[mothballed]

It's the parents obligation to educate their child.

It's the child's obligation to use that education wisely.

There were no trackers on cars when I started driving at 15 so my parents drove with me for a few months and after that I was on my own. There were no gun laws against kids having guns when I was 7 so my dad showed me how to use one safely and after that I was set loose upon the countryside armed on my own. There were no ridiculous negligent standards/laws on the book when I was young about it being wrong for a kid to spend all day going up/down a creek so my dad showed me what all the venomous snakes looked like and how to use a compass and after that I was on my own.

I find disagreement with this new standard on parents. No, it's not the parents obligation to keep their child from ever making a horrible mistake. It's their obligation to educate them well and then set them loose with very few safeguards so they can actually slowly learn to be an adult. I am very much for showing kids how to use the internet responsibly, but I'm not of the opinion that parental controls are particularly desirable beyond an initial learning period.

[sojsurf]

Well written, and I agree with you on everything you wrote.

That said, "the internet" is a large place, and I think parents would find more clarity thinking of it the way they think of a physical place. In my mind, letting my son loose on the internet is not like letting him run around the woods unsupervised (which he does). It is more like dropping him off in a large city every night.

As you said, guidance is imperative, and in the real world we would not give only verbal guidance. We would, if we lived in the city, walk our kid to the library, the museum, the coffee shop, the park. We would talk about what parts of town to avoid. We would talk about what "free" means and about not trusting strangers and not just going into any door.

That last part is tricky. On the internet, every link is a door into a neighborhood, and there are a lot of neighborhoods even adults are not well prepared for.

[throwway120385]

I would add that it's society's responsibility to handle a child's transgressions with grace and humility, and to try to remember what it means to be "tried as an adult." Forgiveness isn't easy.

[freehorse]

There is a survivor bias here. It ignores cases where parents or kids failed to be 100% wise. When we are talking about a whole population, we are gonna have unwise or unluck cases when we "set kids loose".

Which may be fine, I don't know whether the tightened control of both parenting and kids nowadays is better. But we have to recognise the cost that comes with doing something like that. There is less risk-taking right now, and bad consequences seem to be taken harder, in a way human life is valued more, which imo part of the reason of the shift. The mentality "let kids make their own mistakes" can be fine, but that comes with accepting the possibilities of negative consequences these mistakes may cause, and I feel that the main issue is that we frown upon these consequences as society much more.

[xg15]

Ah yeah, it's the parent's responsibility, the child's and probably the pet's as well, the only one who has no responsibility is the tech industry.

[mjg2]

> It's the child's obligation to use that education wisely.

I disagree because children, despite how precocious and "old-soul"ed, are not wise compared to online predators.

I appreciate your POV on allowing children to make their own mistakes; life is the best teacher. Yet, to make an analogy, a gun owner keeps their collection locked up not just for their protection but for their family's protection. Some lessons in life have steep prices and are one-way doors, and we should pass that hard-earned wisdom to the next generation without those costs.

[wizzwizz4]

Children are not wise compared to online predators, but they will notice when things are getting fishy. Maybe that's after they've made their first few silly mistakes (maybe they've given the predator their home address, several photographs, all their friends' contact details, and the one password they use for everything), but they will notice before anything seriously bad happens. But just because they'll notice, that doesn't mean they'll take an appropriate action; and it doesn't mean they won't be convinced that actually, it's fine. The child needs to know that they can come to you for advice, and that there will be no repercussions if the situation is benign, even if they've broken the rules: the concrete threat of (even mild) parental punishment for rule-breaking will be more salient than a mild situational suspicion.

"These are the rules, you are to follow the rules, breaking them would be foolish and breaking them in secret would be even more foolish, but they are always up for discussion, and if you do break them you can still come to me for advice without getting in trouble, and I'd much rather you tell me than that I find out on my own" is a principle that can be imparted to a child. You do actually have to tell it to them, though, in several different ways over a period of time, and you have to be consistent about it. Children aren't wise, but they are clever, they can spot patterns, and they'll tend to believe your actions over your words if the two conflict.

You do not want to set up a situation where a predator can blackmail a child using the threat of your punishment. Parent, yes, but parent consistently enough and well enough that such threats are an obvious bluff that the child knows to ignore (and report to you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46465829), and going online can be as safe for your child as playing in the local neighbourhood.

The rules for young children safely using the internet unsupervised would be extremely absurd for an adult: they include things like "do not use any search engines (ask me if you want a new website)" and "do not create accounts on services (without permission)". Young children must also be kept away from content aggregators, or anything with an automatic recommendation system (e.g. Pinterest, YouTube, modern news sites, Reddit, HN). But hyperlinks on proper webpages are perfectly safe: a child isn't going to end up anywhere they shouldn't by clicking on hyperlinks if they check the URLs first and avoid the places they aren't allowed, just like a child isn't going to end up anywhere they shouldn't, wandering the high street, if they know to avoid roads and building sites. You don't need to tell a 6-year-old "stay away from porn sites", just like you don't need to tell them "don't go in that sex shop", because (a) they won't find it; and (b) even if they do, there are more general rules ("never tell a computer system that you're over 13 if you're not, and ideally not even if you are") that'll prevent any harm from occurring.

And just as you'd have conversations with a child about "where have you been?", and have them show you their favourite spots occasionally, you should also do so with unsupervised internet activity. Unsupervised does not mean ignored, after all.

[baq]

Laws disagree. Parents are at least in some cases legally and financially responsible for their children doings. Parental controls are necessary for children who don't want to or cannot control themselves regardless of the level of education they receive.

[ipython]

Thank you. I couldn’t have said it better.

[cevn]

You were loose with a gun at age 7?!

[iamnothere]

Some kids grow up in families who hunt. It’s not super common but also isn’t unheard of.

[vorpalhex]

One of my uncles was asked to stop bringing his rifle to highschool because him and one of the teachers kept talking about hunting in the parking lot and getting to class late. The principle felt they were likely to at least make it in the building on time if they weren't chatting in the parking lot about their rifles/hunts/etc.

People used to have an insane amount of freedom and things generally went better.

[Bluecobra]

I was in Cub Scouts in the early 90s and got a Swiss Army knife. I thought it would be cool to show it off to the kids on the bus. It got confiscated by the principal and I was suspended for one day. I think I got off light. I can’t imagine what would happen these days.

[mothballed]

Absolutely, I would also walk down the public roads also to get from one field to another, nobody said anything. It was quite normal in the rural Midwest. You'll probably find lots of true stories online as well about kids arriving to school and checking their rifle with the principal at the beginning of class and then getting them back at the end of the day.

[mikestew]

Check the gun with the principal?! No, you leave it on the gun rack in the back of the pickup, and lock the truck door like normal people at my high school. :-)

(Also rural Midwest, and a long time ago).

[throwway120385]

We did that stuff too in rural Washington. The vast vast majority of people don't mess with anyone, let alone children.

[cevn]

Dang, seems like a completely different world than the one I live in. Honestly I would prefer it if we were able to teach our kids personal responsibility to this level, I actually believe people can be that mature by age 7 and you know whether a kid is a rule breaker or not by that point.

[Aurornis]

> It's the parents obligation to educate their child.

> It's the child's obligation to use that education wisely.

In the real world, it’s the parents obligation to make an effort to protect their children. In extreme cases, parents can be found negligent if they don’t demonstrate that they’re taking reasonable steps to protect children and something bad happens as a result.

This doesn’t mean that extreme, draconian parenting is mandatory. It does, however, mean that some level of parental control is necessary on an age-adjusted basis. It’s not enough to say “I told them not to do that” and then wash your hands of the consequences when we’re talking about a pre-teen like in this article.

[dap]

There is important truth in your post, yet you seem to miss the really important pieces that make this hard.

> It's the parents obligation to educate their child.

> It's the child's obligation to use that education wisely.

Two obvious things complicate this:

- You weren't taught how to use a real gun at 6 months old, right?

- Would it not follow from what you said above that if you had accidentally shot and killed yourself at age 7, then it would be your own fault and nobody else's? That seems (to me, at least) like an absurd conclusion.

I think about it like this: as a parent, my jobs include identifying when my child is capable of learning about something new, providing the guidance they need to learn it (which is probably not all up front, but involves some supervision, since it's usually an iterative process), allowing them to make mistakes, accepting some acceptable risks of injury, and preventing catastrophe. I'll use cooking as an example. My kids got a "toddler knife" very young (basically a wooden wedge that's not very sharp). We showed them how to cut up avocados (already split) and other soft things. As they get older, we give them sharper knives and trickier tasks. We watch to see if they're understanding what we've told them. We give more guidance as needed. It's okay if they nick themselves along the way. But we haven't given them a sharpened chef's knife yet! And if they'd taken that toddler knife and repeatedly tried to jam it into their sibling's eye despite "educating" them several times, while I wouldn't regret having made the choice to see if they were ready, I would certainly conclude that they weren't yet ready. That's on me, not them.

You allude to this when you say:

> I am very much for showing kids how to use the internet responsibly, but I'm not of the opinion that parental controls are particularly desirable beyond an initial learning period.

Yes, the goal should be to teach kids how to operate safely, not keep them from all the dangerous things. But I'd say that devices and the internet are more like "the kitchen". There are lots of different risks there and it's going to take many years to become competent (or even safe). Giving them an ordinary device would be like teaching my 2-year-old their first knife skills next to a hot stove in a restaurant kitchen with chefs flying around with sharp knives and hot pots. By contrast, without doing any particular child-proofing, our home kitchen is a much more controlled environment where I can decide which risks they're exposed to when. This allows me to supervise without watching every moment to see if they're about to stab themselves -- which also gives them the autonomy they need to really learn. The OP, like other parents, wants something similar from their device and the internet: to gradually expose elements of these things as the parents are able to usefully guide the children, all while avoiding catastrophe.