This is the way! It is frightening how eagerly parents want to give up freedom for everyone, in return for not having to care about their offspring and the illusion of 100% safety.
I think the authoritarian trend accelerated during corona. Our western political nobility got a real taste for power, and they have not been able to free themselves from that afrodisiac ever since. Therefore chat control, 1, 2, 3, and when that didn't go as planned... lo and behold... age verification, and that of course needs control over vpn, and encryption, and there we go... chat control slipped in through the back door.
Soon we can no longer criticize china if this keeps up.
Did you ever heard a parent asking for this in the real world? Parents who care either don't give smartphones, or dumbed-down ones that they can control.
Asking for less tech at school is not an authoritarian move, but rather a point of view about how schools should work.
If you asked me, I think that parents should throw away their TVs and minimize screen time at home, both for them and the kids. However I won't ask this to be enforced by the State - if anything, it will make my kids more competitive against the cartoons-infused ones of the other parents.
I do not think parents are the one pushing these controls. They are busy raising the kids.
I think parents are raising the alarm about nefarious social media practices (ie recommendation algorithms that actively do harm) and those services are in turn pushing these controls in order to deflect responsibility away from themselves.
There’s an alternate view that parents are very much in support of centralized policy. When policy is left up to individual families — little Johnny X has an iPhone but little Timmy Y doesn’t — the creep towards everyone having a phone begins. When, instead, the school board bans phones it’s much easier for the conservative majority of parents to hold the line.
Banning phones at school has nothing to do with freedom to use phones. You are not restrained in your freedom because using you smartphone while driving is forbidden.
Kids go to school to learn, not to watch modern cable shopping network (aka Tiktok/Instagram).
I'm more fine with schools banning frivolous use of tech devices on school grounds during school hours.
> It is frightening how eagerly parents want to give up freedom for everyone,
It's not like parents have much of a choice. When you gotta work 2 jobs to barely make rent and groceries, you need some sort of "safe space" to pawn your children off to.
Just my opinion but…
I’m all for helping people in the situations that aren’t of their own creation, so using the excuse “what are they supposed to do” doesn’t really fit for me? The first option is to use a condom if they are in a bad financial situation. It’s been amazing how every time I’ve used one, I haven’t had a child.
When did we stop making people responsible for their choices? I’m not against assistance, I’m against the idea that it is my responsibility to give up rights and freedoms because <insert person> made poor personal choices and now society is once again a surrogate to yet another child of irresponsible parents. If you aren’t able to parent, don’t have children. Don’t care what your situation is that rule stays the same.
And of course, someone will jump in with “but maybe” and “what if the situation changed”. Again…I’m not against helping parents who fall on hard times to get back on their feet — society SHOULD be there to help with assistance and programs, even help with getting your kids watched. And all of that exists. I’m against expecting every individual of society to not only help bear the costs, fund and administrate these programs, provide countless charities, etc…
But now the suggestions is also somehow that we are required to be the surrogate parent to every one of their offspring by giving up our rights to create an entire society of a padded playground?
No, I think that’s the line for me.
Parents can give up all their own rights they want and live in their padded kingdoms, but that ends at your doorstep when you walk out to the space you share with every other person…including digitally. You can build the physical and virtual walls around your padded kingdom as high and thick as you want to keep your children shielded from the world.
>The first option is to use a condom if they are in a bad financial situation. It’s been amazing how every time I’ve used one, I haven’t had a child.
That's what they've been doing in unprecedented numbers. Which via demographic collapse is going to cause an even worse crisis, economic, social, political, and more, further down the line.
Good. If people can’t afford their own livelihood, then they probably shouldn’t have them. If they can and choose not to, arguments could be made about why someone would rather they make a different decision. But if “we need poor children in a welfare system or I can’t live my comfortable life” is what someone would think is the answer, there is something desperately wrong with the people who would think it.
It's also why some political factions are trying to ban condoms. Often the same factions that are trying to ban VPNs.
Yeah, I'm sure Kier Starmer is pro-natalist...
"Being able to parent" is something you don't know about before you have your first child, and each child increases exponentially the difficulty. You can manage ok the first one and be overwhelmed when the second one is born.
Also not everyone is a trust fund kid that works at a FAANG: people get sick, lose jobs, divorce, change homes, and so on.
I'm really happy that you found the perfect antifragile optimum in your life, but this kind of "vae victis" thinking will only make parents more miserable and decrease birth rates.
love that not having kids when you can’t actually afford your own existence at that time is a hot take that no one could know in advance that they shouldn’t do. Also love that I SPECIFICALLY called out your argument, almost like you couldn’t even finish reading before needing to get in your super well thought response. That’s sarcasm, figured I’d make sure it was clear since the reading thing is up in the air.
That's fussing around with symptoms. The real cure would be to remove the reasons parents don't have time for their children anymore.
> how eagerly parents want to give up freedom for everyone
...is there evidence that it's parents who are the constituency you describe?
> It is frightening how eagerly parents want to give up
... every aspect of parenting.