My only gripe here is the idea of "perhaps hold the parents culpable." I'm not opposed to the idea, but what sucks is we are ultimately all paying the cost of it going wrong. The idea that we can shunt that away to a few irresponsible people is just demonstrably not the case.

Worse, it leads to situations where society seems to want to flat out be kid free in many ways. With families reportedly afraid to let their kids walk to and from school unsupervised.

I don't know an answer, mind. So this is where I have a gripe with no real answer. :(

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Gormo 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

The presumption that it's not a matter of the parents' prerogative whether to decide whether the child's access should be restricted or not -- and treating the parents as accountable to someone else's standards of what is or is not appropriate for their own children -- is itself objectionable.

What content is appropriate for children is properly up to their parents themselves, not to the government or to some nebulous concept of "society". If parent's choose not to set such a flag on their children's devices, then that means that they're choosing to allow their children to access content without restriction, and that's what defines what is OK for their children to access.

	▲	brewtide a day ago \| parent [-]
		The role of parent has been being diminished by society every year that goes by. I frequently remind my local school system of their role in my children's lives are and what my role in their lives are. They seem to need very frequent reminders. Thank you for your well written take.

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awesome_dude 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Add to that, clearly those "bad parents" are the result of bad parenting in the first place, so really it's the grand parents that are to blame...

Wait, those grand parents also had bad models to work with, so really it's the great grandparents that were to blame...

No, wait, it was the society that they grew up in that encouraged poor behaviour toward them, and forced them to react by taking on toxic behaviours. We all should pay because we all actively contribute to the world around us, and that includes being silent when we see bad things happening.

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no_wizard 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

>Worse, it leads to situations where society seems to want to flat out be kid free in many ways. With families reportedly afraid to let their kids walk to and from school unsupervised.

I'm not seeing the correlation / causation here.

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saltcured 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Not sure, but I think the earlier post is implying a (false) dichotomy between:

A. "Your kid is not my problem"

B. "Your kid is everyone's problem"

	▲	taeric 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Less the false dichotomy, and more the stickiness of each of those options. To your point (I think), those aren't the only options available, but people do seem to be attracted quite heavily to them.

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taeric 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I was referencing the towns that have called the cops because there were some unsupervised kids in a park. I comfort myself by saying this isn't nearly as common as the fear mongers online would have you think. That there are cases it happens still worries me.

Note that I'm not even necessarily worried about cops getting called. Quite the contrary, I am fine with the idea of cops having a more constant presence around parks and such. I do worry about people that get up in arms about how things are too unsafe for kids to be let outside. If that is the case, what can we do to make it safe?