Earlier quoted context omitted.
Back in the early 2000s we didn't have people actively recruiting young frustrated men into incel and far-right terrorist groups though. We didn't have people thinking it was cool and edgy to make jokes about gassing Jews. Hell even the pedo/grooming problem wasn't much of a thing. Yes there was porn and vile gore floating around and you had to take care to not fall victim to dialers changing your dial-up information…
Maybe not in the "early 2000s", but you'd have to be a child of the 90s , not the "2000s", to have missed it, because all of that was around by the second half of the decade (with perhaps the exception of the far-right recruitment, which didn't fully hit its stride until the early 2010s). It's been out there since the beginning; the problem is not the access to it, it's relationship with the internet. Back in the day…
I totally agree. When the reports of how school-issued Chromebooks will monitor texts from any phone plugged into them came out last week, I was tweeting about how we need to do more to teach kids opsec and digital safety/rights. I got some pushback from people who either think that it’s common sense stuff (it isn’t) or that the solution is to legislate something, but I live in reality and reality, as you say, means fhaf kids are smarter and more motivated and will find ways around things.
We need to teach them to protect themselves from prying eyes and how to circumvent the systems their own way.
We also need to stop holding people hostage to stuff they said/did on the internet as literal children, but that’s a separate issue.