Comment by giroro
3 days ago
If we expect Parents to treat Social Media like other unhealthy, dangerous, and highly addictive products, then that can never start with "just expect ignorant parents to all magically start doing something difficult, for no real reason".
It starts by banning kids from the internet, entirely. It starts with putting age restrictions on who can buy internet connected devices. It starts by arresting parents and teachers who hand pre-literacy kids an always-online iPad. It starts with an overwhelming propaganda campaign: Posters, Commercials, After-School Specials, D.A.R.E. officers, red ribbon week.
Then, ultimately, it still finishes with an age-gated internet where every adult is required to upload their extremely valuable personal information to for-profit companies, for free (With the added weight of being forced to agree to extreme ToS, like arbitration agreements).
So what do we do? I agree that the age of entry to the internet should match other vices (currently 21+ in the US, although really that should probably be 18+)...
It will never be acceptable for a single country's police state to extend across international borders, so... we just ban all of the UK and Australia from every web service until they get withdrawals and promise to stay nice? That could be a start.
But this whole situation in like 'freedom of speech' once you start picking and choosing what counts as "acceptable" speech, then suddenly you lose everything. You literally can't make everyone happy, because everything subjective is open to contradiction - and because there are freaks in the world who will never be satisfied by anything less than a complete global ban of everything.
Who gets a say? Do the Amish get to tell us what we are allowed to do? Where do you draw the line? You can't. Completely open is the only acceptable choice. But I still vote we start publicly mocking the parents who give their kids an ipad, and treat them like they just gave that kid a cigarette. Because seriously, they're ruining that kid.
I've already thought about it from the US's perspective and here's my path forward.
If government does not want kids to have access to the naughty bits of the internet but thinks there's something worth sharing with children then the government should provide a public internet for kids and THATS the site that will ask for a login known to belong to a kid. We already do public schooling with public funding and we do not let rando adults sit in classrooms with kids and they get a school id. Boot <18's off the public internet AT THE SOURCE when internet connectivity is PURCHASED / CONTRACTED FOR with a valid adult id / proof of age, but allow them vpn access into whatever the government thinks the child should have access to, like the schools page, I would say online encyclopedias or wikipedia type things but I'm not sure if government wants children to read about the variety of so many different things on this planet we're sorta trapped on and lets face it, restricting communications of the kids to points outside the control of parents is exactly what the government is complaining about, the government does not want kids to have free access to information.
Think of a phone or tablet that can only access the network through either a proxy or vpn but otherwise locked down. It certainly seems like it doesn't require much programming, heck have trump vibe code it for all I care.
I mean yeah, parents could just teach their kids the tough stuff because thats how it used to work anyways, well that and the libraries and schools but those can be pruned of bad books and bad teachers at the request of government anyways right? The kids could also be interviewed periodically by government to inventory what topics they have discussed with their parents to weed out the 't' or 'g' words.
I mean yeah I don't see a place for facebook in that intranet but isn't that sort of the point, we all know big social media will be incentivised to promote engagement with less regard for safety, so why do kids need facebook anyways? The instagrams and ticktalks are worse although maybe government should make a child friendly ticktalk type school social network, call it trumps school for kids for all I care, folks in power right now and a significant part of the US believe that trump knows whats good for kids right?
I mean obviously the libraries have to be REALLY REALLY cleaned up but thats just a detail. But why are parents forcing internet wierdos onto their kids with these smartphones / porno studios in their pockets? What do they think chester the molester on ticktalk is gonna have the kid upload their id? even if he does, do we really want that? c'mon man