Russian Site-Blocking Chief: Kids Shouldn’t Use the Internet

Megalith

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Some people think smartphones, tablets, and other devices can screw up the minds of children. This guy goes one step further and thinks everyone under the age of 10 should be banned from using the Internet, even though statistics show that a significant portion of kids are heavily invested in online media these days. Oh well, there’s always Legos and Mega Bloks (those haven’t been banned yet in Russia, have they?).

…Alexander Zharov spoke on a number of issues, including online safety, especially for children. Naturally, kids need to be protected but the Rozcomnadzor chief has some quite radical ideas when it comes to them using the Internet. “I believe that a child under 10-years-old should not go online. To use [the Internet] actively they need to start even later than that,” Zharov said. As that begins to sink in, with parents around the globe destroying their kids’ smartphones, tablets, and games consoles in agreement, Zharov hasn’t finished. “Some parents are proud of the fact that their three-year-old kid can deftly control a tablet and use it to watch cartoons. It is nothing good, in my opinion. A small child will begin to consider the virtual world part of the real world, and it changes their perception of reality.”
 
I sort of agree. Forget social engineering, I had to step in to make sure my girls could retain information, kids are like sieves these days. Not for what mom and dad say, but for the nuts and bolts of a professional life they retain nothing, they can always look it up later. That's bad, that's not realistic yet. They learned to do real research with books and write down notes with pens and paper (or type them, sure). They learned to memorise because until there's a Google™ brand chip in our skulls those skills are still extremely important. When we are at some sort of half-assed singularity with the ol' intertubes, our memories will be shared, right now, you need to learn things. Just as importantly, you need to teach your kids about critical analysis, dropping a kid on the internet is bathing them in a web of lies and lunacy.

Also: The orgasms on the internet are fake too.

His reasons are different than mine, but yeah, you need to know what information is reaching your kids.
 
don't ban kids from the web.
require them to go outside and be active. Mandate 2 hours of community service per week. Yes, call it child labor or whatever. But parents these days don't give their kids enough chores
 
Backward thinking idiots. Kids absorb an incredible amount of knowledge, especially from the internet. Instead of this man working with software engineers and non-profits and whomever else can help him bring to market a free product parents can use to block porn and be-heading videos, he just throws in the towel and says, "kids should not be on the internet."

I kept my kids out of porn and all that other crap until they where around 17 - 18. it was effective and easy to maintain.
 
Oh well, there’s always Legos and Mega Bloks (those haven’t been banned yet in Russia, have they?).

Your attempt at sarcasm at the expense of big bad Russia, is a complete fail. You failed to grasp the intent here. They want their kids to play with Lego's, ride bikes, build tree forts, and have extensive playtime activities. It has been demonstrated that almost all of our socialized learning that takes place in these preteen years is what defines much of our adult behaviors and interactions.
 
They want doers not sloths with a ton of mostly useless Youtube knowledge? I can understand that sentiment, but well, this is America, that is Russia. What flies there would not here.
 
If the concern is over the ease of adult content available to children then parent should find a way to better filter what their kids see. Technology in general should be encouraged at the earliest possible age someone is capable of learning it.
 
I don't really disagree. I built gaming PCs for everyone in the house and they surf and game. I see how it adversely affects their ability to focus without stimulus and how their grades suffer because real world stuff is boring and difficult compared to videos, surfing and gaming.
I wish I never built them.
I've had to limit the online time drastically, but to a certain extent the damage is already done.
Finally, my 12 year old son is pulling his grades up.
 
I agree, unsupervised access to the internet before the age of 10 is not a good idea. There are people like me on the internet, and you don't want that kind of influence red pilling your impressionable children, trust me.
 
Do you really want a 10 year old or even 12 year old kid playing counterstrike and seeing sprays with girls getting banged by two dudes? Or just the constant stream of F bombs in the chat stream?

If you're going to allow minors to use the internet. Then IMO it should be supervised. And don't put a PC in junior's room.
 
I am very glad the internet wasn't a thing when I was a child and young adult. I was able to actually experience life. The last generation to do so.
 
Do kids choose internet over anything else? Or did their parents choose to give them phones/tablets in exchange for their own freedom?
 
I have two kids - and 8 and 10 year old. They have grown up with tablets, phones, etc. They have PC's in their rooms (not sure this was a good idea!). I can say first hand that electronics can really take over kids if you let it happen.
As a parent, you have to set rules and boundaries. Little babies, in my opinion, should have very little electronic time. They should be playing with toys, exploring the world, playing with other kids - this is the foundation of your life so you need to learn certain skills at this early age. By no means am I a researcher, but I also wonder if electronic devices can change the way kids think (especially at the very young age!). First hand, I've seen kids become OCD fixated on their screens and will refuse food, water, not take naps, throw temper tantrums, etc. Long term effects? IDK.
As my kids are older, I bought a device called Circle from Disney. It's an awesome tool for you parents out there. It's about a hundred bucks, discovers your network devices, and lets you filter content/control access, etc. It's not a perfect solution and a crafty person can probably work around it (it uses the MAC address and ARP). However, go for it. I've got a pfSense firewall as backup!
I look back at myself. I got my first computer when I was maybe 12 or 13. I spent all of my waking time using it. I didn't go outside much, I got into stuff I shouldn't have (piracy, phone freaking, not really much porn back then but I found what I could). That's the bad side. The good side: I did meet a few great friends from BBS systems - we still hang out 30+ years later. I learned to type, use modems, learned some programming, my interests led me to computer science, I now work in the industry...so, it's a double edged sword.
To summarize: parents need to be good parents. Technology should not become the baby sitter or parent.
 
Mind you this is the same country that made it a crime to teach children that homosexuality is normal. Which of course made American media blow up and declare Russia to be anti-gay. You also have to consider that Russia is mostly Orthodox Christian, which means their traditional social values are not exactly in line with our progressive free spirit society. I guess you could say they are just a bunch of heteronormative cisgender killjoys over there.

I myself grew up without real life friends and just a had a computer and game consoles to keep me busy. As such it is not weird TO ME to let my kids have access to game consoles and tablets (we have 4 ipads in the house). HOWEVER I recognize this is not what should be normal. There are kids in my neighborhood...I see them at the bus stop each morning...but I never actually see them out in the neighborhood playing football or even riding a bike. These kids are all sitting inside playing online and watching TV. They are not learning the physical interactions needed to work with others. In real life you don't get to sit there and think of a reply for several minutes, you don't get to proofread what comes out of your mouth. You don't get to express your emotions with a funny gif. You have to learn to do all this stuff on the fly in order to interact effectively with other humans. The youth are a wreck when it comes to interacting with other humans. Russia may have its problems relative to the rich kid across town, but they aren't savages.
 
Don't disagree, kids under 10 should not be on The internet without a parent beside them. My son is 8 and gets 0 internet privalges on anything without me there. Mind you he also doest get to touch a single piece of electronics till his homework and chores are handled so he's lucky to get 30 min during the weekdays to play a game. This excludes morning tv, he wakes up earlier than everyone so I let him have free rain on Netflix in the mornings while he eats cereal, exactly what I use to do at his age (except it was shitty cable or antenna for me :p )
 
Kids are monsters if you let them get addicted to tablets

My kid has his own tablet. he's largely decided on his own that it really isn't that interesting anymore outside of boring things that require lots of kid waiting. Currently, as far as he is concerned, the internet is for learning about tornadoes.
 
Mind you this is the same country that made it a crime to teach children that homosexuality is normal.
Its not normal though, so that would be a lie. Around 1.4% of the global population identify as gay, and by definition that is not the norm, so not normal. Homosexuality is also objectively a defective sexual attraction trigger from a biological/evolutionary standpoint, since it doesn't result in healthy offspring (the reason men are supposed to be attracted to ample breasts and child bearing hips for example, since that usually means high fertility). Putins stance on homosexuality is also not as outrageous as our press claims, as he doesn't believe in persecution of people attracted to the same sex anymore than someone born hearing impaired. He just isn't on board with the whole affirmation, promotion, and legitimization of homosexual marriages specifically, and that's actually quite the norm in most of the world, and even for Democrats just ten years ago.

I'd be much more worried about the treatment of homosexuals in Islamic majority nations, where they are jailed or worse thrown off buildings.
 
My kid has his own tablet. he's largely decided on his own that it really isn't that interesting anymore outside of boring things that require lots of kid waiting. Currently, as far as he is concerned, the internet is for learning about tornadoes.
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat???

My mind was blown when the internet was first available, and it sucked back then. Via the internet, you can find out just about anything to your hearts content within seconds. Want to learn about what was around before dinosaurs? BAM! Want to know how a steam engine works? WAM! Want to know what happens when you mix volatile chemicals together? POW! Want to know if Asian girls really do have horizontal vaginas or if Tim is a racist jerk? CAM!

Speaking of, my nephew broke the laptop screen from the gaming laptop I bought him for xmas, and they asked me about sourcing a replacement screen... they said he's so silly that he always slams the LCD shut when we walk into his room... totally oblivious to the fact he's probably watching naked midgets wrestle in jello.
 
There is way too much adult content on the Internet for children. I limited my children's time on the Internet and video games until they were old enough to regulate it for themselves (16/17). They had to share a single computer which was in the family room, and monitored by me. They didn't always like the restrictions, but they did later tell me they were glad I wasn't like other parents that let their kids have unlimited access. None of my children suffered as a result; they are all very technically capable and successful. Two of them are finishing school this year and will be embarking on new careers.

That all said, I would not want children's Internet usage limited by Government.
 
Interesting topic. In the same way that television was an issue when I was a kid, the internet can be a problem today, but it's only a small part of the bigger picture. One of the things I've noticed is that with the overload of schoolwork these days, passive activities like surfing the internet are a lot more popular than the things I used to do. My kid has literally twice the amount of school work that I had, and frankly, not all of it is useful toward the idea of being a better citizen or applicable to the career options he's considering. He's a meticulous student with shockingly good grades, but he's doing school work sometimes more than ten hours in a day and on weekends too. What's left at the end of the day besides funny youtube vids and a little tv? I'd rather see him grab his fishing pole or gun and go down to the river with a buddy, but when you finish your homework for the day at seven, eight or even nine o'clock at night, the day is gone for being a kid outdoors, and that stuff is healthy too, not only education alone.

I don't know that Russia can fix this kind of thing. I think this has to fall to parents, and monitoring internet is not that different than my parents monitoring and limiting tv when I was a kid.
 
I don't know that Russia can fix this kind of thing. I think this has to fall to parents, and monitoring internet is not that different than my parents monitoring and limiting tv when I was a kid.
It does, but most people are stupid and/or specialized, and know dickall about parental controls on the internet. The smart people really need to dummy-proof parental controls for home internet.

With the TV, you turn it on and with basic cable at least, you know that during the daytime its fine for Billy to watch. But if Billy gets on his tablet, within seconds he can be watching two girls and a cup or browsing Reddit's /r/watchpeopledie sub. Not cool.

So while its the parent's job/responsibility, absolutely, I think the government needs to take an active role in setting up reasonable standards for parental controls on products and work w/ ISPs to make that easier for parent's to implement.
 
It does, but most people are stupid and/or specialized, and know dickall about parental controls on the internet. The smart people really need to dummy-proof parental controls for home internet.

With the TV, you turn it on and with basic cable at least, you know that during the daytime its fine for Billy to watch. But if Billy gets on his tablet, within seconds he can be watching two girls and a cup or browsing Reddit's /r/watchpeopledie sub. Not cool.

So while its the parent's job/responsibility, absolutely, I think the government needs to take an active role in setting up reasonable standards for parental controls on products and work w/ ISPs to make that easier for parent's to implement.

I think we mostly agree. I don't mind the government partnering with parents on things like this... albeit I prefer the state and local governments to do this kind of thing for greater accountability close to home; I have concerns the government usurping parental authority, but controls are helpful to parents... provided they know how to use them.
 
I think we mostly agree. I don't mind the government partnering with parents on things like this... albeit I prefer the state and local governments to do this kind of thing for greater accountability close to home; I have concerns the government usurping parental authority, but controls are helpful to parents... provided they know how to use them.
My only concern with states/localities implementing something is that these ISPs are national, and a consistent standard would be more practical.

I do agree that this should be like food labels, something that gives parents options, but never forces anything. Just a dummy proof option to implement parental controls on a simple interface, but certainly just an option and not something you have to even opt-out of. Information + choices + ease = good.
 
My only concern with states/localities implementing something is that these ISPs are national, and a consistent standard would be more practical.

I do agree that this should be like food labels, something that gives parents options, but never forces anything. Just a dummy proof option to implement parental controls on a simple interface, but certainly just an option and not something you have to even opt-out of. Information + choices + ease = good.
Agreed. But remember, the government closest to the people is the most responsive. I can go talk to my mayor anytime I want. I know him. President Trump... not so much LOL
 
Agreed. But remember, the government closest to the people is the most responsive. I can go talk to my mayor anytime I want. I know him. President Trump... not so much LOL
Pshhhh... You can go hug President Trump anytime, ask his Secret Service that are hating their life right now, lol! The other day h let random Joe from crowd jump up on stage with him for a hug, and then left his protected area to go shake hands and high five walking among the audience, while the SS was probably shitting themselves and cursing over their radios that all the security they setup was all for nothing, lol! :D
 
Pshhhh... You can go hug President Trump anytime, ask his Secret Service that are hating their life right now, lol! The other day h let random Joe from crowd jump up on stage with him for a hug, and then left his protected area to go shake hands and high five walking among the audience, while the SS was probably shitting themselves and cursing over their radios that all the security they setup was all for nothing, lol! :D

Oh Lord, I did see that, LOL. I thought... Secret Service gonna have a heart attack! Actually, I believe, statute-wise, they can choose not to allow that kind of thing. I believe I read somewhere they have the statutory authority to tell a sitting President, 'You ain't gonna do that.' The President putting himself in danger is a threat to national security.
 
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