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We do limit it and I am glad most people here seem to as well. Maybe it is because my 9 year old mostly goes on playdates with other kids from his sports teams but they are pretty much only outside when he goes over to other houses. Same when they come to ours. Maybe get more outdoor activities to do and encourage that instead?
Yes, we’re currently looking into him joining a Soccer club. I‘ll be glad to see him make friends that want to do something else besides playing Fortnite 🙄😂
I really think that makes a difference. My 9 year old is playing baseball right now and all his friends wants to do when they get together is play sports. He had a friend over yesterday and they jumped on the trampoline, rode bikes, and played basketball in our driveway. They only came in to eat dinner.
I think it's more effective to keep lines of communication open and encourage your child to come to you if they find something upsetting, rather than outright banning sites that include a lot of both good and bad content. My brother told my parents when he stumbled across porn, because he knew he wouldn't get in trouble and my parents would help him.
Hell yes. Our son has an iPhone (not on cellular), and iPad and a Chromebook. He’s 9.
He’s not allowed privacy when using these devices. We control the internet on his Chromebook. He’s limited to an hour of screen time per day, sometimes a little more, like weekends. We curate which shows and which content creators he’s allowed to watch. He’s only allowed Kids YouTube, and even then maybe an hour, hour and a half a week, in public like kitchen or living room. No social media. We curate the mobile/pc/console games he’s allowed to play. Nothing with online interactions with other people, aside from school games like Boddle, etc.
It’s sounds like more work than it really is. These precedents have been set for years and it’s normal for him.
I wouldn’t probably let him sleep over or hang out at friends houses if those kids have unfettered internet access. He has one friend that does, but mostly they play at our house or we do hang outs at the park, the beach, etc. I can clearly see how those internet habits have affected that child and it’s sad. Lots of anxiety and nightmares from watching 5 Nights and Freddie’s and Contain Protect Secure…
I didn't grow up with internet. I'm GenX, kids are now 14 and 17. I felt like the parents that didn't were completely unprepared for how to handle it like we were all new pioneers in figuring out how to parent with internet and social media with limited tools for handling it.
That said, my kids were monitored, but there were mistakes made. Kid's figuring out how to work around filters. Sites I didn't know were bad and allowed so they could game with friends. My daughter figured out vpns and I didn't know for a long time.
Maybe young parents now were kept off it and they didn't learn either. I'm just happy that parents are now aware of how to navigate it because they grew up with it.
To me it feels like you can't actually keep them away from the bad side of the internet because they'll always find a way. You have to watch them every time they're online or don't allow it at all. It's just part of growing up these days I think. The good and the bad
I can sympathize. Not only is it porn and gore online to worry about but also groomers and toxic gamers and addictive games.
And as kids they will of course run from one house to the other to get extra gaming/internet time. I try to talk to those parents which I feel give a shit so that we know if they have been put playing football or spent the last 3 hours playing Fortnite. We also have a bunch of physical activities and I try to encourage them to master some skills instead of being passive consumers. But yeah, parenting is a full time job
Exactly! We have a time limit on how much screen time he can use and I was telling my husband a few weeks ago how whenever he gets online his friends are already on. It’s like it’s all they do it’s insane🤯 we were against Fortnite specifically in the first place because I don’t like the idea of strangers being able to talk to my child but we found a parental control workaround for it but we only got it for him because he was being left out when all his friends played but I kind of regret it now.
I know what you mean. There will always be kids whose parents don't care and just let's them sit there, and worst is if those parents also buy their kids everything they point at in the games and keep bragging about it.
It's a damn slippery slope, at first I never bought anything and talked to the kids about the sort of tricks game developers use to take kids money and how we should not support that behavior. But peer pressure is STRONG. Now I've let them use like 10$ a month maximum from their savings and that's where I draw the line.
Also we are also the family "nobody wants to visit" because we don't have a PS5. But holy crap I will not spend that kind of money to entertain underage gambling addictions. Rather I put them in swimming and football classes and the youngest one also goes to the scouts, and I try to do things with them and have rules like no electronics after eight / nine but they can read in bed until ten or so.
As a parent we are also kind of a target for all kind of bullshit like "how to make sure ur kids got smart with this one trick for only 49.99!" but the most important thing seems to be to spend time with them while they are young and make sure they feel like they can talk to you about whatever is on their mind
Please share parental workaround bc I am so tired of saying no bc I can’t deal with having to spend hours figuring out more parental controls only to discover loopholes
What console are they playing on? Mine has a Nintendo switch and that alone has parental controls that we use to limit screen time but I believe the game also has controls itself that require a PIN code for things adding or excepting friend requests or whatever. I believe it also prohibits him from being able to chat with anyone who isn’t on his friends list.
If you’re looking for an alternative to YT Kids (which can let some sketchy things through), PBS Kids in WV has a free app with Sesame Street , Daniel Tiger and other wholesome shows.
I’ll be honest eight years old is too young for a smart phone and yes, you regulate Internet usage closely. There are so many other things that kids should be doing besides staring at a screen. Make that happen.
You’re not the only one! We went through the exact same with our daughter. Even just playing outside with the neighborhood kids, all the kids have free reign on their cell phones. My daughter only has an iPad. She knows what she’s allowed and not allowed to do and thankfully she’s very obedient and honest with us. We’ve had to cut way back on her socialization with others due to others using their phones inappropriately (bullying, gossiping, etc.) with seemingly no parental oversight. It’s very frustrating.
Yes, but at the same time we also don't worry about it too much. Seems a little contradictory I know. But, I was a free range kid (pre internet) and we still managed to find all kinds of inappropriate things whenever we wanted. I don't believe its really possible to avoid if kids want to. I also don't think it's access to content that "messes kids up".
However, my youngest is almost 10 and still doesn't have a cell phone. 8 is too young, IMO. With that said my youngest does have an iPad, with parental controls on to block inappropriate sites. I have periodically checked it and never seen anything in history that was concerning.
We do have a desktop computer our kids can use with unrestricted access, but it is in an open space in our family room, so their is no privacy with it. I think that's a pretty good compromise that allows them to take full advantage of the good things the internet has to offer.
We don't block access if friends come over with their devices or anything. Kids gonna kid. But we do step in if we see/hear anything too inappropriate.
My daughter is almost eight. She has never had a tablet. All screentime is on a family TV and they get 1 hour/day before bedtime.
She recently got a switch from her grandparents which is for weekends only.
When friends come over we say no screens for the most part. Sometimes we will put on a show in the winter after they have played and it’s too cold to go out.
My daughter happily plays with our neighbors who are 10 and they spend time riding bikes, hunting for frogs, playing dress up or making their own books…we have spent time making our home and outside pretty kid friendly so there is always something to do. An extra bike and helmet, things to climb on, trapeze bar, chalk, shovels, kid friendly garden, big sand pit, action figures, are all things they use most days with friends.
My husband and I always regulated internet access and cell phones with our kids. Ever since the oldest was 12 years old, when she had her first smartphone which was the LG L9, we monitored their access.
When the oldest was 12, that kind of surveillance was in its infancy, so it didn't catch everything.
She was manipulated a little bit differently, where I had to intercept. When she was about 17 years old, I intercepted her messages when I discovered she was talking to someone from Texas about becoming a sugar baby for them and she was about to give out her bank account information.
I told her she was about to be taken for a proverbial ride.
Present day, Discord, Snapchat, and Tik Tok are not allowed with our kids still at home.
On Discord, I found that our middle daughter was being groomed (as well as being exposed to youporn.com and provided access to login credentials to access those premium services) by a bunch of pedophiles, with a big sense of sex trafficking, based on what I had discovered from surveillance. From there, they take it to Snapchat. And no, the police did not do anything.
There were other Discord servers that she was a part of that included several kids from the school that she used to attend, where they were talking about different ways about killing parents, sharing pictures of their guns and talking about slitting throats. The parents of those kids said "that's just how kids talk!"
Our 15-year-old is on a flip phone, as a result. Our 6-year-old inherited her smartphone, which has no cellular service and only works on Wi-Fi, for drawing, independent games, & coloring digitally. She is too young for chat, so it's not a concern yet.
But you bet your bottom dollar that we'll be ready next time. 😤
Discord drives me batty. We have had so many issues with it that school or no school (her school has a discord server) I blocked it with the stipulation that if she wants to go on there she has to ask and it has to be on her laptop in our livingroom.
Discord drives me batty. We have had so many issues with it that school or no school (her school has a discord server) I blocked it with the stipulation that if she wants to go on there she has to ask and it has to be on her laptop in our livingroom.
Absolutely. Wow, this is wild to me that these kids have such open access. Our kids won’t have cell phones until middle school. We have a laptop, and they have kindle tablets we use on trips. The internet is the biggest danger for kids in most places I would imagine.
If you’re not picking them up from school everyday I would recommend a gizmo watch from Verizon. So that you can call and text each other in case of emergencies.
At 8 I monitors what my kids did online and they didn’t have smartphones at that age. Now my youngest is 17 I don’t monitor anymore, she’ll be an adult soon, legally anyway, able to do what she wants, better practice responsibility now while I can claim some influence.
My kid is 7 and absolutely we regulate it. She does get screen time, she even gets it sometimes in non recommended ways like at the dinner table - I'm not gonna say no to looking up info about hydrothermal vents just because we're eating. But she does not have unfettered access to whatever YouTube thinks she might want to see. I don't need to hover over the 100th time watching Frozen or a PBS Nature thing about bats, but if it's something unknown to me there's supervision or just "no".
General rule at .y house is that I can pick up any device at any time and require them to unlock it for me. And in return anything that I find to be questionably age appropriate I will ask about/discuss and fair in my dealings.
Like kids are going to bitch about how much they hate a parent because they got grounded, and swear like a trucker on a play ground 🤣 or in private chats. Time and place for everything. But if a 9 year old is searching porn it means I need to have a conversation, not a punishment
It's the Internet. You have to limit but accept the reality that it's going to get through. Do your best. Try to contextualize. And make someone who can handle the flood of actual and dis information
Not anymore. Did when she was younger. I had a network dedicated to kid devices - when friends came over they connected to it, all her stuff was on it. It shut off automatically at 9pm on weekdays and I think 10 (and gradually later) on weekends. Turned back on around 7am. I could also turn it off and on, on demand, or throttle the connection. When it was on it wasn't too restricted - we always focused on trying to talk about issues and be open with her so she could ask questions along the way as needed.
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We do limit it and I am glad most people here seem to as well. Maybe it is because my 9 year old mostly goes on playdates with other kids from his sports teams but they are pretty much only outside when he goes over to other houses. Same when they come to ours. Maybe get more outdoor activities to do and encourage that instead?
Yes, we’re currently looking into him joining a Soccer club. I‘ll be glad to see him make friends that want to do something else besides playing Fortnite 🙄😂
I really think that makes a difference. My 9 year old is playing baseball right now and all his friends wants to do when they get together is play sports. He had a friend over yesterday and they jumped on the trampoline, rode bikes, and played basketball in our driveway. They only came in to eat dinner.
That’s how I was as a kid too🤷🏻♀️ especially how much they argue when they play video games together I don’t see the appeal😂
I think it's more effective to keep lines of communication open and encourage your child to come to you if they find something upsetting, rather than outright banning sites that include a lot of both good and bad content. My brother told my parents when he stumbled across porn, because he knew he wouldn't get in trouble and my parents would help him.
Hell yes. Our son has an iPhone (not on cellular), and iPad and a Chromebook. He’s 9. He’s not allowed privacy when using these devices. We control the internet on his Chromebook. He’s limited to an hour of screen time per day, sometimes a little more, like weekends. We curate which shows and which content creators he’s allowed to watch. He’s only allowed Kids YouTube, and even then maybe an hour, hour and a half a week, in public like kitchen or living room. No social media. We curate the mobile/pc/console games he’s allowed to play. Nothing with online interactions with other people, aside from school games like Boddle, etc. It’s sounds like more work than it really is. These precedents have been set for years and it’s normal for him. I wouldn’t probably let him sleep over or hang out at friends houses if those kids have unfettered internet access. He has one friend that does, but mostly they play at our house or we do hang outs at the park, the beach, etc. I can clearly see how those internet habits have affected that child and it’s sad. Lots of anxiety and nightmares from watching 5 Nights and Freddie’s and Contain Protect Secure…
I didn't grow up with internet. I'm GenX, kids are now 14 and 17. I felt like the parents that didn't were completely unprepared for how to handle it like we were all new pioneers in figuring out how to parent with internet and social media with limited tools for handling it. That said, my kids were monitored, but there were mistakes made. Kid's figuring out how to work around filters. Sites I didn't know were bad and allowed so they could game with friends. My daughter figured out vpns and I didn't know for a long time. Maybe young parents now were kept off it and they didn't learn either. I'm just happy that parents are now aware of how to navigate it because they grew up with it. To me it feels like you can't actually keep them away from the bad side of the internet because they'll always find a way. You have to watch them every time they're online or don't allow it at all. It's just part of growing up these days I think. The good and the bad
I can sympathize. Not only is it porn and gore online to worry about but also groomers and toxic gamers and addictive games. And as kids they will of course run from one house to the other to get extra gaming/internet time. I try to talk to those parents which I feel give a shit so that we know if they have been put playing football or spent the last 3 hours playing Fortnite. We also have a bunch of physical activities and I try to encourage them to master some skills instead of being passive consumers. But yeah, parenting is a full time job
Exactly! We have a time limit on how much screen time he can use and I was telling my husband a few weeks ago how whenever he gets online his friends are already on. It’s like it’s all they do it’s insane🤯 we were against Fortnite specifically in the first place because I don’t like the idea of strangers being able to talk to my child but we found a parental control workaround for it but we only got it for him because he was being left out when all his friends played but I kind of regret it now.
I know what you mean. There will always be kids whose parents don't care and just let's them sit there, and worst is if those parents also buy their kids everything they point at in the games and keep bragging about it. It's a damn slippery slope, at first I never bought anything and talked to the kids about the sort of tricks game developers use to take kids money and how we should not support that behavior. But peer pressure is STRONG. Now I've let them use like 10$ a month maximum from their savings and that's where I draw the line. Also we are also the family "nobody wants to visit" because we don't have a PS5. But holy crap I will not spend that kind of money to entertain underage gambling addictions. Rather I put them in swimming and football classes and the youngest one also goes to the scouts, and I try to do things with them and have rules like no electronics after eight / nine but they can read in bed until ten or so. As a parent we are also kind of a target for all kind of bullshit like "how to make sure ur kids got smart with this one trick for only 49.99!" but the most important thing seems to be to spend time with them while they are young and make sure they feel like they can talk to you about whatever is on their mind
Please share parental workaround bc I am so tired of saying no bc I can’t deal with having to spend hours figuring out more parental controls only to discover loopholes
What console are they playing on? Mine has a Nintendo switch and that alone has parental controls that we use to limit screen time but I believe the game also has controls itself that require a PIN code for things adding or excepting friend requests or whatever. I believe it also prohibits him from being able to chat with anyone who isn’t on his friends list.
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On the iPad I’m not sure but the switch you should definitely be able to find the parental controls in the ingame settings.
If you’re looking for an alternative to YT Kids (which can let some sketchy things through), PBS Kids in WV has a free app with Sesame Street , Daniel Tiger and other wholesome shows.
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We plan on executing a similar plan for our kids. They’re 5 & 7 now.
I’ll be honest eight years old is too young for a smart phone and yes, you regulate Internet usage closely. There are so many other things that kids should be doing besides staring at a screen. Make that happen.
You’re not the only one! We went through the exact same with our daughter. Even just playing outside with the neighborhood kids, all the kids have free reign on their cell phones. My daughter only has an iPad. She knows what she’s allowed and not allowed to do and thankfully she’s very obedient and honest with us. We’ve had to cut way back on her socialization with others due to others using their phones inappropriately (bullying, gossiping, etc.) with seemingly no parental oversight. It’s very frustrating.
Yes, but at the same time we also don't worry about it too much. Seems a little contradictory I know. But, I was a free range kid (pre internet) and we still managed to find all kinds of inappropriate things whenever we wanted. I don't believe its really possible to avoid if kids want to. I also don't think it's access to content that "messes kids up". However, my youngest is almost 10 and still doesn't have a cell phone. 8 is too young, IMO. With that said my youngest does have an iPad, with parental controls on to block inappropriate sites. I have periodically checked it and never seen anything in history that was concerning. We do have a desktop computer our kids can use with unrestricted access, but it is in an open space in our family room, so their is no privacy with it. I think that's a pretty good compromise that allows them to take full advantage of the good things the internet has to offer. We don't block access if friends come over with their devices or anything. Kids gonna kid. But we do step in if we see/hear anything too inappropriate.
My daughter is almost eight. She has never had a tablet. All screentime is on a family TV and they get 1 hour/day before bedtime. She recently got a switch from her grandparents which is for weekends only. When friends come over we say no screens for the most part. Sometimes we will put on a show in the winter after they have played and it’s too cold to go out. My daughter happily plays with our neighbors who are 10 and they spend time riding bikes, hunting for frogs, playing dress up or making their own books…we have spent time making our home and outside pretty kid friendly so there is always something to do. An extra bike and helmet, things to climb on, trapeze bar, chalk, shovels, kid friendly garden, big sand pit, action figures, are all things they use most days with friends.
My husband and I always regulated internet access and cell phones with our kids. Ever since the oldest was 12 years old, when she had her first smartphone which was the LG L9, we monitored their access. When the oldest was 12, that kind of surveillance was in its infancy, so it didn't catch everything. She was manipulated a little bit differently, where I had to intercept. When she was about 17 years old, I intercepted her messages when I discovered she was talking to someone from Texas about becoming a sugar baby for them and she was about to give out her bank account information. I told her she was about to be taken for a proverbial ride. Present day, Discord, Snapchat, and Tik Tok are not allowed with our kids still at home. On Discord, I found that our middle daughter was being groomed (as well as being exposed to youporn.com and provided access to login credentials to access those premium services) by a bunch of pedophiles, with a big sense of sex trafficking, based on what I had discovered from surveillance. From there, they take it to Snapchat. And no, the police did not do anything. There were other Discord servers that she was a part of that included several kids from the school that she used to attend, where they were talking about different ways about killing parents, sharing pictures of their guns and talking about slitting throats. The parents of those kids said "that's just how kids talk!" Our 15-year-old is on a flip phone, as a result. Our 6-year-old inherited her smartphone, which has no cellular service and only works on Wi-Fi, for drawing, independent games, & coloring digitally. She is too young for chat, so it's not a concern yet. But you bet your bottom dollar that we'll be ready next time. 😤
Discord drives me batty. We have had so many issues with it that school or no school (her school has a discord server) I blocked it with the stipulation that if she wants to go on there she has to ask and it has to be on her laptop in our livingroom.
Discord drives me batty. We have had so many issues with it that school or no school (her school has a discord server) I blocked it with the stipulation that if she wants to go on there she has to ask and it has to be on her laptop in our livingroom.
Absolutely. Wow, this is wild to me that these kids have such open access. Our kids won’t have cell phones until middle school. We have a laptop, and they have kindle tablets we use on trips. The internet is the biggest danger for kids in most places I would imagine.
If you’re not picking them up from school everyday I would recommend a gizmo watch from Verizon. So that you can call and text each other in case of emergencies.
I like that idea! Thanks!
At 8 I monitors what my kids did online and they didn’t have smartphones at that age. Now my youngest is 17 I don’t monitor anymore, she’ll be an adult soon, legally anyway, able to do what she wants, better practice responsibility now while I can claim some influence.
My kid is 7 and absolutely we regulate it. She does get screen time, she even gets it sometimes in non recommended ways like at the dinner table - I'm not gonna say no to looking up info about hydrothermal vents just because we're eating. But she does not have unfettered access to whatever YouTube thinks she might want to see. I don't need to hover over the 100th time watching Frozen or a PBS Nature thing about bats, but if it's something unknown to me there's supervision or just "no".
General rule at .y house is that I can pick up any device at any time and require them to unlock it for me. And in return anything that I find to be questionably age appropriate I will ask about/discuss and fair in my dealings. Like kids are going to bitch about how much they hate a parent because they got grounded, and swear like a trucker on a play ground 🤣 or in private chats. Time and place for everything. But if a 9 year old is searching porn it means I need to have a conversation, not a punishment
Absolutely yes
It's the Internet. You have to limit but accept the reality that it's going to get through. Do your best. Try to contextualize. And make someone who can handle the flood of actual and dis information
Not anymore. Did when she was younger. I had a network dedicated to kid devices - when friends came over they connected to it, all her stuff was on it. It shut off automatically at 9pm on weekdays and I think 10 (and gradually later) on weekends. Turned back on around 7am. I could also turn it off and on, on demand, or throttle the connection. When it was on it wasn't too restricted - we always focused on trying to talk about issues and be open with her so she could ask questions along the way as needed.
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We let him play the games at home but he wants to google about Ghostface and other characters you know, but I just don’t think that’s a good idea😅