This article really struck a chord with me, since I’m increasingly worried about my children growing up in a world that is fundamentally different from the one I grew up in. It’s incredibly hard to make sure that children are not confronted with disturbing imagery and all the propaganda that is circulating online without the fully developed critical thinking of an educated adult. How do you go about making sure your children become responsible adults online?
I expected my kids to figure out how to bypass my site blocks (All they had to do was change DNS), but they never did. I eventually just turned them off as they got older.
My kids will never defeat me. I’ll shoot meth into my eyeballs and work to destroy them 24/7 if they dare try.
Last resort… I release the genophage and doom us all
Haha, I’ve just kept the embarrassing pics (3-2-1 backed up) as blackmail material. They’re still only 8 and 6, so not changing DNS yet, but when they do I’ll be proud. I plan to make weak blocks and ramp them up as they learn to circumvent. Teach tech skills while allowing a drop feed of inappropriate content.
The bigger issue for me is how to teach them privacy when they have never experienced it.
Find Hollywood actors who have been traumatized by the lack of privacy and convince them to commit suicide in front of your kids after emphasizing that privacy should be cherished.
Repeat until they get the lesson.
Ugh, now they just know lots of ways to commit suicide and ended up damaged. Parenting is hard.
Millennials were peak generation for self-taught tech literacy. We were raised in an environment where the technology was simple and open enough to actually be configurable, all while the prize on the other side of figuring out the technology was rewarding.
The older generations didn’t have as strong of a reward for figuring out the tech. And the younger generations have too steep a learning curve to get around things, so they never even learned to try, like the “baby elephant syndrome” phenomenon.