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Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
Say you were a guardian or parent and get to decide when a child can get a phone or use a computer and get internet with it. If you wish you can also install software and change router settings to what you see fit.
Some parents decide to forbid the internet completely, others are more relaxed. Some go the helicopter route, and some do not care whatsoever what their kid does online.
What is your policy on letting a child use the internet?
No access until teenagers. If it was like when I was a kid probably younger but it's so fucked rn
I would love things down but leave increasingly difficult to exploit vulnerablitors so they can unknowingly learn more and more about networking and such
You couldn't stop them if you tried, which instead will result on them using dodgy methods to access it, which puts them at even higher risk than if you gave them unrestricted access.
Teach them, teach them that the internet is both fucking terrifying and fucking terrific
Yeah, deliberately view the pain Olympics and one man one jar with them.
Give them the trauma they were looking for.
Tell them to meet you on the back patio, and bring just one cup.
Mostly the former.
What's so terrifying about Lemmy?
Education education education.
Explain how the internet works. Explain companies. Explain evil intent and malicious behavior.
Imo, if you put your child under surveillance that's not the right way. If bad things happen despite good education, fine, introduce limits and guardrails.
Don't do things you wouldn't want for yourself. Be consistent.
Basically, do good parenting.
As much as I hate the idea of exposing kids to the ideologies and mass propaganda of the internet, I hate the idea of incompetent adults even more. Plus, exposure builds resistance to some extent. How are they gonna learn to think for themselves if they haven't seen a wide range of views? Also, do you want your child to fail out of college the first time they play a video game? Or only start learning to code in their twenties? if ever since they won't think of a computer that way.
No way, if I was gonna have a brat, the little bastard would be damn competent at everything.
Child up to age 13 - internet access via PC tower in a public space. No phones, no tablets. I log into router settings to restrict internet access to their machine, (mac address,) when they should be sleeping. I use router to block websites, no FB or instagram. Hell, I will change the wifi password and make them prove they have done their homework/chores to unlock the password for the evening. Ages 14-16 - give them their own pc/tablet. Router still restricts website access, but I stop restricting the times they can access internet. Age 16 - get them their own phone. Presumably I have been talking to them about responsible use of the internet all along, but I reiterate all of the key lecture points. Use router and parental controls to monitor what they are looking at without restricting it. Discuss anything problematic. This is a stage in a young person's life where they should be learning to take personable responsibility for their fuckups within reason, so I am more willing to let them experiment and make mistakes within reason. 18+ - no restrictions. Consider transitioning them to their own cell service that they pay for on their own, so long as it's something they can reasonably afford with their own wages, assuming they have their own wages.
crontab, it's enough to :
and it's pretty straighforward to configure, e.g.
* 8-17 * * 1-5 killall SlayTheSpire && date >> ~/shame
# prevents from playing during weekday working hours
or for accumulation (which can be reset daily, weekly, etc by simply deleting the minutes file)
pgrep mpv && >> mpv_minutes; if [ $(wc -l mpv_minutes) -gt 1000 ]; then echo beyond threshold; fi
That works also for turning up/down network interfaces.
PS: I use this on myself. I'm not a child but I don't have perfect self control. It works.
ublock origin, no ads, only libretube or freetube
FOSS
I have an 11 year old son. He has neutered Internet that can do normal searches on. An hour budget a day for games. An hour for YouTube. Other than that he can talk to his friends on Discord or text. I check his Discord every now and then. He only talks to his buddies or my gaming buddies.
children under 12 should not have one, it has been shown they actually have problems reading and writing in HS, and doing math. 13+ they can have it, assuming they arnt trying to do something illegal, like stealing credit cards and buying games or whatever.
Electronics are for amusement. If he isn't having fun (fussing), time to do something else.
We use it together and communicate during. Zombie mode --> time to do something else.
Great firewall of my house (whitelist). I'm sure he'll figure out how to bypass it one day, and hopefully by then I've raised him well enough to process the horrors of the open web.
PLEASE abandon this mindset
"electronics" are more than toys
Please don't shout 😢
Yeah I like this.
I have nothing againt electronics but doomscrolling is a sign of break-time.
Block every site except itch.io until they turn 13, so as to recreate my childhood on addictinggames.com
I only go to itch.io for erotic games.
Plan scrapped. The only proper way for sexuality to be developed is through large fantasy novels with terrible politics.
I thought that's what itch was for
For both of us:
block every site but phrack.org
Access to the Internet is not something that the parents are actually capable of restricting. As soon as one kid in the has a phone, their entire peer group is exposed.
The question isn't about restriction. It's about who will be teaching these kids about the Internet. The first kid learns from their parents; every other kid learns (mostly) from other kids.
If your kid is the last in their class to have a phone, everything they know about the Internet they will have learned from their peers. They sure as hell aren't going to tell you they already know about all the things you've been trying to hide from them.
Even so, less is better. Being exposed X hours per week through friends is still better than giving them direct access to a dopamine drip feed for 56+ hours per week (avg for teens in 2025). If they really want it, you can set limited access via a home desktop/tablet and teach the same digital literacy.
A kid doesn't need a smart phone in the same way that they don't need their own car. They don't need to go far distances with bulky items and passengers; they don't need pocket access to banking apps and Slack. A dumb phone/watch can keep them in contact with anyone they could possibly need to talk to.
Only with my eyeballs in presence. My son is autistic and barely verbal. He also has combination ADHD. I wish I could forbid the tablet entirely but it just doesn't work with a child facing these challenges. For example, he can't sit still through dinner so if we go out, he uses tablet until the food comes. He's obsessed with Legos. All the content he watches is Lego builds. He watches that on YouTube kids with me present to make sure he doesn't slip through the cracks. My eldest is 19 now and we let him access the internet unabated, that was a huge mistake I highly recommend people know exactly what their kids are watching and you should restrict traffic to safe content only.
A friend had an excellent (but evil) one.
His son had found some more... interesting areas of the internet (aka porn). He collected a selection of his browsing history and sat him down. They then went, video by video, having an open and honest discussion about it. Dad had FAR more tolerance for mortifying embarrassment than his son did. He learnt to clear the history at least.
The 2nd discussion, 6 months later, used the router logs instead.
I'm not sure I would use this particular method. However, it was apparently highly effective at making his kids think things through (for better or for worse!).
Wow, I'm not sure if I am more impressed at him pulling it through or shattering the adult trust by stabbing him in the back like this.
I mean, if you (parent) didn't tell him, how should he know? It's essential to know in advance.
this is good because it teaches the kid the importance of privacy and the entire lack thereof online.
it's also nice to not freak out at porn viewing and to teach them it's ok in moderation.
When they figure it out and become capable of reading and writing. Tablets, phones and computers are not locked down. Parental guidening and open communication means they know what it is, that there's good and there's bad content and people etc.
Working great.
/Swedish
Same.
Our policy was supervised / filtered only until early teens. Kids sites, educational stuff, games we purchased and approved of, etc. We were also late to give them phones, our son got his first because in his freshman year of high-school his band teacher set up a boiler-room to sell worlds finest chocolate and he was the only kid who didn't have a cell phone.
When we had "the talk" we discussed masturbation and porn, why porn is popular, and all the negatives that go with it without condemning it outright. We talked about online predators and not sharing things with people you didn't know, especially pics, addresses, etc.
My wife and I are firm believers that kids need space to discover who they are, so as they became teens, things went to semi-supervised. We paid attention to them more than their devices, but we had rules such as adding one of our emails as a recovery address to any socials they set up, so we could check up on them if we thought something bad was going down. Never had to use that, and I think just having it there made them think about what they did online.
Around sixteen/seventeen, no filter and no more backdoors into their accounts. Just a couple of long heart to hearts about how shitty things can be on the internet and how we're there to talk with no judgement if they need us.
You sit at a desktop in the kitchen to use the computer. If you have shown yourself to be responsible you know your password.
The wifi shuts off at bedtime.
My 11-12-13 year old kids have Apple Watches for communication purposes but no smartphones. These are charged all together in a locked pantry at night.
Start educating them on what internet is and how it works early, before they even get to use it. Allow them to observe how you use it. Explain the good and the bad it can provide. I feel like a lot of how you should use the internet is just how you should generally live your life - stranger = danger, don't give your personal information to anyone at all (even if they claim to be me/my friend/police/whatever), understand how content engagement works and who benefits from it (ads and manipulation are everywhere, not just online), and so on. Ngl I'm kinda baffled how we navigated a much more dangerous real world "just fine" up until the internet has apparently become some unfathomable evil. By not allowing your kids to learn early, you are just gimping their future, they will have to go up against people who often literally don't know a life without the digital world. Not to mention - if you don't teach them the basics of understanding how to navigate the world and its dangers, they can get hurt whether the internet still even exists.
My one opinion that might be controversial is that I believe that by enforcing arbitrary blocklists (outside of just generally useful stuff like uBlock Origin) and restricting content without explaining and demonstrating anything you are simply conditioning your kids to be ok with surveillance and censorship.