parenting

My oldest is 10 and we’re just now starting to hear from him about the things his peers have/see/do. Up till now it’s been a non-issue. Also I don’t think most parents let their kids have free rein of the internet, especially not very little kids. Sure there are some, but I don’t think it’s the majority. A lot of parents now are millennials and we saw how fucked up Facebook made some of us and we hear all the time about how messed up teens are from social media so we’re pretty wary about what the internet is going to do to our kids.

A father to a 2-year-old here. We have a very strict "no screen" policy. If she watches something, it is with her mother, and it is generally a short clip of a kid doing some kind of activity with a caregiver. It is less than a few minutes a day tops and never every day.

I am super anxious about the smartphones and similar as well. I am not sure how my child is going to handle the peer pressure to get one, and how will we (as parents) be able to manage her wanting of a smartphone. I think I will follow a similar pattern to my childhood and will allow access to the internet only through a computer for a while, and there will have several restrictions to what she can access, maybe except for group-based online games, which we will screen who she is playing with and what is going on.

Jonathan Haidt is proposing a return to a "play-based childhood"^1^, and I am very positive about that approach. However, I am not sure if we will be able to get a buy-in for "no screens, no phones" policy with her school(s) and the parents of her schoolmates. That is to be seen. But these policies would probably affect the schools we will be choosing.

1 - If interested, check After Babel.

I'm not a parent yet either, but I've always planned on watching the shows for those stages.

As for the other content, consider social cultural viewing. They aren't the predominant content your child will be watching, especially if you are giving them more engaging content initially.

For example, you may not go out of your way to show them Illumination movies, but your child's friend will have friends who go to the movies for a birthday. IMO, that experience is more important than keeping them from viewing it to mitigate the risk of brain-rot. While the intentions may be good, I think it ultimately can do more harm in a lot of ways.

To supplement this, it's important to remember that conversation is key. Checking in with them before they go, having there be a difference of purpose between different types of movies. Some movies are fun and not much more than that. Some movies are fun because they can be talked about for a long time. Also, kids check out sometimes, don't want to have conversations, so it's a long term game, not really a checklist. If you forgot up to the day of the movie w/ friends and didn't get to have the conversation before they go, preventing them from going won't help anything.

A better way to go about it, and this goes for content you don't want them watching all of the time, is going through different sets of questions that let you get a sense of what your child is getting out of what they just watched. I can't list a bunch of questions, so my guideline is when they detail events, ask them why they thought the character was doing that, or what they think other meanings could be.

A lot of the time there are just no check ins about the content at all. Not necessarily appropriateness, but literally just "hey kid so what did you think?" and a few more questions. The issue is that parents are letting the kids watch the show endlessly on repeat without any check ins. And I get it, it can be hard when it's day 2948 and you're on day 948 of your rewatch of {insert show} and any questions you could possibly have had have long been asked 2 years ago... It's literally a symptom of a kid loving something and watching it on repeat.

So that's my rough course of action and what I do for the children I've worked with.

It is insanity that most parents let their kids have social media and smart phones. I have kids, and it was an expectation that they would not have either of these things until they were adults (if they chose). Most of the parents I am around and spend time with also dont let their kids have these things. There are phones for when they get older that allow them to have something like a smart phone but its restricted and parents have total oversight. I really dont think its a big deal if that is the expectation you give to your kids, and the kids can even see how unhealthy the phone habits of their peers are.

There are a few shows that are a yes for me:

• Bluey

• Daniel Tiger

etc

And we can always watch the movies that our children's department at our local library does showings of. Last one we went to was Migration. Which is an Illumination film. But the librarians approved it and did a whole program surrounding it, and it was really funny for the adults in the audience, though that humor went right over the heads of the children.

As for social media -- Raising him on using Line to connect with his far away grandmother and so far he views phones as ... well ... phones. Not game machines. Not weird asynchronous conversations via text and reposts. Just the ability to get a live person on the other end for voice chats and/or video. We'll see how long we can ride this wave. But I'm pretty sure I'm going to insist on parental controls if ever there are social media accounts made. I read somewhere that families where the parents use parental controls have more open and educational dialogue about online dangers and comportment than families where that is not in place. And I want that dialogue!