The draw of programming for me was that I do could do interesting work and create something all by myself, by the force of my own mind. I loved it largely because I could do it independently, without mommy and daddy steering. I would have lost interest quickly had it been supervised.

There aren't many other creative activities like that - hardware hacking requires 1) driving to stores to 2) buy parts 3) with money or 4) owning a credit card to order things online. Music requires 1) paying 2) an adult teacher and 3) driving you to lessons. Sports, again, requires money, equipment, and driving. As long as there's a computer and an internet connection, you can teach yourself to program all you want.

(As an aside, Cory Doctorow has a part in Little Brother where he talks about why programming is so amazing - there's really nowhere else where you can make living, acting things with just your thoughts.)

>violent videos

So what? Anyone who's slightly informed about the news sees violence all the time. It's part of living in this world. I watched Saddam Hussein hang on CNN.com and I'm not any different because of it.

>social networks with all kinds of shady types hanging around

You might be shady for all I know, but it doesn't matter unless we meet in person. Where your child is going and who he's letting into the house are perfectly legitimate things to supervise and even I wanted to walk into the arms of a predator, it would have been pretty difficult.

As far as Facebook, the shady characters are exactly the same shady characters at school.

>Didn't stop me from learning C and writing games on my TI calculator.

These were the dominant media for a while, but your CLI program in 2014 isn't very interesting to anyone else. Web and iOS applications are, and the web is pretty important if you're going to target these media.

Sports can be pretty cheap too, playing soccer in a field is a popular activity with poor British youth.

Sports can be cheap but in extreme cases of (sub)urban sprawl, getting to a field - or the field where an organized game is happening - is pretty difficult without a car. Also you can't really play organized, coached, team sports without your parents signing liability waivers.

If not, I don't know how better off people in the UK can live with themselves. I would also be seriously concerned about my safety in those areas.

Web and iOS things are a dime a dozen, no offence. The only thing that matters is learning and having fun, and doing things your way. You can easily steer your learning towards marketable skills when the time comes.

I learnt programming on my school computers in lunch times and on a graphical calculator. I really didn't have much interest in programming at home.

It almost feels like you didn't read the article, the author talks about more generic problem solving, fixing a bit of tech, building with Lego. They're the core of hacking, that's what we need to stop labeling 'boy' in children's minds.

A hacker needs to be encouraged to tinker. They honestly don't need private web access to do that. Most of my time near computers was supervized, though I didn't think of it that way at the time.

And there are a lot of people who are affected by watching people hang. I doubt any parent would allow their 12 yo access to that.

I did the same. My interest in programming actually started to decrease as my access to the internet increased. This was, however, in the mid-90s, when there weren't the big online communities that there are now.

Just because the internet wasn't accessible 30 years ago isn't a reason to restrict it in the future. The basic methods of learning are totally different today.. Librarys in financial woes. Wifi at Mcdonalds. Cell Phones for everyone. I know my local libraries don't have any of the information I enjoy reading about.

>>And there are a lot of people who are affected by watching people hang.

And your child shouldn't be wanting to watch those videos.

Those are all there in the real world, too. You can't protect kids from anything harmful or scary, nor should you. Stumbling across a porn or horror site is probably more traumatizing for the adult, anyway. It's like people have forgotten what it's like to be a kid! You've been told your whole life what to do, so there is nothing more amazing than the freedom to be treated like everyone else on the internet.

Can we at least consider that there might be a psychological impact of the fact that in one afternoon you can see more horrors and more nudity than 99.999999% of the world would have seen in a lifetime two decades ago? That there is so incredibly much disturbing content and porn on the internet that the expected reaction is "meh", followed by moving on to yet more violence and porn? That there is so much porn that the craziest fetish you can imagine probably doesn't just exist online, but has an entire website dedicated to it?

It is not just a difference of quantity either. The internet trains you to just move on from things which would have been life-changing events had you witnessed them in the real world pre-1990. Do you really think seeing a picture of a mass grave on the internet is the same as seeing one in real life? Do you think even seeing one in real life now is the same as seeing one in real life before it was possible to just ask the internet for thousands of pictures of one?

In any fair comparison, the internet is absolutely nothing like real life.

In this decade, in the US? No, you are right. Otherwise? It's easy to find examples.

A sample of comments from this thread that I'm trying to argue against:

> That stuff was there during the BBS days as well.... You wrap your kids in cotton and stifle them throughout their childhoods with your helicopter parenting...

> Sure the internet is a HUGE medium, and it's a lot easier to get access to that material using the internet, but that content's been around for almost as long as we've had photography.

> When will people understand that people online is no different from people you meet in real life. Some are shady, some will cause trouble if you talk to them, and violence exist everywhere?... 24/7 supervising is not healthy.

> Is it okay for you to force your child to wear a wire to school? Is it healthy to use the tapes to intervene in her conflicts?

Whereas I say that the internet is not just the same old stuff we've always had, it does affect us, and not wanting your 10-year old to watch porn or beheadings is not the same as wanting to watch them 24/7 and force them to wear a wire to school.

In general, the reinforcement learning present in humans mean that neural systems that are activated more are more influential, easier to activate, etc.. Exposure to violent media unsurprisingly results in increased availability (basically, increased access speed) of violent cognitions and behaviors, and lowered emotional responses (which is not a good thing -- it is very good to be disgusted at violent images, this is indicative of a trait called empathy which can be very adaptive in even the modern world).

Humans are not designed, evolutionarily, to disbelieve things we see. In our evolutionary environment, everything we saw was real. Special effects did not exist. It is actually cognitively effortful to disbelieve -- making research participants complete distractor tasks while having them discriminate between information marked, explicitly, as true or false causes them to be less accurate at judging. When you see a video game character kill someone and experience reward, that is an observational learning experience that is associating positive valence with violent behaviors.

Within the scientific community there's virtually no disagreement on this topic. Denying it is in the same class as denying climate change.

There is definitely a causal link between violent media consumption and violent behavior. Violent media consumption is neither necessary nor sufficient for violent behavior, but it is causal.

(This also does not imply that violent media causes large violent outbursts -- heightened availability of aggressive behavior could manifest as simply as being more easily frustrated or having a slightly quicker temper. But very small effects build up over time, sometimes into large amounts of lost value.)

I suppose your rhetorical question could be read as a value statement, in that it's ethically subjective whether violent behaviors caused by violent media are "bad". But since you seem to care about drops in real-world violence, I'll assume that isn't the case.

People ask me all the time how I know what's safe online versus what's not, and the only thing I can say is experience. I've fallen for enough scams and clicked enough malicious links to know what they're going to look like.

Violent videos are bad, but so is bullying. Should we demand that parents supervise their kids at school to prevent bullying? What about all the shady people on the street, in the store, or on buses. Should a responsible parent prevent a child from ever leaving the home alone?

24/7 supervising is not healthy. Constant watching will cause worse psychological harm than any extremely violent video will do. Instead, talk to the child, and one might learn that they are not interesting to see people burned alive or decapitated with a chainsaws, and thus will close videos that has that kind of content.

Did this damage me? No, I'm fine. I gagged when I saw the images, then I scrolled down and looked at some more. Lasting effects? Well today as an adult, I smash spiders when I see them. Not a big deal.

(Granted, the same thing would have happened if I first saw them in my 20s, but at least I would have known what not to click.)

In this modern society, there are many adults who have never so much as seen a dead body (having never even gone to wakes). In previous generations, and in different societies, seeing dead bodies is common place and does not have the same power to disturb. Does it harm a child to desensitize them to the sight of a dead human body? I don't think so. Does it help? Probably. It opens them up to being able to experience a wider range things, even if it is just going to somebodies wake, being able to watch that optional-attendance autopsy video in highschool, or consider becoming a doctor.

Further, in particularly prudish societies people may not be desensitized to exposed human flesh. Is an Amish child going to be damaged by the sight of a bare ankle? Is an American child going to be damaged by the sight of a finnish sauna? I sincerely doubt it. On the other hand, which is going to have a more difficult time wearing speedos when they join the swim team?

Many humans in industrialized societies are unaccustomed to the sight of an animal being slaughtered and butchered. Are children that grow up in farming communities where they are desensitized to this somehow at a disadvantage when compared to children who grow up in urban communities and only know meat as "that stuff that comes from the store"?

Replace "motorcyclist missing a head" with "photos of Hiroshima or liberated nazi death camps" and I don't think anybody would think it particularly strange that disturbing images are available to view. Yeah, there is historic significance behind those examples, but that doesn't really come into play when considering the effects of disturbing images on people, does it?

But what's for sure is that the images of mass graves and emaciated bodies are stuck in my mind probably forever, and I don't think it's a bad thing as long as it came with proper guidance. It's not the same thing to see them in school with a proper explanation and to stumble upon them by randomly clicking around online on your own in your room.

The Hiroshima/Nazi photos were powerful because they were such a rare display of extreme violence. (At least, that's how I remember feeling when I first saw them.) Plus, their impact was lessened because they were grainy, old, and black and white. Would you be OK with kids today seeing a modern mass grave -- bodies hacked up, heads cut off, etc.? Me, I'd be wary.

I think it is good for kids to see photographs of modern atrocities and war crimes. I wouldn't want them to make the mistake of assuming that is something restricted to fiction and history.

I don't think the "physically ill" feeling is necessary to appreciate the severity or magnitude of those sort of images. In fact, I suspect those sort of feelings cloud the mind and prevent you from taking it all in. An academic appreciation for the horrors of reality is more important that a "gastrointestinal" appreciation.

I'm not going to defend the PTSD hypothesis in particular, or that it's important to be aware of past horrors. But there are real forms of trauma that only require seeing things, and it doesn't much matter whether it's in real life or a picture, only whether it's truly believed.

You're wrong. I know tumblr likes to use the word "trigger" for just about everything, but real diagnosed PTSD is predicated on events significantly more traumatizing than seeing some photographs. There's nothing life-threatening about an image, no matter how disturbing.

While I also find the use of "trigger warnings" rather strange, that usage has to do with triggering reactions that stem from actual PTSD, not that the images themselves can induce it. I know shooting victims can be troubled by fireworks, I don't doubt abuse victims can be troubled (or triggered) by images as well. I don't think that alone should be reason to censor everything we do, but that doesn't mean we can't try to empathize with those that have experienced terrible things either.

And yet, that's exactly what people are doing here.

>but that doesn't mean we can't try to empathize with those that have experienced terrible things either

Please, continue to lecture someone with diagnosed PTSD about being nice to people with PTSD.

>> (...) that usage has to do with triggering reactions that stem from actual PTSD, not that the images themselves can induce it.

>>> And yet, that's exactly what people are doing here.

And I agree that that is silly, was that unclear? Or are you saying that images cannot trigger reactions? I know that for me, looking at images from a time/place of trauma can take me back -- but luckily I've never encountered a trauma severe enough to result in PTSD.

Friends that have seem to be quite easily shocked by related images (say a picture of an abusing spouse) -- and while PTSD is treatable (and therefore no-one is doomed to avoid certain images forever) that doesn't mean that there aren't periods after an incident it might be painful (and maybe counter to recovery) to be faced with certain images?

> that doesn't mean we can't try to empathize with those that have experienced terrible things either

>> Please, continue to lecture someone with diagnosed PTSD about being nice to people with PTSD.

I didn't say be nice (although I think it is good to be nice to people), I said empathize.

Why exactly do you regret it?

I regret it because I feel it's shaped my personality, lessened my sense of empathy, and put a bunch of disgusting images in my head that I'll never be able to get rid of.

Use your words.

(This was in response to my comment getting downvotes.)

Personally, I much prefer linear discussions with hidden favorites, like Metafilter.

As I said, I also sometimes see these images in my head. I don't want to have anything to do with them, but now they're impossible to get rid of.

My son came to me when he was 8 and asked me what gangrene was, so the first thing we did was a Google image search. We talked about it, what it was, etc.

All too often we focus on content more than context but context is extremely important. Kids look to adults on how to react. A frightened parental figure is far more scary to a child than any image the child could ever see is.

Other things I don't allow in my home: ants, stray cats, earthworms, seagulls, termites, bears,... I operate with a whitelist when it comes to animals in my home.

I'm a hacker and "the net" didn't exist before I was 18.

My learning came from the books I bought, and the magazines I subscribed to. Somehow, without IRC or Google to help, I taught myself to program a computer, and wrote an entire game in assembly language (reinventing the concept of linking object files in the process) which I then sold. While I was in high school. I also designed and built an expansion board for my computer with only the IC technical manuals.

By college I was doing real video game consulting work.

I had one awesome friend who was also a good programmer, and we lived and breathed programming together. But beyond that, I was on my own.

It can happen without unfettered Internet access at 9 years old.

Of course, really this comes down to parenting philosophy more than anything else, but those are my 2¢.

I had a Z80 based ZX Spectrum (Sinclair) clone growing up. I had books on Z80 assembly, BASIC, tapes full of compilers (forth, C and pascal) but also tons of games.

The worst I could do in my room was catch the house on fire ;-) but anyway, does it makes sense to have a laptop today and be cut-off from the internet? Is it realistic? I don't know. I would certainly be "going out of your way" from the default setup most people assume today.

http://www.sibkray.ru/upload/blog/e4b/07.jpg (extremely NSFW)

I still consider it to be the most powerful image I've ever seen. It made me realize the absolute horror of war, in an instant. I would rather my child see this image than witness the cartoon violence of Call of Duty and then see military propaganda like the commercial below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkKF4ZcqW14

Kids can handle reality with the right guidance. I have been "desensitized" I suppose, but only in that I'm capable of seeing similar images without cringing. Hopefully that would extend to a situation in which someone was critically injured, I would be able to jump in and help them without hesitation or squeamishness over the blood/gore involved.

My kid if too small to go around the web yet, but I have the feeling there will be a point where as parents my wife and I will need to let him do what he wants without asking us anything, but we keep the ability to check the logs of everything he accessed with any device in the house

It means being able to have red flags triggered on specific things or be able to trace what happened on some social network 2 days ago. 20 years ago my parents didn't care much what I saw of who I talked to in a ny given day as long as I looked fine, but there is a huge gap between the content we could randomly access to physically, and the kind of content one can now stumble on online.

The hard part of course is at which point (8 years old ? 10 ?) will it be ok to let a kid with unlimited internet access and just try to guide him/her to dismiss corruptive infos and follow up on things the kid is not able to deal with alone.

Is it okay for you to force your child to wear a wire to school? Is it healthy to use the tapes to intervene in her conflicts?

If not, then what exactly justified reading texts/facebook messages/emails between friends?

>corruptive infos

What exactly is corruptive information?

Mostly porn and torture? I remember that when I was visiting my uncle, and he left me alone playing on his computer. I was poking around, until I found a folder containing video of a group of soldiers beheading a guy.

I didn't sleep well for a week.

I was left to roam the internet freely starting around age 10, saw my fair share of liveleak-style material, lost some sleep over it and grew up into what I like to believe to be a fairly well-adjusted adult who can only shake his head at the sort of things people in his generation experience irrationality-inducing terror over.

I've noticed that my son is the same way, so I tend to be very careful about what he sees. He's definitely more sheltered that some of his peers, but that's based on how he reacts. It's important to know your kids and know how much they can handle.

If a child is afraid of swimming, most teachers would find it reasonable to keep pushing and gradually acclimatise them to the notion rather than give up and say they are just not cut out for it; why would whatever reasoning that underlies this not apply in the case of "disturbing content"?

I'd image 'grooming' a kid would match the criteria of corrupting a kid's personality. Or suicide/'special' interests sites crafted to target people lacking enough discrimination to understand how they work. Honestly I think there are things that I don't know and don't really want to know about on the web.

In general I'd say information that is crafted in a way to bypass common safeguards and push someone to do or believe something that would usually be considered harmful and he/she doesn't agree with in principle.

> Is it okay for you to force your child to wear a wire to school?

The thing is, at school he will meet professional staff and other kids with roughly the same level of knowledge. In theory bad things could happen, but it's a very controlled environment. Actually teachers will inform parents of conflicts or marking events when it's serious enough, and kids are generally not good at lying or hiding things.

To try another analogy, letting a kid access internet without any check is similar to giving 1000$ in cash and just hoping for the best. Wonderful things can come of it, or the kid can go to a drug dealer. Personally I'd prefer to give him a credit card. If we get a phone call from VISA because of fraudulent transactions, at least we have a chance to do something for the kid.

There will be a time when just sitting down and talking to own's kid should be enough to avoid most of the very deep trouble. But until he/she matures enough to be able to have such discussions, parents need to compromise, with the two extreme of restricting the kid's freedom to such extent that he can't put him/herself in trouble, or let the kid free to do what he/she wants but keep an eye on everything's going on. I tend to err on the 'keep an eye' side until just trusting the kid becomes an option.

> Is it healthy to use the tapes to intervene in her conflicts?*

No, it's not, in any extent. As it's not healthy in general to intervene in a kid's conflicts. You'll intervene when there is a crisis and your kid will get critically hurt.

I think having a log of what a kid does online doesn't mean checking it every night word by word. I means having a place to look at when there is something going seriously wrong and you know or need to know if you have to intervene.

For everything less than that, it's business as usual, talking to your kid, just getting involve enough in his life to have a feel of how it's going and give useful advice.

This is very different from telling you what he talked about at lunch or what he read in the library.

I'd say that the bar for home schooling is set pretty low.

Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are ways of protecting your kids while still giving them the access that can seed a lifetime of curiosity.