The difference was, back in the good old days, you were making friends with the people who owned and ran the platforms you were on. And they weren't (usually)

The difference was, back in the good old days, you were making friends with the people who owned and ran the platforms you were on. And they weren't (usually) slurping up all manner of data about you to sell off access to in one form or other. That is not the case now. On the other hand, from a parent's perspective, the "good old days" were an absolute nightmare, because nobody was particularly responsible for policing content your kids were being shown (except for, well, you). Whether or not you SHOULD be willing to offload that responsibility set aside as a matter for debate, you for the most part CAN assume that the volume of heinously inappropriate content being foisted upon your unwitting 15 year old is a bit more limited, at least on these big platform sites (aside from some of the more ephemeral content, where it's usually a matter of taking it down only AFTER the kids see it). But you can also usually rest a bit more easily knowing your 15 year old isn't uploading naked pictures of themselves to reddit like they may have been to a vbulletin or phpbb site in the days of yore (though, nothing stops them from going off the beaten path and doing so elsewhere unless you've got that firewall and/or actual monitoring going on). I guess the point is, there are pros and cons. Personally I approach the kids on the Internet thing with some pretty hefty firewalling and monitoring and would really just love a return to the greater amount of decentralization (and for the love of god, search engines that just find what's out there, and report back based on terms, rather than curate "acceptable" and "promotion worthy" content...but this may be wishing for too much). But others may have different priorities.