Kids need access to the internet at a super young age these days for school. If you don't have some sort of filter in place when they are in single digits or tweens you are just negligent. The internet has some dark corners.
If the kid is old enough to know what that is, figure out how to bypass your security filters, and search for it, then what purpose in hell could you have for knowing about it other than perving on your kids? It's not like you didn't do exactly the same thing at the same age. After that time it's a normal and healthy function of develoment, parental restriction og that is just religious prudishness at that point. Filters are needed so little kids don't run into stuff accidentally, but parental reports of all searches is just a gross invasion of privacy by the time they're teens...
thats not the kid, thats the parent, how do I know? My parents used filter Software when i was younger. And if i was myself, i wouldnt want any of my kids to have raw unfiltered access to the Internet and thats coming me; a teenager. A teen can very easily develop a porn addiction, sorry if I'm a religous zealot and I'm a horrible being for going to church. but I also check your post history and I think you need a therapist or something. Your not ok in the head
Wow. A straw man fallacy, red herring and ad hominem in the same reply... haven't seen that one before. And yes, I do need a therapist. I'm autistic, and was emotionally abused by my mother. I'm sorry if you don't " believe in" emotional abuse.
My background aside, I am perfectly capable of holding a logical, civilised discussion and assume you are too.
Firstly,
Never at any time did I argue in favor of unrestricted internet access. We are in agreement on the topic of filters and their necessity.
Secondly,
I stated clearly that the issue here is not the use of filters, but the use of surveillance, that is, recieving reports on internet activity in addition to filters.
My thesis statement is simply that filters are enough, and there is no benefit to using surveillance that justifies the disadvantages. Namely:
A) The child feeling distrusted by the parents, and
B) The child losing any feeling of autonomy, which is very important for development during the teenage years.
I apologise for my lack of clarity earlier, as well as my inflamatory language and ad hominem. I did not make my point clear, and should not have escalated in that manner. I respect your opinion as well, even if you no longer wish to continue with this discussion. I forgive you for the ad hominem as well - it was only fare given my earlier rash behaviour.
I'm sorry if my way of talking seems vague or offensive, I have Asperger's Syndrome so I tend to write an essay when I want to talk... sorry.
And to clarify farther, I am in no way in favour of teens being able to access porn or other inappropriate material. As I said, I agree that filters are necessary.
If the kid is old enough to purposely bypass the security, they're probably around the right age to find some of the stuff on the other side. But you don't want them accidentally stumbling into it because they searched something seemingly innocent.
I just wanted to look up blueberry waffles but I was derping hard and couldn't remember the word for blueberries... I was an adult at that point but just imagine a kid doing that on accident iykyk 💀
If the kids old enough to figure out VPNs, dual booting, and all the other pretty simple workarounds then it is what it is. You can't control everything. I am talking about the little guys. And this dudes kid is googling how to teach crabs to talk. If someone is searching that they probably aren't ready to get completely unrestricted access because they are probably pretty young. Like I said, single digits or tweens.
If the parents still try to restrict, which most unreasonably will, then the kid will simply grow better at this
This leads to the kid growing up with confiding in random people more than their family(this might lead to said friends being a bad influence on them, since they didn't learn how to differentiate good and bad people)
That or a general sense of distrust and surveillance
Parents can literally get sued by the state for letting their children watch inappropriate stuff (at least where I live). You are obligated as a parent to restrict the access of your children to inappropriate media.
There's a HUGE difference between restrictions via blockers and surveillance. I can assure you that no one here is arguing in favour of letting kids watch porn...
And the proper way is to teach your kids about it and stop treating kids like super fragile glass beings.
Your city probably has some dark corners too, but you don't set up geofenced tracking beacons to be alarmed if they stumble slightly off the path you intended them to go.
Children should feel comfortable enough to talk to you about bad stuff they encounter, not feel frightened, that they broke a rule.
By the time I was 17, at least on my windows PC, every search I made was reported. Every setting I touched was reported. Every app I use, and how long, reported. Every startup and shutdown reported. Games with chat features were banned. Online games were banned. Every week on Sunday, an email with all this went to my parents, and my dad would forward it to me as a kind of intimidation that "we know all"...
And yes, they used geofenced tracking too.
But I'm a geek, so my Linux laptop and phone were no longer bugged (my only access to other people at the time) by the time I figured it out (around age 16).
Still had to turn the tracker on so they wouldn't ask why the location pings stopped though.
This kind of obsessive control ought to be illegal. I propose privacy rights at age 16, enforceable by fines, with a safe hotline for those with obsessive parents. They were emotionally abusive, control by external restrictions is often only part of the story in cases like mine.
I'm all for safety filters, but parental controls that can be classified as spyware have no place in a parent-child relationship after the age of 16...
If you use these trackers and barge in "hey I saw what you did on the internet, you're in trouble." then you're doing it wrong. Kids need guidance. If you were negligent enough to let your kid roam the city without supervision, you SHOULD have a tracker on them. We're talking about little kids not 16+. Many young kids get themselves killed or groomed or into some kind of cult online. When that happens to young kids, parents are negligent. When 12 year olds get addicted to porn, negligence. You can guide your children without being an asshole. I know a lot of us grew up either completely neglected or completely terrified to make a mistake, but there is an in-between.
Not every state in the US is the same so your comment is mostly based on smug ignorance anyway. It's not paranoia if you live in a city with a lot of crime etc. You just wanted to try and feel superior. Giving me reddit vibes tbh.
The thing is, parents can get sued for not restricting access of their children to inappropriate media. When you think just talking to your children "the right way" and they will suddenly act wise and smart and good all the time you are incredibly naive.
Invasive reports of literally everything. Making it way too easy to control your child to the point of psychical damage, and with some parents a tool for abuse.
I disagree, do not let them use internet as they wish. The age of 12 is so vulnerable for porn addiction, video game addiction,, gambling gacha addiction, meme consooming addiction and all the psychological damage that slot machine style colours and visuals can do permanently to a kid's brain early on. The kid struggles until they are 30, due to this.
Edit: let me just say, hand them over a book called "Irresistible" by Adam Alter. It is not difficult to understand, easy to read.
Fuck you too for ignoring the millions of young adults, who were once children like you, who are now many years ahead of you in terms of psychological damage that the capitalist slot machine world has done to their brains permanently. Fuck you for being insensitive to the effects on millions of people, just because you love your video games and do not want to be left out in "social teenager discussions". Fuck you for wanting to become another cog of the rotten capitalist bingbingwahoo machine.
I can play the rant game the same way you do, since you choose to come up with the most bizarre irrational justifications to cope with the conditions you faced as a kid, where you were confined to this horrible place. The confinement is the problem, NOT confinement from video games. Video game was not the only missing puzzle piece of your childhood, let alone being the most important one.
If you are thinking that inventing rationalities makes you a rational person, then you are more irrational than the people you call irrational.
I love how you demonised me in the earlier comment, and now this one, treating me like a "fucking" "monster" "slave" owner or whatever mental image you form in your head, as you continue to passionately rant, doused in your traumatic past, hurt by it and thinking that attacking me is going to do anything about it. Then you even claim I am the one who does not want to argue in good faith within the span of 1 exchange, where you write 2 thesis long comments.
Your perspective is irrational and purely one sided. You not having been addicted to porn and games does not mean millions of kids have not gotten addicted. You are less important than the millions of other kids for a society, going by a simple logical analysis of the society's current condition.
You have claimed how you missed out on "catching up" with pop culture, wanting to live a video gamer childhood and so on, and want to force that onto other kids because your creativity urge desires that. You are the one who is wrong to want other kids' brains to get rotten, just because of your fictional creative desires. The abuse of human psychology in advertising, gaming, porn and media industry in general is a more important concern than your personal bickering, and I am okay with being rude about it. I will be an asshole to you, since you first chose to be one.
I have watched Blade Runner, and I know about 1984 pretty well. George Orwell was a fascist who sold out communists to the police, and I do not consider his fearmongering picturisation fully valid, even if it lays out one of the possibilities of a future world. There are many, many wrong claims and assumptions you make to formulate the conclusion, and it is heavily tainted by your traumatic childhood and your anger largely based in FOMO.
There is not much rationality in your emotionally loaded rant, and I simply do not have the time or inclination to help you and address this. Generally I am known to help people, but I do not have the energy required to help you, and in life I am getting tired of helping people when almost nobody reciprocates with helping/protecting me. I despise one sided transactional relationships, simply put.
Seek professional therapy and meditation sessions. You need A LOT of healing. A LOT. I cannot emphasise enough.
If there’s a reliable way to only be alerted to specific activity, then the parents aren’t really actively spying, in the sense that the kids still have privacy when they aren’t transgressing into prohibited space. As long as that prohibited space is reasonable (huge debate possible there of course) and the kids know about the restrictions. imo
this post is about a child being blocked then reported to their parents for 'teaching crabs to read'
I don't think you can defend it as a reasonable prohibited space
Not giving your kids access to the internet at all is insane. You're setting them up for failure by not actively teaching them how to navigate the Internet and what bs to look out for. Anyone that does this is just trying to indoctrinate their kid and prevent them from being exposed to any other ideas. The ego on parents that think they know enough to entirely prepare their kids for the world is ridiculous. Especially these days. You're just setting them up to be behind when they're older and they'll resent you while they struggle to catch up.
The thing is, the internet does exist now. And it is part of the world kids grow up in. So the question is not what someone thinks what the children will miss. They will not miss anything because they will have friends who will show them what the internet is. The question is: who do you want your kids to learn from what the internet is and can do?
'Monitoring' if anything is worse. After puberty a human needs some degree of privacy and autonomy. By all means use blockers, but reading their every google search, and especially making them aware of that, is only hurtful.
My parents used this as part of their obsessive-control emotional / psychological abuse. Mostly to try to indoctrinate me into their cult, and their extremist right-wing ideology. There is a place for filters, and even search reports - but search reports ought to end around 14 years, and by 16 there needs to be some form of legal recognition of privacy rights as a human being for cases of isolating abuse as a part of indoctrination. P*rn blockers etc on the router are fine though, the network legally belongs to the parents. But human being, at least after puberty, requires privacy for proper psychological development. Complete surveillance after that time is psychologically and emotionally harmful to both the child and the relationship.