Comment by exodust
8 days ago
Your analogy needs modifying. If we remove the laws, a child could walk into the store and buy beer with their pocket money, no questions asked. This isn't the same as them browsing the internet no questions asked.
The child is not paying for their devices or internet access. Their parents are paying and providing the needed equipment. In a way, it's like giving keys to after hours access to the local mall, where all kinds of stores can be browsed including adult magazine stores, without any shopkeeper to apply the laws.
So one solution is don't give kids the keys. Or, since their online activity leaves a digital trail, even if they did have keys, there's a chance to moderate their activity via seeing what they have done rather than police where they might go.
So because a kid could go stand outside a store and ask someone to get them porn, we should not allow kids outside. We should not give them the "keys" to go to the outside world.
We should make spaces that are suitable for children (most of which should not be age-segregated spaces), we should tell them to stay in those spaces, and we should treat their en-masse disobedience as a policy failure.
Children are getting into debt on online gambling sites? Investigate. Suppose we find that half of children saw a betting ad and wanted to play, and a third just really like online poker: banning gambling ads and providing no-money online poker would be good interventions. "Remove computers from the public library" and "require ID verification to participate in pub bets" are not sensible interventions.
> "...we should not allow kids outside"
That's not an equivalent analogy. Freedom of movement, to stand outside a store, is a human right. It is not the same as "freedom to lurk around online spaces on Mummy's laptop and Daddy's internet account."