jboyens

• Sneak the time when you can
• Play games with them
• Wait until they are 12 (-ish) and they decide you are uncool

Otherwise, you’re doing what I ended up doing. There was a long span that, I just… never played games because I was too busy. I regret that a bit because it’s a thing that makes me happy and even if I’m “Dad”, I’m still a person that deserves some time for “me”.

Oh, I totally get it. It’s super dumb, but being a kid is really hard these days; kind of ridiculously so.

Long story short: they got iPhones. Do I like it? No. Did it make me feel bad to pay into that dark pattern? Yeah. Did I do it anyway? Yup.

But at the end of the day, I had a choice between doing what I felt was right vs. doing what would make their lives just a little easier psychologically.

I did explain how stupid it was that Apple was doing this, how much it was complete and utter nonsense, and what dark patterns were. I can’t force their friends to do different things, but I can nudge their behavior. I taught them about Signal and they’ve shown their friends. It hasn’t caught on like wildfire of course, but, it’s there and I learned that at least some kids today understand a lot more about privacy and security than I’d given them credit for.

The problem that I have with the way Apple does this has nothing whatsoever to do with me. It’s their device, it is not possible for me to care any less about it.

No, the problem I have is that it becomes a severe bullying / exclusion tactic among kids. Now, kids will always find something to bully other kids about, but this one seems to hurt a lot because of the source of the ire and the inability to do anything about it (short of purchasing an Apple device).

My eldest was excluded from group chats with friends because they “ruined” the quality of pictures and videos by being in the group chat. These are friends mind you, not the sort of bullies the rest of us might’ve had. It’s devastating to kids when their friends exclude them like this. What do you do? You can’t complain about the technology not mattering, you can’t reason with it, you can’t say: “it gets better”.

Kids these days have a very different relationship to technology. That relationship can seem weird or “wrong” to folks who remember a time before these ubiquitous devices. Crap patterns like this creating artificial walled gardens are not “novel” or “creative” ways to increase sales.

DRY is nice and all, but never let your code get so DRY it chafes.