A point I don’t often see made is: the argument that “the parents need to parent” is unintentionally classist.

Wealthier people who can afford to have one parent stay home or have babysitters or nannies who will actually supervise the kid can do a much better job monitoring and redirecting than when both parents work long hours and have no money.

So poorer kids are going to spend more time scrolling brain rot, which may lead to worse academic performance and concentration problems. They’re also more likely to get sucked into any number of garbage social media propagated cults, wacko ideologies, and dumb fads.

It also ignores social pressure entirely. If everyone in your class is on some social network and your parents parent and you aren't then you are socially outcast from a major part of your peer socialisation.

If only 50% of parents enforce the rules suddenly half your class isn't there and it doesn't become such a big deal to be missing out and it's less appealing for the kids who are allowed still.

I'd prefer it to be voluntarily organised like https://www.waituntil8th.org/ but even a bad solution is going to have a major improvement on society even if social media is less private due to the ID issue. It's not like you don't share everything with these companies anyhow. I'm pretty confident that if you are a regular user of any large social network today they could identify you 100% of the time already even without your ID.

There are plenty of tech controls that exist for children's personal technological devices that do not require the state to intervene.

I'll take that over everyone being forced to accept the same, standardized, government-mandated "cults, wacko ideologies, and dumb fads", thanks!

Government makes everyone poorer through their terrible policies -> parents need to work more to stay above water -> nanny state must grow to take care of kids -> terrible government policies entrench. Nope, don't want it