I was on HN this morning and my 2 yr. old son asked me "What's that orange thing papa's looking at?"<p>I answered "It's a place where people can talk to each other about things they find interesting." He didn't get it, which makes sense since it isn't really a "place" and there are no visible "people" here.<p>So I figured I would propose it to you all, how would you explain HN to a 2 year old?
If I had the time (and I probably would because I consider it important), I would just go down the rabbit hole and explain the internet in the simplest terms possible. You press some buttons and other people around the world see the buttons you pushed and they press some buttons and you can see them too. With every new inevitable question, just keep explaining in terms the child is able to understand, and keep going until one gets tired of it. You can then say it's enough for then and you can continue some other time.<p>I consider curiosity in a child to be a valuable resource to nurture. If you make it a positive experience for the child, he'll want to do it again. Careful not to appear annoyed, because then, as it resulted in a negative experience, the child will know to avoid doing such things in the future.
> <i>He didn't get it, which makes sense since it isn't really a "place" and there are no visible "people" here.</i><p>Looks to me like the two-year-old is the one explaining it to <i>you</i>.
If he’s seen a bulletin board with fliers pinned to it or if you put things up on the refrigerator with magnets, bring him there. Then hand him, you, and anyone around a stack of post-it notes. Explain to him that HN is a place where anyone can put up something to show people. If people want to respond, they can write their name + message and attach it to the posting or another post-it note. BUT it’s on the Internet! That means that anyone from anywhere at anytime can put up postings and post-it notes!<p>This opens up a bridge to him asking, “what’s the internet?” To which you now have endless possibilities on introducing your son to the wonderful world of technology :)
I’d take him outside and give him a stick to play with instead :-) That used to bring a smile to my 2yr old’s face who is now 22 and finishing a computing degree. It’s a special time when the kids are that age.<p>I remember when my son was little having him help me pull ethernet cable through our roofspace ceiling. As the cable kept coming through the hole in the ceiling as he pulled he shouted up to me, “Dad, is this magic?” :-)
"You know how, in daycare, you read stories, talk with your friends and play?"<p>"HN is like daycare for me! I come here to read stories and talk to my friends, but my friends live all over the world."
“Just something daddy likes to read”<p>My kid is a few months shy of 3 and I don’t think there’s anything of value to tell him about the internet at this point. Once he can read I’ll probably explain more to him.
My son's 2, I just tell him I'm reading. Unless there's pictures he isn't really interested.<p>I'm not sure I could get into much more detail than that, perhaps a library metaphor?
If a 2 year old understands stories, HN is a place where people read stories, share stories, talk about stories and pick their favorite stories.<p>If a 2 year old is interested in HN, it might be because he/she is trying to see what's more interesting than them.
A digital bulletin board, show him a real one the next time you are at the coffee shop.<p>Under each posting, which are articles (shared information) not solicitations (asking to buy or sell services), people are having conversations.<p>You could give the example of people leaving post-it notes for each other.
Different case but I usually open up HN while eating in non English speaking restaurant alone and the staff wonders what I'm reading and I just say tech news site.
"It's a web site where people discuss stories. Here, let me read to you some of the things people are writing to each other. If it's not interesting, we can read something else."
You know how books have stories? This is like a lot of books, where the stories are told by people like grandma. We can just pick which story we want to read and ask them questions about it.
Your son wants to engage with you in a positive way.<p>Children at this age ask "why" questions often in rapid succession. I am not sure it actually matters what the "best answer" is. What is likely important to him is that you are engaging with him.
I just saw you ask this question yesterday. On your profile it says indeed that this thread is a day old. But here it says it's two hours old. And all of the old responses from yesterday have had their timing reset, "10 minutes ago" -- I definitely remember that boffin comment from yesterday because it made me look up the word.<p>What happened?
People write about cool things and you can read about cool things. The cooler a thing is the more people look at it.<p>Keep your vocab limited when explaining to kids. Otherwise you'll go down a rabbit hole of "what does that mean". Which is fine if you want to do that, but a 2 year old isn't going to remember a lot of it.
I don't know - I was aware of BBS'es by the time I was 2; that's where I got my games from! I'd just say that you talk to other people through it, because they show you fun things to read.
My advice, as the father of a ten year old, would be to get off hacker news and enjoy every second of having an amazing two year old! It's a wonderful time and it flies by.
I would say it's a place where people who spend a lot of time on the internet try to gain status by posting comments which they expect to be upvoted.
"A place where people can leave notes to others that can also read them on a computer like mine."<p>No need to overthink this. Kid just wanted your attention.