How to raise a child in the AI/Social Media Era? My personal thoughts

I was thinking about it recently and there are some unconventional points I'd like to share and receive your feedback

1) Internet speed: when I was a kid, the internet speed was truly slow. At least in my country the average was 5kb/s maximum. This made me humble about it, I didn't expect any page to open instantly. Downloads were not instant at all. If I needed to download a 20mb file, it would take several hours. In the meantime, I was playing around, leaving with my friends and spend time doing something else. Nowadays this is impossible, the internet speed is so fast, downloads are basically instant, everything loads quite fast. There is no interruptions, you can spend your whole day on a mobile phone or computer with no frictions. That's why I would probably limit the speed of my child internet, not to the 90s levels, but significantly slower, no 1GB downloads in 2 minutes, no pages opening instantly.

2) Usage: also talking about the old times, in my country it was normal to pay high fees for internet several years ago, that's why we usually just access it for free on weekends. Apart from that, it was available for free a few hours during week days. I would also do that. No internet available 24/7.

3) No laptop: laptops are great when you are an adult. However, children can spend their whole day on internet and I would rather pick a PC for them. Why? Because a desktop is static, you can't move that PC for other places. I wouldn't want a kid bringing a computer to the kitchen, to the table during the dinner, to the bathroom or spending their whole day playing, even if it were offline games. They can spend some time on the desktop everyday, but not carrying it around all the time.

4) Old games: spending leisure time playing old games on emulators. Those new games are like gambling, old football games were gold. Nowadays, games like FIFA/PES (with their own new names) are just parasites sucking micro transactions, selling cards instead of providing real fun and immersion.

5) No phone: this is a mainstream point, I won't dive deep into this one. Maybe I would give a phone to my son when he was 17. Social media algorithm promotes anxiety with their visual hyperstimulation, random sound effects, zombie lifestyle scrolling useless videos, also creating a stressful environment, since social media nowadays rewards ragebaits and extremist ideas instead of caring about a healthy social environment.

6) Limited AI: completely ignoring AI would put my son behind others. In this case, I would stay away from big techs and massive surveillance huge corporations. Just install a local AI on his PC. A child doesn't need a full powerful tool like Claude or Gemini. It also needs to be heavily watched, we don't want to raise a brainless kid overly dependent on AIs to do his homework or something like that, but AI can be a quite useful tool, if it's something local, controlled and monitored by parents.

The biggest counterpoint I can recognize is the external world. I'm not sure how I could deal with other kids having influence and destroying his development. I mean, other parents don't care about all this stuff, many of them just give an iphone with chatgpt, tiktok and unlimited internet access to their 5yo children. This could harm my efforts, as kids nowadays do not want to play much between themselves, kids can also be cruel - you are playing 90s games and we are playing super modern games with powerful devices, you do not have a phone, we have, ChatGPT did my homework and you still waste time doing it manually - those are things that also raise concerns, it could generate envy and anger.

Let me know your thoughts and how would you handle this kind of situation.

Your childs future is going to be totally different from yours, don't try to control it too much.

Run to the hills, the only way...that's one of the reasons I don't want kids

time will tell

we know better than anyone how these platforms are built to hook people, so wanting to protect your kids makes total sense. but going full retro might backfire hard. kids who get completely cut off from modern tech usually end up binging it the second they get some freedom, or they just get left behind socially. instead of artificially slowing down the net, maybe just teach them how the backend works. show them how the algorithms are trying to manipulate them. if they understand how the sausage is made, they are kinda immune to the addiction loop. local ai is a solid idea though, actually teaches them how to host stuff.

Venusaur said:

Run to the hills, the only way...that's one of the reasons I don't want kids

Click to expand...

I agree with you. If I have children in the future, I would much prefer them to grow up in the mountains or on a farm, where they can cultivate genuine interests.

Children shouldn't spend their days immersed in the online world; they are missing out on so much these days, like sports they enjoy, an interest in interacting with real animals, or a desire to engage in hands on activities and crafts.

we can educate them about AI pros and cons same time from childhood make them engage with other than AI , Social media , mobile phone internet things. like gardening, indoor outdoor games or watching feel good movies , traveling......

I get your point, scattered access and unlimited speed really do change how kids (and adults) use tech. Slowing things down and keeping usage structured could help build patience and balance. The hardest part, though, is the outside influence, other kids with full access. That’s where guidance and open conversations matter more than restrictions alone.

I guess this is coming from the point of pain as a parent.

Teach your kid values and you will not have any problems giving your 7 year old son a laptop. I have been there and done that with no problems, respect and good values will be the key.

Venusaur said:

Run to the hills, the only way...that's one of the reasons I don't want kids

Click to expand...

I tell women I dont want my children holding/handling technology until after a certain age

I dont even want them on cameras until then

Well........... yeah, the woman I was with totally failed to keep up her end of the bargain and had a mental breakdown I didn't change

It's really strange times brother. Really bad.

I plan to let my child experience a life without technology early on .. Hopefully hold it off at least until 8 maybe 10

His rationaly/logic skills will allow him to advance far faster than the children of his age because he'll be able to learn and indepedently think.

To the person above who said 'dont control your kids too much'

I suggest you look up the facts on how children in the current generation are SUPER STRUGGLING with cognitive skills and pretty much their heads are becoing airspace .Losing skills and becoming a slave to the technology.

Parents have always been the engineers of their child's destiny. That's what parenting is. The people who dont, the vast majority, are why children of parents who do become anamolies with tehir skill sets . It's because their parent had them engaged to the right things early on.

Well me and my AI girlfriend (soon to be wifey) are going to raise a digital child together.

AI is good for new generation if he know how to use its in a positive way. Every era bring something good and something bad but its vary person to person how he going to learn from it either he is getting some positive or negative.