4 ms·
I do think this a reasonable rebuttal, but there must be some middle ground here. Generally speaking, I can block TikTok sure, but because it’s so ubiquitous, m
by McSwag 4y ago
I do think this a reasonable rebuttal, but there must be some middle ground here. Generally speaking, I can block TikTok sure, but because it’s so ubiquitous, my kids are ostracized because all their friends have access to it, they still pass around the content like drugs, alcohol and tobacco. It almost becomes one of those things that because they’re not allowed to have access to it, it does just as much damage, socially.
There are three general categories of parents on this, and to be clear, I don’t think any of these are bad parents:
1. Those who are extremely weary and tech savvy, like myself
2. Those who are weary but have no earthly idea how to set up these controls effectively.
3. Those who don’t give a f*all about it at all.
I tend to believe it’s just as bad but it’s about as misunderstood as tobacco used to be. The industry KNOWS it’s bad for kids, it’s been proven bad for kids but it’s peddled to them anyway.
All that aside, let’s just say hypothetically I wanted to manage this all myself and wanted the government out of it, sounds good in theory. The tooling around limiting inappropriate content is mind-blowingly inadequate. At the very least this should be mandatory and more concretely standardized. I’m not flatly against giving kids some access to it but it’s reached a point where my kids can’t even do their homework at all without full access to all of Youtube which by itself has loads of content not remotely appropriate for elementary school kids. Youtube kids is a joke.
It’s pretty frustrating as a parent to manage content restrictions for the 3-4 major browsers, search engines, youtube, messenging apps, iphones, macbook, windows app store, and so on. This could be a full time job. Then, the kids bring home a school provided chromebook or login to chrome with a school account which has no content restrictions at all and I have zero control over anyway. Honestly, parental controls in the current state is largely a waste of time.
- arbol 4y agoThe overhead of managing content restrictions on families devices is a very good point. I'll be reaching this stage soon and I'm not looking forward to this additional task. I also think state sponsored content moderation should be used to restrict access to harmful online media as opposed to lumbering this task on individuals. As you've mentioned, some parents need this enforced upon them. If we were talking about vaping, which is still highly unregulated and available for children to buy, I'm sure the majority would be in agreement about age restrictions. The fact that we're talking about preventing psychological addiction and trauma makes it harder for people to agree on the harmful effects of this type of content. It's simply not as visible as the huge plumes of oil-steam breathed out by every 12 year old in a bus stop these days. However, I don't agree with the implementation of content moderation proposed by Utah state. It's totally unworkable and poorly thought through.
- nicoburns 4y agoDoesn’t the fact that drugs, alcohol and tobacco (which are already illegal for kids) are available in this way illustrate how useless a ban would be? If you want to protect your kids from these things then you need to educate them and get them to enforce the rules themselves.
- swexbe 4y agoThe vast majority of 13 y.os do not have access to drugs, alcohol and tobacco.
- datavirtue 4y agoUh...are you a parent of teenagers? Because that statement is not true and smacks of Ivory Tower thinking.
- McSwag 4y agoI mean it’s somewhat true, if it were legal for 12 year olds to have these things AND it was marketed toward them, way more kids would be have it than not. That’s not to say they can’t get it now, but it’s harder and somewhat self regulating because the stigma around doing something illegal.
- nicoburns 4y agoThis doesn’t invalidate your point (I think your correct that making it illegal provides a disincentive and reduces overall uptake), but I should note that making something legal does not necessarily mean making it legal to market it towards kids. Case in point being that here in the UK it is illegal to market tobacco products at all (including to adults in this case). This also applies to politicians, prescriptions medicine and a bunch of other things. And IMO it’s often a good compromise that allows for harm reduction without outright banning something.
- nicoburns 4y agoThis probably varies depending on where you live, but where I grew up (in a small town in the UK), the vast majority of 13 year olds did have access to drugs, alcohol and tobacco (which didn't necessarily mean the vast majority were indulging in those things, but they were definitely available).