I don't mean to sound like the stereotypical "I did X and turned out fine" but...

I grew up with an internet access on my computer in my room without anybody watching over my back and without any restrictions and nothing bad really happened. Meanwhile these days some people around me with children around the 10-15 range seem think their children cannot be trusted and restrictions are absolutely essential.

Has the internet really changed that much in the last decade or two? Or are people and media just talking about the dangers more?

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Also, what happens to these kids when they reach adulthood and the guard rails come off?

Has anybody tried an alternative like teaching children about the actual dangers, how to recognize manipulation, etc? I have a feeling many people (including children) don't really learn unless they get hurt so the best we can do it making sure they do get hurt but only a little.

E.g. let them get scammed in a game instead of real life. Or pretend to be a stranger and try to befriend them, seeing if they fall for it?

I think the difference is that the parents of today are _you_. _They_ grew up with unrestricted internet access, because their parents didn't.

I think that pornography is poison and my parents didn't know that I had access to it. "Not my kid!", they said. But my generation says, "It's every. single. kid."

> Has anybody tried an alternative like teaching children about the actual dangers, how to recognize manipulation, etc?

Another poison is alcohol. Some people think that letting their kids access alcohol in their house is reasonable. I think it is better to wait until your brain is more developed before trying alcohol. First experiences with alcohol at a later age tends to enable people to have a less worse relationship with alcohol.

The internet has changed incredibly in the last two decades, and has almost nothing in common with the internet of two decades ago. Predators of all varieties are everywhere; many of them are billion-dollar companies. Scams are everywhere.

Getting scammed in RuneScape is probably a good learning experience, but is RuneScape still the only game that's like the old experience of RuneScape? That and Minecraft I suppose, but you can't really filter out servers in Minecraft.