Kids and Computers
As a dad, I’ve been thinking about this topic of kids and computers. My oldest kid is 6½.
When I was a kid not much older, I was learning a lot about computers. I got to come home from school and play around on a computer seemingly as much as I wanted, first on a family computer in my dad’s office and later on one in my bedroom.
This open access led me to curiously explore every menu option of the Office suite, and to programming (first BASIC and then Visual Basic) and web design/development — all in elementary school.
(It was funny when my teachers would pull me out of class to help another teacher use their class computer.)
I know my career, success, abilities, and interests wouldn’t be what they are now without that early computer access and foundation that I never stopped building on.
I can appreciate the tension between these two posts:
When I was five years old I woke up on my Birthday and my Dad had put a brand new PC in my room (he built it himself). I was allowed to use it whenever I wanted. When the iPhone came out, we bought one and my Dad said “we’ll hook it up to your phone number…” My Mom took it away at first, because my report card wasn’t good at the time, but I eventually got it. Having access to a computer from a young age eventually made me a programmer and I started up startups in high school and college. My career today probably would not be possible if I wasn’t on the internet from a young age. Parents don’t want to see their kids on the phone all the time or developing an unhealthy social media addiction but there is a balance and a lot of positive that can come from technology too. I will be giving my child access to computers young, with supervision.
No smartphone before high school. No social media until 16. Phone-free schools. More independence, free play, and responsibility. Love these suggestions by @JonHaidt to reverse the damage from social media on our society.
Contrast that with all the common parenting advice and wisdom, even among tech leaders, about avoiding screen time. About keeping kids in the real world as long as possible. About how devices are harmful.
I also acknowledge that today’s internet is a very different place. YouTube is a goldmine of tutorials but also unsafe and addictive for younger kids to navigate alone. Social media’s ability for harm is clear. And of course mobile devices mean you’re always connected, bombarded with push notifications and the dopamine hit of opening an app every time you’re bored for 3 seconds – all of which is 100x worse.
My plan
Lately my plan has been to encourage more time allowed on the computer, with caveats:
- Devices are for creating and learning, not for entertainment/consumption
- Learning sites/apps (math, reading, etc.) encouraged (Prodigy and similar) and bookmarked
- Encouraging programming basics (Scratch and similar)
- Encourage creative tools that teach more advanced skills: design LEGO sets using BrickLink Studio. Music/sounds in GarageBand. Etc. Maybe Minecraft fits here?
- Will probably encourage asking questions to an LLM (great for teaching) especially over Google searches (can lead who knows where)
- Encouraging poking around the operating system and basic offline apps and exploring OS settings
- Let him have a calendar app that shows his sports activities etc.
- I want to find a way for them to make their first $1 online from their own efforts, as young as possible. (First idea here is to sell a LEGO instruction set they designed on Rebrickable.)
Devices
- We only have laptops and iPads but I wish we had a desktop in a central place in the home.
- An Apple Watch relatively young, for communication and location tracking away from home
- But an iPhone as late as we can get away with, heavily locked down.
- No social media, as late as possible
- Need to educate on online safety and also security
- Need to set up some content restrictions and change default Dock apps and Safari bookmarks to be the right type of stuff
This All-In episode with Jonathan Haidt was great regarding parenting and technology usage:
What this looks like so far
Update, December 2024: We gave our oldest kid (7yo) an old MacBook Air. Its battery is dead so he lies on the floor with it next to a power outlet.
Made him a child Apple account under our iCloud family. Used iCloud custom email domain for the whole family so he’s got a cool email address. Screen Time restrictions set up.
Loaded up his iMessage/Contacts with only family members as contacts so he can text good morning to his grandparents/aunts/uncles/cousins. Pretty cute to see them chatting.
Set up his bookmarks with his school learning apps, Prodigy (math game), and Scratch. He also has LEGO BrickLink Studio to 3D model LEGO, which he’s done a bit.
Rules so far: he knows he can only do those specific things, needs to ask about anything else, and has to stay downstairs with it. I don’t mind if he spends a good bit of time on it. Much better than TV.
Only minor hiccup is that his “school learning apps” included a bunch of non-learning games under the guise of coolmathgames.com, which he started spending a lot of time on. I had to put those in the “ask first” category.
Next up is trying to get him to explore coding more beyond Scratch.
This was originally posted on X in July 2024, with follow-ups in September and December 2024.