A Concerned Scientist on Nostr: I don't allow my kids unlimited time on anything other than books. They're at an age ...

I don't allow my kids unlimited time on anything other than books. They're at an age where they spend as much time as I allow on YouTube right now. I'm pretty savvy about it, we talk a lot about what's allowed and what's not and, honestly, they do a good job of sticking to content that we all agree to. They just can't have unlimited time on it.

Maybe a year ago I set up a little system in which every 2 hours of YouTube time their devices require a passcode to keep streaming. If you fail the passcode a few times, you get locked out. This has been working quite well. They don't get it until they're done with school and it gives me a chance to talk with them about whether or not they've done their chores, or whatnot, whenever they want to watch more.

Today I take a look and my 10yo has somehow logged almost 8 hours without a passcode. I go to ask him, and he tries to put his tablet face down real quick so I can't see that he's on YouTube....and he starts giggling. He tries the old "I don't know what you're talking about" but I threaten to block the internet from him entirely until he tells me how he did it...but it's obvious he kind of wants me to know anyway.

So he relents and, I kid you not, he tells me(gleefully) that he looked up details of my past addresses and phone numbers online and he's been trying them, two at a time so as not to get locked out, for a year. Once he cycled through everything he could find, he decided that I was using a one of them as a template, and adding or subtracting numbers from it, for him and his brother's passcodes. So he kept trying them, just one off of the number he'd found online, until he found one that worked.

I didn't know whether to give him an award or a punishment, so I just laughed and walked out. Kid totally hacked me. Gotta up my game to a random PIN generator or something, like I do for banking, with this kid around.