> No but we heavily regulate schools and the behaviour of people at them. Which is more akin to what we are doing with these laws rather than just saying it's the parents fault their child is groomed or exposed to adult content without their consent.

This is not how I see it. These laws are more like what I suggested. The equivalent of that regulation in the case of the Internet would be simply not allowing whatever behavior you disagree with from social media companies and the like.

> It means more children are victims of sexual abuse than before, thanks to the wonders of the Internet.

Can you link some source on this?

> My entire point here is that clearly parents are not equipped to police their own children's use of the Internet 24x7

Neither can they "police" their child's life 24/7. Nor do have to to prevent their kids from falling into various holes out there. Take, for example, drugs and alcohol. We've, more or less, arrived at a reasonable system for keeping these out of the hands of children (most of the time) - but we also accept that, due to this system not being 100% fool-proof (and indeed that such a system could not possibly exist), sometimes kids are going to get access to drugs and alcohol. And yet, most parents (at least, that I know) would agree that that doesn't mean your kid is going to turn out to be an addict or whatnot.

My point is, that with sane regulation - that doesn't inherently erode privacy for everyone all over the world, and gives even more control to (Western) governments and companies - and parents doing their jobs, we can minimize the harm done by social media. We can't eliminate it entirely, but that's the price we pay.

(I question how much actual harm is done by social media, but that's another discussion)