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Not commenting on this specific law, but I do believe the premise that children should be exposed to everything is wrong, and that the overall view on humans in
by dagss 7mo ago
Not commenting on this specific law, but I do believe the premise that children should be exposed to everything is wrong, and that the overall view on humans in this post is naive.
These days, exposing an immature brain to the raw internet is basically just handing the brain and personality over to be molded by large corporations and algorithms.
And humans have never been rational, self-contained actors that self-educate perfectly when exposed to information, converging on an objectively good and constructive worldview. Quite the opposite.
Humans develop in relation to one another, increasingly in relation to algorithms, and sometimes become messed up, and sometimes those mess-ups would have been avoidable had relations or exposure been different.
In fact I would say you as a parent is not doing your job if you are not trying to make sure a 12 year old isn't pulled into, say, an anorexia rabbit hole.
Whether that is best done through making sure exposure doesn't happen, or through exposure and education, will depend on the child and parent (and society) in question. What worked best for a highly rational self-reliant geek teen may simply be a disaster for another human. And what worked for an upper class highly educated family may not work for a poor family with alcoholized parents or working 18 hours a day to make ends meet.
And parents are not perfect -- if all parents were perfect, there also would be no alcoholics and drug addicts or poverty or war. But people are imperfect, and it's natural to make laws to mitigate at least the worst effects of that. (Again, haven't read this specific law proposal, but found the worldview of OP a bit naive.)
- thunfischtoast 7mo ago> These days, exposing an immature brain to the raw internet is basically just handing the brain and personality over to be molded by large corporations and algorithms. You make the case of todays internet being insuitable for young children. But has this been different, ever, maybe apart from the very first days of the internet? While access through phones has reshaped the internet fundamentally, I'd propose that it has always been dangerous. When I was 12, a single wrong click could destroy your machine, or lead to a physical bill being sent to my parents home (which has happened), or lead to most disturbing pictures and videos. So I think it's not the case that we should allow kids completeley unsupervised access (like it always has been), but it's also naive to think that we can regulate our way out of this (on state or household-level, like it always has been).
- dagss 7mo agoI think there is a drastic difference between being once off exposed to bad images, and an algorithm making a choice of whether to subtly over time expose the Pokemon-interested child to racist Pokemon videos vs non-racist Pokemon videos on Tiktok. (Or anorexic Pokemon videos, or..) Amount of time spent and repeated exposure being the key. The question is really what kind of human is raised, rather than raw exposure as such. So for that reason things are different IMO than than 20 years ago. Yes, of course some people would fall into internet forum rabbit holes 20 years ago, and papper-letter-friend-induced rabbit holes 100 years ago. But it did help that it was like 5% of the population instead of 95% of the population spending their time there. Regarding your last point, I don't necessarily disagree (again I didn't check up on this law, I care more about the laws in my own country), but I think arguing against the law will go better if one does not display naivety when making the arguments Don't say "it will be better if all kids are exposed to everything early" (it won't), instead say "the medicine will not work and anyway the side-effects are worse than the sickness it intends to cure" (if that is the case).
- LinXitoW 7mo agoBut the algorithm stuff is bad for everyone, and makes a lot of money, so it's obviously never ever going to be part of any regulation.
- dagss 7mo agoAustralia banned social media under 16, and many other countries are looking on variations on this. In the US, perhaps not...
- labcomputer 7mo agoBut adults (who have fully developed brains, unlike adolescents) can choose not to engage with the algorithm stuff.
- theshrike79 7mo agoWhen my generation "accessed the internet", there was a massive dial-up sound and the single family PC was in the living room, visible to everyone. Even later when the computer was in my room, I still had to go look for the creepy shit, it didn't appear in my email inbox. Kids this age browse the internet through algoritmic apps built to maximise engagment in a corner on their bed in their room. Parental controls for most apps and operating systems are a fucking joke.
- FetusP 7mo agoBut, should it be the governments responsibility to decide/control how children are raised, and what they are exposed to? Maybe in the future, a governing body will try to age lock dissenting opinions with some crafty verbage
- gzread 7mo agoThe CA/CO law only requires the option to enable parental controls on an account, and as the article points out, can be worked around by a sufficiently determined child using something like a virtual machine. This is not really the government deciding how children should be raised. The parent still has the ability to choose to apply the parental controls. It's more like the rule that minors can't buy alcohol in bars - parents can still buy alcohol at the supermarket for their children, and sufficiently determined children can find some other adult to buy it for them. Probably by the time you know how to install a virtual machine, you can handle the unrestricted internet.
- Cyph0n 7mo agoThe bigger problem is it sets us on a possible path towards completely government-controlled computing devices. The fact that so many countries are pursuing ID requirements online is somewhat of a canary for this whole OS age check thing imo.
- jonathanstrange 7mo agoMy view is that this must be left entirely to the parents. The only time a government should be allowed to interfere is when there are child abuse or neglect cases against the parents and the children are put under child protective care. It is in my view crazy and irresponsible to allow the government override the parents' decisions about what media their children can consume. It is guaranteed that this power will be abused.
- gzread 7mo agoThe CA/CO law is literally the government writing a law that says it shall be left to the parents but the device must give the parents the options they need.
- nicman23 7mo ago> believe the premise that children should be exposed to everything is wrong imo this is what is wrong with modern parenting. the reality does not care about the child's feelings and if it is old enough to have a screen with internet unattended it is old enough for anything
- muyuu 7mo agook, that is the argument with merit in favour of shielding kids from the internet - now let's consider how does it look like when the locus of responsibility is governments it's true that kids are vulnerable to certain forms of content on the internet it's also true that adults are vulnerable to certain forms of content on the internet it's also true that governments cannot police "harmful content" on the internet effectively, or even meaningfully, if most people can easily surf the internet pseudonymously it's also very true right now that what's on "social media" is very Sybill-vulnerable, and inordenately so right now with the advent of LLMs what do you think the playbook will look like once there is some sort of tight OS level system that is enforced across the board to certify or verify information about the user? do you think this level of coordination to push for identifying the user at all levels that is happening across the world in a matter of weeks is genuine concern for the kids alone?
- eloisant 7mo agoI agree, and I believe too many geeks who are now parents (including the author of the blog post) do not realize that the computers they grew up with, and in particular the Internet they grew up with, is nothing like computers (phones) and the Internet kids have access today.
- intrasight 7mo agoThe Grimm fairy tales (1819) are full of graphical violence, child abuse, anti-semitism, and incest. They are much more harmful than anything that I've encountered on the Internet. So why are we discussing internet harms instead of book harms? Because people are fucking stupid. And why are we getting concerned about "sharing private information with random web sites" when that's not the solution being discussed. The solution is a simple handshake: service: Is the person assigned this device old enough to use this service? idp proxy: yes|no
- a456463 7mo agoIf you are not perfect, then don't have kids then. If you can't take care of them and nurture them with the attention that they need and rightfully deserve.
- jajuuka 7mo agoI've seen this view applied to things like TikTok and Instagram. Especially with the recent lawsuit. But then when to comes to addressing it most people seem to flip completely and bemoan parenting and internet freedom. It just ends up in a circular pattern of "this is awful, but we shouldn't do anything about it. These companies are poisoning kids, but any attempts to rectify that are infringing on my right to the internet." Makes a lot of conversations around this topic feel entirely pointless.
- prmoustache 7mo ago[dead]