I saw a post recently about someone setting up parental controls – screentime, blocked sites, etc. – and it made me wonder.
In my childhood, my free time was very flexible. Within this low-pressure flexibility I was naturally curious, in all directions – that meant both watching brainteaser videos, and watching Gmod brainrot. I had little exposure to video games other than Minecraft which ran poorly on my machine, so I tended to surf Flash games and YouTube.
Strikingly, while watching a brainteaser video, tiny me had a thought:
I’m glad my dad doesn’t make me watch educational videos like the other kids in school have to.
For some reason, I wanted to remember that to “remember what my thought process was as a child” so that memory has stuck with me.
Onto the meat: if I had had a capped screentime, like a timer I could see, and knew that I was being watched in some way, I’d feel pressure. For example,
10 minutes left. Oh no. I didn’t have fun yet. I didn’t have fun yet!!
Oh no, I’m gonna get in so much trouble for watching another YTP…
and maybe that pressure wouldn’t have made me into an independent, curious kid, to the person I am now. Maybe it would’ve made me fearful or suspicious instead. I was suspicious once, when one of my parents said “I can see what you browse from the other room” – so I ran the scientific method to verify if they were. (I wrote “HI MOM” on Paint, and tested if her expression changed.)
So what about now? Were we too free, and now it’s our job to tighten the next generation? I said “butthead” often. I loved asdfmovie, but my parents probably wouldn’t have. I watched SpingeBill YTPs (at least it’s not corporatized YouTube Kids).
Or differently: do we watch our kids without them knowing? Write a keylogger? Or just take router logs? Do we prosecute them like some sort of panopticon, for their own good?
Or do we completely forgo this? Take an Adventure Playground approach?
Of course, I don’t expect a one-size-fits-all answer. Where do you stand, and why?
It’s a tool, like any other.
Like, our kid did some abysmally stupid shit online a few years ago. They did it despite having been warned about how things can wrong and being told specifically not to do the thing they did, and what the consequences would be if they did.
So, parental controls. That started out absurdly strict, and lessened over time to supervision only. Now, the only limit they have is for bedtime. But supervision can still happen at any time. Kind of a trust but verify thing.
However, they also know that I’m not going to go poking my nose where it isn’t my business. It’s about the kind of activity, not the specifics, if that makes sense? I’m not giving details because what they did is between us and them, and I don’t give out anything about them in a direct sense even if it was something they were okay with me discussing. That’s about privacy, and that’s where the boundary is.
And I think that’s the key to using parental controls as a tool instead of a weapon, if that makes sense. The goal is to guide them, give them a chance to learn. You don’t take a kid out in the woods and just drop them off with no training. Parental controls are the digital equivalent of letting them learn in your back yard first. We can’t be over their shoulders all the time, so we use fences and keep an eye out the window. As they grow and learn, you move the fences a little.
A good example is porn. We all know damn good and well that at some point, our kids are going to run into it. The job is to prepare them for that. Doing so takes time; you can’t explain why xhamster isn’t about pets to a six year old. So you block things until their individual development makes it a reasonable conversation. You give that information in stages, chunks broken up as the kid is ready for the next one.
But! You play fair. You tell them that there’s things they aren’t allowed to access because they’re not for kids. This requires building trust first. They have to know that they can come to you with anything and not be treated like they did something wrong for asking. You have to give them honest answers, and do the dance of making it age appropriate. That way, by the time they’re at the stage where they’re chomping at the bit and doing dumb teenage stuff, you can trust them to come to you with things before they dive into some internet cesspool.
When shit happens and they run into something ahead of when they’re genuinely ready for it, you turn it into an opportunity to guide them and keep the trust going both ways.
We’re lucky as hell with our kid. That trust is there. They’ll come ask about some weird shit, and if I say “you don’t want to know”, they shrug and ask when they should ask again. And they come back down the road and ask again. So far, anyway lol.
As far as spying, that’s a hell no from me. We’re up front about it all. They know I keep a check on the traffic in and out across the board. They also know I won’t be a dick if they explore some. The most I’ll do if they’re exploring something that’s not age appropriate is directly sit them down and talk about it. No bullshit, they’ll get the best answers I can give, there’s no “punishment” at all, there’s no ranting and raving or arbitrary pronouncements. It’s all about making sure they understand what they’re getting into, and guiding them to better things.
It’s fucking hard though. There’s been times I want to just wield the dad hammer lol.
I dunno if that’s the kind of thing you were looking for or not. But it’s a thing I was looking into well before the kid had any internet access that wasn’t on our laps, literally. We adults thought it out, talked it out, and came up with as much of a plan as is realistic to make when a kid is going to be an agent of chaos lol.
Thanks for the in-depth response!
My parents “let health class do the job” and kept their eyes closed – regarding porn – so your punishmentless one-on-ones are new and interesting to me. Trust is definitely the most vital here.
Man, I was lucky in a lot of ways with my parents. They were generally laissez-faire, but they made sure I had as much in the way of information about sexual health as I wanted. Same with drugs and alcohol, none of the bullshit “just say no” that was the default back in eighties.
They made plenty of mistakes, but good info was always the default.
I’m trying to avoid the same mistakes, and the ones my grandparents made with them. If I screw up, I want it to be new mistakes.
You sound like a good dad. I’m in the process of becoming one to a tween and I appreciated reading your post. Thank you.
Thanks :)
Fwiw, the tweens aren’t that bad. A lot of hormonal ups and downs, but it’s when kids really start becoming who they’ll be as an adult. It’s a beautiful thing to see, despite the regular urge to pull out your hair lol.
Thanks for that. A couple of years ago I taught English is overseas, from way too young through HS seniors and the 10 - tween age was my favorite. Old enough to be actual little people, but young enough to still think I’m cool. I loved that “start becoming who they’ll be as an adult” phase, it really was a beautiful thing.
I know it won’t all be sunshine and roses, but I’m excited for this opportunity!
You nailed it. It’s a part of the solution and shouldn’t be a weapon. Trust, guide….verify. You’re raising a “being” hopefully with the intention of being a self sufficient adult, not an over grown child. We have to help prepare them for this world.
I log DNS on all devices. This helps me see if stupid stuff is happening, or if somehow the refrigerator managed to obtain an internet connection.
very reasonable, but i think one should keep in mind that sometimes seeing things by mere accident can mess a child up. not going into details, but when i was a kid i wanted to torrent flash (the program to do animation stuff). well, it wasnt flash what i downloaded, it was a collection of photos. photos which haunt me to this day.