Better idea: instead of bending the entire internet to "protect the children", how about we just ban minors from the internet completely? It was never built for kids, its never been kid friendly to begin with. Minors cannot buy guns or vote, not get married, nor enter into contracts, yet tech companies get a free pass to engage with minors. Why? I think the the tech companies know exacty what minors do on their systems, they allow it and profit from it. Exploiting minors and bad parents. So instead of trying to change the whole internet, how about we keep the people who are responsible for the minors accountable: the parents.

If I start any kind of company, I cannot just invent new rules for society via ToS; rather the society makes the laws. If we just make a simple law that states minors are not allowed to access the web and/or access any user generated content (including chat), it won't need to be enforced by every site/app owner, it would be up to the parents.

The same way schools cannot decide certain things for your children (even though they regularly over reach...).

We need better parenting. How about some mandatory parenting classes/licenses for new parents? Silly right? Well its just as silly as trying to police the entire internet. Ban the kids from internet and the problem will be 95% solved.

Kids are future growth potential. Once they get hooked at a young age, it’s very hard to get unhooked. They’ll expect everything to be on-demand, only a click away. Video, music, entertainment, social connection, food, etc.

It’s a big reason why tech stocks are still high IMO. It’s where today’s kids will spend their time on when they become old enough to spend their own money.

I suspect this would also improve discourse on social media. Who knows how many witch hunts and bad faith arguments originate from precocious teenagers trying to sound smart.

> Better idea: instead of bending the entire internet to "protect the children", how about we just ban minors from the internet completely?

"Think of the children" laws are a useful pretext for authoritarianism.

It's really that simple. It's the whole reason why the destructive thing is done, instead of anything that might actually protect children.

Trying to steelman their arguments and come up with alternatives that aren't as restrictive or do a better job of protecting children is falling for the okie-doke.

I don't see that this is solving the problem. If there is a new law, it still needs to be enforced, so companies still need to have the same checks on identity to make sure they are compliant.

I agree that it should be the responsibility of parents, but if you leave good and bad parenting to the parents only I think we would live in a different world.

We have a framework: COPPA. Just raise the age to 16 or 18, instead of 13.

It would be a generational mistake to rob kids of all of human history and knowledge.

Maybe a controversial take, but why do we even care about kids on the internet to even do anything about it? Sure, child predators exist, but other than that what exactly are we defending children from? It's not like endless doomscrolling is unique to children, I see plenty of adults that do that even worse than my 10 year old nephews do.

I practically grew up on the internet and unsavory sites like 4chan, liveleak and omegle, and the only negative consequence for me these days is that I have to do daily standups due to getting a job in tech from my interest in computers.

Children are a lot less fragile and are a lot more resourceful than people give them credit for, and this infantilization to "protect" them where we have to affect the entire world is maddening to me.