Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Is Linus Spoiling his kids?”.
What’S not cool is the fact that I’m spoiling my children and turning them into little monsters. What the there there was uh. There was a post earlier this week that was flagged by our our community uh coordinator, uh. That go reads like this: I’m astonished at how much gaming lonus gives to his kids nowadays. I know I am nobody to control him, but still from their personal setups to the Caravan gaming to server rackm mounted gaming and much more from the other. Video projects isn’t lonus giving too much luxury to his children. I mean even with me all the dedication that I have converted from the sadness and anger of not having Tech luxury at the most.
I would only give my children a small game console in Nursery an Xbox or Ps in first year, a light laptop in fourth a mobile in sixth or earlier, and a gaming PC around some time, not 10 of the top-of-the-line RTX 490 gaming, PCs at age 5. Um discuss okay, so hold on a second. Yes, it is very clear that that my kids enjoy access to technology that is very different from what normal kids would have. They have pretty cool gaming, PCs at the ages, that they are um, but they’re pretty time limited and you you make them do things. They have like goals that they have to accomplish before they can unlock certain amounts of gaming time, but don’t overestimate how much they are actually allowed to use them. As a Savvy parent, I may have the capability and the means to fill my house with technology. I was, I was counting them and I think in my house there’s no fewer than somewhere between 15 and 20 computers. I wonder how many screens um fewer than you might think. A lot of them are surprisingly single, monitor, setups, but still TVs. Okay, there’s a fair number of screens yeah, there’s a fair number of screens there, some there’s a bunch of laptops, but those are redundant right now. Cuz, the laptop that used to run the land Center are just kind of in a pile right, um CU. We still need to do a video like cleaning it up, and so I haven’t cleaned it up on my own time, because I want to make a video about it anyway.
The point is um see people ask like: what’s your power bill, I mean they’re, not on all the time right like so. Yes, I have the means and and the capability to fill my place with computers, but that doesn’t mean that I, but that also means I have the capability to restrict yeah. Don’T just have free range to access to the computers um. I I make extensive use of parental controls like Google’s family link, um and Microsoft’s, whatever Family Safety, I forget what it’s called they’re not allowed to install apps without permission, they’re not allowed to use the computers without permission um. They have to trade at a ratio of. I think 1 to 1.5 uh, piano practice or um uh, dance or other like uh activity, practice or chores in order to get gaming time um. There are exceptions when we do like family gaming time they don’t have to do anything for that.
But you know: that’s not that’s not something that happens every night. That’S and that’s a rule that a lot of people have like there’s. I know one of them too, is like if there’s a type of game like uh an example we had when we were growing up very often was like shooter games. A lot of people didn’t want their kids playing shooter games below a certain age, but it was fairly common. I would find with like my friends where they would be like yeah.
I can’t play shooter games by myself, but I can play like co-op Halo with my dad cuz like as long as they’re playing together. They were like okay, this is fine um, so yeah, I don’t know. Family time’s always been different with. That said, it’s a valid concern and it’s one we think about a lot um. Thank you for raising it, and it’s it’s definitely something that we’re we’re. We are cognizant of and um.
You know it’s tough right because, on the one hand, yeah we don’t we don’t want them to be spoiled little brats right like that’s. I I don’t think. That’S anything. I don’t think that’s something anyone wants from their kids.
I think it’s something that happens by accident. I’M sure there’s someone at least yeah. I was going to say 90 % of the time. I would say that spoiled awful kids probably happened by accident, but that doesn’t mean that you can be complacent about it. That means that, if anything, you need to be more vigant about it.
So don’t worry, we are, we are on it. We are doing our best um and no don’t assume that just because they have a lot of options for devices that they can use, that. That necessarily means that they can just go on them whenever they want.
U, there are some exceptions. I actually created a document. Uh a couple of weeks ago, I’m pretty proud of this little bit of parenting uh. The document is called I’m bored and the reason it exists is because I wanted to have something to point my kids to every single time. They walk up to me and say a smart, I’m bored, and so this is this. Is the I’m bored document? Do you want me to read yeah sure you can you can read it? Okay, so he’s got locations. So I am asked I am bored and I am at location X.
These are the things that I can say so everywhere includes hideand-seek tag, listen to music or dance educational activities on phone or computer uh camera play. Take pictures to record videos of each other. Do whatever film little videos do whatever forts building tents out of tubes or crazy forts other things I used to build them out of uh the dining room chairs when I was a kid um reading comic book Corner swing outside on the porch bedroom cats just play With the cats in general, okay, we’re upstairs here’s this insanely long list of toys to all right, we’re on the main floor, arts and crafts hang out with different people, play piano yoga and exercise K we’re in the basement. All these other things. Oh, my God.
This is really long. There is so much to do in our house. This is very long. It takes multiple scrolling swipes to get through, and for that reason I don’t want them playing video games all the time because they could play dress up or they could have a tea party or they could practice magic tricks.
Um. There are some video games that don’t need permission if they play Beat saber or dance Dash or box VR, all those or anything that is like a high exertion video game. That’S allowed they’re allowed to play Ring fit Adventure without permission makes sense as long as they have it set to a reasonable difficulty, so they’re not just breezing through it um yeah other than that they they’re allowed to play games that we consider educational. So I would say, for my youngest, for example, something like wordscapes is considered educational.
I would say that gets a little less educational later on um, but you know if they up to a certain age after they’re using dual lingo, or something like that. I I would. I would consider that to be educational, so uh using family link, you can apply different limits to apps um on a per day basis or you can okay, you can apply limits systemwide or to specific apps. So you could have 45 minutes of total screen time in a day, but an unlimited amount of this during that time, and only 5 minutes of this during that time, and a completely unlimited amount of Kindle, for example, is an app that is completely unlocked on the Kids, that have phones as phones and other devices.
We also have a Kindle that they can just use um, because I I’m I’m of the mind that I don’t care what they read as long as they read um. You know make of that. What you will. It means that every time I go on my Kindle unlimited account, I can’t find anything in the sea of stupid, Minecraft books or whatever, but that’s a small price to pay.
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