(IANAP -- this is not parenting advice ;) I speak mostly as a newly-minted adult who still remembers what it was like to be a child, when my world was small, so small decisions felt very important, especially when they were made without my input)

Children are people too, just with less experience. Your goal really isn't just "ban TikTok", it's "raise my children to develop healthy habits on their own and to recognize when they are being manipulated."

So, even if you ultimately decide to enforce parental controls, I hope you will bring your children into the decision-making process. Have an honest dialogue with your children about your concerns, and develop a space where they are free to share their own thoughts and feelings without fear of judgement. It's important that your mind is not already made up before you sit down at the table, as they'll sense it immediately. Repeat this often, and make it easy for anyone (yourself included) to express that their perspective has changed. Set a good example (by e.g. not using social media yourself) and apologize when you are wrong, so that your children learn that it's safe to do the same.

Encourage them to pursue healthier alternatives. Allow them to experiment and learn from their mistakes.

Upvoted for solid parenting advice.

I pretty quickly realized that kids, even little ones, like 3 years old are far smarter than you think. They are basically little humans without much experience and that means not great judgement.

So as a parent it’s important to make sure they are exposed to things they understand and can process. Things that are age appropriate. If something isn’t appropriate, well, you try and explain why (as best as they can understand).

Thanks for your comment, I really pointing out "learn why".

I try to explain to my 7-yo the _reason why_ for many things, whenever I can. Key is to not push it when she loses interest. If it's important, just end up talking about it again at a later datetime. There's only so much input a child (or adult) can accept before the buffer is full and needs to be mapped. It takes time to put into context.

Also accept that some things can't really be explained by everyone. A guy on YT with a channel on self defense said, "if you are not a violent person, you'll never understand violence", and I think it has some bearing. Sure, I can certainly understand that, in the case of X, he was beaten as a child and therefore may see violence as a way to handle his feelings, but that doesn't explain "why did X beat up Y unprovoked last Wednesday". There's rarely a single causality that explains things like that.

And, ads, yt-videos, social media, most often are manipulative. Eg the "youtube-face", excessive reaction-videos, etc. (no, she has no access to social media).

Exactly this! I was hoping to get more suggestions along these lines. Because the first thing I thought was that if I hard-ban something they'll just learn how to do it without me knowing, especially if it is something their peers are doing.

So, we need to "gracefully" ban this; that is, if it needs banning at all.

The alternative is to embrace it and show how to use it properly.

And then, there's this addictive nature to it - the app is designed and tuned to provide dopamine hits; how to fight that?

> Because the first thing I thought was that if I hard-ban something they'll just learn how to do it without me knowing, especially if it is something their peers are doing.

Yeah, exactly! Growing up in this age, it's impossible to avoid online interactions of some kind. So, it's better if children learn how to use technology / media / internet responsibly in a controlled environment. You're like the guard rails in a bowling alley :)

One approach might be to let them use TikTok or whatever app is popular, and just try to get them to learn to self-identify 1) how long they spend on the app, 2) how using the app made them feel, and 3) whether or not time on the app took time away from something else they might enjoy. Help them learn identify the positive aspects and the negative aspects of the platform, and only consider a full ban if you start seeing extremely problematic patterns.

If you have any personal self-improvement goals, it might also mean a lot to your kids if you make a habit of sharing your progress with them (in a way they can understand at their age).

Good luck :)

I use the Family Link feature on Android, so my kids have to ask for permission before they install a new app.

and then they will just use the phone of their friend with no such policing in place or use a publicly available client with no such controls in place

when I have such discussions with friends and family I tend to say that I'll rely more on trying to make my kids understand what they are doing than trying to police what they are using. Not saying that I'll not do some policing on their devices but I'll just rely on that

neither one works flawlessly in isolation. You can explain to a child why you don't want them doing something until you're blue in the face. But in all likelihood they're going to want to do it more. The backup is then to block the app on their phone

Sure, they can still use their friends' phones, but you can only protect a child so much. You've made a good start by explaining the issue and banning the app, but you can't track them all day to make sure they're not doing it elsewhere.

Instead of focusing their attention by telling them how bad it is, give them something else to do and introduce you them to other children raised with similar values

You can do that all you like, you can give them all the hobbies they could ever need to be busy. But eventually one of their friends is going to share the app with them when they're playing together

> and then they will just use the phone of their friend with no such policing in place or use a publicly available client with no such controls in place

That means, that they wont have that content pushed on them for hours either before sleeping or while you work and they are in home due to lockdown.

They will have access to it only while they are with that friend.

I deploy a novel virus that makes it impossible for them to get near a friend's phone.

Both iPhone and Android have parental protection that allows you to block apps (though on Android it might be too easy to circumvent)

On my home network, I run a transparent, MITM squid proxy with a whitelist for my 8 year old son. My intention is to gradually loosen the restriction as he gets older, in stages: first switch it to a blacklist, then lift all restrictions but continue to log, then remove the proxy altogether and allow him free, unmonitored internet access. I will change it at whatever times seem appropriate - I'm new to this, ofc, and I don't know when it will be.

I have no intention of letting him have a mobile device any time soon, but if and when I feel it's appropriate/necessary, I have the option of giving him a "managed" device (i.e. like a corporate device) with always-on wireguard to my home network, routing traffic through the same proxy. I haven't tried setting up a device like this yet, but the necessary capabilities appear to be present in both iOS and Android. This will also allow me to control which apps can be installed on the device.

I am of course entirely open with him about this, including the technical aspects of how it works, and frequently discuss all of the many issues involved. My goal is not to hide reality from him or to instill some unreasonable fear of what's out there - quite the opposite. It's to try and help him arrive at a healthy relationship with the internet as an adult, something that most adults I know (including me) have so far failed to establish.

And yes, of course it's possible to circumvent all of this stuff (although quite a lot harder with what I have than with the vast majority of parental control solutions). And yes, I can only control the technologies he has access to that I manage. But you have to consider the "threat model" here. He doesn't rail against this restriction. He understands it. If he wants access to something he asks for it. If I say no, I explain why, and he accepts it. We'll see how that develops over time, but it's certainly not the case that "It's technically possible to circumvent it, ergo there's no point doing it".

There's a strangely defeatist attitude I see about this, often voiced alongside a false dichotomy: that what we need to do is teach our children responsibility instead of using technology to protect them. As I see it, both are needed - and the latter, while difficult, is possible. Unfortunately it currently requires skills that are far from universal. It would be much easier if people took the need for it seriously and developed better technologies for it.

There are people on this post saying about dubious content on Tik Tok that you "only see it if you like it". That's not good enough. Internet technologies lead you on in subtle ways. As an example, my son is massively into Lego. When he was 6 he discovered Lego videos on youtube and started watching them on our smart TV. After a while I realised that all of the models he was making were weapons, mostly guns. It reached a particularly bizarre moment when he handed me an (awesome, obviously!) lego butterfly knife he had made. I checked the videos he'd been watching and all of them were Lego weapon tutorials. Now, my reaction here isn't "omg weapons how horrible!". Not at all. It is, however, to note that through youtube's algorithms a general interest in Lego became laser-focussed on one, perhaps slightly dubious, genre of models.

Among other things, I want my son to understand this kind of subtle shaping/guiding influence that technology can have on its users, and until I feel he has developed sufficient awareness I want to be in a position to know and to intervene if I think he's being led by it in directions I don't approve of. At this stage in his life, I feel that is my responsibility and it would be wrong of me not to at least attempt to live up to it.

Don't mobile phones have decent parental controls?

Other kids' phones may not.

No. It is pretty crappy.