13 ms·

Maybe the internet is a different place now but if these restrictions were placed on me as a kid I never would have grown up to be who I am today.

mixmastamyk 6y ago
The internet didn't exist when I was a kid and I became a software engineer. "porn" on my computer consisted of a random sentence generator loaded from cassette tape on my Commodore and given profanity as input. Turns out constant surveillance is not a necessity for learning.
- austhrow743 6y ago
  >Turns out constant surveillance is not a necessity for learning. Didn't you just make a post above this one about how much you surveil your households tech usage?
  - mixmastamyk 6y ago
    No, the problematic stuff is blocked automatically. There is no manual tracking done by me, that's the point. Besides, you know I'm talking about government and corporate actors. Although I have assigned screen-time to myself. ;-)
imesh 6y ago
There is a chance that OP doesn't want his kids to end up like you though.
- formercoder 6y ago
  Fair enough, obviously OP has the right to parent as he pleases. I think that my tinkering intuition has led me to many of my professional successes, and this talent was garnered by experimentation with computers as a child.
  - aaomidi 6y ago
    Eh I sometimes wish parents weren't basically given ownership rights over their kids.
    - CarbyAu 6y ago
      Yeah. Different people have different values. In the same way people see "free speech" as being a good thing, "free parenting" is similar, both in concept and result. Clearly, some people talk shit and some people parent shit. And the results are as per expectation. But without the mixing pot of variation we wouldn't have the better ways either - and we try as a society to have education(for parents and kids, for speech and parenting) make up the difference. And worse come to worse, there is the unfortunate need for Child Services, however that works out...
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - burntoutfire 6y ago
      They aren't, most developed countries have some form of Child Protection Services for cases of abuse.
  - imesh 6y ago
    No disagreement from me. Without gaming on Windows systems I would may never gotten involved in programming in the first place. I'm currently watching what looked like my nephews Roblox/Minecraft addiction turn into some real amazing content creation utilizing youtube as a very real learning source.
    - mixmastamyk 6y ago
      Kid has Linux, every programming lang available, Minecraft, ebooks, wikipedia, educational websites, etc. We live a block from the library. No shortage of quality learning materials basically. Perhaps ya'll've misread the list. It's a preference for quality over quantity.
apocalypstyx 6y ago
This is a false premise. It looks at it from the perspective of what you would loose now. But if other things had happened in your life, that would be the you that is. There would be no comparison because the you who is now wouldn't be and never would have been to consider not being.
acituan 6y ago
What percentage of these technologies were available when you were a kid? Chances are addictive nature of these engagement driven websites would have sucked up our curiosity and autodidactism to an extent that there wouldn’t be much time left for actually doing hands on experimentation, self-directing our research, coming to our own conclusions and experience inventiveness that come from boredom. I think this downside is more important in comparison to the information they make available.
- username90 6y ago
  All of those existed 9 years ago, there are adults today who grew up with them.
  - godelski 6y ago
    I don't think you can compare the addictiveness of sites today to those of a decade ago. The algorithms are very different. It should be unsurprising that in the last decade that they have gotten better at engineering ~~addiction~~engagement.
    - elliekelly 6y ago
      okay but have you ever played elf bowling? snood? chip’s challenge??
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
wisty 6y ago
1. "Back in the day" people actually were forced to work on computers to get anything to work (much like boomers had to work on cars to have them run). Now for many kids it's a passive learning experience, they can just say "Siri give me Youtube" and then hit whatever recommendations it has. They don't even need to learn how to spell, let alone configure a modem. 2. More broadly, while children (and young adults) resent restrictions and rules, was Rousseau really right about nature being best? Rousseau was a guy who put his own children into a French orphanage (it's unknown whether any survived) rather than raise them himself, not sure if he's got a lot of real-world experience. And even cultures that have had time to get things right (unlike our rapidly developing society with lots of scary new risks that we aren't evolved to handle) generally seemed to have a lot of rules to avoid behaviour that was risky (either in the short term, or creating long-term bad habits). 3. The internet is a distributed race to create the most "engaging" content possible, powered by evolving AI. Letting kids play on it unrestricted these days is like letting them loose in a red light district with drug dealers on every corner giving them unlimited money and thinking it will end up well.
- abraxas 6y ago
  Thanks. Finally a voice of reason drowned by the cacophony of "I roamed the internet as a baby and look at me now!" bozos. Facebook, YouTube and whatever SnapCrap of the week is in vogue these days employ hordes of PhD's whose sole job is to ensure you get addicted to their pulp feed as much as humanly possible. Stories of internet addiction among kids involving serious sleep deprivation and complete social withdrawal are everywhere to be found. Yet the people who grew up with Geocities as the biggest site on the web think they understand the magnetic pull of the modern sites highly tuned for stickyness.
ViViDboarder 6y ago
Which restrictions? YouTube is about the only one that I could see having an impact. Having your information tracked doesn’t help you grow to any better than being anonymous.

mixmastamyk 6y ago

The internet didn't exist when I was a kid and I became a software engineer. "porn" on my computer consisted of a random sentence generator loaded from cassette tape on my Commodore and given profanity as input. Turns out constant surveillance is not a necessity for learning.

austhrow743 6y ago
>Turns out constant surveillance is not a necessity for learning. Didn't you just make a post above this one about how much you surveil your households tech usage?
- mixmastamyk 6y ago
  No, the problematic stuff is blocked automatically. There is no manual tracking done by me, that's the point. Besides, you know I'm talking about government and corporate actors. Although I have assigned screen-time to myself. ;-)

imesh 6y ago

There is a chance that OP doesn't want his kids to end up like you though.

formercoder 6y ago
Fair enough, obviously OP has the right to parent as he pleases. I think that my tinkering intuition has led me to many of my professional successes, and this talent was garnered by experimentation with computers as a child.
- aaomidi 6y ago
  Eh I sometimes wish parents weren't basically given ownership rights over their kids.
  - CarbyAu 6y ago
    Yeah. Different people have different values. In the same way people see "free speech" as being a good thing, "free parenting" is similar, both in concept and result. Clearly, some people talk shit and some people parent shit. And the results are as per expectation. But without the mixing pot of variation we wouldn't have the better ways either - and we try as a society to have education(for parents and kids, for speech and parenting) make up the difference. And worse come to worse, there is the unfortunate need for Child Services, however that works out...
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - burntoutfire 6y ago
    They aren't, most developed countries have some form of Child Protection Services for cases of abuse.
- imesh 6y ago
  No disagreement from me. Without gaming on Windows systems I would may never gotten involved in programming in the first place. I'm currently watching what looked like my nephews Roblox/Minecraft addiction turn into some real amazing content creation utilizing youtube as a very real learning source.
  - mixmastamyk 6y ago
    Kid has Linux, every programming lang available, Minecraft, ebooks, wikipedia, educational websites, etc. We live a block from the library. No shortage of quality learning materials basically. Perhaps ya'll've misread the list. It's a preference for quality over quantity.

apocalypstyx 6y ago

This is a false premise. It looks at it from the perspective of what you would loose now. But if other things had happened in your life, that would be the you that is. There would be no comparison because the you who is now wouldn't be and never would have been to consider not being.

acituan 6y ago

What percentage of these technologies were available when you were a kid? Chances are addictive nature of these engagement driven websites would have sucked up our curiosity and autodidactism to an extent that there wouldn’t be much time left for actually doing hands on experimentation, self-directing our research, coming to our own conclusions and experience inventiveness that come from boredom. I think this downside is more important in comparison to the information they make available.

username90 6y ago
All of those existed 9 years ago, there are adults today who grew up with them.
- godelski 6y ago
  I don't think you can compare the addictiveness of sites today to those of a decade ago. The algorithms are very different. It should be unsurprising that in the last decade that they have gotten better at engineering ~~addiction~~engagement.
  - elliekelly 6y ago
    okay but have you ever played elf bowling? snood? chip’s challenge??
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

wisty 6y ago

1. "Back in the day" people actually were forced to work on computers to get anything to work (much like boomers had to work on cars to have them run). Now for many kids it's a passive learning experience, they can just say "Siri give me Youtube" and then hit whatever recommendations it has. They don't even need to learn how to spell, let alone configure a modem. 2. More broadly, while children (and young adults) resent restrictions and rules, was Rousseau really right about nature being best? Rousseau was a guy who put his own children into a French orphanage (it's unknown whether any survived) rather than raise them himself, not sure if he's got a lot of real-world experience. And even cultures that have had time to get things right (unlike our rapidly developing society with lots of scary new risks that we aren't evolved to handle) generally seemed to have a lot of rules to avoid behaviour that was risky (either in the short term, or creating long-term bad habits). 3. The internet is a distributed race to create the most "engaging" content possible, powered by evolving AI. Letting kids play on it unrestricted these days is like letting them loose in a red light district with drug dealers on every corner giving them unlimited money and thinking it will end up well.

abraxas 6y ago
Thanks. Finally a voice of reason drowned by the cacophony of "I roamed the internet as a baby and look at me now!" bozos. Facebook, YouTube and whatever SnapCrap of the week is in vogue these days employ hordes of PhD's whose sole job is to ensure you get addicted to their pulp feed as much as humanly possible. Stories of internet addiction among kids involving serious sleep deprivation and complete social withdrawal are everywhere to be found. Yet the people who grew up with Geocities as the biggest site on the web think they understand the magnetic pull of the modern sites highly tuned for stickyness.

ViViDboarder 6y ago

Which restrictions? YouTube is about the only one that I could see having an impact. Having your information tracked doesn’t help you grow to any better than being anonymous.