What’s the alternative? How do you solve the problem of not allowing children into online spaces where they shouldn’t be allowed in?

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Tade0 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Parents who wish to have both the child and themselves remain sane are already watching over the way their offspring uses the internet.

Truth be told the worst kind of content is nominally child friendly - just incredibly addictive and overstimulating. We're all so preoccupied with preventing our children from looking at gore or porn or even meeting predators online that we forget that those who stand to make money on addictive content will pull every lever necessary.

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philipallstar 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

We should assign one or two adults to children who provide for them, and prevent various dangers, including online ones, from reaching them. It sounds like a lot of effort, but it is also the most important task on the planet.

	▲	harshreality an hour ago \| parent [-]
		A generation of kids have grown up with just such assigned adults, who overwhelmingly did not apply sufficient oversight to the kids' use of social media. In large part that's because, if they'd done so, the kids would've been socially isolated from their peers, at least the most normal ones with the most normal parents, which are the kinds of friends most other normal parents want their kids to have. It's a collective action problem, except instead of "I can be better off if I ignore what I know is best for society", it's "if I ignore what I know is best for my kids psychologically, they will still have friends, and social media brainrot is a lesser evil than socially isolating my kid from all the normal kids at school." And also, giving kids social media interaction devices is a convenient form of babysitting. It reduces up-front effort of parenting.

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big85 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

The existing paradigm is on-device parental controls. It's worked for the past 30 years, and the alternative is forcing everyone to show government ID to use websites.