Comment by BatteryMountain
7 months ago
Or, just ban children from the internet, same as gun ownership for 12yo's. Fine/imprison parents. This is a parenting problem, not a technical/business problem. Remove the supply of children and things will get better. A business cannot make laws or override laws with ToS and invent their own moral compasses - rather it is the sole responsibility of the parent on what their child gets exposed to (whether politics, porn, weird beliefs, spam, chat/user generated content). The parents have been getting a free pass all this time.
I completely agree with your argument.
Some parents are awful at parenting, so much so it makes me question why they had kids if they clearly don't care about bringing them up properly.
It's a no brainer that kids should have minimal screen exposure. There's even organisations which specifically state the most ideal screen time (basically none up to 18 months, 1 hour max up to 5 years old). iPad children will be a detriment to the future of any country.
The screen time is bad enough, without the sloppy content you can very easily find online. The best ways to destroy a kid are to saddle them with social media, media consumption and porn/gambling/vices at an early age. Their brain is being fried during development.
> imprison parents.
I’m consistently shocked at how authoritarian and draconian HN comments can be. Throwing parents in prison if their 12 year old uses the internet? Jail them and send their kids to foster care? This is your plan for improving the lives of children?
If you give your 12yo access to a gun, and shoots/kills another child (even by accident) - who is at fault? The 12yo? The gun? The parent?
> The parents have been getting a free pass all this time
I totally agree but the UK government – particular Labour – doesn't want people to take responsibility really, because that would take from their own 'power'. There's nothing the UK loves more than a stupid population hooked on benefits and devoid of education, critical thinking and financial freedom.
Not the UK, Labour.
The Tories wrote the law for the recent changes to internet freedom in the UK. Labour supports it. Support seems to come from all sides across the political spectrum.
I think the Greens are opposed to it, and maybe Reform in one of their populist speeches, but the majority of UK representatives seem to support this law.
Based on this poll, most Britons also support the OSA: https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/britons-back-online-safety-acts-...
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Don't pretend the Tories are any better...
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No, both parties.
The internet is an extremely useful educational resource. It provides ways of communicating with people you want your kids to communicate with. it needs management by parents.
My kids have learned a huge amount from the internet. I have guided them, discussed what are credible resources, the harms possible etc, who they talk to and what they tell them....
There are solutions that would make it easier for parents - people need tools to manage this. Require that children use child safe SIM cards in their phones (they are available already - EE advertisers them). Home internet connections should be by filtered by default that can then be turned off (or off for particular devices in the ISP supplied router that most people have).
Internet should not be filtered by default, that’s ridiculous. Either make it a separate product that large ISPs have to offer (like you either choose the ‘internet package’ or the ‘child-safe filtered internet package’) or ask people as part of the sign-up flow whether they want filtering.
I think it’s bad for society to treat adults as children, I’m happy that it should be made obviously available (there’s some merit to the argument that tech-illiterate parents often don’t know devices they give their kids have parental controls at all), but not on by default.
Not only offer them - if they have children in the house, they are forced to use the child-friendly version, no exceptions. Or when we switch to ipv6 each device can have a static IP and they go on a list (child or adult) and those devices sit on a different subnet.
As bad as it is to treat adults as children, it is equally (or worse) to treat children as adults.
Parental control only get you so far. Even if we conjure the perfect tech system to manage this, remember that children were being exploited long before the internet. Bending the internet will not solve the problem, just alleviate the current flavour of child abuse, and force it back offline.
> It provides ways of communicating with people you want your kids to communicate with
Who do you want your kids to communicate with over the internet ?
Their friends and family, obviously.
I’m surprised by all of the comments assuming the internet can’t possibly have any value for kids in any way, shape, or form. Did HN commenters grow up and forget what it’s like to be a kid with friends? With an interest in games or technology or discovery?
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> Or, just ban children from the internet, same as gun ownership for 12yo's. Fine/imprison parents.
It's an interesting idea. I presume that the there would be similar laws to selling guns. So there would need to be the national ID card and checks when selling any internet-enabled device. TVs, phones, cameras etc.
I as, a parent would probably need a phone safe, into which I could place my phone when I wasn't using it (though I suppose conceal-carry would be permissible). I;d probably want to have biometric locks on my TV, Chromecast etc etc and the children wouldn't be able to use the TV unsupervised unless all smart functions were locked down.
Doesn't sound particularly cool.
> It's an interesting idea. I presume that the there would be similar laws to selling guns. So there would need to be the national ID card and checks when selling any internet-enabled device.
12 year olds are not buying their own iPhones and monthly service plans contracts.
Creating a national ID system for this is a weird suggestion that would have no impact on kids whatsoever but would create another centralized database for adults and make basic purchases more difficult and prone to tracking. Why even suggest this?
All solved problems.
Phones can have passcodes, fingerprint readers, facial recognition (for parents face) to keep kids off them.
Devices can have multiple user accounts, each with different purposes and applications. On my linux laptop, I have two accounts, one for work & one for personal, with distinct applications and configuration.
If all else fail, each manufacturer can product a simple device that can only chat & call with parents in case of emergencies. Can be a simple smart watch or pager like design, or just a dumb phone.
We are at the point where children should not even be exposed to the news (which is primarily incendiary politics these days) unless it is a major event. Smart TV's has so much garbage on them, why should they be allowed to even watch what they want on it?
Either way, ALL of these requires the parents to actually be parents. We can create the perfect technological solution but if the parents expose the child to porn/drugs/social media etc etc and fry their brains, it is a parental problem and not a tech problem.
Lol.
One of my colleagues had Child Services round, as their daughter had told her school he was abusing her, because he confiscated her mobile (that he was paying for).
Good luck "parenting" any child in this day and age, when any seemingly minor things you think you can do as a parent, lead to that sort of outcome.
How'd you keep a kid off the internet, when they're happy to say anything to the authorities get that internet access back?
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I don't think we need to ban kids from the Internet or punish parents that let them use it. It's enough if we make it clear that parents are responsible for what their kids do on the internet, both for harm that comes to the child and for any liabilities the child may incur there.
> Or, just ban children from the internet, same as gun ownership for 12yo's.
wait... wut? Gun ownership for 12yo's? wtf :D
Though the idea of "internet only for adults" is not that bad IMHO. Yes, internet is (well, at least was advertised as) infinite-resource-of-knowledge but we know how it turned out - IMHO minority of underage use it to spend hours reading wikipedia and instead spend hours glued to crap like tiktok (though crap like that should be banned altogether as well :D)