Ugly Truths:
1) Preteens probably shouldn’t have phones, but parents give them anyway.
2) Young teens shouldn’t be on social media, but parents allow.
3) Older teens still need guidance and check-ins.
4) If you have younger users, knowing and catering to that might be safer.
1) Preteens probably shouldn’t have phones, but parents give them anyway.
2) Young teens shouldn’t be on social media, but parents allow.
3) Older teens still need guidance and check-ins.
4) If you have younger users, knowing and catering to that might be safer.
A lot of the public policy challenge here is balancing caring about:
1) Passive harms to kids using screens
2) Active but non-criminal harms, like teen bullying, “Thinstagram” and overall crappy influencer culture
3) Active, adversarial and criminal harms (grooming, sextortion)
1) Passive harms to kids using screens
2) Active but non-criminal harms, like teen bullying, “Thinstagram” and overall crappy influencer culture
3) Active, adversarial and criminal harms (grooming, sextortion)
And doing so in an environment where you can’t trust parents to properly enforce boundaries (although maybe they would with better tooling) or without a PRC-like model of showing ID to get online accounts.
I would probably start by asking the phone platforms to make age something that is flowed through to all apps, triggers reasonable defaults per age and part of initial setup (and hard to change). Xbox is probably the best example.
Everybody ragging on “X for Kids” should propose their ideas. Parents letting 11yos lie about their age and join services with adults is a pretty bad status quo.
The current “X for Kids” discourse reminds me of the journalistic feeding frenzy around Facebook’s NCII protections. It’s fun to sit on the sidelines and heckle any imperfect solution to hard, broad societal problems. Less fun to come up with solutions to be heckled.
What do my wife and I do?
Our kids’ iPads and Chromebooks (required for school) are on an SSID that uses a filtered NextDNS resolver. iPads have screen time limits including requiring approval for apps.
9yo: Can FaceTime friends who *we* add to contacts.
Our kids’ iPads and Chromebooks (required for school) are on an SSID that uses a filtered NextDNS resolver. iPads have screen time limits including requiring approval for apps.
9yo: Can FaceTime friends who *we* add to contacts.
12yo: Has FaceTime and iMessage, no social media. Access to locked down phone when walking, home alone.
9 and 12: No devices in rooms, only public areas.
14yo: Phone, no public social media. We have his pin and can spot check (rarely). Phone turned over at night.
9 and 12: No devices in rooms, only public areas.
14yo: Phone, no public social media. We have his pin and can spot check (rarely). Phone turned over at night.
Would be nice if you didn’t have to be somebody who has run corp sec teams to implement this plan. Every dinner conversation with other parents is about implementing both technical and “policy” limits.
Most important is to make it clear to your kids that if something happens online that makes them feel weird than can come to you and won’t get in trouble. The most tragic cases I’ve seen were caused by spirals where the child victim felt (or was convinced) they couldn’t get help.
Loading suggestions...