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?