Hacker News Reader

Comment by John23832 | Hacker News Reader

> Work out a zero knowledge way to verify age, and implement it. It won't be easy, but it also won't require breaking the rules of mathematics as per most of the governmental requests to 'safely' backdoor encryption.

Have parents actually pay attention to their kids and not give them unfettered access to technology. Boom. Easy.

The parents are the second factor that nobody is willing to discuss because the parents are addicted to the exact same technology.

View on HN

Everyone discusses better parenting all the time. But some people forget what it's like being a kid, circumventing blocking systems is trivial if you're motivated, and even if they weren't, a cheap phone costs $80 and kids are very willing to share their old devices.

Kids can also choose to disobey parents and play on train tracks or jump off cliffs or a million other dangerous things. Either you leave it to the parents or you end up spying on every single action they take.

I had a second phone line installed at my parents house so I could have dialup Internet of my own, so I grew up on the Internet through the twilight of the 'golden years'. My parents had no idea what was going on, I was the only one in the household that knew anything much about computers and the Internet.

rotten.com was an interesting education.

I had a good upbringing and generally attentive parents on the whole, though, so I was already a well balanced young human.

Reality check is that parents spend a lot more time actively parenting then they used to. The expectations on parenting went up.

These complains about parents not doing enough are from another alternative reality.

One of my colleagues (he is in his mid forties now) joked that he was raised by TV, not his parents. I suppose today’s kids are raised by social media. It is super easy to give an iPad to a 10 year old, so they don’t bother you while you’re working. Feels like parenting is a bit outsourced to electronics and the internet

Hasn’t worked based on the evidence, so we’re moving on to something effective. Australia is up first, others will follow, just as we limit access to nicotine and other drugs or harmful products. The data is robust social media is toxic to kids, and Meta even knew about it and doesn’t care.

Social media bans are like GLP-1s: we know that will power is not a thing, so we use an intervention to help the human. Same deal. “Just do better good luck” is not actionable.

“We have seen the enemy and he is Big Tech.”

Reply on news.ycombinator.com