The mother of my kid and I are separated. I wanted to restrict content/screen time, but she gave him unrestricted access to his iPhone and now I feel it can't be undone. He's 13.

I'm mostly worried about his attention span, especially when I watch him use his phone. But then again, maybe this is just a different generation and I must understand that his way of using the internet is different from mine.

Would you share a story of falling/picking them up?

A screen is a great way to amuse a kid while you regain your sanity after a rough day. But so is a playdate with another kid, or a sleepover if they're older. And if your kid went on a playdate or a sleepover, wouldn't you ask how it went? Wouldn't you talk to the other parent(s) about how it went? Wouldn't it be weird if you didn't ever talk about that sleepover? Why should an iPhone be any different?

My point is that a screen isn't a pause button on your parent-child relationship. It's an experience that the kid goes through, separately from you, and it's your duty as a parent to get back in sync again afterward. Sorry to use your kid's mom as a pointed subject here, but it makes all the difference whether she sees the iPhone as an extra parenting responsibility, or a substitute for some of hers. In our case, we didn't demand a full accounting of every one of our kids' clicks. But occasional conversations were expected. (And pro tip for separated parents, these kinds of conversations can also happen... over the phone! On SMS!)

Stories to share... well, I won't get too specific because they're kids and all that, but briefly...

One: the kids all have small savings accounts with even smaller allowances. Twice they've gotten bamboozled by online gaming sites (similar to Club Penguin) into putting in their debit-card number to buy a virtual trinket that then turns into a $expensive/month subscription. Both times they noticed they were suddenly overdrawn, and came to me asking for help. If those payments were tuition in life experience, we got good value for it, because my kids today are pretty good at reading the fine print. And we now have a family legend/parable of Kid #2 buying the $1 powerup that cost him all his savings.

Two: Call of Duty during the pandemic. Self-regulation issues surfaced, and grades slipped. We talked about it and came up with a homework-before-gaming-each-night rule. We (the parents) didn't enforce the rule; that was the kids' job. Grades came back slowly, but the bleeding stopped almost immediately.

Honestly, I sat here for a while trying to think of a zinger of a third story, but most are the same -- the kid walking up to me with a screen in hand, showing me a site or an app, and asking "Dad, is this legit?" and oh god no it isn't and I'm so glad they felt OK asking me about it. I think that's actually the common thread with all these stories: we've been reasonably successful keeping the lines of communication open about their online lives, giving us the opportunity to parent through the teachable moments, rather than preemptively shaming them into dealing with it alone. My kids aren't perfect, but I'm satisfied with how they're prepared for the world, in all its gory detail.

> My point is that a screen isn't a pause button on your parent-child relationship. It's an experience that the kid goes through, separately from you, and it's your duty as a parent to get back in sync again afterward.

Very well said, thank you for sharing. I’ve never considered it like that because it was never my experience, nor one I’ve seen firsthand in others... but it sounds so obvious reading it now. Makes me wish I had more of that growing up. Makes me hope I remember this when I’m a parent.

I'm sorry for your difficult situation. Phones killing attention span is real.

This is an important point. There's a reason that it's well known on any given college campus that the wildest people are the ones with the strictest parents.

To anyone reading this - guide your kids, don't try to lock them down. Obviously what degree of freedom:restriction will be dependent on the kid in question, but be guided by the point above. I don't want to know where I would be right now if I didn't have friends who screwed up their life first and didn't choose to use them as a warning.

E: Added last sentence

Maybe that requires a child having some built in proclivity towards some manner of creative expression or physical activity, who knows.

Also, giving your children unfettered access to the internet is not the same thing as giving them money for a slot machine. They don't have money unless you give it to them. It's not difficult to prevent them from having unlimited access to your credit cards.

Children will grow up into adults that have access to all this stuff anyway. Better to teach and manage excess early then restrict.

You and I, as parents, are both fortunate that our respective children received the gift of constant attention. I fully admit that this experience-everything attitude works a lot better when you're actually there to provide choices, knowledge, feedback, etc. Two working parents who hardly see their kids during the week would have a different perspective.

Before that, we had no limits. After that, self moderation was lost. They would play forever and turn into monsters. The then-7 year old would pee in his pants and keep playing.

I would set the limit at "you have to do something other than school and tv/internet/gaming in your day, on most days."

Nowadays, the only thing that works for me is to print what I want to read, turn off phone and computer, restrict internet access by turning off router, putting the router in hardest to reach places and lay down to read.

See but I don't think you'd be able to do that if you hadn't the experience of living without. Like you literally wouldn't even consider it an option.

Also you may be somewhere on the ADD spectrum. Worth looking into if this becomes a problem for you.

I think it's better if we just admit that these systems are built to be addictive instead of pretending we can just "zen" ourselves away from it.

Realistically, like a lot of addictive things, it would be better off if I nevers started.

All of regulations and moderation go to shit the moment one (as an adult) realizes that there is no "real consequence" for unlimited use. The "real consequence" is only what one puts one's mind to be.

(Losing job because of internet addiction? Nvm, find a different one. Getting overweight? It's a silent killer and the effects are years away, plus you get to shop for new clothes. )

The other part of the equation: The internet is an important aspect of the current generation's identity and culture. What seems like addiction to us could very well be our children's identity, lifestyle. The comparison to TVs is flawed because TV is not social. The unhealthy aspects have to be spoken about in the same vein as drinking and drugs, but any kind of limit-setting that doesn't acknowledge this might push children away from conversation.

There is an hilarious episode of Everybody Loves Raymond that goes into this with refreshing honesty.

I am not a parent, so maybe don't listen to me, but if I were (especially to boys), I would try to deeply instill a value of responsibility into them.

Boys are naturally going to have a higher tolerance for risk, and that can be a very good thing, but it needs to be directed and they need to learn to differentiate good risks from bad ones.

But more generally, building up an identity of being responsible and showing what is expected of them as a child, family member, citizen, human being, etc. will hopefully mean they will do what needs to get done when it needs to be done. Try to get them to ask themselves "what's the responsible thing to do here" and "why is that the responsible thing to do".

idk, maybe that's super obvious. Sorry for posting my naive opinion.

from the perspective of a woman, I missed the possibility to make dumb mistakes because "responsibility" (and not even because my parents taught or encpuraged it, but from friends and family's pressure). Let your kids make dumb stuff and dumb mistakes, please.

The base state of the child is absolutely evolutionary (at a population level): male children are less responsible/compliant and female children are more responsible/compliant from the outset.

This makes girls easy to (even accidentally) make responsible.

Teachers and parents generally easily spend 10x to 100x the effort trying to make boys responsible but do not succeed at nearly the same rates by the same ages. Girls learn faster.

you meant mature faster? probably until the mid 20s where gap closes, I guess.

This means there are more male extreme athletes and entrepreneurs, but also more inmates and gambling addicts.

I don't doubt that it worked for you, but I wonder whether this is a good approach.

You say you never had limits on anything. Say one of your kids tells you he wants to trying heroin a bit. Would you let him?

Now, obviously mobile phones aren't as addictive as heroin and the consequences of failing to control yourself aren't as bad either, but they're still extremely addictive. They're addictive enough that _most people_ struggle to control their impulse to take their phone out every time there's even 10 seconds of downtime. I was at a playground a couple of days ago, and literally every parent there other than me was scrolling their phone while their kids where playing.

> Probably dozens of times, maybe hundreds, we have had "the talk" about how there's a lot of weird shit in the world

Another observation is that you seem to be responding to the question of "how do you deal with your kids being exposed to nasty stuff out there", where the question is really about addiction.

So let me ask you explicitly: When there's a bit of downtime, do your kids reach for the phone? Follow up question: how many hours a day do you estimate they spend staring at their phone?

I'm skeptical that your approach is a good one because these days people who aren't addicted to mindlessly scrolling their phone are the exception rather than the rule.

EDIT: To add some more...

A great example of a victim is my girlfriend. Her parents also didn't prohibit much from her. They've had many "talks" with her too about how there's good things and bad things in the world. But guess what, phones didn't exist when she was a kid so her parents didn't tell her to be careful with phones. She slowly started using more and more. Nowadays she spends 2-3 hours a day in between dinner and bed scrolling her phone. When I point this out to her she says "I'm tired, I just wanna relax". I have the firm conviction that telling a child "this is dangerous stuff, you'll get addicted, do NOT play on this" will reduce the probability of this happening later in life, because you might "catch yourself" using too much earlier in the process.

| "Dad, what do you think about heroin?"

| "If you go near that stuff, you'll be grounded for a month."

| "Thanks, Dad." (proceeds to try heroin)

In the time I typed this, probably 1,000 kids around the world had the very same conversation with a parent about various difficult subjects including drug use. That's 1,000 missed opportunities for parents to have real conversations with their children.

I have a few thoughts about the rest of your comment.

First, you're defining "addiction" very broadly. It's hard to reconcile why your girlfriend is a "victim," but "literally every parent" on the playground was doing the same thing. At a certain point, behaviors become norms. If phones didn't exist, what would those parents on the playground be doing instead? Probably not heroin, but probably not work that society highly values, either. And nothing so extreme that it's my business to judge them.

Second, it's very difficult to address your "the question is really about addiction" point without conceding a false premise. My comment wasn't about how I deal with it; it was about how to prepare my children to deal with it. Which absolutely is about addiction, or rather about avoiding addiction. (To be clear, I'm talking about addiction in the classic sense that causes a person to make destructive life choices to feed their addiction, and absolutely not about the "addiction" that declares that there is a problem with a parent's manner of sitting on a bench on a sunny day in a park.)

If OP were asking how to stop mobile-phone usage, I'd have ignored the post entirely, because in my opinion that's a misguided goal. OP asked "do you take any precautions to help your children avoid falling prey to [internet addiction]?" That's a very different question. And my answer was to teach my children not to become prey.

Yeah but from your answers it looks like you failed at that. All your example interactions seem to come from kids that can't take their eyes off the screen.

I mean you can say what you want about it to them, I'm still not sure I'd give my kids unlimited access to junk and hope they're cool to just be ok with it?

I had zero restrictions on my internet acess growing up, I was also told about excesses and I still blow way too much time on HN, YouTube and Instagram, so I'm not sure it really works to just have the talk?

The question then becomes how do you develop self moderation, which has been a question for at least the last 2,400 years with the socratic "how to achieve a good life" (by having an inner life) and the various "religions of the book" which are a proxy to this question, sprinkling in with a forklift supernatural beliefs (the good life is the one devoted to the God superclass, which has private, unknown methods to solve the confusion of reinforcement).

Coming to think of it, it is probably important if the child does not see you as a God superclass: they will try to rely on themselves (although it is a hard game to balance, not to be too traumatic), and they will be less inclined to rebel against you, achieving both their own personhood, but also being set up to follow your example.

Like for some kids, having to leave a fun play date at their friends house because they have school the next day is crushing enough but probably a good lesson in self moderation and preparedness. That's probably a simpler way to teach self-moderation rather than, here is a bag of cocaine, try not to eat all of it please.

"You see billy, there is a company who is out to get you by stealing all your attention and ruining your life by maximizing profits" is probably a bit complicated for a child.

Also I don't think adults are great at overcoming all their weaknesses, for example, I absolutely love chocolate, so much so that if it's in the house I wish ravish it. So what I do is, I don't have chocolate in the house and it's problem solved.

For some kids not having you tube in their face is probably similar to not having chocolate in the house?

There is a joke: how do you stop a 30 year old man from beating his wife? You hug him when he is 7. How do you stop a 7 year old from being a brat throwing tantrums for chocolate and YouTube? You control your chocolate/YouTube/etc. intake when they are 1 days old.

If parents solved all their problems with the kid by shoving the phone in their hands ["so that brat would finally shut the fuck up"] then of course.

The generation raising children now may not fully understand how critical technology will be in your child's everyday life. You can't just avoid tech, it's literally how every job gets done now, how every leisurely activity is organized or even operated. It's everywhere, unlike chocolate, which can more or less be entirely described as a needless luxury.

This isn't "chocolate" it's "literacy", and by limiting your child's access to it, you're limiting their ability to grow fluent in this new language.

Yes, there are drawbacks and problems, but those will be valuable lessons to learn.

As a consequence I steered clear of all physical addiction and never gambled, but spent countless hours on the net without it creating a problem, until years later (earlier this year) where it all compounded into a nice pile of "not being able to do much beside scrolling social media".

Sure, this would be considered the "excess", but I'm not sure if it's the kind that children should be made to deal with at such an age in such high volumes.

Wouldn't the same logic apply to drugs?

Me and my friends were over 20 years old when social media arrived and it still changed a few of them for the worse. It's a source of suffering for them and it's plain as day from the outside.

I'd advocate for letting them grow up as much as possible before having to deal with that crap while constantly discussing the dangers and negative incentives of the platforms as well as many content producers.

There are tons of articles that say screen time is bad, social media is bad, etc etc... and I suppose you can always find some expert to support those claims, but in terms of actual scientific research, actual experiments, the fear of social media and Internet addiction in general has no more basis today than addiction to TV or video games or even music had in the past, and yes, "experts" in the past went after music as well claiming that it corrupted young kids minds.

* Maryanne Wolf * Cal Newport * Jaron Lanier * Studies conducted by Facebook and brought to public attention by Frances Haugen

Not all are writing about kids specifically but rather humans in general. There are also plenty of psychotherapists specializing in internet addiction, you can look through some of their web pages to see what they are dealing with. I'm from a small European country, I'd recommend looking into local professionals.

It's true that there is a lot of hysteria and speculation and the grand experiment is still running. I admit I'm also biased by what I see in grown ups around me and by my own experiences. The apps and games our kids use are designed to make them addicted. And wasn't it in Irresistible by Adam Alter that managers of companies like Facebook and similar heavily regulate their kids screen times?

I'm not advocating for zero screen time. There are official recommendations from institutes of developed countries and I lean on those. I believe in limits on time and content and media education. They can also learn to deal with something dangerous slowly, they don't have to crash a thousand times.

I got to pick what I watched and when; I just got 30 minutes or an hour a day. I mostly tried to catch the latest Dragon Ball Z episode.

The general strictness of my parents lead to severe rebellion, and that got me into all sorts of trouble (so it definitely wasn’t all a good thing). Now that I’ve matured a bit, I enjoy not having much of a TV habit (I find that I self-titrate internet content in a healthy way as well). I’m actually pretty grateful for the limits.

I don’t have kids, and I don’t know what I would do regarding this posted question, but I thought that I would share that I have very positive feels concerning my parents’ decision to impose a limit on TV consumption time. I filled the rest of my time reading books, and that’s a very fulfilling time-sink to this day.

Also relevant: I think a lot of the streaming-video content available today (Netflix and others) has a lot more intrinsic value than most of the TV content when I was young. There are so many brilliant writers producing theses shows nowadays that my parents’ sentiment may not really apply to all the content.

I don't think you can draw the conclusion that this is because of your childhood restrictions. I have not watched TV in ~10 years, and most of my friends don't have a TV, but I have never had any restrictions. I had the TV on in the background for 8+ hours a day when I was a kid. I don't think there is any correlation at all.

Of course, it also seems to be for much younger children than something like Rugrats, so maybe that's where this reaction of mine is coming from.

I think this contributed greatly to them having all kinds of mental problems. My other children will not have personal devices, but rather dumb phones and a family computer they can use that is in a central place in the house. Until they turn 16.

Tongue in cheek: Based on my experience I now think that giving children free access to the net is roughly as good parenting as providing them a sack of cocaine would be.

My three kids are each unique in different ways, which confounds any attempt to draw predictive conclusions about one parenting style vs another. I can only say what I have done as a parent, and I was happy elsewhere in this thread to share anecdotal mistakes the kids have made along the way. But claiming credit for any positive outcomes would be "results-oriented thinking," as professional poker players warn.

For what it's worth, I haven't been on social media in any meaningful way for probably 10 years. Even my rare tweeting is likely to end given that the guy running that company has spectacularly lost his marbles. My ex-wife and wife are similar. We have no dogma against social media; it's just not very interesting. I work hard at my tech job, but I still make dinner every night for my family. None of this is really for my family or kids in any altruistic sense; it's just how I like to live my life. It's a lot easier to spout a certain parenting philosophy when your own life, and those of your partner(s), match. (I hope this isn't coming off as horribly judgmental; I'm merely admitting that if I had a "do as I say, not as I do" attitude, I'm sure my experience would be a lot rougher.)