I don't doubt that it worked for you, but I wonder whether this is a good approach.
You say you never had limits on anything. Say one of your kids tells you he wants to trying heroin a bit. Would you let him?
Now, obviously mobile phones aren't as addictive as heroin and the consequences of failing to control yourself aren't as bad either, but they're still extremely addictive. They're addictive enough that _most people_ struggle to control their impulse to take their phone out every time there's even 10 seconds of downtime. I was at a playground a couple of days ago, and literally every parent there other than me was scrolling their phone while their kids where playing.
> Probably dozens of times, maybe hundreds, we have had "the talk" about how there's a lot of weird shit in the world
Another observation is that you seem to be responding to the question of "how do you deal with your kids being exposed to nasty stuff out there", where the question is really about addiction.
So let me ask you explicitly: When there's a bit of downtime, do your kids reach for the phone? Follow up question: how many hours a day do you estimate they spend staring at their phone?
I'm skeptical that your approach is a good one because these days people who aren't addicted to mindlessly scrolling their phone are the exception rather than the rule.
EDIT: To add some more...
A great example of a victim is my girlfriend. Her parents also didn't prohibit much from her. They've had many "talks" with her too about how there's good things and bad things in the world. But guess what, phones didn't exist when she was a kid so her parents didn't tell her to be careful with phones. She slowly started using more and more. Nowadays she spends 2-3 hours a day in between dinner and bed scrolling her phone. When I point this out to her she says "I'm tired, I just wanna relax". I have the firm conviction that telling a child "this is dangerous stuff, you'll get addicted, do NOT play on this" will reduce the probability of this happening later in life, because you might "catch yourself" using too much earlier in the process.
If my kid asked me about heroin, he'd be asking for advice, not permission. Kids do much more than their parents know about; they always have, they always will. Imagine if your kid came to you asking for advice, and you responded as if you were asked for permission.
| "Dad, what do you think about heroin?"
| "If you go near that stuff, you'll be grounded for a month."
| "Thanks, Dad." (proceeds to try heroin)
In the time I typed this, probably 1,000 kids around the world had the very same conversation with a parent about various difficult subjects including drug use. That's 1,000 missed opportunities for parents to have real conversations with their children.
I have a few thoughts about the rest of your comment.
First, you're defining "addiction" very broadly. It's hard to reconcile why your girlfriend is a "victim," but "literally every parent" on the playground was doing the same thing. At a certain point, behaviors become norms. If phones didn't exist, what would those parents on the playground be doing instead? Probably not heroin, but probably not work that society highly values, either. And nothing so extreme that it's my business to judge them.
Second, it's very difficult to address your "the question is really about addiction" point without conceding a false premise. My comment wasn't about how I deal with it; it was about how to prepare my children to deal with it. Which absolutely is about addiction, or rather about avoiding addiction. (To be clear, I'm talking about addiction in the classic sense that causes a person to make destructive life choices to feed their addiction, and absolutely not about the "addiction" that declares that there is a problem with a parent's manner of sitting on a bench on a sunny day in a park.)
If OP were asking how to stop mobile-phone usage, I'd have ignored the post entirely, because in my opinion that's a misguided goal. OP asked "do you take any precautions to help your children avoid falling prey to [internet addiction]?" That's a very different question. And my answer was to teach my children not to become prey.
> That's a very different question. And my answer was to teach my children not to become prey.
Yeah but from your answers it looks like you failed at that. All your example interactions seem to come from kids that can't take their eyes off the screen.
The title of this thread is "how do you protect your children from Internet addiction", so you're the one who really wants this discussion to be about something that no one else is taking about.
I don't doubt that it worked for you, but I wonder whether this is a good approach.
You say you never had limits on anything. Say one of your kids tells you he wants to trying heroin a bit. Would you let him?
Now, obviously mobile phones aren't as addictive as heroin and the consequences of failing to control yourself aren't as bad either, but they're still extremely addictive. They're addictive enough that _most people_ struggle to control their impulse to take their phone out every time there's even 10 seconds of downtime. I was at a playground a couple of days ago, and literally every parent there other than me was scrolling their phone while their kids where playing.
> Probably dozens of times, maybe hundreds, we have had "the talk" about how there's a lot of weird shit in the world
Another observation is that you seem to be responding to the question of "how do you deal with your kids being exposed to nasty stuff out there", where the question is really about addiction.
So let me ask you explicitly: When there's a bit of downtime, do your kids reach for the phone? Follow up question: how many hours a day do you estimate they spend staring at their phone?
I'm skeptical that your approach is a good one because these days people who aren't addicted to mindlessly scrolling their phone are the exception rather than the rule.
EDIT: To add some more...
A great example of a victim is my girlfriend. Her parents also didn't prohibit much from her. They've had many "talks" with her too about how there's good things and bad things in the world. But guess what, phones didn't exist when she was a kid so her parents didn't tell her to be careful with phones. She slowly started using more and more. Nowadays she spends 2-3 hours a day in between dinner and bed scrolling her phone. When I point this out to her she says "I'm tired, I just wanna relax". I have the firm conviction that telling a child "this is dangerous stuff, you'll get addicted, do NOT play on this" will reduce the probability of this happening later in life, because you might "catch yourself" using too much earlier in the process.