[Snakes3727]

It baffles me that parents have become so lazy they don't even want to monitor what their kid does anymore online, and instead expect the government to do all the work.

I remember when my daughter wanted to play Roblox with some friends I sure as shit did my best to monitor and lock down that horrible thing. Same with just general internet monitoring. Whenever she wants to play some game or something I research it.

I have sat down with her countless times and yeah she has broken my trust a few times and she looses access to the internet.

[justinator]

Brutha when I was young my parents would ring a bell at dinnertime and if I ran to the dining room in 5 minutes I got to eat and that was basically the extent of their monitoring of me.

[fragmede]

But did you have unrestricted access to a device with a camera where pedophiles the world over tried to talk thirteen year old you into doing dances in your underwear for them?

[anal_reactor]

I honestly think that pedophiles aren't half as bad as Facebook algorithm making you addicted to doomscrolling. I spent shitload of time online as a kid looking for friends. Once I came across a guy who openly told me he's a pedophile. Nothing bad ever happened to me.

[eskori]

I completely empathize with you on this:

> I spent shitload of time online as a kid looking for friends

Plus I also agree in how harmful doomscrolling can be, specially for the young. Can't compare that with pedophiles though, sorry.

I don't know your age, but I think we can both agree in the fact that the Internet has changed a lot in a short period of time, and still does. I met some of my best friends online: games, forums, group chats.

However, as well as we could go out and play in the street without much concern some years ago and now the streets are for cars that can injure/kill you + other stuff, the Internet is no longer the same either.

Not only that, but now parents are also people who grew up with the Internet and no longer see it as something new or weird, so they are not as afraid as previous parents were. That means that children are raised without or with much less fear to online dangers.

Of course we are talking about a large-scale issue and we can't just use personal experience to justify anything. But I wanted to point out that using "Nothing bad ever happened to me" is specially dangerous here because we are not even talking about the same scenario.

[Hizonner]

> I don't know your age, but I think we can both agree in the fact that the Internet has changed a lot in a short period of time, and still does. I met some of my best friends online: games, forums, group chats.

It changes. Hasn't gotten materially less "safe" on the whole, though. And it doesn't change that much.

> However, as well as we could go out and play in the street without much concern some years ago and now the streets are for cars that can injure/kill you + other stuff,

You are out of your mind. Streets in general, in most of the world, are safer for pedestrians than they were "some years ago". And they are a whole lot safer than they were when I was a kid, which was rather more years ago than you seem to be talking about. What's changed is people's perceptions and tolerances about risk. And not entirely for the better.

Unless "some years" is somewhere over 100, you're just making up obvious nonsense here.

> Not only that, but now parents are also people who grew up with the Internet and no longer see it as something new or weird, so they are not as afraid as previous parents were. That means that children are raised without or with much less fear to online dangers.

Parents were not, in general, terrified of the Internet in the 1990s. Whereas there's a vast wave of paranoia right now. Again, what you're saying is just flat out factually false.

[anal_reactor]

> However, as well as we could go out and play in the street without much concern some years ago and now the streets are for cars that can injure/kill you + other stuff

Tell this to teenagers regularly standing on the street corner in front of my house and being loud.

> the Internet is no longer the same either

Yes, but again, the real danger is having your brain turned into mush by algorithms, not pEdOpHiLeS. And the current social trend is to have even more walled gardens with algorithms.

> but now parents are also people who grew up with the Internet and no longer see it as something new or weird, so they are not as afraid as previous parents were. That means that children are raised without or with much less fear to online dangers.

The opposite. When I was a kid parents had zero knowledge about how computer works and what the internet is, I could browse shady or straight-up illegal websites all I wanted and nobody cared. Nowadays there's huge panic "my child saw a picture of a titty!" because parents are at least somewhat aware that there's shit on the internet. Otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place.

> But I wanted to point out that using "Nothing bad ever happened to me" is specially dangerous here because we are not even talking about the same scenario.

Okay. Can you point me to some statistics that fear-mongering is beneficial to the society at large? Because news usually paint a picture of the world getting more and more dangerous despite crime in general falling in most developed countries.

[eskori]

> Tell this to teenagers regularly standing on the street corner in front of my house and being loud.

I also have those, specially at night, but at least where I live they are a minority. I used to think the same but it's easy to forget about those who we don't hear about (literally).

> Yes, but again, the real danger is having your brain turned into mush by algorithms, not pEdOpHiLeS. And the current social trend is to have even more walled gardens with algorithms.

As much as I hate seeing how pedophiles are used as an excuse for absolutely horrendous technical and legal decisions (when in the first place I straight up don't believe them), I am aware that they are an actual danger. And when you are affected (also meaning your kid or whatever related) it sucks. It's a different type of harm compared to algorithms, "brainrot" and its consequences (which doesn't mean they they are less dangerous).

I completely agree in how terrible the possibility of "having our brains turned into mush by algorithms", and not only for the younger (even though they are specially vulnerable). It infuriates me even more when I see parents letting their 2yo get stuck with videos automatically recommended by some algorithm designed as if it was a mental weapon to completely lobotomize them, but then "I don't understand why do they behave like this". Also agree in the trend to have even more walled gardens with algorithms and how that sucks.

> When I was a kid parents had zero knowledge about how computer works and what the internet is, I could browse shady or straight-up illegal websites all I wanted and nobody cared. Nowadays there's huge panic "my child saw a picture of a titty!" because parents are at least somewhat aware that there's shit on the internet.

As with the first point, this is highly subjective, since different families grew and grow up in different environments (regional, cultural, legal, etc.) Where I live and with all the parents that I have discussed this topic (pretty frequent in my case), I found out that most of them understand up to some degree that the Internet has its bad stuff, but see that as inherent and inevitable, so they don't care that much. Maybe they already saw that stuff, but since they are OK they don't perceive a danger. You always find a couple of "Karens" in the other opposite, that's a worldwide species, but here a minority. I would love having actual data in how parents position with this in different areas and generations, I am really interested in this topic. Since I don't I work with that I have locally, but I know I can't just extrapolate that to the rest of the world.

> Can you point me to some statistics that fear-mongering is beneficial to the society at large? Because news usually paint a picture of the world getting more and more dangerous despite crime in general falling in most developed countries.

Unfortunately not, but the think is that I also agree here, panicking is hardly a good choice. However, that's not the same as ignoring the danger. If we are getting lower crime rates and safer environments it's because we are more aware (and take consequent actions) than ever of different types of dangers. That's my whole point: ignoring that the Internet has dangers because we happened to grow up in it and without issues isn't ok. There are dangers, we should be aware of them, and we should have mechanisms to avoid them or at least mitigate their impact (Virus? Antivirus. Pedophiles? Don't engage with certain interactions/requests, or idk, I don't have the answer to be honest). About the news... a hole other topic, but yeah, they live of sensationalism and I could argue how harmful and stupid that is for hours.

[justinator]

My dude if someone wanted 13 year old me to do undie dances for their pleasure, they'd just kidnap me off the street.

Are you under the impression that crime was just invented 5 years ago?

[Ferret7446]

That's kinda the point of online grooming. You get kids to trust you and then you tell them to go to some location where you can kidnap them off the street. It's the predator equivalent of door-to-door snake oil -> email phishing, the Internet allowed them to "upgrade".

[navigate8310]

This kind of helicopter parenting encourages the child to break your trust even more. Instead of regulating what your child does online, be very transparent and talk about out all the perils of such services. Be ready to invest considerable time with them that encourages physical outdoor activities instead of being lazy and hoping internet will be their parent and then micro manage stuff.

[latentsea]

Most people don't actually either know what the perils of such services look like in enough practical detail to describe it to kids, and if they do, they generally feel very uncomfortable describing such things to their children. Ironically the logic is that kids are too young to hear about such things like that and need to be protected against even hearing about it. Seems counter productive to me, but also seems to be the way of the world.

[frizlab]

Do you have children?

[sys_64738]

Usually this response comes from those who are highlighting their inadequacies as a parent. People don't like to be judged so get defensive.

[frizlab]

Not this time, I mostly agree with the comment I was responding to, in general.

However the tone implied a “know-it-all-it’s-easy-just-do-this” solution, which, as everybody who has had children knows, does not exist. Every child is different, and they all respond differently to the same thing.

Furthermore the comment gave explicit orders and judgments of other parents, which, if he is not a parent himself, is completely unacceptable (and even if he is, it is still unacceptable). The rule is simple: never ever judge a parent. You do not know the sh*t they have to deal with (and tbh the same goes for non-parents too…).

Obviously giving advice is completely fair, but the tone matters.

[wryoak]

A: “it’s important to communicate honestly with your kids and spend time with them in a way that provides them alternatives to common yet inferior modes of living life”

B: “To suggest such, you must not have kids yourself”

Is someone feeling inadequate? Better to look into the mirror than to try to turn it on those who challenge you

[frizlab]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46083280

[navigate8310]

Does my point becomes invalid if I say I don't? I've been a child before.

[mbirth]

Or as Hofstetter put it: “If I see a helicopter in a tree, I don’t have to be a pilot to know: Someone fucked up”

[frizlab]

But it does not tell you how.

[frizlab]

Oh boy, you’ve been a child?! Good for you, you must know what it is to raise one then.

That is truly and desperately stupid, I hope you’re joking.

[fuzzythinker]

How can such obtuse opinion be the top comment? A good parent builds trust with their kids, not monitor them. If that trust can not be obtained, then block sites in hosts or at the network level. If you believe Roblox is horrible for your kid, why allow them to use it at all?

[GaryBluto]

> I have sat down with her countless times and yeah she has broken my trust a few times and she looses access to the internet.

All that does is encourage her to lie and find work-arounds rather than fess-up and suffer consequences.

[protocolture]

Good breeding ground for new techies however. Circumventing net nannies and school protections got a lot of us interested in the first place.

[bigstrat2003]

That makes no sense. For rules to have any meaning at all, there must be consequences to breaking them. If OP doesn't take away his daughter's Internet access when she breaks his trust, it will just teach her that there's no reason to follow his rules because it doesn't affect the outcome for her.

[tarsinge]

This is unfortunately a common fallacy: rules with consequences can encourage kids to lie, it’s inferior to trust, so let’s have no rules (and don’t say no) and talk through everything. Not only is not how kids brains grow, but inevitably the parents lack time to talk all day long and the kids end up on their own unprepared to face anything with consequences. This is a recipe for the behavior and anxiety problems that have become so common.

[ctheb]

What would a better approach look like?

[iamnothere]

Explain why it was bad, show them how you caught them, and tell them they have to do better next time. Rinse and repeat until a young hacker is born.

[tarsinge]

There is a fantasy theory that you can just only explain to them why something is bad, and they’ll understand and stop to do it by themselves. In contrast to past generations that are painted as caricatures that only had rules with harsh punishment, never talking and explaining. Looks obviously extremely appealing on paper, at least a generation of "modern" parents fell into the trap and are struggling with teens and young adults highly insecure and non adapted to the adult world.

[Hizonner]

Worked for me. I now have a secure young adult who's as well adapted as anybody I've seen.

Come to think of it, I never got punished much as a kid myself, unless you count lectures. Did OK.

Sorry about your cycle of authoritarianism there.

[orwin]

Repetition. Then make them repeat, to see if they understood why (they _will_ roll their eyes, until they age enough).

The only thing we were punished for in my childhood was lying. Not forgetting/not following on promises ('yes I will do it, don't worry '), that was fine, but saying 'i did it' when it wasn't done, that was getting harsh punishment. You didn't clean the toilet after use despite multiple warnings? As long as you admit it, no punishment, only a calm talk. I destroyed my little sister room and ran out for an hour during a teenager fit? Calm talk, asked to fix everything the best I can (and I did). Lying after the fact? Yeah, you've gained a curfew, and an unpaid job. The 'where were you' that most kid are asked in their late teenage years was always answered truthfully, even when it was doing illegal stuff (happened with my younger brother, in front of my even younger sister). Calm discussion, no punishments.

A few year, my sister called my dad at 3 am, while inebriated and high, and afraid (I don't remember if it was because she didn't trust her friend to drive her or that she felt weirdly bad and was afraid of GHB). The trust built in the early years from this approach might have saved her life.

[joseangel_sc]

my teenager self finds this as a challenge and just a way to defy your authority

[mjevans]

I'd feel better about a kid smart enough to learn how to get around DNS block lists and other forms of mass surveillance and filtering than one who free ranges and isn't even trying to get out.

[joseangel_sc]

me too, but i want my child to get around those authorities and i want them to defy them, but i don’t want too be one of those authorities

[pram]

TBF my boomer parents didn't monitor a single thing I did on the internet, so I kinda doubt it's some unique failure of contemporary parents.

[ls612]

My parents tried but they know about as much about technology as a typical boomer so by the time I was in high school it became totally ineffective.

[jen729w]

But was this in the late 90s/early 00s? I mean … it was kinda different then, no?

I - 49 - also had boomer parents who didn't monitor my internet back then. I really don't think it can be compared to today.

[nechuchelo]

My parents didn’t monitor what I was doing on the internet when I was growing up in 00s. I saw a lot of shit and wasted a lot of money on GPRS and WAP portals. I learned from my mistakes and I’m glad I did. I wouldn’t want to monitor everything my children do either.

[pksebben]

don't know if you had a similar experience, but my folks didn't pay much attention to ANY of the stuff I ingested, data, chemical, or otherwise.

My partner, a gen Xer, had it even looser. Talks about just hanging out in a patch of random dirt until the street lights came on.

Notably, I haven't heard anyone use the terms 'helicopter' or 'bulldozer' parenting lately, and I kind of wonder if it's because that's just the norm, now.

[Larrikin]

Whitehouse.com, Goatse, Lemonparty, wondering what results you will get if you type fuck into Dogpile, public and private chat rooms etc all existed on the early Internet.

There was way less advocating that slavery and Nazis weren't so bad and it was much harder to upload a photo of yourself, but nearly everything these censorship laws are trying to block existed in some form on the early Internet. Parents need to parent and we have an entire generation that grew up fine with the Internet and video games.

[pram]

Frankly the amount of outrageous deranged shit I saw on IRC and Usenet as a preteen kinda makes me conflicted on this point, whether the internet is "worse" today. Like, I had already seen the gaping asshole of goatse probably hundreds of times before I graduated high school so... lol

[datatrashfire]

every generation thinks they live in unique times. that there existed some idyllic lost time innocence. it’s a fantasy.

[the_af]

The internet was pretty fucked up in the 90s / early 00s.

Much less regulated, you could find all sorts of weird stuff (and yes, also porn) in it.

And it didn't mess us up. Before that, we teens had access to naughty magazines. I had a friend who managed to rent porn movies from the local videoclub (before Blockbuster).

"Life, uh, finds a way."

[fragmede]

> And it didn't mess us up.

Honest question: If it did, how would we know? Here is a thread on incels.is where a dude tricked a woman into flying to another country because he "knows she deserves it". https://incels.is/threads/i-just-made-a-woman-fly-from-spain...

With reproduction rates falling, and people having all sorts of trouble with relationships, what does "messed up" look like, and why are we so sure that we actually aren't when the world is increasingly polarized and having trouble with authoritarianism? How can we prove those things aren't actually linked?

[the_af]

To be honest I think incels as a full-blown phenomenon came after my generation. In any case, as my sibling commenters point out, there are so many variables you cannot really isolate which one is responsible for the incels. Did porn play a part? Maybe. I bet there are lots of things that played a larger part, including other aspects/platforms of the internet which spread hateful and misogynistic rhetoric.

[iamnothere]

How can we be sure that it isn’t the result of the US leaving the gold standard? Or the increase in automotive recalls? Or the increase in the number of hot dogs consumed at hot dog eating competitions? I’m sure there’s a connection. https://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

[Larrikin]

Hating women and having her waste money on a flight is way better than burning her at the stake, stoning her, or chatting her up because you are a serial killer.

Theres a long history there. It is already a good thing that most people identify that behavior as weird and awful instead of it being socially acceptable or even the law.

[port11]

So we're blaming parents now? I don't know a single parent that understands what a VPN is or why the government needs to be on top of that.

This is 100% a crusade against online anonymity and a bid for control. Children aren't using VPNs, adults are, and politicians are quite convinced that that's where dissidence and danger lies.

[annoyingnoob]

Kids need room to explore the boundaries and fail, it is part of growing up.

[lisbbb]

It's not about parents failing to do their jobs, it is about heavy handed big government wanting to step even further into our lives using our own technology.

[slumberlust]

Would you support removing age restrictions elsewhere under the guise of 'just parent?' Drinking age? Gambling? Driving?

[ch2026]

> I sure as shit did my best to monitor and lock down that horrible thing

How much of that "horrible thing" is due to a handful of youtube videos you've seen as opposed to first-hand experiences? What if you found out that the very well-produced youtube videos which regularly attack Roblox have the exact same agenda as the US/UK laws you're opposing?

[Dusseldorf]

Within the past week the CEO described predatory behavior on the platform as "not necessarily just a problem, but an opportunity as well". Not sure what YouTube videos have to do with that, regardless of production value.

[ch2026]

CEO is an autistic dumbass who isn't good at conveying his thoughts. What he could have said: "While we have the best protection of any gaming or social media platform today, any amount of predatory behavior is an unacceptable problem. Roblox has increased from 20M DAUs to 150M DAUs over the last 5 years and the absolute number of these unfortunate incidents has remained flat: an 80% decline in incidence rate. In this way, we view it also as an opportunity: How can we can continue to scale the platform while getting the incidence rate to zero?"

[frm88]

I agree with this interpretation. I watched the interview and - to me - it was very obvious that this was his intention. It was also very obvious that he has a lot of trouble verbally expressing himself precisely. I will admit, he completely lost it when he talked about including Polymarket in a children's gaming platform.

[octorian]

Oh, its definitely a dumpster fire. And they keep changing the parental controls to make it less obvious what's appropriate for what age.

And then there's the constant begging for fewer restrictions and more things being permitted, to the point where you're basically screaming "no" in their face and want to smash the damn tablet.

Then it settles down, and starts up again a month later.

[idiotsecant]

If it's baffling it's because it's bullshit. Very few parents are calling for this. It's just 'Wont someone please think of the children' moral hand-wringing on its face and not very subtle creeping fascism underneath.

[CJefferson]

The world doesn’t consider it reasonable for businesses to sell beer to kids, and expect us all to constantly follow our kids around to make sure they don’t get beer. Bars don’t get to say ‘woops, we got thousands of 9 year olds drunk, their parents should keep an eye on them’”.

And at this point, most kids, most people, spend more time online than outside walking around

[g-b-r]

> Bars don’t get to say ‘woops, we got thousands of 9 year olds drunk, their parents should keep an eye on them’”.

Because there's no whatsoever downside in requiring bars to not serve children (if we assume that it's just to not give alcohol to children); online age checks instead have very big negative consequences for the whole populace.