One thing I noticed that is often missing in these discussions, sometimes it isn't up to the parents to decide at all.
Imagine your 8 - 11 years old daughter's social circle, and the school she is at where her classmate were allowed very little Internet at home or school. Then you wouldn't have a problem enforcing whatever internet rules.
Now imagine everyone of her classmate were playing Minecraft, and she is the only one being left out.
The point is, if everyone at her school is spending time on god damn stupid Chinese TikTok, then a 10 - 15 minutes Tik Tok for her would be a necessary evil.
So far most of the Internet stuff are entertainment only. So stuff like Pop Music, Anime, Viral Videos etc. While not productive, they are harmless. And educating them not to use real names and talk to strangers on the internet seems to have worked so far. And only keep track of topics they looked into. ( At least before the age of 12 or 14 ) Generally speaking the internet is still fairly safe under some guidance.
But I have witness teenagers ( son of my close friend ) wondered into politics and culture war at the age of 14+. And it is absolutely destructive. The age where they start doing things without telling you, and going on to Reddit or whatever Internet forums. I dont have a good solution to that.
Part of the reason why I have been thinking about Age restricted participation on web forums. You could only reply if you are over the age of X.
Friends of ours have a pretty okay-ish implementation for social media for their kids. They make the kid the 'brand manager' for a pet first. The kid gets the interaction of social media and their friends, but they have to do it for their dog/cat for a year first, then they can get their own account. The kids have gotten some low level brand sponsorships for the pets, something that the other kids at school are jealous of, or so I am told. The kiddos know the ins and outs of social media from the business side a bit more, though I am skeptical of that. Also, the pets are eating and getting toys at a discount, kinda. Seems like not the worst of ideas and allows for a soft entry into that hellscape.
It means that rather than posting about themselves, they're posting about the pet. Nobody is going to bully a cat or dog, so they can get used to SM without any of the drama that might be aimed at them by their peers.
I thought so too! I imagine there are a lot of ways to dip your toes into SM without all the drama. Things like model trains, art, metalworking, 4H, or other 'creative' pursuits where the focus is not on the poster but rather what the poster has created/done. Less documenting your own life and more documenting your efforts. The pet thing seems to work well as it has the kids do chores surreptitiously.
AFAIK, the kids can only take pics/vids of the pet and the kids post as the pet. There's not a lot of DMs and the like, as it's in the 'voice' of the pet.
Their own pets
The kids are making the pet into a 'brand'
The kids use tiktok and insta as their social media outlets. FB is, as I am told, 'for old people'.
They have followers like any influencer does. Mostly these seem to be bots to me, but of the 'real' humans, they seem to be people that are into cute animals and dumb pet tricks. Especially with the dog, the one kid has gotten it into Frisbee tricks and that seems to have gotten a bit of traction online.
I think this is underrated. One girl in middle school who was my daughter's friend wasn't allowed a phone or internet. By the end of 8th grade she had very few friends and really had nothing in common with anyone else to talk about. This was a during a lot of stay at home covid schooling which probably made the effect more severe.
> Tik Tok for her would be a necessary evil. [...] While not productive, they are harmless.
I think it is a mistake to view something like viral TikTok videos as "harmless". Wasn't it a few weeks ago that we had a front page article on a child that died during a "pass out challenge"?
But you raise a good point. Other parents giving their children unsupervised access to the internet creates a massive problem. A colleague of mine started with a hard and fast "no internet" rule. That absolutely broke when all his son's friends were playing minecraft.
I haven’t got the discipline to keep a minimum of screen time and I notice a massive difference between kids that do have very little unsupervised access (i.e many hours of TikTok and YouTube): the screen kids in
my non-English speaking country speak fluent English at age 9 or 10. The non screen kids might never catch up. So while I’m sure it’s toxic as hell at least there is some benefit.
If I was in an English speaking country I’d set my kids’ TikTok to e.g Spanish ;)
I swear it will be like, OpenBSD only, custom router, firewall everything, no Windows...
If you can break out, good on you. If you can write your own tools, even better.
"I was traumatized from computing because my dad never let me see a GUI outside of X11."
I hope they'll be bored enough to wander over to books--"old" programming and math books--and just start working through those. Who knows.
There were at least three groups of folks with unlimited access to computers and Internet in school: smart gamers, smarter tinkerers, and me. What I'd like to encourage, if I could control some portion of it, is to funnel activity to the second of the three. And that based on constraints, because I don't know any better than utter abstinence.
Any complaints about Minecraft will get them pointed to the book on Foley, gcc, and the promise of my time to help...
In the end, they'll figure out everything anyway. But at least in the beginning, I tried to have them focus on first principles.
Did I mention the Great Books? I have to put those somewhere.
I will say, YouTube killed my nephew’s interest in programming and tinkering. He started out with all sorts of interests and teaching himself how to code. Now he just watches YouTube and TikTok like all the other sheep and does nothing interesting.
I optimized my life to build projects, and I avoid youtube and tutorials unless I can't really guess how to achieve something. Tutorials, and especially video tutorials that are less easy to quickly examine just deplede your "creativity moment". Why make something if someone already did? The goal that was "magical and special" for me is now a consumerism's image in the Desert of the Real.
I get so annoyed these days when I google "how to X" and the top 20 results are youtube videos like I don't want to make noise or put headphones on sheesh.
I get angry because they're largely bullshit filler to begin with, and even that aside I can skim a lot faster than I can read. They're an intentional waste of my time soley for the sake of draining my wallet.
The placement of videos over text tutorials is a literal scam, and I resent it strongly.
I suppose it's different for younger kids, but Minecraft was very productive for me compared to many alternatives. I was playing as a teenager, though. I learned binary logic through the redstone system, server administration (and how to build computers) from server hosting. Met some friends that I've kept for over 10 years and still see in person when we're in the same area.
It's a pretty wholesome game with a lot of skills you can learn without even realizing.
Imagine your 8 - 11 years old daughter's social circle, and the school she is at where her classmate were allowed very little Internet at home or school. Then you wouldn't have a problem enforcing whatever internet rules.
Now imagine everyone of her classmate were playing Minecraft, and she is the only one being left out.
The point is, if everyone at her school is spending time on god damn stupid Chinese TikTok, then a 10 - 15 minutes Tik Tok for her would be a necessary evil.
So far most of the Internet stuff are entertainment only. So stuff like Pop Music, Anime, Viral Videos etc. While not productive, they are harmless. And educating them not to use real names and talk to strangers on the internet seems to have worked so far. And only keep track of topics they looked into. ( At least before the age of 12 or 14 ) Generally speaking the internet is still fairly safe under some guidance.
But I have witness teenagers ( son of my close friend ) wondered into politics and culture war at the age of 14+. And it is absolutely destructive. The age where they start doing things without telling you, and going on to Reddit or whatever Internet forums. I dont have a good solution to that.
Part of the reason why I have been thinking about Age restricted participation on web forums. You could only reply if you are over the age of X.