Comment by alt227
3 days ago
> So pass laws and enact regulations that require them to be made strong.
No, please dont. More regulation is not the answer. Any more restriction which is imposed on kids becomes the thing they focus on getting around.
Just dont buy your kids phones until they are older, and send them outside to play. Thats all the parental restriction you need on phones.
> No, please dont.
Why not? If the parental controls in all the mainstream OSs are effective, difficult to bypass, and don't involve any communications with third-parties beyond communicating the set of prohibited topics/actions/whatever, what's left for busybodies to complain about?
NOTE: I'm not calling you a busybody. I'm calling the people who push for these "age verification" laws with the genuine belief that they're for protecting minors who lack the ability to handle the dangers of the world busybodies.
I'm not convinced this is the correct move, if only because anything short of draconian control is going to be lossy, and draconian control has catastrophic failure modes for people who are naive to the things you're trying to help them not be overwhelmed by (see: abstinence-only sex ed).
There's no one-size-fits-all pitch, but my starting point would probably be time limits per day on a smart device, killing all notifications on it, and telling them that these things are because it has bad consequences if they don't have limits, so if you catch them getting around the limits, the privileges of such things will be temporarily or permanently removed.
I don't love it, but unless someone comes up with a wonder drug to dampen addictive effects of things in humans and we're all somehow convinced this is a great idea to give to everyone, all you can do is avoid the parts that are a race to the bottom of gamified attention and focus, until they're old enough that they hopefully have an informed opinion and are the ones making the choice to drink the poison chalice or not.