Around age 5ish, mostly Storybots. Ruff Ruffman. A few other shows handled it well for younger kids.
Once a bit older, maybe 7-8, I setup an old laptop with debian and allow-listed network connection, etc. Let them play with it and gave them learning activities.
I saw one comment about baking and that reminded me…
If you let your 6 year-old bake, you don’t teach them oven safety then leave them to it. You do it together.
The same is probably good for tech and internet. Do it as a together thing. And that means also cultivating good habits yourself. If you sit watching porn all day and writing hate mail on Facebook, telling your niece she’s not old enough for it yet, she’s going to see and want to try.
What is ((thing)) for? How do we use it? The answers are learnt in watching and in doing it together. I know the internet is famous for children learning all sorts of things by themselves (including good things). But I think for healthy development, this still applies, and when they’re ready for The Great World Beyond With All Its Pitfalls And Evils, they’re more ready.
Lemmy will say, give them an old desktop with linux.
I would say the same. No ipads or smartphones. Give them books on coding. Build a pc with them. Learn to solder.
Didn’t have restrictions when I was growing up, maybe I’m an exception. I installed Linux Mint on my laptop when I was 11. Now I use NixOS.
Me too. I had the internet at 9. You can’t even imagine the things I’ve searched for. Also, being 9 I was interested in girls of my age, so I probably put my family on some police list.
I turned out well anyway, I use Arch Linux.
Autistic children will be excluded as outliers
…ableism…
‘Old enough’ is a troublesome concept. I’ve met parents in their 40s who I wouldn’t say met the mental competence minimum to be capable of informed consent, so age isn’t really the measure.
If you want to give a kid the chance to learn tech but not be messed up by it, the best advice I’ve seen is to keep it isolated and user focused. The computer is a place they can go to when they demand its utility, not with them all the time and demanding their attention. The computer is a tool to let them do something else, not a way to cure 30 second windows of boredom with a stream of content. No internet or uncontrolled content, only curated software with no social aspect so they aren’t open for exploitation. The internet is basically a ‘no’ for maintaining sanity and safety. They’ll get access to all sorts of things as they get older/gain autonomy, so you won’t have to worry about when it’s appropriate to give them access.
This is so well put! Than you for making the LemmyVerse a better place!
Just become Amish until they are 18 or so.
Give them an android tablet with youtube, but make sure to subscribe to good YouTube channels first
I used a thin client, HP T610+, and installed Windows XP POS.
this is a point-of-sale version of windows xp that’s basically XPSP3. it comes with Ethernet, WiFi, touchscreen drivers, etc. works really well actually.
I firewalled it from internet access and allowed my kid to surf the intranet I host along with standard 90s 00s kids software.
- reader rabbit
- Disney interactive games
- encarta 98
I also used a kid keyboard that deviates from the typical 102 keyboard. no function keys etc.
you could do the same with an old x86 laptop too, recommend using a dual core CPU if possible though.
to ensure nothing is broken, I used software called deepfreeze from Faronics. it freezes the system and restores the system after reboots. just to make it clear, this means any changes to the “c” drive will not be permanent.
to keep the save files I used a some batch scripts/shortcut trickery and re/store them from the NAS when the apps start and end.
in the end it’s sitting in my tech closet after my eldest lost interest after a year. Now I’m waiting for my youngest to break it out again.
You’d be an awesome parent !
You’re a genius. I installed Linux on an old chromebook and the amount of times my kid would alt-tab out of scummvm or dosbox or whatever was redonkulous.
Also Linux is about as kid-friendly as a honey badger
Makes them learn. The spoon feeding software is part of the problem of our dumb society.
I agree. Kids love to solve problems. I remember trying to fix problems on my computer before even having an internet connection. That’s how I became a programmer.
My hot take: good.
I’ve got my kids using Linux on Raspberry Pis, and I honestly want them to break it so that then they have to figure out how to fix it.
I mean, that’s basically how I learned to use computers (except I was using DOS)…
Same re: DOS. I still catch myself typing dir /w in the terminal erry now and then
The best thing we have done is make all computers be in the same room, and no personal digital devices until they are old enough.
Just being able to give oversight is the most important thing.
You do need to be able to say “youre not old enough for that yet” and then explain why. Luckily my kids accept that when its explained.
This is a good one. I’d have died of dehydration if I’d had a PC with access to the internet in my room as a teenager. Also learning to cover my tracks and circumvent restrictions my parents put on the shared family computer taught me valuable computer skills.
Thanks for the advice, I’ll keep that in mind as an uncle.
Yeesh let me know if you find a good answer. My <5 y.o. offspring found an old apple phone in a desk drawer and is begging me to charge it up, calling it “MY phone!” and in general causing me to worry about issues I wanted to avoid for a lot longer. Dreading the next 10 years of this battle.
Just tell em it’s made of broccoli or something. Lol
The broccoli thing depends on the kid. I loved broccoli as a kid.
Whether-or-not it and some other vegetables have a really unpleasant taste is a genetic thing.
https://distance.physiology.med.ufl.edu/the-science-of-supertasters/
It’s a tale as old as time. Growing up, your family tried to instill a love of broccoli and other leafy greens in you, but it never quite took. Now, you might be an adult who still doesn’t appreciate certain veggies, coffee or spicy foods. Perhaps you’d even go so far as to call yourself a picky eater. If so, have you ever considered whether you might be a supertaster?
Picky Eating
Many supertasters have a laundry list of foods they wouldn’t dare touch unless they were stranded on a deserted island — and even then, it would be a challenge. To their credit, there is a scientific reason behind their finicky food preferences. Scientists believe that many supertasters have the gene TAS2R38.
This particular gene increases a person’s perception of the bitterness in various foods and drinks. Many supertasters that have taken part in scientific studies often find that they’re extremely sensitive to a chemical called propylthiouracil (PROP). This chemical is often used in research to measure a person’s sensitivity to notes of tartness. Because PROP has an easily detectable bitter taste, supertasters often note an extremely bitter taste when given the chemical, more so than average or non-tasters.
Camouflaging Bitter Flavors by Overcompensating With Other Flavors
Broccoli and spinach may leave an overwhelmingly bitter taste in the mouths of supertasters, but that doesn’t mean they don’t understand the nutritional value veggies offer. To mask the bitterness, some supertasters add sweet, salty or fatty flavors to foods they wouldn’t eat otherwise. This makes certain bitter-tasting foods more palatable so supertasters can have their vegetables — and their nutrients too.
Charge it, put some educational games and setup screen time it (assuming its not so old its useless), otherwise slap their music on it and they got an ipod and camera to play with until it snaps.
My toddler uses a PC rather than a tablet. Can even load up her videos in VLC on her own! (Although I simplified it to the desktop for now so she doesn’t have to hunt through folder branching)
Found some websites with some old school flash games that I bookmarked too.
I’d start with sorting videos into folders on desktop to get organized, don’t let her be the unorganized girl’s desktop meme!
At what point is a mouth ready to drink from a firehose?
My brother was 4 when he started using a computer with his Microsoft Easyball mouse. With touchscreen devices, that could probably be brought down to 3 or even 2. Just make your kid a Roblox account, and set them free. It’s a kids game, so it’s 100% safe. Hell, set them up with social media accounts, too.
I was pleasantly surprised that kids are being taught Internet safety in grade 1 where I’m from. Still no way in hell I’d let a kid on the internet unsupervised at that age mind you…
I don’t have children so you can accept or dismiss my contribution as you please. I do have about 50 nieces and nephews of varying age (I have a big family) … and they have lots more children after them.
Children shouldn’t be exposed to the internet on their own until about 12 or 14 years of age. They shouldn’t be given free reign to look at things as they please. If you do want to expose them to it all … then it should always be under parent supervision.
I was born in the 70s (I never know what generation that makes me) … all I know is that it placed me at the perfect age to grow up without the internet and to grow as an adult with the internet. Now I know how to navigate, explore and deal with the internet and social media on my own in a very objective, critical point of view … I don’t trust everything and I trust people less and I question everything I come across. I’m not perfect and I’m not the smartest but I am very careful about what I watch, read and interact with on the internet. I still do dumb things and watch dumb things but I also do my best to stay aware of many other important political, social, philosophical things in the world.
I got to that point by being able to have a critical view of the world and to learn how to do things on my own and learn lots … mainly because I grew up without the internet. It takes a lot of imagination, work and brain power to try to do things with very little resources when you’re a kid … and that is an important training period for a young mind … plus I learned to read books, comics and paperbacks … reading takes in a lot more information than in watching 18 hours of minecraft videos, fail videos, funny videos or influencers dancing around.
I think kids should be encouraged to just learn on their own without the internet or with limited access … then given full access to it once they get a bit older. If you just raise kids on nothing but free for all internet … their brains are going to be pudding by the time they turn 18
You’re exactly my kind of guy. For me, it’s not about my daughter, but about my little niece, who just turned five.
When we’re together, we go out to the woods, to the lake, to the playground, to the bookstore, the museum, to the zoo, or something like that.
Until further notice, I have no intention of putting her in front of a screen.
I’ve just planned that at some point, when my niece is much older, I might build a weather station or an irrigation system with her using a Raspberry Pi or something like that.
But that’s still a long way off.
Neat … all my family is not anywhere near me so I don’t spend much time with them during the year. I used to years ago and we were often overwhelmed with children everywhere but not any more.
You should go ahead with that weather station or irrigation station … just figure out how to use mechanical / tactile systems you build, use, measure and document by hand on paper.
I used to play games with my nieces and nephews with puzzle hiding games - I’d give them a clue to find an object, which had another clue, then kept them guessing and finding the next clue five or six times until they found a small prize. A fun little game you can design inside a room, or inside a house, or in a field or yard.
I haven’t done that game in years but last year I had a nephew who is 20 now remind me how much he enjoyed it years ago. It’s something they remember far more than a playlist of funny Youtube videos.
Have fun while you can with them … times goes by really, really fast and by the time you realize it all, they’re all grown and can no longer spend much time with you.
Some of the kids game sites like coolmath are still around. Lots of quick games that designed to be fun, beaten, but not drain your soul.
Also turn off the adblocker at some point. Kids gotta learn what’s an ad and what’s not.
Also turn off the adblocker at some point. Kids gotta learn what’s an ad and what’s not.
And install Windows while you’re at it. Ransomware builds character.
Nah, they get enough of that on the school Chromebooks.
Goal is to teach them how to avoid the dark side, not to let them swim in it.
What’s coolmath?
A website full of flash games (well, html5 now), many have some sort of educational value. At least better than mobile games.
Nothing groundbreaking, but if a kid’s gonna play a game, may as well sneak some math problems in there.
