[minusthebrandon]

My wife and I both work full-time and we still stick to my daughter's iPad restrictions: only an hour a day, no Instagram or TikTok or YouTube at all, and she only gets it after homework and chores and other things are done. We never take it anywhere. It's important that parents set AND KEEP boundaries.

My daughter now knows not to expect to be able to Snapchat her friends or anyone else because she's never been able to. When she mentions that her friends all have it, we remind her that our house is not their house and we have our rules in place for a reason, which we are always willing to explain.

While I agree that screens and TV ARE very addicting, that doesn't mean that parents are powerless or that the majority of the problems brought up in this article are not the fault of the parents.

[londons_explore]

Lack of ability to snapchat friends might not seem important... But communication is key to nearly everything in life, and not being part of those snapchat rumours, disputes and controversies now will probably mean your daughter doesn't get as good at the skills to interact with her peers in 20 years time.

[minusthebrandon]

She interacts with her peers at school and with her family... by that same token, ANYONE who grew up before Snapchat or the Internet had or has lacking social skills.

Also, she CAN FaceTime. I would not consider Snapchat or TikTok to be "socializing with friends" for an 8 year old.

[jjk166]

> She interacts with her peers at school and with her family... by that same token, ANYONE who grew up before Snapchat or the Internet had or has lacking social skills.

You know how we don't really get this whole social media thing the kids are into these days? That's because we lack those social skills. Just like how your parents' generation struggles with E-mail despite it being so simple, because you grew up with that.

It might not bother you that you're bad at Telegram or whatever because none of your peers use it either. But her peers do.

[minusthebrandon]

My parents struggling with e-mail is no way the same thing as lacking social skills. That just seems a lack of technology skills.

My point was that saying Snapchat or social media leads to greater social skills than what previous generations had is very hard for me to believe.

[jjk166]

Tomato tomato

You can communicate via a method your parents can't because you used it extensively in your prime while they didn't. Your grandparents probably had the same issue with fax machines and your grandchildren will probably have the same problem with neural-messaging. Every generation thinks "but this time it's different" and every generation is wrong.

[minusthebrandon]

I will still say that lacking the ability to communicate via a particular medium is not the same as lacking social skills. My inability to send messages via Morse code over telegraph lines doesn't mean that I lack social skills.

[jancsika]

Nobody ever ended up going down a "Fax" rabbit-hole, or becoming depressed because they spend an hour before bed each night compulsively faxing.

[NegativeLatency]

I missed out on texting because of similar choices by my parents, at the time it was not fun

[snazz]

Yes. I don't know how old the GP's daughter is, but restricting communication apps—especially during a pandemic—seems counterproductive. TikTok, sure, whatever; it's a time suck and doesn't really help with social skills. But socializing online really matters now, especially for adolescents.

Edit: If she's eight years old, then this seems like a more reasonable restriction. Disregard what I said previously. Eleven or twelve might be a better time to get Snapchat, especially since that's about the time that most kids get their first smartphones today anyway.

[minusthebrandon]

Yes, she is 8. But even if she were 10 or 11, we'd probably keep similar restrictions. She does have access to FaceTime and our time restriction will probably grow as she ages.

[anonunivgrad]

A minor should not have access to Snapchat. It’s all fun and games until she sends a nude picture to a boy out of naïveté, falsely lured into a sense of security by Snapchat.

[_zamorano_]

Yeah, it's doable and congratulations for achieving.

But anyway, he is right. For most parents is an uphill battle against tech and social media they're bound to lose due to mostly exhaustion.

[ccleve]

How old is your child? Whether you can get away with this very much depends on the child.

[minusthebrandon]

She's 8. I'll grant that this works for us now. As she ages, we'll give her more responsibility for handling boundaries on her own.