Parents are not encouraged to give children unlimited access to alcohol or tobacco or hard drugs. Sure, they might find ways to break the rules, but are those rules then completely useless? Plenty of teenagers will claim that the rules just caused them to rebel, when in reality the rules were mostly effective and the teenagers are criticising a system from a sample size of 1 with no control.

This "rules are bad" is just silly. Kids aren't perfect and not every flaw is due to the parents making an egregious mistake - often the actions of parents are ones that make children into better people. It's also telling that the archetypal advocate progressive "child-centered" education (where natural consequences are good but authority is bad) was Rousseau, who never raised children himself.

I ruined my college years playing video games 3 hrs a night in my dorm for the entire year. The addiction is real.

Transferring, this wasn't maintainable, and it was honestly my saving grace for entering the workforce. I developed the self discipline necessary to meet the requirements, and 3 hours a day was way more "free time" than I had to actually network, expose myself to new ideas, and handle coursework.

At the easier school, I realize in retrospect that the extra time should've been used building things, making connections, or getting involved in extracurricular work.

Even now, a bit later in life with a family and a career, 3 hours is far more time than I have to waste on a game and still maintain connections with my family, handle household responsibilities, and develop interests that might help me grow as an engineer in the long term.

Maybe you just had fun, gaming? Then I don't think it was wasted time. I would consider it only wasted, if you did it out of bad habit and no better plans.

Having fun has diminishing returns. At some point, like with any addictive behavior, it becomes a matter of habit. Tons of people are in this rut and don't realize.

There are tons of other fun activities that come with positive side effects like physical fitness or an in-person social group

College was useful (at least for me) for those two aspects, neither of which I would have been able to really do well with 3 hours a night of gaming.

Post-college? Do whatever you’d like. In-college, you’re paying for time you won’t get back. :)

I deeply regret it.

Being a parent is hard, and mistakes are going to be made. Positive intent is important.

In my experience my parents issued blanket bans and the threat of punishment for eating sugary foods, using the internet and watching TV. All this did was cause me to binge on all three whenever I had the opportunity at a friend's house, and that behavior extended into my adulthood until I was able to break free of my parents and seek the advice of reasonable adults to help curb my addictive behaviors.

When I discussed this with my parents they doubled down on their behavior, washed their hands of responsibility and blamed me. They used the same tired "how you behave when you are an adult is up to you" line. I hope you aren't doing the same to your children.

I take the somewhat contrarian view: kids (at some age) need to learn to cope with absolute limits that are strictly enforced. How else will they cope with living in real society? Not paying your rent will get you kicked out. Driving over the speed limit will get you a ticket, or worse. Not showing up to an exam in college means you fail the class.

Not saying you should have draconian rules on everything. But some rules need to be enforced with (reasonable) consequences. Otherwise you are doing your children a disservice, IMHO.

My kid has limited screen time that is strictly enforced, roughly 30 minutes a day. They're well aware of this fact and when it will happen.

We occasionally make exceptions for things like movies or what have you on the weekends.

This is not binary. As they grow older, kids should be able to take control of their lives more and more. Probably much more than the average parent thinks they should.

Edit: To clarify, I don't mean kids should become more skillful in controlling themselves according to their parents wishes. I mean the parents should gradually micromanage their kids less and less as they get older.

Indeed. It's strange to me that people try to do things any other way. At the start, you have a tiny person who has no idea how to function in the world and is entirely dependent on others. Somewhere around two decades later, you have someone who needs to be ready to go out into the world on their own and operate independently. How else could you possibly get them from one to the other effectively if not by introducing more freedom and more responsibility over time as they become mature enough to handle them?

Probably the biggest complaint when I've spoken about childhoods with friends of my own generation, and the thing we pretty much all agree we want to avoid with our own generation of children, is strict and arbitrary-seeming rules that remain in place for far too long. Obviously no five-year-old is ready to make their own fully informed decisions about everything. But a fifteen-year-old? Hopefully by then they'll be making most decisions for themselves and relying on their parents more as advisers and a safety net than as figures of authority.

I've read stories of folks successfully getting their kids to manage their own screen time.

There are ways to get interested in things other than hobbies that give you a surface level exposure to hardware and software.

It was actually fun and felt like an achievement.

In the end, totalitarian views are what got us into the current political climate. Being able to negotiate, and sometimes push boundaries and break rules are important life skills.

But don't tell them that.

In this situation the rule had been fulfilled, the meal was finished, and so finding a way to get back online was perfectly "lawful".

I'm pretty legalistic in a rational way with domestic rules for my kids - they can't flout the rules but they can provide a logical challenge and change the rules.

This situation was poor time management on my child's behalf.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html