When I was a kid my parents wouldn’t give me a cellphone. I wanted to call my girlfriend. Well, really, my girlfriend wanted me to call her. A lot.

They didn’t give me one.

I ended up finding a way to get my own through a more apathetic adult who I could pay cash to cover my bill (only an extra $10/month on a family plan).

I certainly am not telling you to just cave in, but perhaps this story can be a reminder that technology you control is potentially better than technology you don’t.

Australia was one of the first countries to institute social media bans under a certain age. Reading the reports and commentary from parents there has been fascinating, but not really surprising if you remember what it's like to be a kid.

The most positive thing I read was that the kids are spending less time on social media in front of adults (like at the dinner table) because they're not supposed to be on social media.

But most of the parents in the article I read believed their kids had circumvented the ban somehow. Their problem now was that the kids' social media use was entirely hidden from them and they had no way to monitor it or even bring it up with their kids. The kids didn't want to admit to using social media at all.

None of this should be very surprising for any of us who remember back into childhood. Circumventing the restrictions was a game with its own reward. I had friends who were finding ways to get around the school's internet controls for the fun of doing it, not because it blocked any sites they wanted to use.

When my friend's kids were totally obsessed with League of Legends, I offered to set up a home firewall with increasingly difficult workarounds, so by the time they graduated high school they'd at least have a cybersecurity certificate and possibly a Ph.D in networking.

I found it such a hassle to keep locked down I gave up. Like, he'd be so aware that he'd find ways to watch me enter the PIN code when adjusting the settings. I'd have to be ever-vigilant and I got tired of it.

Back in elementary school, I used Applescript in Hypercard to get around the restrictions on our school computers. Kids always find ways.

We were once 1337 hackers too

You can lock them out of the app store completely, and only allow a list of approved domains that can browse to. I also had it shut everything down at 10pm so they couldn't spend all night trying to find workarounds. Worked really well, but it did require some work on my part to manage the installed apps and allowed domains though

A friend was woken up by his young kid trying to surreptitiously lever his finger onto the TouchID sensor to pay for a game dlc.

As a late Gen X I grew up when the "it's 10pm do you know where your kids are" ad's ran. When "just say no" was all I heard for a decade. When sex ed was marginally controversial. Honestly, I remain shocked that I never got arrested for some of my shenanigans. The rest of it was drinking, drugs and partying.

I was candid with my kids about what I did in my youth, I was also honest with them about how terrible the tech was. They also got unfettered access to it (tech), and there were lots of conversations and consequences around its (mis)use.

Given the history of "abstinence only" sex ed, and "just say no" drug campaigns, and their massive failures; just not letting them have it seemed like it was going to create the problems that many are looking to avoid.

As they have moved into adulthood they have taken those lessons to heart, and are now the ones who complain about their peers and their abuses of social media and inability to self moderate. These same conversations continue now, with the added topic of AI -

You are teaching your children to be even more secretive and hide things from you even better.

It seems like Apple put a big focus on 'kids mode' things this WWDC. To the point they dedicated a major section of the keynote to it. Hopefully a part of that will be focussed on the workarounds.