The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread
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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.
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@Hog said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:
@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.
I think not much has changed in Texas.
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I’d have supported his decision if only to get him out of the house faster
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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.
It’s kind of funny though, because at least in the US minors have no agency and can’t sign a contract, so they can’t legally agree to the dozens of TOS’ they do.
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At least they won’t also be able to bang an Attorney General.
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@Jam said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:
I don’t think social media kills as often as other “vices”
Read Jonathan Haidt’s books on the subject. You’d be surprised how bad social media is. The effect its having on our youth is significantly worse than alcohol or drugs ever were. Here is a brief article https://www.persuasion.community/p/haidt-the-teen-mental-illness-epidemic
Social media makes people think they’re trans, that the world is flat, etc.
Now, you could fix this in other ways but acting like it isn’t all that bad isn’t one of them. Banning it probably is the wrong route too. Trump’s plan to end section 230 and force social media companies to allow you to opt out of their algorithms if accomplished are good first steps. However, the human brain is wired to deal with drama on the scale of the entire planet. The human brain is still wired for tribal life still not planet sized bullshit 24/7.
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I have no problem considering that all the brain-rotting content on the internet is probably more damageable for kids than drugs and alcohol. I don’t think Jam realizes how heavily bombarded the kids are and from such a young age.
[IMG] https://image.ibb.co/nhhF0Q/new_sig_lob12.jpg [/IMG]
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@madrebel said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:
@Jam said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:
I don’t think social media kills as often as other “vices”
Read Jonathan Haidt’s books on the subject. You’d be surprised how bad social media is. The effect its having on our youth is significantly worse than alcohol or drugs ever were. Here is a brief article https://www.persuasion.community/p/haidt-the-teen-mental-illness-epidemic
Social media makes people think they’re trans, that the world is flat, etc.
Now, you could fix this in other ways but acting like it isn’t all that bad isn’t one of them. Banning it probably is the wrong route too. Trump’s plan to end section 230 and force social media companies to allow you to opt out of their algorithms if accomplished are good first steps. However, the human brain is wired to deal with drama on the scale of the entire planet. The human brain is still wired for tribal life still not planet sized bullshit 24/7.
This x 1000
But fixing it seems impossible. We’re the car that’s edged itself into a car parking cul-de-sac that it now can’t reverse itself out of. I can refuse my kids having true SM until they’re 16, maybe. But after that? It’s there, waiting to pounce, and they’ll voluntarily grab it for its attractions and benefits.
We are fucked. We screwed it all up.
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@Lob12 said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:
I have no problem considering that all the brain-rotting content on the internet is probably more damageable for kids than drugs and alcohol. I don’t think Jam realizes how heavily bombarded the kids are and from such a young age.
I do.
Our 16 year old granddaughter has used Tiktok since about the age of 9 and Snapchat probably since she was about 12. She is much more sensible than her 28 year-old first cousin who used to pose “selfies” half a dozen times a day on Facebook.
Granddaughter taught me some TikTok routines which got a lot of likes, though she had to speed them up for me so it looked like I was not as lame as I was in reality at normal speed.
The 28 year-old seems to have more issues than the 16 year-old.
I don’t envy parents today. I do not know how I would handle this social media phenomenon and at my age, I have no such challenges remaining. But I suppose I would do what many do and that is use a transactional and reactive approach to it pending a “Dr. Spock” type character showing me the way. ;-)
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@Jam said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:
@Lob12 said in The OFFICIAL tech stuff thread:
I have no problem considering that all the brain-rotting content on the internet is probably more damageable for kids than drugs and alcohol. I don’t think Jam realizes how heavily bombarded the kids are and from such a young age.
I do.
Our 16 year old granddaughter has used Tiktok since about the age of 9 and Snapchat probably since she was about 12. She is much more sensible than her 28 year-old first cousin who used to pose “selfies” half a dozen times a day on Facebook.
Granddaughter taught me some TikTok routines which got a lot of likes, thous she had to speed them up for me so lit looked like I was not as lame as I was in reality and normal speed.
The 28 year-old seems to have more issues than the 16 year-old.
I don’t envy parents today. I do not know how I would handle this social media phenomenon and at my age, I have no such challenges remaining. But I suppose I would do what many do and that is use a transactional and reactive approach to it pending a “Dr. Spock” type character showing me the way. ;-)
I’m dreading the next few years. Teenage daughters are the most at risk group where the drawbacks of social media are concerned
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She is probably more at risk having grown up with a father that acted like a fascist mod to her all her life.
