How to teach kids ad free costs money?

[recycledferret]

What's a polite but effective way to approach this

My forum is mostly adults around 40. There are a few relatives under 15 and they treat the forum like an app. They keep refreshing to check for likes and comments to their content.

Went from using 700 or less ad free per day to 1900 per day after they joined. Now the package won't last the month.

We sent a mass email and asked people not to do this in a general sense, but the message didn't get across. I don't want to call out the kids directly. They are just kids.

[🎶Sossity🎶]

Aug 15, 2024 4:57:16 GMT -8 recycledferret said:

What's a polite but effective way to approach this

My forum is mostly adults around 40. There are a few relatives under 15 and they treat the forum like an app. They keep refreshing to check for likes and comments to their content.

Went from using 700 or less ad free per day to 1900 per day after they joined. Now the package won't last the month.

We sent a mass email and asked people not to do this in a general sense, but the message didn't get across. I don't want to call out the kids directly. They are just kids.

Hi
Did you consider what Michael suggested in the other thread concerning this?
support.proboards.com/thread/677182/ad-free-question

[recycledferret]

Lol forgot I asked. But they are kids. They don't have jobs or money. Not sure if contacting their parents to pay for this is the right answer.

I'm asking for suggestions on how to approach the kids about this

[Kami]

Aug 15, 2024 5:15:59 GMT -8 recycledferret said:

Lol forgot I asked. But they are kids. They don't have jobs or money. Not sure if contacting their parents to pay for this is the right answer.

I'm asking for suggestions on how to approach the kids about this

This question kind of goes beyond the purpose of this section of this forum — this board is for technical support with the software. Maybe an admin can move this into the Managing Your Forum section :)

My suggestion to your question though is to approach them like you would any other adult user. They're kids, not glass, they're not going to break because someone tells them they're doing something silly. I've been running my forum for nearly twenty years now and due to the subject matter the audience for the forum tends to include a lot of kids in the 13-19 age group. There is absolutely no reason you can't just reach out and tell them to stop.

Talk to them individually via PM to not embarrass them, and just be direct and casual. Don't try to be overly cool, but don't be overbearing or threatening.

A simple "Hey, just wanted to reach out. If you didn't see the mass PM from (date), please don't reload the forum so much; doing that uses up our ad-free page views, and our budget won't last us the month at this rate. Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks!" will probably far more effective than nebulously asking the forum as a whole to stop doing something.

[moonbeam]

What about suggesting they use the Tapatalk app to view the forum? That might not use up ad-free.

Admins or anyone else, do you know if that would help?

[bigballofyarn]

Tapatalk views and posts do NOT deduct from your ad-free package. I've encouraged all of my mobile users to post from Tapatalk. If you are one to look at your forum analytics, the forum requests number will still increase, but the pageviews number will NOT increase for Tapatalk views and posts. Totals for topics and posts WILL still increase.

I definitely can empathize with this potentially being a difficult thing to explain. My forum recently took a similar approach as you and put up a generalized announcement so that no one would feel targeted. However, in the process of doing so, someone did feel targeted, and feelings were unintentionally hurt. It also evolved into a private Q&A where even an adult didn't understand that the entire forum shared from the same pool of ad-free views.

I think how you approach this with each child should depend on the individual person. Some people will get hurt easily and others won't. Be mindful that their understanding of the internet may be mostly through apps, whereas people around age 40 grew up with an entirely different experience. Be mindful that they may not realize that every refresh costs money because most/all of the social media apps on their phone are free and clicks don't matter. This could be beneficial though. If they enjoy posting from their phones, getting them to install an app might be easy. If they primarily post from a computer, they'll need to understand that they shouldn't use the forum as if it's a cellphone app. Maybe you can show the desktop users how to manage their notification settings. Then they can only log back in if they receive an email notifying them about a new like or comment rather than refresh endlessly to check for updates to their content.