Because the internet is far more optimized at capturing your attention and encouraging terrible behavior (purchases, viruses, scams, etc.)

When you were younger the scariest thing was joining an AOL chat room on a 56k modem. Now you can mind rot yourself on YouTube shorts with the next video loading in milliseconds while being fed content full of sports gambling ads.

To act like the internet doesn’t have significantly sharper edges and dangerous loops which affect children is ignoring the reality around you. The downvotes are not because in principle folks disagree, it’s that the situation is different.

i don't think the situation was that different. You could mind rot yourself on shfifty-five and all sorts of terrible content. People are just making an educated decision that that's not what they want for their kids. Parenting, how bout it.