[ale] Niece's laptop

[Jeff Lightner]

Uh...

Being intellectually smart and being experienced are NOT the same thing.
Teenagers often think they are both because they are the former so will
often make bad decisions out of sheer inexperience.  The smartest of my
3 nieces often made the worst decisions of the 3 due to this when they
were in their teens.

-----Original Message-----
From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of JK
To: ale at ale.org
Sent: Monday, July 31, 2006 7:00 PM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
Subject: Re: [ale] Niece's laptop

William Bagwell wrote:

> On Monday 31 July 2006 04:55 pm, joh6nn wrote:
> 
>>snip
>>personally, speaking as a "kid" (i'll be 23 in a few weeks), i don't
>>think filters are the answer for someone her age (since she earned the
>>money herself, i'm imagining she's at least 11 or 12).  sure, there
>>should be safe guards in place for younger kids, but if your niece is
>>smart (and it sounds like she is), she will defeat pretty much any
>>filter you put in her way.  i guarantee you that if she has not yet
>>defeated AOL, it is only for lack of something that piqued her
interest.
>>
>>the best answer will always be to simply tell her what is and is not
>>acceptable, and trust her.  if she lets you down, then you can act.
but
>>we don't like it when the government treats us like children: why
should
>>kids like it any better?
> 
> 
> This needs a +5 Insightful :) My "kids" are 18 and 20, we have had
Internet 
> access for almost 9 years and never had content filters of any kind
(other 
> than spam). I have no regrets this was the right decision in our case.
> 
> Two situations where filters might be appropriate would be extremely
young 
> children. (Of course if they are that young perhaps they should not be

> using a net connected computer unsupervised in the first place.) And
older 
> kids who have *lots* of friends over who are not well known to the
parents. 
> (Probably not wise for other reasons, but I'm trying to play devils 
> advocate here)
> 
> What I probably would have done had the later occurred here, would be
to 
> install a filter, and show *my* kids how to bypass it when needed.
Then 
> warn them to never bypass it for others.

I considered installing a filter and then telling my kids,
"There's a content filter installed on the firewall machine,
which will prevent you from seeing content that you might
*really* want to see, since you're 14. If you can figure
out how to bypass it, more power to you."  But I never did
it.

-- JK

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