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It is because children are too easily influenced that they need access to the unrestricted internet. To pick what is perhaps a trite example at this point - yet
by geofft 5y ago
It is because children are too easily influenced that they need access to the unrestricted internet. To pick what is perhaps a trite example at this point - yet very real - a child experiencing same-sex attraction can be easily influenced by their parents, who they spend most of their lives with, to believe that such a thing is unnatural and best off suppressed. Access to the internet cam show them that there is a very large community of people who disagree with that viewpoint.
Or, more broadly, consider how historically common it is to choose the same profession as a parent. Access to the unrestricted internet can let you discover fields that may not have even existed when your parents were in college and even try them out (see also https://xkcd.com/519/ https://xkcd.com/519/).
If we had stronger cultural norms of collectively raising children in the village (the whole village, not just a church of specific beliefs and traditions that attracts the like-minded), this argument wouldn't be as strong, but we don't.
- cardanome 5y agoThose are fair points and I do not necessarily disagree. I feel some of them should be, ideally, handled by the school though, no? For example sex education is part of the curriculum of my country and teaches without judgement about the different forms of sexuality and how to safely engage in sexual activities. I know some states in the US teach "abstinence only" which I would not call education but a crime against those children. The internet can only be a band aid here. Same with finding a profession. That is why schools teach children all the subjects and offer additional activities so they can find out what they like.
- ReactiveJelly 5y agoMaybe we can agree on this: - Unrestricted access to 4chan and Fortnite is net bad - Unrestricted access to Wikipedia is net good
- puppet-master 5y agoUnhindered access to the Internet for children means unlimited access by advertisers, politicians and advocacy groups to push literally whatever they want into the child's head, regardless of what that might be. For example, should it be possible for an organization like Prostasia ( https://4w.pub/prostasia-normalize-pedophilia/ https://4w.pub/prostasia-normalize-pedophilia/ ) to have unmonitored and unlimited conversations with a child through its media campaigns? The Internet as some amoral ocean of voluntarily accessed objective knowledge is such an unbelievably naive old meme by now that it is extremely disappointing to still see it crop up on HN. Humans have sorely limited attention bandwidth, and we live in a world where every bad actor (including even the Taliban https://old.reddit.com/r/MalangKhostay/ https://old.reddit.com/r/MalangKhostay/ ) has learned how to game attention to push every manner of ideological garbage down our throats in tiny increments. As an adult it's almost impossible to avoid falling prey to influencing tactics on a daily basis, why would we expect children to be more adept at navigating a global and almost completely unregulated media machine?