The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread
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Undoubtedly a big problem but banning it outright seems pretty heavy handed. It can’t all be negative and what defines “social media”. Personally for my own kid, I think I’d rather introduce him to it in a controlled way and monitor it when he’s a quite a few years younger than that when it wouldn’t feel so much like a gross intrusion on his privacy. Just setting them loose when they are 16 with no previous experience and no ability to control it seems like a backward step.
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@Hog said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:
Undoubtedly a big problem but banning it outright seems pretty heavy handed. It can’t all be negative and what defines “social media”. Personally for my own kid, I think I’d rather introduce him to it in a controlled way and monitor it when he’s a quite a few years younger than that when it wouldn’t feel so much like a gross intrusion on his privacy. Just setting them loose when they are 16 with no previous experience and no ability to control it seems like a backward step.
now, replace social media with alcohol in the above and consider that the negative side effects of social media are far worse than alcohol ever was.
do we let minors drink?
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@madrebel said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:
@Hog said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:
Undoubtedly a big problem but banning it outright seems pretty heavy handed. It can’t all be negative and what defines “social media”. Personally for my own kid, I think I’d rather introduce him to it in a controlled way and monitor it when he’s a quite a few years younger than that when it wouldn’t feel so much like a gross intrusion on his privacy. Just setting them loose when they are 16 with no previous experience and no ability to control it seems like a backward step.
now, replace social media with alcohol in the above and consider that the negative side effects of social media are far worse than alcohol ever was.
do we let minors drink?
Most of us don’t, but the kids will try it anyway . . .
. . . and some will get hooked while young . . .
Like with many other things.
I don’t think social media kills as often as other “vices” we humans become addicted to do, but one can make an argument that some kids do die from doing stupid stuff or committing suicide linked to their experience with social media.
In some cultures . . . here I am thinking Italians and their wine . . . kids may be introduced to wine in a prepared environment by their parents.
This seems to be along the line that Hog described for social media.
My parents were 3 1/2 pack a day cigarette smokers. My mom died at 67 from lung cancer and my dad had a heart attack around 55 or so, and he immediately quit smoking and made it to 82. He likely could have lived longer had he not had some bad habits.
As kids, the four of us were told that we could smoke if we wanted to (we had plenty of secondary smoke) but we had to do it at home with our parents first.
None of the kids became smokers. We could not stand the smoke and the stink.
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We didn’t let our daughter have it until jsut recently and she will be 18 in January. I am convinced it made her a better person.
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@Gustaf said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:
We didn’t let our daughter have it until jsut recently and she will be 18 in January. I am convinced it made her a better person.
Alcohol, cigarettes, social media or licorice?
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@Hog said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:
@Kilemall said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:
licorice
aka Satan’s candy
When will you let your boy try licorice?
Not the Finn stuff, that’s obviously adult only.
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@Kilemall said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:
@Hog said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:
@Kilemall said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:
licorice
aka Satan’s candy
When will you let your boy try licorice?
Not the Finn stuff, that’s obviously adult only.
He gets a smiley face on a board when he tries new food but I don’t think he’s ready for that one (plus I don’t know where to buy it). Maybe in a few years.
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@Gustaf said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:
We didn’t let our daughter have it until jsut recently and she will be 18 in January. I am convinced it made her a better person.
What do you mean by “it” though? Any social media account? If that’s the case, I’d be curious to know how you were able to enforce that.
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@Lob12 said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:
@Gustaf said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:
We didn’t let our daughter have it until jsut recently and she will be 18 in January. I am convinced it made her a better person.
What do you mean by “it” though? Any social media account? If that’s the case, I’d be curious to know how you were able to enforce that.
We have an app on her phone that shows us everything she does, anything she installs, and we can block any app she has that we don’t want. But we also had a lot of argumen…uh…conversations about it on a regular basis.
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@Gustaf said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:
@Lob12 said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:
@Gustaf said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:
We didn’t let our daughter have it until jsut recently and she will be 18 in January. I am convinced it made her a better person.
What do you mean by “it” though? Any social media account? If that’s the case, I’d be curious to know how you were able to enforce that.
We have an app on her phone that shows us everything she does, anything she installs, and we can block any app she has that we don’t want. But we also had a lot of argumen…uh…conversations about it on a regular basis.
George Orwell tried to warn kids about parents like you!
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@Gustaf said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:
@Lob12 said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:
@Gustaf said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:
We didn’t let our daughter have it until jsut recently and she will be 18 in January. I am convinced it made her a better person.
What do you mean by “it” though? Any social media account? If that’s the case, I’d be curious to know how you were able to enforce that.
We have an app on her phone that shows us everything she does, anything she installs, and we can block any app she has that we don’t want. But we also had a lot of argumen…uh…conversations about it on a regular basis.
Must be fun having to go through and manually delete all the dick pics dudes send to her.
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@Gustaf I’ve been using Google’s Family Link for as long as my boy has had a phone (a couple of years now). It’s excellent IMO. I particularly appreciate being able to set time limits on apps - so he can use his phone for X hours but only watch movies for Y hours. There’s a lot of educational stuff on his phone that I don’t have limits on aside from the overall screen time limit for all apps. I also use the downtime feature to disable every app for a few hours during the middle of the day. He’ll have a nap or play lego or whatever. If he’s really restless and we don’t feel like inventing something to do with him one or both of us will take him out for a while.
In addition to the above, I don’t have to worry about him visiting websites he shouldn’t and strangers contacting him .
To put Minecraft on his phone I had to also install Microsoft’s family app (I forget what it’s called) which, as near as I can tell does the same things but I haven’t played with it since it seems redundant for me.
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@Gustaf said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:
@Lob12 said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:
@Gustaf said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:
We didn’t let our daughter have it until jsut recently and she will be 18 in January. I am convinced it made her a better person.
What do you mean by “it” though? Any social media account? If that’s the case, I’d be curious to know how you were able to enforce that.
We have an app on her phone that shows us everything she does, anything she installs, and we can block any app she has that we don’t want. But we also had a lot of argumen…uh…conversations about it on a regular basis.
Do you monitor her web browser usage too?
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Yes it sends an alert whenever she goes to a new site and we have the option to block it if we want.
@Gators1 We actually did it because when she was in 8th grade she started talking to some high-school kid on Discord from Minecraft and it started getting a little out of hand. Nothing really bad happened but it might have been heading that way and I’m too delicate for prison.
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@Gustaf said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:
Yes it sends an alert whenever she goes to a new site and we have the option to block it if we want.
@Gators1 We actually did it because when she was in 8th grade she started talking to some high-school kid on Discord from Minecraft and it started getting a little out of hand. Nothing really bad happened but it might have been heading that way and I’m too delicate for prison.
Freedomz!
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Its probably pretty hard for a parent to deal with all that crap nowadays. Not sure how I feel about that monitoring thing but I keep thinking about my own experiences and its not really relevant for today’s environment.
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We felt it was better err on the side of caution and ensure she was safe. While we can also read any incoming text message she gets we don’t do it very often. But as far as social media goes I was primarily concerned about her self-image and self-esteem as things like Instagram and TikTok seem focused on destroying those for young girls. That, and I was concerned that she would spend hours scrolling. Her self-esteem is just fine (maybe too fine as she’s a genius) but my concerns about time spent scrolling have been well founded as she spends way too many hours on that.
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I would totally troll my parents if they monitored my shit. I would be going to sites like “how to tell if you are a lesbian” or “stripper job listings”.
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@Gators1 said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:
I would totally troll my parents if they monitored my shit. I would be going to sites like “how to tell if you are a lesbian” or “stripper job listings”.
Which would have confused the hell out of them I’m sure given you were a teen before trans acceptance was a thing.
