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Comment by austincheney | Hacker News Reader

According to HN today social media is a necessity that must be forced on children:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27942843

Parents that say otherwise are the great evil. It does make me wonder how many of those wonderful individuals (experts) actually are parents.

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Christ, talk about taking the comments out of context. They were saying that strictly forbidding your child access would just make them do an end-run around their parents and use it behind their backs. If you think a no-tolerance rule for something as pervasive as social media is going to yield some unspoiled angel of a child, you're in for a rude awakening.

Edit: it's also completely unrelated to the comment you responded to, which was talking about one social media giant going out of favor for another. You conflated it with "all social media" just to bring your drama into another post (which it looks like you've done elsewhere too).

Sorry if the truth hurts, I'm just, as your profile states, "confronting you with radical honesty."

There are lots of good answers there to the same question that essentially say the same thing as you, but minus telling your kids to fuck off and that you are the boss and smashing the phone. I tend to agree with them, as well as the people who replied to you saying that that’s not a very good parenting style. You’ll likely alienate your children and not teach them anything, except perhaps that they need to respond unquestioningly to authority or they will be met with violence.

I suspect that is more why you were downvoted, but not really sure why you want to re-litigate it here in the first place.

Smashing the shit out of a phone to prove a point is a horrible example to set as a parent.

Do you have teenage children?

I have kids, but they are not yet teenagers. I could see taking the phone away, or even selling it… but smashing it is both wasteful and sets a bad example for how we deal with issues.

I do and would agree smashing a phone is terrible example.

If anything it shows authority has been lost and the parent is flailing desperately.

Sure, you can get compliance just like you can get compliance by pepper spraying someone but it's not how to do good parenting.

You can of course remove the phone if it seems it's warranted. Parents are eligible to critical interventions IMO.

There are times when parents actually need to intervene. But this intervention should be taken from a position of dignity, authority, respect and minimal violence.

The quality of intervention depends on the situation. As a parent of a slightly autistic child for example I've had to restrain the child physically to stop the child for harming themself or the anyone else during a meltdown.

I would never smash any of my childs property. Remove - yes, if the situation warrants it.

I have found, through practice, that temporary removal entices false incentives when the actual problem is substance addiction because it doesn’t remove/repair the problematic behavior.

If only it were limited to noncompliance you probably wouldn’t have to go as far as removal.

Actually we had a severe youtube and game problem. Not just being glued to it, but up to a point were the child became a "zombi" just wanting the screen.

Removing the phone temporarily, and then saying unless limits were followed the phone would be removed again actually worked. This of course needed to be repeated at every lapse. The most difficult thing as a parent was being thoroughly consistent - no ifs or buts. It would create a terrible scene every time. But after a few bouts things became much better.

But kid's are different. It totally varies from person to person what works and not.

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