Every day I see a celebrity in an ad for gambling and they all have the same defence "well, if people choose to gamble if they have a problem, then that's on them". Everyone knows it will destroy lives. But they say "that's on them for buying what I'm selling".
People are walking around perpetuating the moral compass of a heroin dealer like it's normal. You are responsible for your mark on the world and your fellow human beings. Yes, even if you only did the bad thing to get the money.
Some things are difficult to regulate, even as we know they are harmful and difficult to control for adults due to their addictive nature.
You don't have to think about it very hard to realize that kids, who have not yet learned to emotionally regulate themselves, will be even more vulnerable to these things if we push it on them.
More people need to be talking about this. The children of parents who abdicate their responsibilities of parenting are going to become the adults we deal with on a daily basis. I think the scope of the issue is not perceptible until you get to know how much damage a person with all the power can bring onto their child. That kind of thing is lifelong and not everyone can afford the therapy you will end up needing.
It shocks me that even the nicest parents I know - on the surface - still give their children phones.
This is why I see the drive for child safety regulation as an unspoken admission that the problems of an individual parent are falsely seen as insurmountable, so people start pointing fingers at whoever is in the vicinity, when in reality the parent was the one responsible for choosing their own fights by purposefully exposing their child to the modern Internet. Parenting has existed for thousands of years, social media for just 20. This is a solvable problem but parents have to change their behavior. When the majority of childhood is spent with one's family, there is no other solution.
For the record I think the gin industry should in fact be regulated from marketing their product as a pacificer for kids. I find it very difficult to believe that you don't.