My ex and I just talked about this and for the record, we both like how you think. We have a six year old together and she has two older children from a previous relationship.
We are going to:
a.) Educate her on the general concept of pedophiles.
b.) Arm her with specific tactics about specific communities.
c.) Monitor.
d.) Get her permission to constantly log into her accounts and play as her.
I'm thinking about introducing our eight year old to basic computational literacy, but I'm planning to have that be without any internet access at all. He can learn to type, write, program, do digital painting / photo editing, movie editing, sound editing, and 3D animation without general internet access.
How is playing online multiplayer video games a need for a child?
Even if you think it is for some reason I'm not seeing, why not have het play games where you can run a private server, so you have control over exactly who can log in and can keep an eye on things like chat logs?
Children now engage in play and social dynamics online. If your child's peer group engages in online interactions with each other and your child does not, your child will risk the struggles of bullying and isolation. Children are forced to be with their peer group for most of their waking hours and practice social rituals like hierarchy establishment, identity formation, boundaries, in-group/out-group dynamics, etc. with each other.
This is a really good question. I'll answer but if we could go back in time, I think we would make a different decision. To be very blunt, I think we fucked this one up.
At first, we started with a strict 'hands off' policy because we didn't see how it was a need for her. But then the pandemic hit and due to a variety of factors, it ended up being our best option for her to socialize with other people her age.
Private servers are great, but we discovered an interesting vulnerability that created a need to both educate and protect her. I was surprised by how many 'age appropriate' (whatever that means) Youtube videos provide detailed steps on how to connect to private servers.
That introduced a need to trust her completely. We have to trust her to never sneak away and never get access to a device without supervision. If we misplace our trust, she could end up a victim. We hope she doesn't and in reality, she likely won't, but I can only say 'likely'.
So now we're backed into a corner. Technical guard rails are one option but she's been obsessed with figuring out how things work since she was very young. Again, if there's a small possibility of danger, that's too much for us. So we're left with the least bad option - educate, trust as appropriate and verify.
Or alternately, some nice person on HN could build a parent time machine so we could go back in time and make an entirely different decision. The more time goes by, the more I agree with you. But again, we really fucked that one up and now that the cat is out of the bag, there's a risk that major changes will make sneaking around even more appealing. And again, that's just too much danger.
Ah. Speaking as a parent who has made many, many mistakes, that makes all too much sense.
I will say that longer-term I absolutely do plan to give my kids unfettered internet access. The day will come they need to learn to cope with it, so might as well have them do it when I'm around to hopefully be of some help.
One slightly out-there idea for how to roll it back - ditch WiFi entirely. Internet access is by using a physical cable at one or two locations in the house.
Harder to subvert, and the kids see that you share the constraint, so it may be slightly more palatable.
We homeschool. Our friends are about as careful with devices and children as we are, so far as I can tell, and more often than not we're seeing them in non-internet contexts like playgrounds and parks.
He does use the Netflix Kids interface to start the next episode of shows during their daily allotment of screen time (which we keep a close eye on, so they're only watching shows we approve), but he has no concept of the web or that he could use that interface for anything other than TV time.
We are going to:
a.) Educate her on the general concept of pedophiles.
b.) Arm her with specific tactics about specific communities.
c.) Monitor.
d.) Get her permission to constantly log into her accounts and play as her.
I pray this is enough. :(