[hosh]

Experience works in a learning process if, and only if, there is awareness of consequences, and the developing brain is capable of linking actions with consequences. If there is a long feedback cycle, it is doubtful an adolescent is going to put much thought into it — or care.

Free range parenting, by the way, don’t necessarily advocate letting a child wander off with zero awareness on the part of the parent. There are often environmental rail guards invisible to the child — neighbors that know the child and the parents, for example, or in the case of Japan, a culture and social order where this is pervasive.

My view is that parents curate environments, and change the possibility space in which catastrophic mistakes can be avoided. This isn’t a question of “sheltering” or “exposure”, but whether or not posting up naked under aged pictures of yourself on the internet is a catastrophic mistake.

[Spivak]

I don't think I really disagree with you but I don't know of any options here where you can do that. Monitoring internet usage destroys trust, same with trying to make it not private with something like "no phone / laptop in your room." This is the age for discovering porn after all. You can't make a web filter for "sketchy guys on IG", and it's the same sort of thing IRL with GPS monitoring or just not letting them go places. Apples new nudity filter thing might be a not too invasive option but that's iMessage only.

Thirteen is about the age where you lose control of what they're doing all the time and there's no way to afford them the necessary independence to actually grow up that they can't do catastrophically stupid things with. Best you can do is prepare them, have a relationship with them so they tell you things and you can smell when the vibes are off, and hope they took some of the bigger lessons to heart.

[karp773]

Are you speaking from experience? How many teenage kids did you have? What are the outcomes?

[Spivak]

Sorry, too young for my own, I'm talking about my own experience. There is nothing my parents could have done to make it physically impossible for me to make the mistakes I did outside of stripping me of my privacy and independence -- the noose I hung myself with was "had a phone" and "had access to Instagram." Well I guess that's not true either, I got my phone and door taken away plus a curfew and that didn't really do much due to the whole "having friends" thing. Parent's somehow never caught on that I took the sim card out before turning it over and just used my friend's old phone.

I feel like you're not gonna believe me but it's the truth. I stopped being a menace when my parents loosened their grip. To this day I still have no idea why they completely changed their approach, probably just apathy, but without this looming oppressive authority to fight against there was just I don't know -- no point. All the twisted satisfaction I got from pissing them off or getting away with stuff just got sucked out of the air. I mean I still did things my parents didn't approve of like going to Forest without telling them, and getting my nose pierced but like I was more responsible about it when it wasn't an act of defiance.

[hosh]

I’ve raised a tween who became a teen step child. I also grew up as a teen in the 90s. I was accessing porn via gopher and usenet when I was around 10. Netscape wasn’t even around back then. The dotcom boom did not really ramp up until after I graduated high school.

There are a lot of factors at play in all of this. For one, in the 80s and 90s, I didn’t have the internet as you know it. I also enjoyed a lot more freedom, as many folks who grew up in that time will remember.

These days, as parents, we can get arrested for neglect because we want the child to be able to walk home from school with their friends school. The laws were put on the books due to fear of child trafficking — little do they know what kids are doing on the internet.

My wife and I now have a under-2 child and another on the way. I can tell you that for me, allowing the child independence forms a crucial part of the parenting, but independence for its own sake is not the whole thing. The key missing piece is somehow teaching the child to _voluntarily_ contribute something greater than themselves. There is freedom, yes, but also responsibility. One chosen by the person.

Without that “contribute something greater than yourself”, independence for its own sake is meaningless. So is forcing the person to take on a responsibility.

I’m not aiming for control of the internet for my child. I’m aiming for raising someone who can discover their own inner purpose and then can grow into someone capable of contributing that. The next generation will have to take care of the world long after my cold body is food for the worms.