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Comment by interpol_p | Hacker News Reader

I value the privacy of my children and have trusted them with their devices for the most part. I avoided parental controls and blocking applications, I don't monitor them or know their passwords

But once my oldest (9) started disappearing with his iPad for too often and too long, I did browse his YouTube history (I had to ask him to unlock his iPad, as I don't have or know the passcode). And after that I blocked YouTube, as there was just too much adult content for a nine year old. I have also made it a rule that computing and screen time needs to happen in family areas

I still feel like I violated his trust. But I also feel like I can't responsibly allow him to have access to YouTube or the full Internet without experiencing negative effects to his emotional development. I am unsure if I am a helicopter parent in this situation, and if I went too far

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ah, your parents probably didn't let you rent whatever you wanted from Blockbuster or buy porno magazines at the convenience store, seems like it's basically the same thing

> And after that I blocked YouTube, as there was just too much adult content for a nine year old.

Did the same for my 6 year old. Yes, there is a lot of stuff I dont want my kid watching.

He used to watch video game videos, mainly by other kids, so I didnt mind.

Then one day, I heard him swearing. Looks like some (a lot?) of these kids swear, even in games like minecraft. And they use sexist language; again, these are videos by kids, some just a few years older than my son.

And now Youtube is banned.

I dont understand where this "helicopter" parent thing comes from. Like another commenter says, will you let you kids eat anything they want? Watch TV till 11 in the night?

I'm curious what do you mean by "adult content" on YouTube? Like sexually explicit or suggestive things, music videos, etc, or rather some other too mature topics?

There are a lot of sexually explicit videos on YouTube. I didn't realise and it was totally my fault for not looking into it as soon as YouTube usage started going up

Ok, I guess some slip through because they should normally require age verification. Even medical videos like breast cancer screening are classified.

Does Google have a reliable way of doing age verification on YouTube these days, or is it still as easy as creating a new GMail account?

In EU you need to upload your passport.

Or steal your parent's credit card. Its an American company after all they use their CC for everything and a CC is completely normal for identification for some ungodly reason that I do not comprehend.

Just to resgister an account? Is this a new change? It's the first I hear of it, and I have family members with GMail accounts who were <18 only few years ago.

Not to register an account, but any video flagged as any kind of explicit, suggestive or problematic content requires age verification. There was some flack recently as YouTube was requiring age verification for LGBT+ support videos.

For what it is worth, I have a son a little younger than yours and have decided I will do the same.

My reasoning is that these platforms (as we've recently seen) know full well that they cause harm. That gets verified pretty regularly by independent researchers. Standing by and letting a preteen deal with that on their own has predictable enough results: my job is to Sherpa kiddo through life and part of that involves deploying myself as a kind of surrogate sense of self regulation when his fails. I'm pretty liberal and allow privacy on most things (I would never read a diary etc) but draw a line between what he consumes and produces. Privacy is for production, at the moment. Private consumption can come later.

tl;dr you did right, imo.

> results: my job is to Sherpa kiddo through life

Yes and also to protect him from the adults who author addictive, compelling content that a 9-year old can’t be mature enough to protect against.

If you don’t regulate his internet activity, why do you regulate his diet? Why not allow him to eat whatever he wants whenever he wants?

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