide things from their parents.

Case in point: I rented a room to a girl once (she was 19) whose mom came
along with her to every meeting, and bragged about how her and her daughter
shared an email address.

When I was at the house once after she moved in and her mom was gone, without
even bringing it up, she was very proud of the fact that she had a secret
email address, a secret boyfriend that her mom didn't know about, and a secret
stash of "sexy clothes" that her mom didn't know about.

That right there made me realize the futility of trying to spy on your kids.
Kids are smart and they see each other every day. They _will_ figure out how
to get around your technology and share that info with others.

As others have said, honest conversation seems to be the best answer. Just
like before the internet existed.

~~~
prepend
I was thinking 5-10 year old kids, not 19. At that point I’m not too concerned
with keeping them safe on the Internet.

I’m not sure how a five year old could not share passwords, much less
remember.

~~~
jedberg
Well she was 19 at the time but the password sharing started when she was a
pre-teen.

~~~
HyperTalk2
How did you know so much intimate information about this little girl who was
just your tenant? Maybe another part of keeping kids safe online should be
blocking domains like SeekingArrangement.

~~~
jedberg
She told me all of this the moment her mom was gone. I was doing maintenance
on the house at the time so I pretty much had to listen and smile and nod.

------
sn9
No smartphones or unrestricted access to the internet. No social media.

Have a computer in a common space like the living room for when they want to
be online. You don't have to be watching over their shoulder.

You could try to keep up with all the shit you have to be wary of your kids
encountering online (e.g., age-inappropriate pornography, political extremism,
social media "influencers", games with microtransactions, etc.) or you could
be proactive and intentional and just nip it in the bud with how and when and
where they have access to the online world at the access point.

There's a reason we wait until kids are 16 to give the freedom to drive a
heavy hunk of metal at speeds that can kill themselves or other people. We
should seriously re-evaluate when we give them the freedom to encounter the
worst of humanity. The internet of the 90s and early 2000s is a distant
memory; we live in a world of carefully engineered experiences designed to
exploit our minds' flaws, online social environments our minds never evolved
to navigate, and a host of other things I could mention that suggest that we
should focus on providing childhoods in which they're engaged in things we
know to be relatively safe, if not beneficial (e.g., play outside, read books,
watch movies, play video games that aren't connected to the internet, etc.).

~~~
m0zg
And also: no Windows. My kid somehow gets Admin access on his Windows laptop.
He's 14 years old, from which I conclude that anyone with basic Google search
skills can elevate their local privileges to Administrator and do whatever the
hell they want, including VPN install, at which point your firewall and
parental controls become useless.

~~~
snowwrestler
Single user mode on a Mac will let anyone with physical access to the machine
create a new admin account.

[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201573](https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT201573)

~~~
m0zg
No Mac then, as well. I'm pretty sure I could lock down a Linux laptop to not
be vulnerable to teenage shenanigans, though.

~~~
cpach
Watch out for the evil maid attack ;-)

------
jaxn
My thoughts as a father of six (ages 10-17):

1\. Teach your kids that the most important thing is to treat other people
with respect. The most likely harm to kids comes from bullying. No one wants
to think of their kids as a bully, but by focusing on not bullying others is
the best way to teach them what to participate in and what not to participate
in. They will be able to say they are being bullied.

2\. Teach them not to talk to strangers, but understand that Fortnite and
other games do and will involve talking to strangers. Most of the other
players are kids, but they need to know that just because someone says they
are a kid, they can't trust they really are a kid.

3\. In order to develop socially, you kids need to be online.

~~~
plutonorm
Number 3, this is the most important point. Cutting them off from the internet
is forcing social exclusion upon them. If you want unhappy badly adjusted
adults place barriers between them and their peer group, isolate them and make
them feel powerless by denying them the rights that others around them share.

Denying children, growing up in a digital connected age, access to connected
technology is very damaging.

~~~
ACow_Adonis
while I agree with your position to a point, does the same apply if you're
acting from a position of privilege rather than one of denial?

I.e. you have a high income highly educated tech savvy population in your
immediate vicinity and you primarily mix with other highly educated high
income people physically day to day in your immediate surrounds.

while I agree that it is detrimental for society and problematic for these
bubbles to be forming, I'm not immediately seeing the disservice to the child
from a locally optimal point of view in denying them media consumption and
social networking, if you assume that 'a digitally connected world' is
essentially marketing speak to get lower class and less educated people to
normalize media consumption and social networking.

By all means I agree a child needs access to, and ideally to understand
programming and computers, but I'm not convinced participation in those other
activities are necessary from a locally optimal social perspective except to
work in the interests of those who control those mediums and want people to
participate in them.

obviously?, if you're at a vanilla middle class school and everyone is
watching marvel comics, consuming Disney, and sharing their lives on Facebook,
and your kids is the only one that isn't, they're going to have a bad time.
And I'm not saying I'm a member of that higher class (far from it, although I
don't yet take it as a given that I live in a community that doesn't primarily
deal face to face, or that my neighbors aren't for the most part highly
educated). indeed, I would say this attitude that adtech and media consumption
and large scale social networking is harmful isn't a strange position to take
amongst those with experience with those things. Like junk food and trash
television, sometimes the ability to exclude is a privilege, not a cost...

~~~
jaxn
I guess that is up to the parent. I don't send my kids to private school for a
reason.

~~~
arwineap
As a new parent I've recently been thinking on the issues surrounding private
schools. Can you expand on some of your concerns?

------
colemickens
I get that this is HN, and "tech" is the solution to everything, but an
android app or consumer router setting are not going to protect your kids
from: predatory YouTube content (we all remember the epidemic of Spiderman
humping Elsa, right?) or excessive advertising on YouTube that their brains
aren't even capable of recognizing/processing (we all know about Logan Paul
content that is basically a 20 minute ad being targetted at pre-teen kids, at-
one-time available on YT Kids app, right?).

It's not going to protect them from being pressured for nudes. It's not going
to stop them from committing felonies and producing and transmitting underage
pornography. It's not going to stop rumors and gossip and drama from spreading
across Facebook even if your router is off for the night.

My brother is a middle school math teacher. Find the nearest middle school
teacher you know and ask them how pervasive these issues are. Just from their
small middle school, they had dozens and dozens of students disciplined, just
for nudes. One was supposedly going to be charged after the 6th+ time of
soliciting nudes from a fellow student and then sharing them. The quiet nerdy
kid built a categorized Dropbox collection from the entire school and was
quietly sharing it. It means so little to them.

I'm actually sort of getting worked up here thinking about this. If you've sat
on your hands until your kid is 12, you have no trust or dialog with them, god
bless your hearts for thinking a firewall or Android app is going to help a
single ounce. All you've done is setup a tiny puzzle. Most of us likely know
the workarounds, they will figure it out, just like I did 15 years ago.

Of course, I think "tech" is probably an invaluable tool for setting time
limits and helping with screen addiction, but it's not going to fix any of the
other psychologically damaging aspects of youth+tech.

EDIT: I really appreciate and would like to echo jedberg and ziddoap's
comments here as well.

~~~
cpach
_”One was supposedly going to be charged after the 6th+ time of soliciting
nudes from a fellow student and then sharing them. The quiet nerdy kid built a
categorized Dropbox collection from the entire school and was quietly sharing
it.”_

Ouch. That’s nasty. I wonder though, is it really a technological problem? I
wonder how those guys were raised and what role models they had if they so
blatantly ignores other persons’ privacy. Of course it’s technology that
enables the rapid spread of photos etc. But their parents and other adults
around them are still responsible for trying to teach them how to behave
decently.

~~~
colemickens
That's exactly my point. I knew enough to be "destructive" in middle school
with the school computers, but I chose not to, because of how I was raised. It
wasn't that the school group policy was effective, but rather that I
understood running "fdisk" on the school PC would have more serious
consequences than if I just showed people how to use OLE and Sound Recorder to
unmute the computer speakers.

Technology makes a lot of things easier. I think the most effective thing is
raising kids so that they _want_ to do the right thing. But I also sort of
think this all bottoms out on active, involved, caring parenting.

------
gfh
I don't want my young kids being exposed to a lot of trash online. But we like
to laugh at funny pictures/memes together. So, one weekend I built a primitive
tool that lets me share funny images with them: cleanhumor.net

I have a python script that pulls down posts from /r/funny. Reddit has some
filtering options in their API, which I use. My script then rejects any that
have caption words on my blacklist. It also does OCR to look within the image,
and applies the blacklist there, too.

The remaining images I review manually. They show up on my phone along with
large "accept" and "reject" buttons. When I click accept, the image and
caption become available on that little website I made for my daughters. Many
images aren't funny, and I personally still wade through lots of trash. But
overall it has been fun for my family.

~~~
p10_user
Very cool process. I like the resulting site. Now if you could only add an
additional “possibly be funny” filter :)

------
mackatsol
I've been looking at installing Pihole and OpenDNS.. to block a bunch of stuff
automatically.

Other than that, my kids now being 12 and 15: their computers are desktop
machines in the kitchen. My wife and I look over their shoulders throughout
their online time, and help keep them on track.. as well as having very open
discussions about which things to look out for.

Use any excuse to teach a lesson, but keep it short. One example, my youngest
was asking about online advertising and "what's the big deal?". I explained
how easy and quickly their movement online is tracked, then decided to show
it: we loaded up google and did a fairly unique search, in this case alligator
skin cowboy boots for kids, and clicked a few links.. then asked her to go to
a big newspaper site.. lo and behold a banner ad for the same item we searched
for less than minute ago. Got the point across rather firmly.

Spend time with them, talk to them about their interests online, get them to
show you sites they go to, Youtube stuff they like, etc. I try to point out
new stuff that is "better" than what they are familiar with and sidetrack them
with learning sites like Khan Academy.

Teach them how to do research, so they can fact check and know what is a scam.
Show them snopes, so they can know how to spot bogus stories..

Oh, and lastly, I have told my kids not to panic if they come across a bad
site, just close the window and they should be fine. But do let me know so we
can check the machine together afterwards. Yes, that includes porn sites.. I
know some of these clicks won't be accidental, but I don't care.

I've done enough tech support that i'd rather they be safe than start hiding
stuff from me.

Oh yeah, I really need to sign up for the Family version of 1Password.

------
ziddoap
As a former child, I have some insight, I think. Everything is just my opinion
and I claim no authority on the subject. Your mileage may vary, especially
depending on your childs age. Mine is too young for the net so this is mostly
based on my experiences, the experience of friends with kids, etc.

I don't personally agree with using software to monitor activity for a few
reasons. There are two main reasons for my opinion of this: It rapidly erodes
the trust between you and your child, and I tend to stay away from any tech
targetted at/for kids (or parents for the purpose of monitoring kids) due to
the numerous scandals (insecure, data problems, whatever).

The single biggest influencing factor for online safety, in my opinion, is
education. Explaining what the internet is, how it works, etc. _without fear
mongering_. Present the dangers, and the benefits, without bias. The best way
to approach it is by being honest. There are dangers, here's the reality of
them, here's how you should deal with them, and here's when you can come to me
without fear of judgement. The key here: don't try to "scare them straight" \-
it doesn't work. Just be honest.

More helpful than any monitoring is encouraging a home where your kids want to
come to you with their problems, instead of hide their problems from you. In
my (admittedly anecdotl) experiences, monitoring widens the gap between parent
and child - not closes it. Don't forget that kids deserve some privacy in
their lives, too.

In general, I think it comes down to "be a good parent". Be available, be
helpful. Educate. Don't lie or overexaggerate to get a point across - no
matter how valid the point. Ask about your childs day and try to pick up on
non-verbal cues that something might be going awry.

The internet is out there, your child is going to find it. Help them make it
through that, rather than shelter from that.

Thanks for listening to my tedtalk

~~~
jolmg
What do you think of censoring, like blocking porn sites and possibly obscure
sites that might depict awful gore? Do you think education suffices? At what
age?

I want to agree with everything you said, but there's some crazy things on the
net. With children being the curious and impressionable creatures that they
are, I find it scary to think how much they could be influenced by what they
happen to come upon or search on a whim.

~~~
ahje
If your child is watching gore vids on the internet then the solution is to
sit down and have a very serious talk to the kid -- not to rely on a technical
solution to prevent it.

~~~
jolmg
Sure, but how do you find out if a child is seeing such things without
monitoring? Let them get comfortable enough that they don't feel like they
have to hide that kind of thing from you?

~~~
ahje
The parent comment I replied to was about blocking, not monitoring.

Monitoring is a whole other matter.

~~~
jolmg
The parent comment I replied to was about avoiding monitoring in favor of
education. I replied asking if education was considered sufficient on its own
or if blocking was also desirable in addition to educating. You replied that
instead of blocking one should just talk to them if they're seeing stuff
they're not supposed to.

Unless you rely on catching them by accident, that seems to reintroduce the
need for monitoring that we were avoiding, so I replied asking how we're
supposed to know such things without it.

Monitoring is related. The whole subthread is about avoiding it.

~~~
ahje
Sorry, I misunderstood you then.

For what it's worth, I couldn't even monitor all my teenager's Internet
traffic even if I wanted to. We have had the "there's a lot of wierd stuff on
the Net" talk, and there has been other kids at school who apparently MMS'ed
some pretty bad stuff to the other kids, which resulted in a very productive
discussion about peer pressure and the importance of being responsible.

I believe that approach is better than trying to control everything. Otherwise
you'll simply end up with a bunch of kids in a small bubble that bursts when
they move out, and then the World will simply come crashing down on them no
matter what. It's better to prepare them for what's to come.

------
ACow_Adonis
I don't have any experience yet, but it is something I'm equally concerned
about as a newish father.

First issues seem like non- negotiable to me: ad-blockers, no social media
while young, no YouTube/streaming while very young. Shows or television
downloaded and scheduled locally/limited to stop the addiction and consumerist
problem. I don't have any objections to physically blocking things at a very
young age. Education-wise all the usual stuff about online behaviour and
safety: don't use your real name, don't give it your details, don't click on
ads, or anything sent to you, etc.

No explicit media consumption devices: ipads and phones.

The main issues I have are questions of when and how to introduce more
computer time and access and how/when to drop these controls.

I'm less concerned about porn (assuming young kids aren't really interested in
it, and by the time he is interested in it I doubt there's much I can do bar
education) than I am digital + media addiction, consumerism, gore/ shock sites
and nutter ideologies/bubbles (although again on that last I'm assuming
education, an actual relationship and exposure probably inoculates best).

Any thoughts on when and how to introduce kids to the digital world when my
main fear/thing to protect them from is digital consumption, addiction,
consumerism and tech companies?

~~~
Arbalest
I'm pretty much in the same boat. I would also agree with all the anti-
advertising stuff. Keeping them off tracking is paramount. The phones thing as
well. I have also been thinking about the ramp of releasing restrictions.

With respect to pornography, I was collecting it since I was 13. Yes it makes
parents uncomfortable. I don't think it has made me a worse person, primarily
because I was raised to still respect people. The problem with porn is when
other things (ads again) imply that hypersexualisation is normal, and the
boundary is blurred. Problems with pornography also get raised when peers talk
about it as if they can emulate it. All of these things are out of your
control.

I am already thinking of a pi-hole like system. I sort of have this dream of a
90's early 00's filter system, but that can't last much beyond 10 years of
age. Further, with DoTLS etc, ad blockers are going to become more difficult.
Maybe later on, once a mobile phone becomes neccessary, it needs to be a
smartphone with a custom rom with full app isolation and anything and
everything to cull tracking.

Despite all these measures, I suspect the only real solution is to keep your
kids occupied with hands on stuff that is not on the computer. Treat computers
as a tool. You use it to program other devices. Do some gardening (if you
can). Use computers to track growth and research techniques.

------
webwanderings
Do everything possible to make sure they stay away from YouTube, particularly
their YT for kids app.

~~~
raise_or_bs
I think in terms of __safety __there are bigger fish to fry than YT.

~~~
prepend
There certainly are bigger fish, but YT is an easy one to stop while working
on those bigger fish.

I suppose if you only pick a single site to block for your kids, you get the
most bang for your buck by blocking YT.

~~~
8bitrebellion
You'd be better off blocking a bunch of porn and gore than something with
relatively less 18plus content. And why YT Kids of all apps. Isn't that
tailored for younger audiences

~~~
prepend
My issue with YT kids is that there is a lot of weird content that feeds into
screen addiction. I’ve never seen porn, but seen rotting animals, conspiracy
theories, and lots of annoying, asshole kids constantly talking over mundane
tasks. Not so bad in small bursts, but with hours and hours it’s a bad
influence on kids.

And of course, the ads are terrible.

My problem is that it is tailored for young audiences.

------
dahart
Talk to them a lot. If you let them online, then discuss what happens online
and your fears about their online activity frankly. Porn, predators, privacy,
etc.. There’s no substitute for communication.

I used OpenDNS on my router, and it probably worked for a while, but now I
think my kids probably know their way around it, now that my 15 year old is
has setup multiple Linux distros on USB drives. I also found a VPN app on his
phone once, which will circumvent OpenDNS and anything else I try to do. We
had our first online porn accident when he was 8 or 9. He was traumatized by
getting caught and became paranoid about letting us interact with his devices
or see any of his history, even when he wasn’t doing anything naughty.

Definitely wish I could have held back on games and devices longer, and these
days it’s getting more difficult to limit their screen time. Their YouTube use
is pretty out of control. OTOH, we had all kinds of fears about our oldest
getting too deep into games. We thought he might not make friends because he
wouldn’t talk about anything except games, and for a while didn’t want to do
anything except play games. It’s mostly passing now, and he seems to be
turning out very normal. There was some amount of my wife and I spazzing
unnecessarily.

I only know one person who stopped his kids from using devices at all, and his
kids turned out truly amazing, but I suspect that’s a really difficult road to
go down as a parent.

~~~
bbulkow
As a non parent, can you go further on the idea of how it would be hard to
prevent a kid from using screens and internet until they were much older, like
14 or so?

I grew up in the tv and telephone age, and i simply never had my own of
either. I know other kids probably threw tantrums to get theirs, is that what
you are talking about?

~~~
dahart
Sure, I suspect it would be hard because there’s quite a bit of social
pressure at school and in the neighborhood - more or less all kids are hooked
on screens - and because my experience with trying to limit screen time is
that it takes a lot more parenting effort, we have to actively stay on top of
it since there are screens in the house, we have to actively provide
constructive alternatives and more frequently check on them.

There’s an obvious implication about parenting being more difficult with
screens excluded - that using screens is potentially somewhat lazy. As a
parent, I think I have been lazy and allowed iPhones and Playstations to keep
the kids occupied and let me work on side projects. Road trips with devices is
Nirvana compared to not having them; the kids fight for hours without, and
it’s silence when they have games.

I didn’t have a screen to myself when I was growing up either, until I camped
on the family IBM PCjr as a teenager. This generation just has it quite
different than we did, which in a way makes it harder to evaluate what we
should do as parents. That said, sitting in front of the TV was something we
would do as kids, and also something the adults were warning against.

One way to consider this is to think about whether we adults can go without
screen time. I find it pretty hard myself, much harder than it used to be. Of
course kids are a different case, but as parents we’re setting an example, and
we also have to realize how much of life went online in the last 20 years. It
might be harmful to prevent kids from going online entirely. On the other
hand, there seems to be an emerging global consensus that considerable limits
for kids is healthy and necessary.

------
bbulkow
1\. Your job as a parent is to educate them with mature and thoughtful
responses to everything that they could experience in the world, say, by the
age of 16. At this point your job is over, and you don't keep them safe, they
go off and explore. I hope we can agree on that. 2\. If that is the goal by
age of 16, consider working back on the amount of Independence that gets to
that goal. And, what are the key measurable goals when you can check off
mentally and say 'this kid is on their way to being an independent adult', at
different ages? 3\. I would work to foster the idea that the internet is not a
toy. You go there with a specific task, you get done what you want to get
done, and you walk away. You don't get out the table saw and just fool with
it. 4\. The way to teach a task oriented approach is to do tasks with your kid
on the internet. Side by side. Just like you would teach driving or using a
table saw... Or in the case of my neice today, grilling. Questions will come
up, mistakes will be made, triumph will happen, and you will do it together.
5\. I don't see how kids should have email addresses or open screen time
before the age of about 12, when you have seen a level of information maturity
and critical thinking. The internet is so wild and wooly, i might ask when you
allow a kid to fly airlines by themselves, or take a day in the local city by
themselves, is about when they should have open internet time.

I suppose I rankle at the problem statement, keep them safe, instead of 'how
do we teach independent thought and action', but i tried to answer your
question helpfully and positively.

~~~
AndrewDucker
Agreed with all of this except: "I would work to foster the idea that the
internet is not a toy. You go there with a specific task, you get done what
you want to get done, and you walk away."

The internet is many things, and the idea that it shouldn't be used for fun
seems very odd to me. Like saying "The city is not a toy. You go there with a
specific task, you get done what you want to get done, and you walk away." \-
you'd miss out on a huge amount of what cities have to offer.

~~~
pergadad
That might be an interesting attempt to teach kids to use tech meaningfully,
rather than fiddle around with Reddit, YouTube & co like most of us. Whether
that will rally succeed is another question. The internet is an eternal
evolutionary struggle for "most captivating activity" and our brains are not
equipped to overcome all the nudges and addictive designs.

------
prepend
Since your kids are 7 and 9, I suggest a couple of things. First, have them
sit with you while you show them how to use sites and basic nettiquite- never
share id info with strangers, how to get you and other parent to register for
sites, what’s an ad or scam, etc. just spending time with them to talk through
everything.

Then get a computer and put it in the main room of your house. Let that
computer be the YouTube/Minecraft/roblox/whatever so computer use is around
other people. Put an adblocker on it.

Otherwise block YouTube from phones and iPads and such. It’s a cesspool,
especially for kids.

Fight social media accounts for as long as you can.

Pay for an email account so they don’t have to use gmail. Pick something easy
so they can keep it their whole life.

Look into a smart WiFi hub that lets you set screen time limits. I like the
Uniquiti AMPLIFI. You can set profiles for each family member, turn off and
on, etc.

Set up screen time limits on devices. Apply limits to the adults as well. They
will want to model after you.

Set up a pihole to block ads and whatever else at the network level.

------
neves
I have 2 children. The greatest menace on line to them is addiction. I have
blocking and monitoring software (Kaspersky), and it prevents me of arguing
and fighting about turning down the devices. It doesn't really solve the
problem, but at least relieves me of a lot of stress. Without it is really
difficult just to take them out to do anything.

As all the fathers I think they are smart and intelligent. We talk not just
about the perils of the Internet, but also of the world at large. I tell them
the etiquette on and offline. I think the monitoring functions are almost
useless. They get annoyed and sometimes angry, like when he searched for Isis,
the Egyptian goddess, and it was blocked due to terrorist category match. I
really don't know if it will be necessary when they start to search for
pornography.

BTW, Kaspersky has a terrible interface. I really hate it, but other options
are much more expensive or does not work (e.g. Windows 10 parenting features).

------
eqdw
I have been fucking around on the internet, without any supervision
whatsoever, since I was 12 years old. As far as I can tell, I turned out fine.

Is the internet that much worse than when we were kids?

~~~
snowwrestler
I don't know when you were a kid, but as someone who has been an adult for the
entire life of the WWW: yes, it's much worse now than it was even 5 years ago.

I'll give you an example: my kid used to like to watch a show called Peppa
Pig, so I would find clips on YouTube. Within about a year, people started
posting really disturbing fakes in which Peppa is stabbed, raped, etc. They
have the same thumbnails as the real clips, and _Youtube suggested them, and
autoplayed them after real clips._ Including after clips from the official
Peppa Pig Youtube channel! Truly a WTF moment for me.

Weird shit has existed on the Internet for decades, but it's only recently
that it is being shoveled in front of regular folks as the default experience.
I mean, these Peppa videos were the types of content that 4chan folks would
have worked _really hard_ to inject into normie websites a decade ago. Now,
not only is it super easy to upload them to Youtube, Youtube will promote them
to everyone for you! And seemingly not care about it!

It's one thing if a curious 12-year-old goes seeking porn or gross stuff or
whatever... there's some inoculation in the fact that you had to go find it.

It's another thing entirely when the _default experience_ for a 5-year-old on
Youtube is to get served a video of her little cartoon friend getting
murdered.

------
kemonocode
I think most advice boils down to: If they're very young (under 10 years old)
don't let them have their own smart devices just yet. Young or old, don't
treat them like felons. Talk to them about the possible dangers of online
interaction, but don't give them a (damn good) reason to distrust you. And
yes, unfortunately that also means Internet filtering beyond
advertising/tracking/known malicious sites. It's futile to try to spy on your
kids.

------
kidsans
If there is an advice I can offer out of my experience as a kid: Be friends
with them, and don’t push too hard that they don’t make mistakes.

My dad wasn’t very friendly with me as a kid, and got angry quickly whenever I
made mistakes. So I grew up with a fragile personality, prone to addictions,
and always trying to do things behind his back.

Even though we didn’t have internet at home until I was 18, I always took
money behind my parents back and skip classes to go to the internet cafe. He
also restricted the set of TV channels we can watch, but I knew how to have my
“secret” set of channels that I can easily add/remove whenever my parents
weren’t home.

I’ve discovered a lot of dark corners in the internet, and developed a porn
addition since the age of 13 which I’m still struggling with (I’m 25 now).

It’s always a good idea to setup a DNS filter to avoid accidental harmful
content or define a screen time, but keep in mind that a determined kid can be
as smart as you are and bypass it, or can encounter such content via their
friends smartphones or other means. The best you can do is to educate them to
make conscious good choices when they browse the internet, educate them so
that they can define their own screen time and understand why it is a good
idea. And be a person of trust to them : Make them feel you respect their
privacy and trust them, and when they do something wrong, talk to them quietly
about it, it would have a much better effect that expressing anger.

You want that when your kids find harmful content come to you and say : “Hey
dad, I saw such and such on YouTube”, so that you can educate them about it,
not that they continue watching it behind your back.

------
mrpotato
Using technology is a good tool for this kind of problem and lets face it,
we're here because we love playing with tech. However, I would encourage you
to sit down and talk to your children about what it means to be safe online,
steps they can take to stay safe, and to reinforce the idea that if they are
unsure, it's ok for them to ask you or your spouse for guidance or support.

------
codingdave
My kids who are not yet teenagers always use a Chromebook, and sign in to
their school account. That gives us the same content filters at home that run
at the school. And my district does allow some games, so it isn't overly
restrictive.

We also talk about it, so when they become a teenager and start to get some
freedom, they have some idea of how to behave. We tell them to let us know if
they see something that they know we wouldn't approve of... not to get in
trouble, but so we can be sure that everything is put into a context that
helps them understand what it was, why we don't want them seeing it, and at
what point in their life it may or may not be appropriate.

Finally, all the computers are in our living rooms, with the screens facing
the room. I'm sure the kids can find times to still look for things I wouldn't
like... but at least this adds some transparency to what they are up to. And
it feels far less invasive than monitoring.

------
charliepark
Something I struggle with, and need to do a better job of, myself: Set a good
example for them of not being addicted to screens.

------
cpach
You might want to read this quite short article by scholar Elza Dunkels:
[http://cdn.agilitycms.com/wacc-
global/resources/md-2014-1/6-...](http://cdn.agilitycms.com/wacc-
global/resources/md-2014-1/6-Dunkels.pdf)

------
sha666sum
It's a lot easier to keep your kids safe than your parents. Your parents are
unlikely interested in learning new things about computers, but they need it
for all kinds of important stuff, like spending money and communicating with
people. Your kids don't have that issue, and don't have any important
credentials to steal. However, if they're to be safe when they grow into
adults, it helps to learn while they're young.

I think kids should grow up using PCs and not phones/tablets. I doubt kids can
grow up to be computer literate if they spend their screen time in front of
smart phones instead of PCs.

Here's what I would do: Put a PC with usable specs and the latest Windows in a
semi-public place in the apartment. They're supposed to have some semblance of
privacy but still have an adult passing by every now and then. Give them a
Windows computer that's isolated from the rest of the network, and set up an
unprivileged user with an adblocker. Give them access to the administrator
account (or let them figure out the password as you type it in front of them),
and tell them to be careful what they run on their computer, especially as
admin. Sternly tell them not to plug in USB's/CD's/whatever into any other
computer except that one computer which they're allowed to use.

The expectation is that they'll catch some adware sooner or later, download
dubious game cracks, and generally mess up their computer. This is fine, you
they're supposed to be allowed to experiment in moderation. If you fix
something, try to have them around watching so that they see you solve the
problem. Another good option is to take the computer away for a few days
because "they messed it up, and now it has to be fixed". Even better if they
have friends coming over to use the computer, as kids learn a lot from each
other. Over time they might try to solve problems themselves and screw up
Windows, at which point you'll reinstall it and incidentally wipe all their
data.

Let them surf the web, as long as they stay away from porn, violent content,
etc. Instruct them to stay pseudonymous, and not to tell people or
websites/games who and where they really are. Tell them it's perfectly fine to
lie on a login form. Tell them that there are all kinds of people on the
internet, that everyone lies on the internet and that websites are competing
for their attention. If something is bothering them, they can always just
close the computer and talk to you about it. Most importantly, let them make
mistakes and learn from them.

------
tokyokawasemi
It's tough. I've been thinking about this a lot over the years, especially
with respect to youtube content -- which is really hit-and-miss to say the
least. I'm trying to curate channels I think are ok on www.fugu.tv, and
welcome any input.

------
Simulacra
Be real and honest with them. Tell them there are predators out there, tell
them people will try to get them to do awful things on the internet, on
camera, in video games. Tell them there are an infinite number of bullies and
hateful people on the internet. Better yet: Give them the novel Ready Player
One, trust them a little bit, and tell them to be extremely cautious.

~~~
cpach
_”tell them to be extremely cautious”_

To me that sounds like encouraging them to be afraid. I would rather try to
assist my kids to develop a sound judgement.

------
tmaly
I think it would depend on the age. If you could walk them through different
bad things that have happened to kids and relate it to them, they might be
more cautious.

My kids are still too young to be online. I know with YouTube if your letting
them watch, you have to be very careful about the sidebar

------
mukeshyadavnitt
You can try SnapAlert ([https://snapalert.ai/](https://snapalert.ai/)) or Bark
([https://www.bark.us/](https://www.bark.us/))

------
gshdg
At what age?

~~~
permanent_job
I have two daughters age 7 and 9. But tips for other ages are more than
welcome.

~~~
ypkuby
Have you considered getting your own non-isp supplied network gear, running a
firewall and just monitoring it, setting up rules and triggers, etc?

That's what I'm doing at home, I also monitor news for threats happening and
some sample payloads, IPs, and add to my block list.

Its not bulletproof, but I'd say 70% at least gets blocked.

~~~
bored_kitty
Sorry to jump in, but is it possible to monitor for cyber bullying using these
methods?

~~~
poglet
Chat apps encrypt the messages as they are sent over the network preventing
you from monitoring them.

------
baconhigh
Talk to them.

------
perfect_loop
There is plenty of software to monitor your kids' activity online. One thing
that is sometimes overlooked is watching out for cyber-bullying. Contrary to
what many think, this is usually caused by classmates from the offline world
and is spread using anonymous apps or messaging apps, especially Snapchat.

------
ajaaar
Qustodio is pretty good.

