No, we've always had effective societal gatekeeping on what kids can access.

Cigarettes, liquor, porn, R-rated movies, all had general barriers to access for kids in the pre-internet world. Parents could rely on most store clerks not selling alcohol, tobacco, or adult magazines to a child. Parents did not have to hover over everything their child did. Was it perfect, of course not, but it worked fairly well and didn't require constant monitoring. You could let your kids go to the mall and be fairly sure that they would not be let in to an R-rated movie. They could ride their bikes to a convenience store and the worst thing they could buy was candy.

With online accounts and apps, everything needs review and permission. Every. Single. Thing. That is the main complaint in TFA. He wants a single device level setting so that he doesn't have to constantly vet everything.

This is precisely why many parents support age verification laws for social media and adult sites. Tech companies could have solved this on their terms but they just punted it to "parents" with an insane level of complexity, and the parents don't like it.

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eikenberry 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> No, we've always had effective societal gatekeeping on what kids can access.

Isn't there still a very simple one, hardware access. If the child doesn't have a smart phone of their own or computer in their bedroom then they cannot use them to get online unsupervised. This is about as simple on/off as you can get and very easy to moderate.

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SoftTalker 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In my analogy that would be like forbidding your child from having a bike because they might go somewhere that would sell them beer, rather than simply a general, mostly-reliable prohibition on selling beer to kids.

Or, if you do let them have a bike, it requires you to follow them around everywhere to be sure they don't go to a liquor store.

It's a completely over the top level of control. Yes it would work but also do as much harm as good.

	▲	eikenberry 31 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The bike analogy depends a lot on where you live. There are places where you would not let your kids ride anywhere they wanted without supervision and there are places where the opposite is true. The internet is one "place" and you'd need to adapt your bike analogy to that place.

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Yossarrian22 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Until the school assigns online homework, homework that takes 3 hours a night

	▲	eikenberry an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I didn't say no computer/internet access. They could do their homework on a computer in a common room.

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soperj 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

and then they reset the settings regularly and you have to redo it.