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Comment by vorpalhex | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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/

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.

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.

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

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