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Managing the Online Teenager?
Parenting Pains asks: "I've got two teenagers, whose peer group have 'discovered' the Internet over the course of this year. We've gone from two bright happy lively teenagers at the start of the year, to now having two people who rarely venture outdoors except under duress and are close to unbearable unless they're ensconced online with 'friends' on MSN for hours at a time. Over recent months, this has gone from mildly amusing to out of hand, with them spending up to 10-12 hours a day on weekends online with friends. Many Slashdot readers must have confronted this situation; how have you dealt with it, and what were the outcomes of what you did? Do you just let the kids stay online till they got sick of it, and how long did it take? Do you ban them from using MSN? Do you limit the number of hours they can be online?"
"When they're not online, they're grumpy, demanding, constantly nagging, etc. (i.e. normal teenagers) - frankly it's easier for us when they are online, but not for that many hours at a sitting.
We made a decision up front to trust their judgement and not monitor who they talk to and what they talk about, but I'm starting to question the wisdom of this right about now. Not for any specific reason; there's just a little nagging voice in the back of my mind telling me there's something wrong with this."
We made a decision up front to trust their judgement and not monitor who they talk to and what they talk about, but I'm starting to question the wisdom of this right about now. Not for any specific reason; there's just a little nagging voice in the back of my mind telling me there's something wrong with this."
Introduce them to pr0n. That will keep them off IM.
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Hey dad, get off slashdot. These are my friends. Oh, and I can be grumpy if I want.
-Tolerate my intolerance
... until they stop acting like trolls.
make them cook their own food, do their own laundry, etc. give them good reasons to leave the PC.
eventually they'll grow out of it, but it could be years and years before they complete that on their own.
help them hate the computer, force them to use IE, force them to go through a proxy where everything they do is monitored. disallow them from installing new software. make them hate the computer. they'll either give up or become so good at computers that their online time will turn into a career.
or you can just do what my dad did when i was hooked on nintendo. pull the fuse and hide it.
...charge them for the time they spend online. Treat your house like an internet cafe.
Install Linux on their PCs. Something like Debian, without the Gnome or KDE desktop environments. Explain to them that in order to run the instant messenger, they will need to compile the desktop environment for the latest kernel, meanwhile using wget. Bring home a good supply of O'Reilly books.
Pretty soon they will be either off the Internet, or discussing the kernel fork pros and cons in specialized mailing lists.
And certainly the good old "AS LONG as you stick your LAN cable into MY switch YOU'll DO WHAT I SAY ! " ;-)
Many Slashdot readers must have confronted this situation;
indeed!
how have you dealt with it,
vi hosts
slashdot.org 127.0.01
and what were the outcomes of what you did?
Once again having a sex life and showering regularly?
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