[wvenable]

I'm a parent -- it's never been easier to control what your children are doing on devices. My son isn't an admin on his laptop. I don't let him download arbitrary apps and he doesn't even own his own i-device yet. He's only slightly older than Miguel's kids, and he has a Switch (with parental controls on), but I don't see any need to give him his own iPad.

When he wasn't old enough to learn about dark patterns, we didn't expose him to any! Now that he's older, dark patterns are something we talked to him about and he understands. No matter how restrictive you make an app store, you're never going to eliminate sources of manipulation. Each failure, including one of his accounts getting "hacked", is an opportunity for learning.

What's not an opportunity is locking down the entire world so children can't screw up.

[liontender]

It has been absolutely fascinating to see my 3 year old interact with his grandparents as he "helps" them play Scrabble on their iPad.

Together they decide to watch in-app ads; try installing some free-to-play game apps that seem like they might be amusing for an adult to show a child how they use; and otherwise explore the bounds of what you can do & learn on the modern walled-garden Internet. The grandparents are pretty media savvy ("this is an advertisement -- they want to sell you something") but are overall a little less conservative than the parents about screen time and are occasionally willing to, for example, try new apps that turn out to be scammy shovelware.

I've been thinking about getting the kid a non-networked desktop PC with a keyboard and seeing whether he derives any joy from the kind of basic, actual applications I grew up with -- a word processor program and a printer; literally QBASIC and gorillas.bas; etc.; with the understanding that this is an amusing anachronistic toy.

To be honest the biggest thing I'm trying to think about with the kids is not so much about screen time but about dealing with information more generally. Ads work really well on kids, but so does any organic, confidently stated information.

How do you convey the idea that that "just because you read something online doesn't mean it's true"? What happens when adults in your life (including sometimes your own parents) don't model a safe level of skepticism?

[wvenable]

A lot of dinner time conversation revolves around stuff that any of us, including the kids, have read or seen online.

A few months ago (while school was closed and we were quarantined), my son relayed to us all information about COVID-19 that he had come across online (likely via YouTube). I was expecting a bunch of misinformation but all of it was spot on! We've also talked about Flat Earthers. The other day we ended up discussing why Wikipedia isn't allowed as source at school.

> I've been thinking about getting the kid a non-networked desktop PC with a keyboard and seeing whether he derives any joy from the kind of basic, actual applications I grew up with -- a word processor program and a printer; literally QBASIC and gorillas.bas; etc.; with the understanding that this is an amusing anachronistic toy.

We grew up in similar times and from my experience as a parent it doesn't really work. We did a lot of that stuff because it was what we had. I did introduce my son to emulators and classic Nintendo games; the idea of 3 lives and your dead was a bit of a shock. But he eventually got Super Mario Maker and making your own classic Mario levels is more fun than playing someone else's.

[user5994461]

>>> The other day we ended up discussing why Wikipedia isn't allowed as source at school.

Because Wikipedia has made obsolete all research tasks given by schools? One search and the wikipedia article will tell you everything there is to know about a subject.

[zpeti]

Yeah, try searching for anything even mildly political, and see how much of "everything" there is to know you see about it.

[pyman]

Kids between 2 and 11 years old spend an average of 5/6 hours per day in front of a screen. And kids between 2 and 3 see an average of 25,600 ads a year.

This article is not about restricting the use of mobile devices or parenting, it's about regulating the software industry. Parents don't want their kids to be exposed constantly to advertising on their day-to-day lives, or pressured into buying things all the time.

The European Union is doing a good job regulating businesses, however, Apple is doing a lousy job regulating their own ads and payment systems. And this is because the AppStore makes $60 billion a year thanks to ads and subscriptions.

In my opinion, Apple and the AppStore should be regulated more by the European Union.

[wvenable]

My kid sees more ads now that he watches YouTube on his Switch but between 2 and 3 and I don't think he saw a single ad. We don't have cable (just streaming) and I always have browser ad blocking enabled. Even on mobile devices, I greatly dislike apps that have ads.

[maxgashkov]

I'm not a parent but all practices described in the article infuriate me as well. I'm not sure why should I try to deduce if the next app I will install uses any of them -- and you don't even need to lock down APIs to prevent this.

All you need is a simple 'complain' function in App Store that will trigger a review by human with following expulsion of offending app (and probably the developer account too).

[Valkhyr]

> What's not an opportunity is locking down the entire world so children can't screw up.

Massively agree. It's also not good to teach children that computers are locked-down things you can't control.

[pyman]

Kids between 2 and 11 years old spend an average of 5/6 hours per day in front of a screen. And kids between 2 and 3 see an average of 25,600 ads a year. This article is not about parenting, it's about regulating the software industry.

[Fnoord]

I rather view it as limited, and every computer has limits. Including the one's in a traffic light. So for example an air gapped machine has limits which allow you to not worry about the Internet.

[KiranRao0]

> Each failure, including one of his accounts getting "hacked", is an opportunity for learning.

I do not have a child but I completely agree. Some of my best learning experiences have been from being manipulate when I was younger. The loss was nothing of consequence in the grand scheme of my life, but the lessons had tremendous value.

[paulryanrogers]

Learning the hard way can be stickier. But it can also be devastating. STDs are a very permanent reminder to learn from the mistakes of others. (Not advocating sheltering kids unnecessarily.)

[wvenable]

If they must learn the hard way, better it be on smaller problems than big ones. Better to lose your Roblox account to a scammer as kid than your bank account when you're an adult.

[wvenable]

We always drilled into him basic cybersecurity -- don't give out your password, it's too good to be true it probably is, etc. But for whatever reason he pressed on this one, and even socially engineered me in the process, I think just to see what would happen.

Much worrying and crying ultimately ensued. We were eventually able to recover the account and nothing really terrible happened. But I believe this was a more valuable lesson than all our previous talks about it. And he's now slightly more insulated from this kind of thing in the future.

[taeric]

While I get what you are saying, claiming it has never been easier is somewhat silly. It was never required in the past. So, as easy as it may be now, it is still harder than many times before.

Worse, as well intentioned and correct as your advice is, you are still many zero days from a hosed machine. Sure, you don't let them download arbitrary apps. Doesn't matter if they visit some sites.

[wvenable]

When I was kid in the 80's and 90's, I had unfettered access to my computer. I had video game systems. I had portable video games systems. I ran an adult BBS when I was 13.

There was no controls at all in those times. You still had the option to give your kid a device or not -- same as now. And you can connect that to the Internet or not -- same as now. But now you can actually have much more fine-grained control -- it doesn't have to be all or nothing. But you still have to decide and I don't see why Apple needs to make all the decisions when I have the controls.

> You are still many zero days from a hosed machine.

It's definitely not as easy as you make it sound -- the sky isn't falling that fast or we'd all be screwed. And I block web sites as well.

[taeric]

I was a kid in the same times. Yes, for those of us lucky enough to have access to machines that had good modems (or, well, any modem), some semblance of this was possible. To argue it is at all at the same scale, though, is rather wrong.

The comparison was "it has never been easier." Back then, just don't buy that rather expensive modem and let the kid take up the home phone. Nowadays, it is "don't buy the entry level game system or ubiquitous computing device."

It really is vastly harder nowadays, because of how ubiquitous networked devices are. Can it feel easier? Sure, but I guarantee that most motivated kids can and will outsmart most parental controls used by less than tech savvy parents.

[Fnoord]

> I had video game systems. I had portable video games systems.

> There was no controls at all in those times.

There was though; you could by design do less with it than a Raspberry Pi with Internet connection.

Its like using vi versus emacs. Neither is better, each have their pros and cons. These (portable) video games systems are akin to vi; they do one specific job really well.

[vaccinator]

> and he doesn't even own his own i-device yet

you probably don't either... are you an admin? or is Apple the only admin?