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The danger of making the internet safe for kids
- armchairhacker 5y agoTrying to make the internet safe for kids if like trying to make real life safe for kids. You can’t. Instead what you do is limit children’s access to the internet, like how you don’t take children to strip clubs and war zones. Unfortunately this relies on the parents, just like how some parents do take their children to strip clubs. Things like ID trackers might help but create privacy concerns and not everyone has an ID. Age-restrictions should only be reliant on parents because ultimately they are reliant on parents: terrible parents can expose their children to whatever they want. What we do need is opt-in tools for filtering out inappropriate content, preventing predatory behavior, and parental restrictions. It’s up to parents to enable these tools in their children’s accounts and devices, and teach their children not to click “Yes” to “Are you over 18?” when they fail. Possibly we can have laws against parents who fail to enable these tools if they are easy enough to install, but probably not because some adults are really clueless about computers. Ultimately some children will be exposed to content online they shouldn’t, but some children literally starve. Trying to prevent all exposure or exposure even in the most extreme scenarios is worthless. It’s a sad situation but one people need to realize.