Children are not little adults. You cannot place the same expectations on them as you would an adult. Education or not. I've personally witnessed my kids doing things they knew they shouldn't and were specifically warned against, yet were surprised when the outcome matched what they were told would happen. In this case it was someone offering free stuff via steam and my son's account was stolen.

Exactly it's the consequences of what could happen. It's good for kids to learn the hard way most of the time, but I'm not letting my kid swim in shark infested water so that they learn about the value of signs.

> Children are not little adults. You cannot place the same expectations on them as you would an adult.

That’s kinda the same for adults? I expect a lot from some adults, I expect basically nothing from others.

It’s not the fact they’re kids (e.g. under the arbitrary age of 18), it’s how responsible they are in general.

> I've personally witnessed my kids doing things they knew they shouldn't and were specifically warned against, yet were surprised when the outcome matched what they were told would happen.

I’ve done this many times (ignore what my parents told me), and been bitten a few times. But I’ve also been right that nothing bad happened an equal number of times. It makes sense to me they would keep trying, that’s what it means to be a kid.

That said, I’m a great fan of the saying “If it looks to good to be true then it probably is.”

And you still feel this way given the context of this thread (sexual predators)? Are you a parent?

I think your example is actually a counter example.

This is also how most people, regardless of age, learn.

The key is - did you have to warn your son again?

I subscribe to natural consequence parenting within guardrails. People learn from experience reliably, the key is to allow manageable consequences.

Experiences to learn from aren’t created equally though. Getting your steam account stolen is one thing, getting exploited by sexual predators is quite another. Some experiences are good for learning, others may lead to long term consequences or developmental or mental problems.

The point people are making here is that your child is not on an equal playing field with the predator. The predators have an overwhelming advantage.

You’re missing the point.

The issue isn’t the account getting stolen. The issue is my son giving what should be privileged information to strangers on the internet. In this case, the impact was a stolen steam account but it could easily have been much worse.

Also known as a learning experience. :) I lost my Asheron's Call account the same way.

You're right, of course. Some experiences are worse than others. And it's worth protecting kids from as much negativity as possible.

Maybe not as much as possible, but I definitely think online predators is on the list.

First of all, I wish you luck with your effort to have children.

It's almost a cliche at this point, but the prefrontal cortex isn't mature until between 25 and 30 on average.

"One key part of that trajectory is the development of the prefrontal cortex, a significant part of the brain, in terms of social interactions, that affects how we regulate emotions, control impulsive behavior, assess risk and make long-term plans. Also important are the brain’s reward systems, which are especially excitable during adolescence. But these parts of the brain don’t stop growing at age 18. In fact, research shows that it can take more than 25 years for them to reach maturity."

So, yes, teach your children how to avoid predators. That is excellent. But this is the last line of defense. Since children have major impulse control and emotional regulation deficits and the predators have a major asymmetrical advantage in behavioral engineering, it is overwhelmingly the job of the parents to the extent possible to just keep the predators away.

> "Internet is scary"

Damn right it is. Children are uniquely impressionable and imprintable for a long time. Seeing or being forced to do gnarly stuff at the wrong time is permanently disfiguring.

> Kids will find a way to hang out with their friends.

Yes, the traditional way that would happen is at someone's house. Together. In person. Which provides some level of protection against predation and a fuller/richer/healthier social experience. Where the venue is virtual those protections are lost and more vigilance is required.

> If you get in the way of it, you'll quickly find yourself on the losing end of a years-long battle.

There are wolves in the world. There always have been and always will be (as you say). It's a never ending and virtually thankless job (in fact, you will regularly be abused for doing it), but keeping the wolves at bay is parenting job #1. Get them to maturity whole, healthy, intact, and self-sufficient.

I'm not going to share experiences to the extent of the OP, but I have kids and I've met some wolves.

> It's almost a cliche at this point, but the prefrontal cortex isn't mature until between 25 and 30 on average.

It's ridiculously cliche and infantilizing. The brain continues to change through your entire lifetime. Not to take away from the rest of your post, which I broadly agree with.

The context here is centered on literal children. Of course it's 'infantilizing'.

I think they meant this as a bit of hyperbole to get the point across.

> It's almost a cliche at this point, but the prefrontal cortex isn't mature until between 25 and 30 on average.

That's a myth, there was a hn article on it a few months back. Could just as easily have selected 12 iirc.

There's a reason insurance companies charge substantially higher rates for coverage of drivers under 25, and it's not that they believed the first pop-science article they read.

> keeping the wolves at bay is parenting job #1. Get them to maturity whole, healthy, intact, and self-sufficient.

Keeping the wolves at bay is an impossible task. Reducing the exposure to the wolves, educating on recognizing the wolves, and mitigating the negative consequences of the wolves is a far more viable set of goals.

> Reducing the exposure to the wolves

...which is "keeping the wolves at bay".

"Keeping the wolves at bay" means keeping them at a distance so they can't do damage; rather they can only bark and bay. That's not the same thing as reducing exposure to them; which implies they can still do damage, just not as much.

> teach your kids how to avoid the predators, since predators will always be around.

One concrete action in that vein is “we taught our child to avoid Roblox”.

Roblox is not the predator. There's a learning opportunity for discernment here, if you child is mature enough for that lesson. If he's not, well, play with him to the extent you have the time.

Dark alleys at 3 AM in inner cities aren't the predator either. The Everglades swamp isn't the predator either.

One good strategy to avoid being preyed upon is to avoid places where the risk of predators is unacceptably high.

Roblox is also a predator. They are exploiting children for money, through the user generated content and marketplaces. They take an incredibly large cut from everything sold and then have crazy high thresholds before you can cash out. Roblox might not be sexual predators, but they are predators.

If you do have a kid, you'll learn that every single experience you've had with other kids amounts to nothing. Having a lifelong commitment to another human and trying your hardest to make them the best person they can be, often against their own will, is something that you can't replicate with all the nieces and family friends in the world.

Pedophiles are extremely extremely clever and know exactly how to manipulate their targets. Just like spam, they don't go for every kid but they target the ones they know they can manipulate. If your child happens to be the target of a pedophile it's extremely, extremely difficult. We had some close calls on Roblox because my kid was an early reader/writer/typer so I was watching everything he was doing and cut away as soon as weird stuff started happening and then I deleted the app entirely. Now he's on Minecraft but I have a dedicated Minecraft server and only his friends play on it.

There are certain dangers that you can safely expose your children to with limited negative or even good consequences. Learning how to carefully climb structures at a young age is a great skill and if they fall down, they learn to be more careful. Learning your own limits at a young age is great. If they break their arm doing a skateboarding trick, that sucks, but they will learn more about conquering fear from bouncing back.

Getting conned into sending nude photos or being roped into the virtual hands of a pedophile are quite often things that kids have an extremely hard time recovering from. It's basically like sending your kid to play on the highway and expecting them to "learn" from the experience. "Well, they can learn how to be careful around moving cars!" is a ridiculous statement when the entire environment is dangerous and the outcomes are extremely binary.

It's easier to teach them how to avoid predators when they're much older, but Roblox is targeted for much younger kids.

It’s just that kids, despite their best efforts, are really stupid. Think about how much effort is put into teaching them to look both ways before crossing the street and that is an easy concept to understand.

Kids are inexperienced as well as impulsive. My wife and I joke, "why can't our kids have the perspective of middle aged people?"