I do have kids and this is really the only way, the path of least access needed. The parental controls built into most of the services are limited and/or ineffective. Its most of the reason I have my own media server. The kids have Linux computers with no browsers installed.
The trickiest thing is that most other parents dont seem to do much of this, so the kids think we are a bit strange compared to everyone else.
Mines the same, its a lot of paper per kid. I never see a paper delivery truck though…
Even the parents that have degrees and jobs in tech have trouble keeping ahead of all this stuff, because there is far more money and manpower put behind making these products as abusive as possible. Sure, I’d like everyone to be as knowledgeable as us on the subject, but that’s not practical. Social signaling has a place for broader society even if it ends up hitting people it won’t affect.
Parents are only one side of the equation, with the other being the social media companies themselves. These laws make it so they have to stop offering their services to children, just like I would expect laws to prevent a corner store from selling tobacco or alcohol to minors.
If we actually cared about society in general, we would behave differently. This is a result of the fuck-you-get-mine mentality that thrives in America. There are plenty of people here that don’t care about their neighbors, at all.
You only see outrage come from people affected firsthand, because everyone else thinks they are too smart/rich/successful to possibly fall victim to the same systems as the stupid/poor/lazy people.
You bring up a great point about focusing on youtube and letting roblox slide right by. Plenty of parents made that mistake, but the truth is that almost no online platform is safe for children to meet strangers in.
I’m not sure what the best way to restrict access to adults only is though, but it does seem the current attempt is the best we’ve come up with so far. Its incredibly invasive, and I simply won’t use products that require age verification, so I’m hoping this leads to a better solution. Perhaps another country will figure out an idea and we can copy it.
If parents dont care or approve of their kids using social media then the kids will keep doing it. Its still important that the top officials in government are warning adults that its not safe for children there, because some people dont know or won’t trust anyone else.
The problem was thinking it was okay for kids to be on social media, and this fixes that. People on here keep saying the problem being fixed is how to prevent every child from getting on social media, but thats not what’s happening.
This also allows us as a society to punish parents who break these laws or allow their children too. We have to be able to signal to each other in society when something is harmful, whether it affects autonomy or not.
The answer is convincing people that the major social media services available now are bad for everyone regardless of age. For some reason this type of understanding tends to start with the most vulnerable people affected, until we finally admit its bad for everyone. These laws only punish those who use social media and those who provide it as a service, which should reduce social media use in general to a degree, so I’m for it.
Ideally for me, social media wouldn’t exist in the way it does today. If we did have it at all, it would be extremely localized as a means to connect neighbors to one another. Something that would benefit society in some way.