Yet another thread about explicit pf's

[Minali]

While reading this and that other thread I can't help but wonder how many of you people are actually parents or ever had to watch over a much younger child. Can't be many. My parents tried to control my internet hours with a specific router when I was a teen and I managed to disable it and later at least double this period quickly. Eventually my dad wrote the company and they said my parents already did what the system is able to achieve. And both of my parents worked in IT, they knew stuff. This was around 2002ish. I can't even begin to imagine how quick kids can outsmart their parents and their control systems today. If a parent tries to hover over them, they'll just do things in secret or find work arounds around tools and apps and blocks.

Do you know what the lasting effect of this was? I learned I couldn't trust my parents. When I faced disturbing stuff, I didn't tell them. Sometimes I didn't even tell my friends, the friends I found online and eventually met irl. If I would have been in the situation OP's kid was in, I wouldn't have gone to my parents and tell them about what occured. I had an okay relationship with them otherwise but things at school were really bad and I was terrified telling them about anything bad in the internet would make them pull the plug for good, cutting me off from the only people I ever met who were there for me, the only thing that kept me from running away or even harming myself very badly. (I didn't tell them that either, thought they'd blame the internet or games for this as well. Now I know they wouldn't have, but that's what it felt like at the time.)

Y'all are suggesting parents should monitor every discord server, every game, every chat the children have and consider this the bare minimum good parenting, as if this kind of helicopter parenting wouldn't cause a lot of harm (and being super unrealistic besides, considering adults are busy adulting most of the time.) I know OP of the other thread is a good badass parent because they have a daughter that tells them if something happens that feels kind of off. She trusts them she won't be the one to be punished for the online behaviour and events of other people none of the two have any control over. You absolutely can and should educate your child about not sharing their address or the one of their school online, be careful with photos and all. But a parent can hardly predict a game wouldn't be suitable for their child based on user behaviour if no official rating you can see in the store makes it obvious the rating is questionable. Only if they are gamers themselves and know these things in and out. It's on us as a community to accept the rating is what it is and we should have some basic decensy of not pushing 18+ stuff into the faces of random people who might not be of this age. It is on us to keep in mind this game is not solely made for adults only, no matter if the kids might see stuff on Tik Tok as well. This is completely irrelevant for how this is to be handled in this specific game.