My wife and I have wondered about this idea. If we were to have kids, we’d want them to be tech savy and inventive, but hopefully not get too addicted to the internet at a young age. There’s something to be said about not buying them a computer, but letting them build one, I think. But it’s an odd line to walk.

Definitely will say I was interested in what I couldn’t have, but I do think there are healthier ways to fuel an interest. Hope that someday my kids will just want to tinker with my stuff

Yeah definitely some lasting consequence. I’m a pretty good liar, and extremely skilled at manipulating people to calm down. Sometimes I wish I stood my ground better and let there be friction between me and others. Instead I sort of morph into whatever they need, sometimes abandoning my core principals. It came in handy to save my siblings’ asses a few times though. But literally just yesterday my wife was video calling her mom and showed her my brand new ear piercings (which I’ve wanted my whole life, but is a huge no no for men in Mormon circles, so it’ll be a big deal when my side of the family finds out) - anyway, I wanna stretch/gauge them because I like the look of small tunnels, so my mother in law says, “they look so nice, but you won’t gauge them, right?” And I’m like “no of course not” because I know it’s probably a bit shocking to her that I pierced them at all. But I wish I instead said something non-commital like “not now, but I love the look of small gauges”

Overall, the biggest effect is probably the distance I feel towards my parents lol

If your curious, I’d describe myself as quite chill, but very reserved. I wouldn’t even say I was constantly on guard… I was just a good liar. Got caught for very few things. I have a lot of siblings though (10), so I doubt I’d have had as much opportunity if I were an only child or something

It was more about moral concerns of the internet. Pretty common thing for Mormon parents to do. But yeah entertainment may have played a role, they weren’t exactly what I’d call “active” parents.

They were scared of unmonitored access to the internet. And only up to T rated games were allowed, so for Halo I used to trade game cases with friends to hide what I owned. And since my parents were extremely Snoopy, I’d even switch my T rated games around so they thought I was just too lazy to match a game disk with it’s case, and never get too suspicious.

Edit: Programming was allowed, just had to be on the shared computer in our living room where everyone could see what you were doing.

When I was leaving for college I bought a laptop and they made me keep it in the box until I left. It was honesty torture. I wanted to set it up and stuff but they insisted that our home computer would work fine…

My first Pi got me into computing which led to my software career now. Won it from a YouTube giveaway and kept it a secret because I wasn’t allowed to have a computer. Put retroPi on it and told my parents it was for gaming. Coded my first game in Python (from a tutorial). I once put it in a crayon box and used that as a portable handheld. Later. Made a janky arcade cabinet. Sad that my kids may need to use a different brand device. I have no love for public companies