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Chris Trottier

My 9-year-old daughter is begging to join Mastodon.

I'm very apprehensive about this. But she wants to make friends, and is really excited about the Fediverse.

So if we're doing this:

1. She's joining my instance
2. She has no password access to her account
2. She's only using this with my active supervision

And there's going to be strict time limits on this.

Currently, she already uses Pixelfed.

Perhaps she'll be on the Pleroma instance I've already set up.

And if you want to know why I'm setting her up with an account, it's because she's constantly trying to access my Mastodon account to post messages.

Sometimes she succeeds.

She hasn't sent anything harmful (yet), but she's still sending messages—usually about ducks or The Simpsons.

Therefore, she needs her own sandbox.

@atomicpoet But firstly you have to decide what kind of cartoon animal she will be. ;)

@atomicpoet Oh, that was not not you‽ 😂🤣😉

Yeah, lock it down & make it private. I would also defederate the account & cut off RSS feeds too.

You do not want web crawlers scraping content off of her profile.

@atomicpoet Sorry, just had this close by. I did see a duck post. It quacked me up.

@atomicpoet you've reminded me of an article I once read about kids who had been cut off and surveilled out of every other possible online outlet who discovered that they could have discussion threads through, i think, the reviews feature on their ebook reader? The author discovered this because they would leave id tags that connected the different threads.

Sandboxed fediverse is like the keys to the kingdom in comparison

@atomicpoet I mean in your opinion, how complicated is it to set up an instant

@atomicpoet - As a parent to two girls….I wouldn’t let them on any form of social media. At least not for a few more years, but that’s just me.

@AJ I think it could work if *everything* is locked down, and she's on my instance.

@atomicpoet Maybe we need some indication as to who is posting, so that we can reply appropriately. I have much looser lips when talking to an adult that I do with a child.

@atomicpoet

I was thinking about kid and if non-commercial social media was safe enough as well. Like we have evidence Instagram is bad for teen girls, but I'm less sure about this place.

My guess was locked account. with approving followers. Ideally followers are other kids you know.

@alienghic There should definitely be kid-friendly options.

@atomicpoet I'm wondering what's the average age of people on fedi

@atomicpoet I have a 9 year old daughter too, who also loves this sort of thing. Let me know what sort of precautions you’re taking, beyond what you mentioned.

I’d love for her to learn hands-on at a young age what being a responsible digital native on social media looks like.

@atomicpoet Interesting. Been wondering if my 14 year old might ask me at some point. For now she's lost interest in social media outside of discord.

@thom I trust the Fediverse more than I trust Discord.

@atomicpoet I don't blame you. Comes down to her having proven herself - she's become more cautious than me. And I've even taken part in a chat with some of the non-IRL kids.

@atomicpoet Honestly I'd be terrified of my nephew joining and he's 15.But it sounds like you have some pretty good boundries in mind

@atomicpoet
Personally, I think at 9 she should be making friends in person, not online. My daughter was not on social until 13, during the lockdown.

@johnnymojo My daughter is autistic. It's not easy for her to make friends in person.

@atomicpoet
Then it may be a big help for her. I'd recommend checking with her therapist, maybe even getting them on the same instance.