Controlling what children do online is a solved problem: Parenting and parental control applications.
Spoken as someone who probably hasn't used iOS/Mac parental controls. It is a hot buggy mess that randomly blocks whitelisted applications as well. We use it, but it is a constant pain. Also a lot of applications only work half, e.g., TV apps blocking off all content rather than only content that is not age-appropriate.
By the way, we were initially firm believers of not using parental controls at all, by limiting time and teaching kids about how to use devices in a healthy way. But a lot of apps (e.g. Roblox, YouTube Shorts) are made to be as addictive as crack, making it very hard for a still not fully developed brain to deal with it.
That said, I absolutely dislike the current lobby for age verification because the goal of Meta et al. seems to be to be to absolve themselves of any responsibility by moving verification to devices and to put up regulatory walls to make it more difficult for potential competitors to enter the market. It is regulatory capture.
The addiction economy is hard to deal with for anyone - regardless of age. So, I agree this is definitely not a solved problem, but from what I see the only viable way forward is actually to do pretty drastic things like not own a smartphone.
You can remove most objectionable elements with uBlock filters. Also dedicated browser extensions exist to deal with the biggest offenders.
If you're willing to use alternatives and do without the services entirely then simply DNS blocking a handful of big names on your LAN immediately resolves the majority of the issue.
Precisely, and those that claim to be immune are usually the most susceptible.
If these laws pass you could also enable parental controls for your own account.
Why are you giving your children access to any devices, online services, video games, social media?
Seriously. There are mountains of evidence all of this is harmful to developing brains.
Access to educational material, communicating with friends and family, fun.
There huge benefits to being able to look things up, download books, talk to friends and family even if they live on another continent, playing chess or D & D online.
I think social media is net harmful (to adults too) but devices, games etc. are not bad per se.
Then you also take on the risk that brings for your childrens health and well-being. Its not a problem for the government to solve for you.
I agree. I know my kids and can judge what is right for them better than rigid age rules. My point is that there are benefits to balance against the harms.
Why do people let tweens wander a mall unattended when there are things like brewery/restaurants inside? Because it's illegal to serve them alcohol and as a social convention you know they won't.
Society works a lot better when we make the few bad actors that are out to exploit children stop, and instead expect everyone to look out for them/generally behave in prosocial ways. Things stop working when we say "why wouldn't you assume everyone around you is out to harm your kids and act accordingly?"
We can just say "actually you're not allowed to put gambling in a game targeting 7 year olds".
Sounds like you need a law to regulate parental controls.....
This is as intended.
It’s not a parental controls / software problem. It’s a parents showing self control / parenting and monitoring their children in person thing.
How many kids do you have? What software do you use for this continuous monitoring? How do you balance spending 18 hours a day continuously monitoring your children, with also working full-time and being a human yourself? Please elaborate on your personal system because I think you could help out a lot of people.
I am strongly against this age verification, I think this is an absolutely, catastrophically terrible idea. However, I'm also a parent who has been in the trenches. This is a damn hard problem, and we will lose our access to computing and a relatively free internet if we just sit back and say that it's on parents and parents are stupid if they don't know how to solve this problem.
having children is a choice. Therefore, the difficulty of that choice is not really a factor in our lawmaking nor should it be.
Is it, though? The trajectory right now is to remove the choice of parenthood. If some people in power have their way, it will not only be illegal to end a pregnancy, it will also be illegal to prevent it to start with. If a male and female have sex (and I doubt a sufficient number of people will give up having hetero sex), the result will often be a child, and there will be no safe, legal choice in the matter.
I certainly want people to have easy access to contraception and abortion. However, I also think that it's still a choice. I never said it was a good one (I agree, you'd be hard pressed to stop folks from having sex)
If we make laws that make it impractical to have children, I'm sure this will have no consequences for the country's future.
no one said anything about making laws making it more difficult to have children - and laws like age requirements don't make it easier, either
societally having children is not a choice
I have 2 kids. I choose to limit when they have access to electronics and monitor when they do.
No software is going to stop kids with constant access to electronics, kids are resourceful.
It's a choice, there's no getting around that.
Do you genuinely not remember being a child?
tbf, when most of those posting here were children, access to smartphones/tablets with unrestricted internet connection wasn't a problem
but i do remember my parents actually raising me pretty hands-on, taking care of me not watching stuff I shouldn't be watching which of course existed and was easily available
Access to smartphones/tablets with unrestricted internet connection is only a problem today when parents give their children access to smartphones/tablets with unrestricted internet connections.
Cell phones and tablets don't spontaneously appear whenever a child wants one. Parents have the ability to hand devices over to children when they have time to watch them while they use it and remove those devices from them when they don't.
i 100% agree with you, but we cannot make the argument that the conditions were remotely comparable decades ago
they really weren't
Yes.
So you want all parents to be helicopter parents?
You don't have to helicopter if they don't have electronics 24/7.
It's an actual choice:
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/11/fashion/steve-jobs-apple-...
Don't buy your kid a cell phone/tablet and tell them to go play outside. simple as.
no need to use parental controls if you simply don't get the child the device.