The case for banning children from social media

Does your company produce ads for the company that produces Proprietary Toy and get money if they sell more products? Does your company supply batteries for Battery Operated Proprietary Toy? Does your store sell either Proprietary Toy?

And so on.

People love to say that the war on drugs didn't work, but I for one haven't consumed illegal drugs even though I have been curious at times. Since I haven't spent time with people who regularly break the law I have not been introduced to any element where I could have had access to illegal drugs. So war on drugs has worked at least on me and I live under to illusion that I am somehow unique.

Yes. Of course addicts will addict. If we ban social medias tomorrow some people will still use them or build new ones, but putting any kind of barrier for entry does have an effect. This is why we complain when something is opt-out instead of opt-in since people do the default thing and if default thing is that social medias are illegal then that will deter many if not even most people from using them.

That said, I've been contending with this situation having a 14 year old of my own at this point. The reality is, at that time, swatting was not a thing. Pictures on the Internet were like, something a minority of people had, because it involved taking a film picture and scanning it in (assuming you had access to a scanner). Video? Forget it.

Honestly I wouldn't have blamed my own parents for being more restrictive with me had they known how to, but the tech went entirely over their head. Seeing how far it's come in that time and just how much more damage can be VERY rapidly done, particularly with the more developed blackmail scams, or just kids making poor choices that result in some very real criminal charges, have me pretty okay with taking a much heavier hand on the matter than was taken with myself.

I suppose I'd liken it to "free range children" in farmland, vs. free range children in a gangland ghetto. While we can certainly lament the lack of a good environment for kids to run free, the alternative is an unsafe environment. Perhaps platforms can be made to bring back a corralled in space that would be sensible, but allowing them loose on what the modern Internet has turned into would be frankly irresponsible.

That all said, there's only so much we can do at the legislative level. Kids are already not allowed on many sites they get onto (now, just the same as back then). What I find most necessary as a parent is the ability to lock down devices so that I can allow my child access to specific resources without being forced into allowing access to others. iPhones are frankly AWFUL at this -- I'm happy to report my experience on Android has been much smoother, and Windows is quite a bit better than my initial expectations as well (though router-level configuration is handy for home devices as well). IF we must use the heavy hand of government to address the matter, requiring the availability of usable, effective parental control measures that engage in app-level (if not hardware level in the case of cameras) whitelisting would be where I think we'd have the most bang for our buck without too much in the way of collateral damage. Better still would be some market pressure, but unfortunately, most parents I talk to seem to just feel entirely helpless and don't even know what to look for, and just assume there's no choice but to let their kids get raised by the Internet.

If you're new to raising kids in this era, do yourself and your kid a favor -- familiarize yourself with tools available, and demand platforms that give you the ability to effectively administrate your devices.