Ask HN: How to deal with children's online habits?

[kqr]

Or, more generally, how to give children freedom and privacy, yet also be there to help them understand the lessons the world is about to teach them?

I have this preconceived notion that I don't want to violate my children's privacy. It's very tempting, of course, to passively monitor e.g. their spending or online habits, but I don't want to.

(As a concrete example, I know a some people get very detailed reports from the daycare about what their children have been up to. I'm not interested in that -- when I want to know what the daycare experience is like, I personally spend a day at the daycare.

This gives me much more nuance than a report ever would, but it also feels more respectful toward my child that they're allowed a part of their life outside of my supervision. But the reason I can do that is because there are other helpful adults at the daycare. That won't be the case everywhere, unfortunately.)

So I want them to have privacy, but I would also want to pick up on problems early -- either their own bad behaviour, or if they're victim's of someone else's bad behaviour.

Some more concrete questions in the same vein:

- What fraction of their online time should I sit with them?

- Do I play all video games with them or should they have some of "their own"?

- Do I give them the ability to do online purchases?

- Do I allow them to use up all of their money even as a mistake, or do I set up a limit?

- Do I limit their "screen time" (hate that term) or will that prevent them from interacting with their friends in the way they would want to?

This depends on maturity levels, of course, but I'm looking for generalisations. My children are 2 and 0.2 years old now, so this won't be relevant in a while but I like to be prepared and if you have thoughts regarding any maturity level, please share.

The reason I ask you HN folks is (a) that you are likely to understand my concern for privacy and personal integrity, and (b) that I've received very useful and thought-out child-related advice here before.

----

I'm also skipping a bunch of privilege-related questions like "who the hell can take a day off to spend it at the daycare?" Or, perhaps more importantly, "what determines how much time you spend online with your children may not be what's appropriate, but how much time you can spare for it?"

And yeah, both of those are problems for myself as well -- I'm interested in all creative solutions here, also that help work around such problems.

[brightball]

I’m going to go the other direction…it’s your responsibility to violate your childrens online privacy at least up to a certain age.

Block, restrict, monitor. Say no pretty much all the time. They’ll be fine.

There’s so much stuff out there where they’ll have no idea what’s going on but you’ll recognize it immediately.

NextDNS is great for this stuff. Apple Family Manager too. On a phone or iPad just remove safari entirely if you need to.

You’re their parent, not their friend. You can’t be both.

[fleddr]

I have friends with children in the age of 12-14, one of which excessively monitors his son's online behavior.

He's shown me results of his monitoring and it pretty much ended the debate. Weird old guys contacting his son, excessive cyberbullying, swearing (fine by me, but still), being drawn to the wrong kind of "friends", hate speech, general addiction and obsession with games and in-game items, the list goes on.

Doesn't mean one should intervene all the time, but you should know. I'm not a parent so I don't know at what age you should back off, but I'd say don't do it too early. Your trust is misplaced.

[thih9]

> Your trust is misplaced.

This way of approaching the topic feels unhealthy to me. I’d put less focus on “don’t trust your kids”, and more on “make sure your kids have a responsible adult they trust”.

[tmaly]

What does your friend use for monitoring?

[rajin444]

> Your trust is misplaced.

Could you provide some explicit examples to what you linked above?

> Weird old guys contacting his son

This one sounds a little weird, but the rest could just be the kid isn’t following modern western progressive values (and being obsessed with games depending on how much is just being a kid).

> swearing (fine by me, but still), being drawn to the wrong kind of "friends", hate speech

I’d need specific examples here, but it sounds like the kid is just rebelling against the current cultural norms. Much like most of us rebelling against conservative norms growing up.

[sneak]

> Weird old guys contacting his son

I'm almost 40 and weird old guys contact me on the internet all the time.

[kaoD]

Other replies already addressed the screen time/hanging out together aspect, so I will comment on being unsupervised.

I was a kid on the early-ish internet and I was free to "surf the interwebs" unsupervised. The internet is not the same anymore but I think the general rules still apply. This was a very valuable learning experience for me.

Based on my own experience (anecdata, I know) what I found really helped me is grownups around me explaining things clearly and hammering a few facts into my brain:

1. Don't put anything about your real self on the internet (this is increasingly harder due to social media, I'm glad I was just on IRC back in the day).

1a. What goes in the internet will stay in the internet forever. Mind the info you get out there, even if it's supposed to be a private message. Leaks happen.

1b. Encourage them not to use their real name and address, to be pseudonymous at the least (or better, completely anonymous). Help them set up accounts that don't link to their identity (specially email which is the center of your online identity nowadays).

2. Not everyone on the internet is who they say they are. On the internet nobody knows you're a dog.

2a. Be clear on what grooming and pedos are and that they're out there to catch you off-guard.

2b. Show them what spam, scams, malicious sites, phishing, etc. look like and how to prevent damage.

3. No matter what happens or how deep in shit they are they can come to you for help. You won't approve the ugly things they do, but you will forgive them and help them clean up the mess. If in doubt, come get help. The earlier you ask for help, the faster the cleanup.

Make all of this real by showing them what could happen. Show them real cases (there's plenty on the news) and the consequences. Show them how easy it is to trick the other side of the conversation. E.g. it was eye-opening for me to watch a friend of my brother pretend he was an MD from a completely different city on the IRC. He was just a horny teen looking to meet women. He often joked about how we were probably chatting with other men lying about their identity too.

Once your kids are old enough to understand this then they can go on the internet 100% unsupervised (it was around 8-9 y/o for me but everyone is different).

This will take a while given your kids' age, but we all know time flies. Better get them ready before the time comes!

[walthamstow]

Great advice. I'm not a parent (yet) but reading your comment it strikes me that playing outdoors is safer than it was when I was a kid in the 90s, but is more discouraged. Playing online is actually more dangerous than it was in the 90s/00s but is more encouraged.

[feet]

I think this is some great advice. Educate rather than restrict

I also grew up on the early internet and my sentiments are the same, education and awareness is required but once you know how to interact, things are safer

[guidedlight]

I have some pre-teen children that have access to an iPad, Xbox, and an Apple TV.

My #1 recommendation is NO YOUTUBE, unless it's for education purposes. I don't have the App installed on any of my kids devices (they can access it via the website, but they don't do that). It's just a cesspool of garbage for kids. Even YouTube Kids is bad. Occasionally, they will complain about not having the YouTube app... but I never took it away, so they aren't missing it.

I've loaded up the iPad with fun age appropriate games and activities, that don't require any In-App purchases. If my kids want more apps, then Apple will ask my permission on my iPhone.

I use an Ubiquiti Dream Machine as my home router, so I have some basic content filtering and I have some categorisation of the traffic available, but nothing detailed.

In terms of video games, my recommendation is have a games console in the living room. They have access to video games, but they can play them where everyone can observe. They can have their own video games, this isn't a problem. Microsoft sends me a family report every week about what games were played, but I don't pay much attention to it. Purchases require parent approval on Xbox too.

With a 0.2 and 2 year old, you are somewhat lucky. The ages are close enough that they will play with each other a lot... and screen time won't be too much of an issue until they hit teenage years.

Good luck.

[rj111]

YouTube is really bad and hard to stop. When kids get curious about something on the fringe, the algorithm pushes them further and further into the rat hole until they are practically brainwashed by the craziest YouTubers. Unfortunately Google has chosen profit over allowing controls that are effective for parents.

[MobileVet]

YouTube is horrible. They use it for school occasionally and so it would have to be available during that Covid year of online schooling. My wife actually noticed that around Feb of 2021, the algorithm had won. Our son was hooked.

‘How can a 6 year old boy compete with a bunch of engineers at Google?’ - wife

Since that time I have been playing with a YouTube app concept that only allows limited access and doesn’t auto play.

I don’t know that it is a full ‘solution’ but it does allow Science Max and Mystery Doug and other great content to learn from without all the negatives.

[Smithalicious]

Is YouTube really so bad nowadays? I feel like I'm in a weird position as I'm young enough to have grown up with YouTube, having used it regularly since age 11 or 12, and I got a ton out of it, but "The Algorithm" wasn't a thing in the same way back then. I still use YouTube today and still get a lot out of it, but I mainly watch videos from channels I'm subscribed to or through direct recommendation by other people.

Am I living in a weird bubble while the rest of the world experiences a parallel, much worse YouTube?

[anibalin]

Great tips. Agree with the youtube vision you have. How do you deal with banning youtube all together? It's even on the smart tv menu. It's like playin whack a mole.

[lrvick]

Try Freetube. No login and no algorithm.

You can also download folders full of content you want kids to have access to and put it on Kodi or similar.

[ksec]

One thing I noticed that is often missing in these discussions, sometimes it isn't up to the parents to decide at all.

Imagine your 8 - 11 years old daughter's social circle, and the school she is at where her classmate were allowed very little Internet at home or school. Then you wouldn't have a problem enforcing whatever internet rules.

Now imagine everyone of her classmate were playing Minecraft, and she is the only one being left out.

The point is, if everyone at her school is spending time on god damn stupid Chinese TikTok, then a 10 - 15 minutes Tik Tok for her would be a necessary evil.

So far most of the Internet stuff are entertainment only. So stuff like Pop Music, Anime, Viral Videos etc. While not productive, they are harmless. And educating them not to use real names and talk to strangers on the internet seems to have worked so far. And only keep track of topics they looked into. ( At least before the age of 12 or 14 ) Generally speaking the internet is still fairly safe under some guidance.

But I have witness teenagers ( son of my close friend ) wondered into politics and culture war at the age of 14+. And it is absolutely destructive. The age where they start doing things without telling you, and going on to Reddit or whatever Internet forums. I dont have a good solution to that.

Part of the reason why I have been thinking about Age restricted participation on web forums. You could only reply if you are over the age of X.

[killjoywashere]

> most of the Internet stuff are entertainment only. So stuff like Pop Music, Anime, Viral Videos etc. While not productive, they are harmless

You are so obviously not the parent of a teen girl. The viral videos have created a crisis of self harm the world has not yet come to terms with.

[Balgair]

Friends of ours have a pretty okay-ish implementation for social media for their kids. They make the kid the 'brand manager' for a pet first. The kid gets the interaction of social media and their friends, but they have to do it for their dog/cat for a year first, then they can get their own account. The kids have gotten some low level brand sponsorships for the pets, something that the other kids at school are jealous of, or so I am told. The kiddos know the ins and outs of social media from the business side a bit more, though I am skeptical of that. Also, the pets are eating and getting toys at a discount, kinda. Seems like not the worst of ideas and allows for a soft entry into that hellscape.

[rr808]

I think this is underrated. One girl in middle school who was my daughter's friend wasn't allowed a phone or internet. By the end of 8th grade she had very few friends and really had nothing in common with anyone else to talk about. This was a during a lot of stay at home covid schooling which probably made the effect more severe.

[bjt2n3904]

> Tik Tok for her would be a necessary evil. [...] While not productive, they are harmless.

I think it is a mistake to view something like viral TikTok videos as "harmless". Wasn't it a few weeks ago that we had a front page article on a child that died during a "pass out challenge"?

But you raise a good point. Other parents giving their children unsupervised access to the internet creates a massive problem. A colleague of mine started with a hard and fast "no internet" rule. That absolutely broke when all his son's friends were playing minecraft.

[turtleyacht]

I swear it will be like, OpenBSD only, custom router, firewall everything, no Windows...

If you can break out, good on you. If you can write your own tools, even better.

"I was traumatized from computing because my dad never let me see a GUI outside of X11."

I hope they'll be bored enough to wander over to books--"old" programming and math books--and just start working through those. Who knows.

There were at least three groups of folks with unlimited access to computers and Internet in school: smart gamers, smarter tinkerers, and me. What I'd like to encourage, if I could control some portion of it, is to funnel activity to the second of the three. And that based on constraints, because I don't know any better than utter abstinence.

Any complaints about Minecraft will get them pointed to the book on Foley, gcc, and the promise of my time to help...

In the end, they'll figure out everything anyway. But at least in the beginning, I tried to have them focus on first principles.

Did I mention the Great Books? I have to put those somewhere.

[lr4444lr]

As a tech worker with kids, what I see is an all out war being waged on their attention span, motivation to consume, and healthy self-concept with zero regard for their healthy cognitive development. I let my kids watch certain specific shows on YouTube Kids and Netflix, and that's it. About 30 minutes a day, tops, and I am almost always in earshot. Articles that came out in the last 5 years or so about Silicon Valley execs keeping their kids away from the very products that make them rich was a very telling indicator. Much good as the internet has done or my life, I was also blessed to have grown up with a childhood that was not permeated by it during my early formative years. There is some great content out there, but the data is coming down firmly on a negative correlation between screen time and a variety of child health measures. Kids deserve their innocence. When they are older, I will definitely be installing monitoring on my router for their IP traffic.

[p1necone]

If you try to control your kids internet/device usage too much they will learn to work around it (at least once they hit the young teens). Try to have open conversations with them and teach them about the dangers of strangers, predatory microtransactions, the permanence of whatever they post on the internet etc.

If you just try to monitor and restrict what they do they will grow to resent you, and they'll hide everything from you (and they'll likely be much better at this than you expect).

Do note this advice is for teenagers though. I suspect you'd be quite successful limiting a 5-10 year olds unsupervised access to the internet, and probably justified in doing so imo.

[PebblesRox]

I highly recommend Kidpower [0] as a resource for how to have these kinds of conversations - they're really good at making things really specific and understandable for kids without going into details that are not age-appropriate.

They also have good advice for how to teach and equip kids to be independent while maintaining appropriate safety boundaries at each stage along the way to full independence. [1]

Discussion and trust are important but I think there is a phase where kids do not yet have the maturity for discussion and trust to be enough to keep them safe. In the meantime, they also need supervision and physical boundaries to be safe.

As an analogy, no amount of verbal instruction will allow a toddler to walk safely by themselves near traffic. Until they reach a certain maturity level, children need an adult who is paying attention and is ready to physically intervene if they start heading for the street.

I think there's a similar dynamic at play when it comes to internet safety. We need to teach our kids so that they will be ready for independence but we also need to recognize that they will not be ready for full independence for quite a while, given the complexity of the risks involved.

[0] https://www.kidpower.org/library/article/online-safety-for-y...

[1] https://www.kidpower.org/library/article/preparing-independe...

[PragmaticPulp]

> they will learn to work around it (at least once they hit the young teens).

Teenage years and the 7-12 range are worlds apart in terms of what’s appropriate.

Regardless, it’s not a good idea to let “perfect be the enemy of good”. The idea that putting any restrictions in place will result in kids going off and accessing the worst stuff doesn’t really follow, in my experience. Half the battle is communicating expectations and creating a framework for understanding what’s reasonable and what’s not.

[hndamien]

I explained memetics to my kids from around 3 and have given free access (and supervision) with education like you have said and its working fine so far up to 7. He even used to turn over the ipad if there was an ad appearing (we pay for no ads mostly). It really can work down young.

[FrenchDevRemote]

>What fraction of their online time should I sit with them?

Unless they're 5 year old and learning the ropes or asking for it, then none

>Do I play all video games with them or should they have some of "their own"?

If they want to play with you: as much as you want, otherwise none.(I kinda wish I played with my parents honestly, but they never cared)

>Do I give them the ability to do online purchases?

Physical products? Probably yes, but it should go through you to check that the site is not a scam or shady. Virtual items, crappy lootboxes and predatory subscriptions? Absolutely not.

>Do I allow them to use up all of their money even as a mistake, or do I set up a limit?

Depends on how much money you have.

>Do I limit their "screen time" (hate that term) or will that prevent them from interacting with their friends in the way they would want to?

No, I don't see the point. I spent hours doing programming exercises in freaking notebooks because my parents were soo keen on limiting my screen time. Dozens of arguments because they would take away my consoles. Not worth it.

Also I'm not really in favor of trying to control what your children do, but block TikTok if it still exists in 5 years, some social medias aren't social medias, they're psychological warfare.

[Thorentis]

My opinion: children don't need access to the internet, period. There are plenty of ways to let them explore, learn, and play, without giving them any access to the internet. I plan to host an entirely off-line copy of Wikipedia, a bunch of other resources, video games, programming tutorials and libraries. Basically a whole bunch of content that will let them learn about computers and the world, without having access to the internet. The internet is not what is used to be, and the cons severely outweigh any possible pros, especially since the pros can be achieved in other ways.

[Wertigoyr]

They are kids.

Kids should be able to have their room door closed but that room is a save space.

The internet is not a save place it's like walking in an huge anyounmous city

You should not let your kids walk alone in a huge city until certain knowledge is learned.

Unfortunately the internet provides even more hurdles than a huge city.

I personally would even create a list of things I would teach my kids over a period of month and years. From grooming, pedophiles, scams, password management, spyware etc.

[jugg1es]

I thought I had a good handle on my kids' online activity until COVID hit and suddenly they were home 24/7 for a long time. In order to keep working, I had to give up on a lot of limits on screen time in order to retain my sanity. The rules we have settled on is that they can't use devices until at least 3 or 4pm. This manages to limit their screen time considerably and forces them to use their brains for most of the day.

I installed Qustodio on their computers and made sure that everything on their is set with an age limit (including their windows account, youtube, and chrome account). You'd be surprised how much support there is now for limiting content for your kids.

I also strongly discourage them from watching youtube videos and prefer them to actually play video games.

[bitlax]

My kids are under 10.

1. No internet access 2. A tablet with a few select apps and no games. 3. A tv with a Raspberry Pi running xbmc with a few videos I've curated.

Access to the tablet and tv are limited to certain times, say when we're driving or when my wife's cooking. At some point I'll probably use a PiHole or something like that to give them whitelisted access to a few sites. Not sure where I'll go after that. I don't plan to secretly monitor any conversations but I think I'll stress that I don't consider online and messaging communications to be private and they will be monitored.

As for the money, I'd address the goals separately. Have investment accounts which aren't touched and a performance-based allowance which they can spend completely. I think the Dave Ramsey "when the money's gone it's gone" lesson is something that's supremely important to learn early. And if they need some more money they can always make an appeal to the local VC (you).

[krisoft]

> I think I'll stress that I don't consider online and messaging communications to be private and they will be monitored.

What a wonderfull dystopia we are building here together. And then we wonder why the average people don’t care about privacy. Perhaps because they were conditioned from a young age to expect none?

[kleene_op]

> I don't plan to secretly monitor any conversations but I think I'll stress that I don't consider online and messaging communications to be private and they will be monitored.

So you'll be lying to your kids?

[mensetmanusman]

Short answer: we don’t know. This technology is too new on a human sociological timeline.

Our strategy is explicit in categorizing digital activity as reading literature, gaming, content consumption, and creation.

We will sometimes tell the kids that they are only allowed to play games on the iPad, and if they are in a ‘ I only want to drone out and watch shows‘-Mode, then they will actually choose to do something else in the real world many times.

Shows are super useful for road trips, road trips have never been easier. But download good movies to their device to limit choices.

[thoms_a]

Expose your kids to activities that are more compelling than screens. Trust me, once you take a kid go-karting, they aren't going to be as excited playing a video game.

Do cool shit with your kids. Go skiing, camping, fishing, go-karting, flying (small plane tours), drone racing, etc.

I know most of us here are nerds, but the jocks really do have life figured out when it comes to fun stuff.

[Macha]

I realise HN has a disproportionate amount of software engineers, but I know my parents would struggle to afford the likes of skiing, flying, go-karting as regular activities, never mind in sufficient quantities to displace video games and the internet. Even a trip to the bowling alley was a rare treat when I was growing up.

[mecanicox]

Never allow a children below 12 access to internet, a not give to they cellphones until the 14 or until they needed, in my experience as father, I give him 4 or 5 hour in videogames or videos in the computer monday-saturday, sunday is for family time, everytime he ask for buy something, I tell him that he must work for obtain that as reward or compensation, not let them take the monitor outside of your range, even in his room my son has the monitor close the wall but in front of the door so I can see what is he doing when I pass to his door, our family policy is that all the rooms are with open doors, is forbiden stay in a closed door, constantly I ask what is he doing in the computer, sometimes he lies but is ok, I not cross certain limit, sometimes I stay with him looking him playing his videogames, talk a lot with them, tell all the good and bad things that are in the internet, tell about the scamers, and all the bad actors in the social networks, but most important, show they that you love them and you care them and those are the reasons why are you doing this things.

[eatsyourtacos]

>Never allow a children below 12 access to internet

What in the ever living heck are you talking about...

>show they that you love them

In my opinion everything you stated is pretty much the exact opposite of showing them that you love them.

>our family policy is that all the rooms are with open doors

I guess your kids see some good sex action with you and the wife then.

[smugma]

Does watching PBS Kids or Disney+ count? What about YouTube Kids or YouTube?

The point being that almost all content is on the Internet now.

I guess your reply can be seen as a good faith response because if you block everything, there’s no need to monitor. It’s just very extreme to disallow content if provided over the Internet, rather than building trust and nuance, which I think is more along the lines of the original question.

[pneumatic1]

I grew up in a house with no closed doors and it pushed me to find other, less healthy, ways to distance myself.

[ripvanwinkle]

I'd be more flexible.

There are kid safe quality sites and apps like Khan Academy, Youtube Kids , SplashLearn, the local library and more

Its possible to allow list only specific URls and apps and set time limits and that works well with my 5 year old.

[closeparen]

The wide open internet is a pretty serious threat environment and it makes sense that parents want to protect their kids from strangers and horrific content. But one thing I find pretty disturbing is parents monitoring the digital footprint of their children's real-world relationships. Most people would find it pretty creepy if you made your child wear a tape recorder to school or a friend's house, but the digital equivalent - reading text and instant message content - is surprisingly accepted. I had some friends who were monitored this way and it was very uncomfortable knowing that their parents were party to any conversation we had.

My enormous volumes of unrestricted screen time led to my interest and eventual career in technology; I'm pretty grateful for them. On the other hand I do feel like success in modern life is down to resisting the siren song of empty-calories time sinks like social media, gaming, Reddit, Twitter, etc. and the successful adults of the next generation will be those whose parents inculcate self-control and moderation here.

[mgz]

When my kids were small, I was fighting with crazy Youtube videos. Kids started with something innocent and soon were watching sick and disturbing pieces.

So I built an app to control their Youtube consumption, which later turned to a cool small business https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1431645198

[jawns]

I have 3 kids between 7 and 12.

Both PCs and Chromebooks have parental controls that are okay but not stellar.

For PCs, Microsoft lets you set up profiles for your kids where you can specify what apps they can access, and for web access you can either go with a Microsoft-selected whitelist or build your own white/blacklists.

We as parents get a weekly activity report showing what sites they spent the most time on and what disallowed sites they tried to access. Obviously, this doesn't align with your privacy objective, but frankly, until my kids are able to keep themselves safe online without parental supervision, the slight infringement on their privacy is a reasonable trade-off.

[bitwize]

No internet before age 13 at least.

1) Touching grass is super important at this phase of their development. We were given brains to move our bodies; kids need practice at running around and playing in a physically active manner.

2) Aside from the usual risks (exposure to porn, Elsagate material, child abusers, etc.) there's the fact that even innocuous kids' apps encourage addictive behavior. I made the acquaintance of a delightful six-year-old girl, the child of a family friend. She was eager to show me the games she played on her Kindle Fire, and some of them were the Skinner-boxiest things imaginable. Feed the animals ice cream by tapping the indicated thing and get a visual and sound reward. I flat out told her her favorite tablet games were boring, intended for toddlers and not big girls like her, and she needed something that would challenge her brain. She is rather smart and creative given the opportunity; she makes her own maps and such for Little Big Planet. But she is quite prone to being satisfied with the familiar and not seeking the challenge and advancement she needs (for that matter, so am I), and the internet -- even at its best, before actively harmful material enters the picture -- is only too happy to supply that stagnant comfort, to drive up engagement metrics.

By all means, get your kid a computer! Do not connect it to wifi or ethernet. Tell them if they want a game for it they will have to write it themselves, and in response to their frustrated "HOW?!" open the discussion about how to program. Get them a Raspberry Pi autonomous car kit or something. All of this at appropriate ages of course. If they need to look something up online, do it for them or supervise their internet use. Require beforehand that they ask to look up something specific and once they have it, have them save it for future reference.

[fdsafdsfdsa]

>you are likely to understand my concern for privacy and personal integrity,

I've given up on the high ideals I used to hold about (online) privacy (and anonymity). There's an argument that they, in some circumstances, are the antithesis of personal and public responsibility.

My current plan is that my kids will get tech when they can afford it themselves. I'm also dreading it, as more parents bow to the pressure and allow kids to have phones and tablets at an ever-younger age. I do understand the downsides of this, and also don't want my kids to be social pariahs.

Also - you role model what your kids will do. If you think it's ok to sit and scroll on your phone at every opportunity, so will your kids. If you game till the early hours, so will your kids.

FWIW both my wife and I gave up smartphones last year, and all "tech" in the house is banished to our home office. When a family computer becomes a necessity, it will be in a shared area.

[jstarfish]

> I do understand the downsides of this, and also don't want my kids to be social pariahs.

FWIW, they will more likely become pariahs (or suicidal) from a lapse in judgment involving said device.

[nemo1618]

Can you talk more about giving up smartphones? That's a pretty radical move.