That opinion still stands. But I believe that we should regulate children's access to the internet, and not the internet's access to children. As the prior does not affect adults and their free, open and private internet, while the latter absolutely does.
I believe that there should be a standard, open framework for parental control at the OS level, where parents can see a timeline of actions, and need to whitelist every new action (any new content or contact within any app). The regulation should be that children are only allowed to use such devices. Social media would then be limited to the parent-approved circles only. A minor's TikTok homepage would likely be limited to IRL friends plus some parent-approved creators, and that's exactly how it should be.
Why do you need regulation for any of that? Devices with parental controls exist already. Special browsers with parental controls exist, just for kids. Do you think Jane Smith, L3 civil servant, will do a great job of taking over product management for the entire software industry despite having a BA in English Lit and having never heard of JIRA?
There's no need for any regulations here and never was. It was always a power grab by governments and now the people who trusted the state are making surprised pikachu faces. "We didn't mean like this", they cry, whilst studiously ignoring all the people who predicted exactly this outcome.
Because most parents are oblivious to the danger, and are not taking action on their own. Meanwhile the unrestricted internet can be just as dangerous to a child's development as alcohol or drugs, if not more.
The regulation should just specify a few standards that parental controls must meet, such as the standard that every new action in any app must first be approved by a parent, and it should regulate that minors may not use or have possession of unrestricted internet devices. The actual development of that technology, and the frameworks to integrate apps with them, should definitely be up to private companies and open-source projects.
Yeah or maybe most parents don't care because they think you're wrong? Many people with young kids now grew up with the internet as kids themselves. They remember their parents going through the exact same moral panic about the internet in the mid 90s, they remember using it anyway with no restrictions whatsoever ... and they remember they grew up just fine.
When I was a kid I was logging in every night, talking to random strangers online, I even met up with a few as the years passed. Everything was fine. If you were right that it's as bad for a child's development as drink and drugs I should have ended up a burned out husk. Not only did I not, none of my friends did either and they all also had unrestricted access to the internet.
Regulations aren't the answer. They hardly ever are. Half of HN's content these days is just people being faced with the negative consequences of regulations they themselves supported and then doing a No True Socialistman meme: "good regulations haven't been tried yet!"
We can likely agree on a lot. Overregulation is bad, I don't want the government or large corporate monopolies to have more control. I also grew up with the internet and am very familiar with it, much more so than the average person. That's exactly why I'm arguing for simple regulation which gives more control and visibility to parents, and parents alone.
For example: Teenagers playing Counter Strike is most often fine. Teenagers accessing Counter Strike skin gambling websites is not. I'd say that almost all parents would agree with that, yet it still constantly happens because parents have no visibility, no way of preventing it, and most likely do not even know that their son or daughter may be lured into gambling by playing the game.
An easy solution is to limit their access to the device. If they can only use the devices in your living room when you are sitting next to them you keep full control.
Admitedly at some point they are reaching teenage years and they should have a right to privacy so even having access to a timeline of actions seems like a no go to me. The same way they can wander off in the street on their own, write private letters to people or have private calls with friends.
Definitely. I remember the era of the living room desktop PC, and that was a pretty easy and effective solution. But the primary benefit of parents giving smartphones to their kids these days is the ability to stay in contact while away from each other.
For teenagers, yeah I agree that message content and such should not be shared with the parent. The level of detail in the timeline should be configurable at the discretion of the parent. At the same time, it's also probably the most important period to shield them from harmful online content.
Kids don't really need a personal smartphone until they reach at least secondary school which put them quickly unto the early teens years.
During a transition period between 11 and 13 I applied a simple solution: smartphone stay in a drawer at home unless some communication with people is important for school work, parental control disallowed install of apps, data plan was limited to the bare minimum.
My eldest daughter is nearing 15 and now parental control has been off for a year. I can see she is not installing every dumb app possible she has a bit more liberty but screen hours is still caped and the smartphone stays out of the bedroom during the night. This is probably a rule that will sty for a while as she is sharing her bedroom with her smaller sister.
Again, rules will gradually relax with time. Key is to allows them to reach autonomy. Being divorced with the shared custody, with different rules in each household made it a bit more complicated, for example my EX didn't wanted to follow my rule of no screen time during at least a 2h time window every day where all devices are off or in a drawer, including for adults living in the household. So far I think she and her sister understand that it is OK feeling frustrated/limited and not being considered cool at school. Also that being cool at their age only gets you so far and most popular kids in my teenage years where those that ended up the worse at adulthood: early pregnancy, early addiction issues, most didn't get so far into studies and didn't have the luxury to be in a situation where they can steer their own path professionally, at least not at the extent I could. Having the example of 2 different houses, with their own mother having her own struggles help as well as sad as it can be.
Honestly sounds like you handled it very well. Starting with strong parental controls, then gradually decreasing it as they become more mature and understanding of the dangers is definitely the best way to provide online safety, without being overly restrictive or invasive. The important part being that they can learn what's normal from the real world before going into the digital world.
I just wish that this was the standard for every child. So many of them are handed completely unrestricted tablets and smartphones from a very young age these days.
I believe that there should be a standard, open framework for parental control at the OS level, where parents can see a timeline of actions, and need to whitelist every new action (any new content or contact within any app). The regulation should be that children are only allowed to use such devices. Social media would then be limited to the parent-approved circles only. A minor's TikTok homepage would likely be limited to IRL friends plus some parent-approved creators, and that's exactly how it should be.