I can’t think of a better solution to the issue of children being so aggressively harmed by the internet. That doesn’t remove any of the problems associated with this.
I grew up in a neighborhood full of drug dealers. Street sellers, not the classy Walter White kind.
Ironically being on a computer all day kept me out of trouble.
But with these laws in place I guess you might as well start doing stupid ish in real life.
Too bad?
Too bad!
I'm glad we're discussing parental liability. It seems no one else is advocating for "social media access is criminal neglect," so I appreciate the novelty.
The current strategy of yelling "parent's should parent" does nothing to influence any sort of result. It's simply ineffective and makes people who say it look like slogan slingers rather than cooperating in any meaningful change.
This is probably the most interesting angle of discussion I’ve seen in the past few days on this topic.
In, say, about a decade this tech bullshit will be regarded as the relentless toxic insanity that it was and we'll be better for it. Social tech CEOs will be lucky to evade prison if I had my way.
The state can't control those things, it can control putting an age restriction on certain websites. Unless you are advocating for the complete abolition of all age restrictions throughout society.
You can let your kid play in traffic. You can let your kid run around with knives. Sure, but when shit hits the fan you'll be luck to pay a hefty fine and lose all social credibility you had. In the worst case you're looking at jail time. Those sort of incentives will tend to smooth these issues out.
More to the point, if a kid walked into a convenience store and the clerk sold them a pack of cigarettes, the clerk wouldn't get off the hook by claiming, "well, the parents are responsible for their kids." I'm also not sure how one would justify holding parents legally liable for crimes they played no role in committing.
I'm not saying that I agree with these laws. They appear to be taking things too far. But that has more to do with there being no clear way to define sites that are only of interest to adults (no gatekeeping needed) and sites that should be restricted to adults.
This is already a thing.
https://www.bu.edu/articles/2024/charging-parents-for-childs...
Once upon a time they idea that Americans would surrender all of their God Given rights for an illusion of security was considered absurd, but that's where we're at.
Either way, I genuinely don't believe "let's just hope parents... start doing better?" is a solution.
Work on building self confidence.
My family relentlessly called me stupid and lazy to the point where a cyberbully would of been an upgrade.
You can always turn your phone off.
A lot of God awful parents treat their kids like trash and blame everyone else when Timmy doesn't get into Harvard.
Of all the people I've met with rough upbringings not a single one blamed anything outside of bad parenting.
Being a parent ( especially a step parent) is extremely hard.
100 years ago bad parents blamed dime novels.
50 years ago it was rock music.
Could you clarify that, and maybe take into account the fact that this is indeed completely unprecedented?
If you have time, I also would love to hear how “parents should do better” fits into a plan where parents DO do better.
Turns out you don’t need to get into a great college to make a lot of money. If anything, my screwing around all day with video games has probably led to my great 6 figure career.
There’s absolutely no way to implement age gates all over the internet without fundamentally locking it down. Do you want a future where a website that chronicles the history of slave revolts is denied an operating permit?
This is about controlling the free speech of adults, not anything else.
Again, please incorporate the fact that children are, for the first time EVER, dumber than their predecessor generation. It is a literally unprecedented step backwards. Who cares if kids can access data about slave revolts if they’re simply too stupid and pacified to do anything with the knowledge? Do you think people who spend all day hearing from their “totally-not-LLM” peers online that everything is scary, they are OWED an easier life, and that the true problems are things like social issues - ignore the climate and starving children, will be the ones to rise up and fix a problem?
https://frac.org/hunger-poverty-america
>Children: 14.1 million children lived in households that experienced food insecurity, a slight increase from the 13.8 million children reported in 2023.
This is something the government can actually fix without eliminating the first amendment.
Rampant food insecurity in young people probably has more to do with declining test scores than social media.
Because then you need to ban VPNs to stop users from bypassing ID verification.
My point is the government should fix issues within it's power to solve.
Food insecurity is solvable, and kids who know where they're next meal is coming from will be nicer people. Online and off.
I have knives in my kitchen. Do I give it to them and let them run around the neighborhood? I could but there are consequences and I would be held accountable for it.
Social media = knives or as some other commenter pointed out, similar to letting your kids play in traffic.
You’ll have the burden of needing to explain how any innocuous comparison you make still holds when we’ve never seen that kind of reversal in all of the time we’ve been watching as a society.
Solution: Maximize the distance between yourself and the people
On a related note I would like to add that social activity of any online kind is completely useless and can be get rid of immediately and without any adverse side effects whatsoever.
I'm pretty convinced the next generations will view being online as cheap and stupid. Offline is where the real value is.
A simple G/PG/PG-13/R header for websites would solve 97% of actual issues anyone could care to present. (violence, porn, etc)
Forcing people to identify themselves will not solve skinner boxes, gambling-for-children, focus-degrading slop, etc.
Bluey-themed slot machines are still harmful.
As an aside, why would a mature rating on a bluey themed gambling machine change anything? I may have a unique perspective on this because I worked at blockbuster for a decade but I PROMISE you parents largely do not care. If you want to solve the problem, hoping parents solve it isn’t… actually a solution of any kind.