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Comment by vorpalhex | Hacker News Reader

Letting your child talk to strangers on the internet may not be the best idea. News at 11.

No moderation system is flawless. If you are going to let your kid talk to strangers on the internet, teach them safety like avoiding sexualized content.

I do find the digging in to the personal lives of the employees here pretty bad taste. Yes an adult can look at porn and have sexual relationships with other adults, whether they work at Roblox or Toys R Us.

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> If you are going to let your kid talk to strangers on the internet, teach them safety like avoiding sexualized content.

Problem with this is kids are sneaky, curious and liars.

Maybe be straight up with them instead of "shielding" them so they're not curious anymore. As a European I find American culture extremely prude. And anything that's "forbidden" is automatically interesting. For some reason I genuinely don't understand however, most people prefer ignoring these kinds of factors of human nature and just keep forcing their values and norms when it's clearly not working.

It’s so absurd. They call their children sneaky liars in the Anglo-sphere and then never tell them the truth in a silly attempt to “protect” their innocence. Of course they are sneaky liars?

Not sure if this is pointed at me since I made the sneaky liar comment from my Anglo-sphere but I never once suggested to dodge telling them the truth. In fact, I’d combine telling them the truth with “that’s why we don’t talk to strangers online” whereas the quote I mentioned was about “if you’re going to allow them to talk to strangers online”. That shouldn’t be an option for kids this age. You have to do more than talk with them. You have to monitor them. You have to know what their doing. You have to accept that you still might not get throw, because they’re sneaky liars and if they want to break a rule they will. That’s what kids do. These kids at this age can also be curious about sex.

Do you have actual parental experience that counters any of this because it seems you have strong opinions on how to parent?

Also it sounds like you’re taking it personal as if I’m name calling the kids. That means you’re definitely lacking parental experience because it’s a simple fact that every kid is sneaky and lies albeit to various degrees.

There are two ways to teach a kid to not run into the street - you can yell at them every time they do or you can explain why streets are dangerous.

This applies to most things.

Most kids need both of those at various times, because they’re kids.

No. Only a child-acting parent yells at their children. It might be popular in your culture, but it doesn’t make it right.

Streets are not exactly intelligent adults who are lusting after your children... Streets are not good to run into. Easy. This person who is nice to you online and has been your friend for the last three weeks might be fine or might slowly be grooming you. Hard.

Yeah the human element obviously is harder than a static foe, which is why we teach a mixture of guides (soft rules) and hard rules. Something like:

Hard rule: never send photos of yourself to someone online, without letting one of us do it for you.

Guide: Don't trust any adults or other kids who ask you about your underwear

Rule: Don't tell anyone where you live or give them your address or where you go to school

Guide: If you feel uncomfortable talking to someone, stop talking to them and get one of your parents.

I love Kidpower as a resource for how to teach kids important people-safty skills, both for in person and online interactions.

https://www.kidpower.org/library/article/online-safety/

Explain away to a five-year-old but it's not enough. You will also need to practice safe behaviors and sometimes yell.

And until they're old enough to understand the explanation and control their impulses accordingly, you use high levels of supervision and hands-on action in order to prevent them from putting themselves in danger.

For children below a certain maturity threshold, taking strong action to prevent unsupervised internet access seems totally reasonable to me.

> Yes an adult can look at porn and have sexual relationships with other adults, whether they work at Roblox or Toys R Us.

True, but it’s generally considered to be in good taste to not advertise it to the world.

My kindergarden teacher can do anything they want in their time off, but I do not want to know of it.

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