6 ms·

The right people to protect children are those responsible for them - their parents and guardians. If there is a problem with children not being sufficiently p

by chr15m 2mo ago

The right people to protect children are those responsible for them - their parents and guardians. If there is a problem with children not being sufficiently protected, that is the level at which to solve it. Give families tools and information to do so.

hedora 2mo ago
I’ll just add that age verification schemes serve no purpose—-and are actively harmful—-unless there is some reasonable policy that’s applied after the enforcement. The companies pushing age verification make their money monetizing access to children. They are exactly the sorts of groups I’d like to keep my kids away from. Forcing the kids to label themselves as minors just makes them more vulnerable to online exploitation.
- chr15m 2mo ago
  Yes, it is an egregious attack on the privacy and safety of minors.
dyauspitr 2mo ago
Totally disagree. If you want to stop kids from using cell phones and social media, you are not going to achieve that at the family level. It is just not possible because if your peers are on the platforms and are using smart phones, no amount of family level restrictions are going to stop kids from using them. It has to be at the state or higher level so that everyone is prevented from using social media or smart phones at the same time so that is the norm. It has to be alcohol tier regulation if you actually want it to be effective
- ColdStream 2mo ago
  Pretty much. As soon as kids start going to school, there is a large amount of time where they are out of the supervision of the parents. This is when they end up being dragged to the general flow of society for better and worse.
  - account42 2mo ago
    There is going to be an even larger amount of time where the kids will be out of supervision of the parents once they grow up. That you get a limited test run of that via school instead of a surprise that your parenting has failed when your precious little kid falls prey to the world after turning 18 is something you should be glad for.
- GoblinSlayer 2mo ago
  Two platforms? Facebook and youtube? So regulate those two.
zmmmmm 2mo ago
the weird thing about it all is that age is a bad proxy in the first place for a child's level of safety in interacting with online content. Some kids are super mature at 11 and others still need protection at 16. For some reason the world has fixated on "years alive" as a perfect measure of vulnerability and now are doggedly pursuing it. Even if perfect age verification is implemented, kids will be harmed. Because they are vulnerable while above the arbitrary age limit. So -arguing for age verification is harming children. Won't somebody think of the children? And the answer comes back to the same point. Parents should mediate this. Online content should advertise its maturity level, and parents should be able to configure devices at setup time for the maturity level they are appropriate for. Then apps should respect that and everyone can be better off without robbing everybody of anonymity or freedom.
- jfengel 2mo ago
  I don't think anyone believes that age is a perfect proxy. Just that it is good enough, and that any better solution is either much more difficult or impossible.
  - zmmmmm 2mo ago
    > any better solution is either much more difficult or impossible. I just don't buy that. I think it is perfectly feasible to mandate device makers support parental controls that include content maturity settings. In many ways that is easier than requiring every web site in the world to comply with age verification.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  Under the DAAA the parent can just lie about the child's age in the settings.
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    This is explicitly allowed and supported in the bill btw. It's not a workaround.
- 2mo ago
ColdStream 2mo ago
This is something where I agree and disagree with both sides. Parents should have the tools to protect their children, the providers should have those tools in place. But those that are dealing the goods as also heavily invested in trying to maximize engagement and so they do not really work to hard on providing those tools.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  That's the same side twice.
- lern_too_spel 2mo ago
  When the market leads to bad outcomes, that's where the government steps in with regulation, as is the case with the California laws linked in this article. You appear to fully agree with them, which makes sense to me because the laws look perfectly reasonable.
ytoawwhra92 2mo ago
No ID checks at clubs, bars, or other adults-only venues. No school zone speed limits, or protected crossings on streets near schools. No requirements for railings on public balconies, fencing around public pools, protective covers over drains or other holes in the ground. Parents/guardians can just supervise. Sounds great!
- ColdStream 2mo ago
  While what you say seem intuitive, it is missing one point. Those locations probably are not recording exactly who is coming and going and what they are saying/doing. That is where this become more than just gate keeping and becomes full on tracking.
  - ytoawwhra92 2mo ago
    You are saying something quite different to the comment I responded to: > The right people to protect children are those responsible for them - their parents and guardians. My position is that there is a social responsibility to protect children which extends to the community at large, not just their immediate guardians.
    - LeBit 2mo ago
      You are being facetious.
      - jfengel 2mo ago
        I really don't believe that they are. Historically, communities raised children, and leaving everything up to parents is an anomaly.
        LeBit 2mo ago
        You are talking about leaving "everything" to the parents. Those are extreme positions. There are things where you want the government to intervene. There are things where you don’t want the government to intervene. What I do in my bedroom should not be monitored by the government. Me speeding on the road should be monitored by the government. Conversations I am having online should not be monitored by the government. It’s my job to teach my kid how to behave when he is bullied at school. The government does not help with that. It is my job to make sure my kid does not become the bully. The government does not help with that. It is also my job to teach my kid what the internet is, that there are wackos out there, and how to recognize dangerous patterns. That’s life. If you think this is to save the children…
dijksterhuis 2mo ago
reads like you’re espousing a theoretical position from a theoretical perspective https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49205469 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49205469 > you know, i feel like the "it's the parents' responsibility" comments that turn up on submissions like this often tend towards phrasing like "the parents" rather than "with my children i ..." if you’ve had kids maybe you’d like to share with the class exactly how you go about doing exactly what you’re describing? if not, maybe let parents figure out how to parent rather than expecting them to be perfect for everyone else’s benefit.
- suslik 2mo ago
  >maybe let parents figure out how to parent That can only work if parents as an interest group stop bothering the rest of us with the very 'think of the children' nonsense that spawned this thread. If you are inventing laws that affect us, we should also have a say.
  - dijksterhuis 2mo ago
    you do get to have a say. contact your local elected officials. the democratic process requires effort from the electorate :shrug:
- Cthulhu_ 2mo ago
  > phrasing like "the parents" rather than "with my children i ..." I need to remember this one, thanks! The only way parents can try to protect their kids from the world is to keep them isolated, homeschooled, or in some kind of commune or cult. Which unfortunately is not uncommon in the US. > let parents figure out how to parent While I agree, I also think there's a role in society to help parents on how to parent, via e.g. education and awareness. Every generation brings new unknowns, like what kids can do in Roblox or how they can browse the internet on their smart fridge, and it's unreasonable to assume every parent knows all of that.
  - dijksterhuis 2mo ago
    > I need to remember this one, thanks! direct experience beats reasoning which beats testimony, if you want something else ponder. > While I agree, I also think there's a role in society to help parents on how to parent, via e.g. education and awareness. i was quite blunt and one sided in my previous as it was more about the HN “vibes” than actual parenting. there is definitely more nuance to the whole topic of parenting!
kakacik 2mo ago
You clearly don't have kids. You drop them at school and for maybe 8 hours a day, as a parent you have 0 control over whats happening. Bullying, peer pressure etc. How is that also parent's responsibility? Parents shouldn't buy smart phone to kids, period. There are 0 reasons kid of say 15 or lower should have one instead of dumb phone (or new commodore one with google maps and whatsapp but no browser or apps), in same way we don't allow cigarettes or alcohol to be given or sold to them. Helicopter control freak parents can go to hell, their mental issues shouldn't be messing their kid's lives. But to claim parents have 100% responsibility could work only if kids spend 100% of the time with them.
- account42 2mo ago
  If you don't have any influence over how your kid acts at school and what he learns from the experience there then you're not parenting. At some point your kid is going to move out or you will die and then you will have even less influence. School is a test for that.
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    You have limited influence. The school has a lot more. Would you choose a school with a bad reputation for letting children watch brainrot all day? What if every school is like that and you don't really have a choice - would you homeschool? Or would you say the government should maybe tell the schools to stop doing that?
Cthulhu_ 2mo ago
Said parents and guardians cannot protect their kids all the time - they have their own responsibilities like work. Most kids go to school during the day. The few that aren't grow up in homeschooling systems or cult-like environments, which are their own problem. I frequently see this rhetoric (parents should look after their kids) from naive people on the internet that clearly don't have kids of their own (or don't have teenagers, or don't live or let their kids live free, etc)
- GoblinSlayer 2mo ago
  All people were kids and know first hand what it means to be a kid, no need for vetted authority on that.
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    But we went to school 10-80 years ago and even 10 years ago, school was very different back then. Apparently now there's a lot more technology involved, and kids can bring their phones and use their phones all day which is why there's a backlash. When I was at school, phones were mainly used for texting (or calling, but not at school) and if you were (un)lucky enough have one, you had to put it in a locked drawer of the teacher's desk at the start of the day.
    - GoblinSlayer 2mo ago
      I had NES and a lot of time after school.
      - inigyou 2mo ago
        Yes. After school.
penguin_booze 2mo ago
> The right people to protect children are those responsible for them - their parents and guardians. They can only do so much, within the boundaries of their home. It takes a village to raise a child. The policies, thus, should be made village-wide.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- chr15m 2mo ago
  I agree that we must bring back villages. "Village-wide" is probably the exact right dimensions for any given policy, if you mean a literal village.
- buellerbueller 2mo ago
  >It takes a village to raise a child. ...is one form of parenting. Maybe some people would prefer other forms.
  - fragmede 2mo ago
    Which forms are those?
KaiserPro 2mo ago
> Give families tools and information to do so. The problem is, agreement on those tools is hard to find. "I want to be able to pen my kid into a digital walled garden, so that they cannot see $bad stuff until the right age" that seems normal right? nothing contraversial. The issue is, implementing that is really fucking hard. For mobile phones, largely thats already been done in the UK. You need to opt out of the nanny proxy before you can get porn and reddit. The issue is, as soon as you get on the wifi, all of those controls disappear. So how do you stop that? if you're an idiot (and the person leading the OSA was an idiot) you do what the UK did. You put in legal tools to "age gate" the internet _at source_ rather than at delivery (like mobile phones) so yes give people the tool, but if you're not giving techincal guidance, and just saying NO NO NO NO, OSA is what you get.
segfaltnh 2mo ago
Every time I see this take I remember the time my step father picked me up by my throat and body slammed me on the floor. I was 12. I've had tinnitus ever since. Children really do need protection from some parents. I'm glad you had a good upbringing, be well.
- GlacierFox 2mo ago
  The meat of the subject isn't about protection from physical violence here though is it? I mean, yeah, have governmental protection for kids against abusive parents - obviously. But in regards to the breadth of the Internet and tech, I think it needs to be focused on the endpoint - the actual parents.
- chr15m 2mo ago
  I'm really sorry. I hope you are doing ok. Nobody should have to experience that.
- GoblinSlayer 2mo ago
  That too. Presumably in bad families internet doesn't stand out as a problem.
inigyou 2mo ago
Half these laws are literally just about giving parents tools to do so. Like the California digital age assurance act which, despite the name, does not assure age. It assures (provides certainty about) how parental controls should work.
jollyllama 2mo ago
They don't actually care about children being protected. If they did, who in their right mind would trust the government to pull it off? It's like people who send their kids to public school thinking they're really going to be safe and educated. They're either rolling their dice with the best option they have, knowing there's a significant likelihood of failure, or checking a box. "My kid's in school, I did what I needed to do, now it's someone else's problem."
- dennis_jeeves2 2mo ago
  > "My kid's in school, I did what I needed to do, now it's someone else's problem." You got it right. This is exactly the attitude of most parents.
- fn-mote 2mo ago
  > It's like people who send their kids to public school thinking they're really going to be safe and educated I really feel like I missed the /s or something. Or possibly the poster went to a much worse public school than I did? (USA public = government funded.) Reducing a challenge like education to a sound bite to win an argument on HN lowers the level of dialog. Also, where I live the majority of people trust the government enough to send their children to public school, and it isn’t clear that the pay-for schools are much better.
  - jollyllama 2mo ago
    As of 2025, the majority of American adults are dissatisfied with the public education system [0]. [0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/1612/education.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/1612/education.aspx
  - eks391 2mo ago
    I obviously can't speak for everyone, but even when I was in school, I knew (thought) schools primary purpose was to babysit kids and teens so any damage they were doing was in a contained environment. Education was just busy work and safety is definitely a goal but a difficult objective. When I went to college, I met friends with dramatically different experiences in their schools than I had, and that was the first time the idea that school was more than just a babysitting camp had crossed my mind. My school was safe from exterior threats, and they took the bomb threats and jail breaks very seriously, even holding us in our classrooms late into the day until the perpetrator was caught, but internal threats caused by kids would always outnumber the teachers capacity to thwart. My parents choose where we lived based on the school having the least violence in the area so I know my experience wasn't even on the extreme end. Edit: I realize I didn't address education. In short, in successful because my mom put a lot of work trying to educate me and ensure I took homework seriously. Even though I hardly attended my classes, I graduated top 10% because submitting homework was all you needed to do to surpass your peers. Any kids whose only educational influence was school itself, at least where I grew up, didn't receive much of an education.
lonelyasacloud 2mo ago
> The right people to protect children are those responsible for them - their parents and guardians. How does the ability to successfully reproduce confer expertise in protecting children from perils of the 21st century, specifically internet porn, hate speech, cyber bullying, addictive platform design, etc? > If there is a problem with children not being sufficiently protected, that is > the level at which to solve it. Society creates the greater environment that kids grow up in. And we all then pay for the problems when they occur because of those sh*tty environments. Pushing fixing it all onto parents is like trying to get kids to be healthy when they are driven everywhere, surrounded by fast food joints and bombarded with junk food adverts. Claiming that it would be different with a little more public service information and tools on top ... well the obesity rates would beg to differ. Ultimately, society creates the greater environment and lives with consequences, as such society cannot not be involved in any meaningful attempt to deliver improvements.
- pickleRick243 2mo ago
  Society is made up of families, i.e. children and parents. So yes of course it's up to society to solve these problems, tautologically. But that's not what you meant. Everywhere you wrote "society", you really meant "government". Might as well be honest about it.
CFI_Initiative 2mo ago
How about looking at this from a different angle? All this time, we have been asking children to adopt to internet or giving parents tools and information to adapt children’s to the internet. Instead, what if we ask ourselves a different question in this age of AI? Can we not build an internet that adapts to children? And provide progressive digital wellbeing. Coz that’s what we have been doing in physical world for children. We build schools and playgrounds for children, set speed limits near schools, and even medicine is packaged specifically for children. But on the Internet, we do the opposite. Isn't it the time to reimagine the Internet for children?

by chr15m 2mo ago

hedora 2mo ago

I’ll just add that age verification schemes serve no purpose—-and are actively harmful—-unless there is some reasonable policy that’s applied after the enforcement. The companies pushing age verification make their money monetizing access to children. They are exactly the sorts of groups I’d like to keep my kids away from. Forcing the kids to label themselves as minors just makes them more vulnerable to online exploitation.

chr15m 2mo ago
Yes, it is an egregious attack on the privacy and safety of minors.

dyauspitr 2mo ago

Totally disagree. If you want to stop kids from using cell phones and social media, you are not going to achieve that at the family level. It is just not possible because if your peers are on the platforms and are using smart phones, no amount of family level restrictions are going to stop kids from using them. It has to be at the state or higher level so that everyone is prevented from using social media or smart phones at the same time so that is the norm. It has to be alcohol tier regulation if you actually want it to be effective

ColdStream 2mo ago
Pretty much. As soon as kids start going to school, there is a large amount of time where they are out of the supervision of the parents. This is when they end up being dragged to the general flow of society for better and worse.
- account42 2mo ago
  There is going to be an even larger amount of time where the kids will be out of supervision of the parents once they grow up. That you get a limited test run of that via school instead of a surprise that your parenting has failed when your precious little kid falls prey to the world after turning 18 is something you should be glad for.
GoblinSlayer 2mo ago
Two platforms? Facebook and youtube? So regulate those two.

zmmmmm 2mo ago

the weird thing about it all is that age is a bad proxy in the first place for a child's level of safety in interacting with online content. Some kids are super mature at 11 and others still need protection at 16. For some reason the world has fixated on "years alive" as a perfect measure of vulnerability and now are doggedly pursuing it. Even if perfect age verification is implemented, kids will be harmed. Because they are vulnerable while above the arbitrary age limit. So -arguing for age verification is harming children. Won't somebody think of the children? And the answer comes back to the same point. Parents should mediate this. Online content should advertise its maturity level, and parents should be able to configure devices at setup time for the maturity level they are appropriate for. Then apps should respect that and everyone can be better off without robbing everybody of anonymity or freedom.

jfengel 2mo ago
I don't think anyone believes that age is a perfect proxy. Just that it is good enough, and that any better solution is either much more difficult or impossible.
- zmmmmm 2mo ago
  > any better solution is either much more difficult or impossible. I just don't buy that. I think it is perfectly feasible to mandate device makers support parental controls that include content maturity settings. In many ways that is easier than requiring every web site in the world to comply with age verification.
inigyou 2mo ago
Under the DAAA the parent can just lie about the child's age in the settings.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  This is explicitly allowed and supported in the bill btw. It's not a workaround.
2mo ago

ColdStream 2mo ago

This is something where I agree and disagree with both sides. Parents should have the tools to protect their children, the providers should have those tools in place. But those that are dealing the goods as also heavily invested in trying to maximize engagement and so they do not really work to hard on providing those tools.

inigyou 2mo ago
That's the same side twice.
lern_too_spel 2mo ago
When the market leads to bad outcomes, that's where the government steps in with regulation, as is the case with the California laws linked in this article. You appear to fully agree with them, which makes sense to me because the laws look perfectly reasonable.

ytoawwhra92 2mo ago

No ID checks at clubs, bars, or other adults-only venues. No school zone speed limits, or protected crossings on streets near schools. No requirements for railings on public balconies, fencing around public pools, protective covers over drains or other holes in the ground. Parents/guardians can just supervise. Sounds great!

ColdStream 2mo ago
While what you say seem intuitive, it is missing one point. Those locations probably are not recording exactly who is coming and going and what they are saying/doing. That is where this become more than just gate keeping and becomes full on tracking.
- ytoawwhra92 2mo ago
  You are saying something quite different to the comment I responded to: > The right people to protect children are those responsible for them - their parents and guardians. My position is that there is a social responsibility to protect children which extends to the community at large, not just their immediate guardians.
  - LeBit 2mo ago
    You are being facetious.
    - jfengel 2mo ago
      I really don't believe that they are. Historically, communities raised children, and leaving everything up to parents is an anomaly.
      - LeBit 2mo ago
        You are talking about leaving "everything" to the parents. Those are extreme positions. There are things where you want the government to intervene. There are things where you don’t want the government to intervene. What I do in my bedroom should not be monitored by the government. Me speeding on the road should be monitored by the government. Conversations I am having online should not be monitored by the government. It’s my job to teach my kid how to behave when he is bullied at school. The government does not help with that. It is my job to make sure my kid does not become the bully. The government does not help with that. It is also my job to teach my kid what the internet is, that there are wackos out there, and how to recognize dangerous patterns. That’s life. If you think this is to save the children…

dijksterhuis 2mo ago

reads like you’re espousing a theoretical position from a theoretical perspective https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49205469 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49205469 > you know, i feel like the "it's the parents' responsibility" comments that turn up on submissions like this often tend towards phrasing like "the parents" rather than "with my children i ..." if you’ve had kids maybe you’d like to share with the class exactly how you go about doing exactly what you’re describing? if not, maybe let parents figure out how to parent rather than expecting them to be perfect for everyone else’s benefit.

suslik 2mo ago
>maybe let parents figure out how to parent That can only work if parents as an interest group stop bothering the rest of us with the very 'think of the children' nonsense that spawned this thread. If you are inventing laws that affect us, we should also have a say.
- dijksterhuis 2mo ago
  you do get to have a say. contact your local elected officials. the democratic process requires effort from the electorate :shrug:
Cthulhu_ 2mo ago
> phrasing like "the parents" rather than "with my children i ..." I need to remember this one, thanks! The only way parents can try to protect their kids from the world is to keep them isolated, homeschooled, or in some kind of commune or cult. Which unfortunately is not uncommon in the US. > let parents figure out how to parent While I agree, I also think there's a role in society to help parents on how to parent, via e.g. education and awareness. Every generation brings new unknowns, like what kids can do in Roblox or how they can browse the internet on their smart fridge, and it's unreasonable to assume every parent knows all of that.
- dijksterhuis 2mo ago
  > I need to remember this one, thanks! direct experience beats reasoning which beats testimony, if you want something else ponder. > While I agree, I also think there's a role in society to help parents on how to parent, via e.g. education and awareness. i was quite blunt and one sided in my previous as it was more about the HN “vibes” than actual parenting. there is definitely more nuance to the whole topic of parenting!

kakacik 2mo ago

You clearly don't have kids. You drop them at school and for maybe 8 hours a day, as a parent you have 0 control over whats happening. Bullying, peer pressure etc. How is that also parent's responsibility? Parents shouldn't buy smart phone to kids, period. There are 0 reasons kid of say 15 or lower should have one instead of dumb phone (or new commodore one with google maps and whatsapp but no browser or apps), in same way we don't allow cigarettes or alcohol to be given or sold to them. Helicopter control freak parents can go to hell, their mental issues shouldn't be messing their kid's lives. But to claim parents have 100% responsibility could work only if kids spend 100% of the time with them.

account42 2mo ago
If you don't have any influence over how your kid acts at school and what he learns from the experience there then you're not parenting. At some point your kid is going to move out or you will die and then you will have even less influence. School is a test for that.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  You have limited influence. The school has a lot more. Would you choose a school with a bad reputation for letting children watch brainrot all day? What if every school is like that and you don't really have a choice - would you homeschool? Or would you say the government should maybe tell the schools to stop doing that?

Cthulhu_ 2mo ago

Said parents and guardians cannot protect their kids all the time - they have their own responsibilities like work. Most kids go to school during the day. The few that aren't grow up in homeschooling systems or cult-like environments, which are their own problem. I frequently see this rhetoric (parents should look after their kids) from naive people on the internet that clearly don't have kids of their own (or don't have teenagers, or don't live or let their kids live free, etc)

GoblinSlayer 2mo ago
All people were kids and know first hand what it means to be a kid, no need for vetted authority on that.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  But we went to school 10-80 years ago and even 10 years ago, school was very different back then. Apparently now there's a lot more technology involved, and kids can bring their phones and use their phones all day which is why there's a backlash. When I was at school, phones were mainly used for texting (or calling, but not at school) and if you were (un)lucky enough have one, you had to put it in a locked drawer of the teacher's desk at the start of the day.
  - GoblinSlayer 2mo ago
    I had NES and a lot of time after school.
    - inigyou 2mo ago
      Yes. After school.

penguin_booze 2mo ago

> The right people to protect children are those responsible for them - their parents and guardians. They can only do so much, within the boundaries of their home. It takes a village to raise a child. The policies, thus, should be made village-wide.

deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
chr15m 2mo ago
I agree that we must bring back villages. "Village-wide" is probably the exact right dimensions for any given policy, if you mean a literal village.
buellerbueller 2mo ago
>It takes a village to raise a child. ...is one form of parenting. Maybe some people would prefer other forms.
- fragmede 2mo ago
  Which forms are those?

KaiserPro 2mo ago

> Give families tools and information to do so. The problem is, agreement on those tools is hard to find. "I want to be able to pen my kid into a digital walled garden, so that they cannot see $bad stuff until the right age" that seems normal right? nothing contraversial. The issue is, implementing that is really fucking hard. For mobile phones, largely thats already been done in the UK. You need to opt out of the nanny proxy before you can get porn and reddit. The issue is, as soon as you get on the wifi, all of those controls disappear. So how do you stop that? if you're an idiot (and the person leading the OSA was an idiot) you do what the UK did. You put in legal tools to "age gate" the internet _at source_ rather than at delivery (like mobile phones) so yes give people the tool, but if you're not giving techincal guidance, and just saying NO NO NO NO, OSA is what you get.

segfaltnh 2mo ago

Every time I see this take I remember the time my step father picked me up by my throat and body slammed me on the floor. I was 12. I've had tinnitus ever since. Children really do need protection from some parents. I'm glad you had a good upbringing, be well.

GlacierFox 2mo ago
The meat of the subject isn't about protection from physical violence here though is it? I mean, yeah, have governmental protection for kids against abusive parents - obviously. But in regards to the breadth of the Internet and tech, I think it needs to be focused on the endpoint - the actual parents.
chr15m 2mo ago
I'm really sorry. I hope you are doing ok. Nobody should have to experience that.
GoblinSlayer 2mo ago
That too. Presumably in bad families internet doesn't stand out as a problem.

inigyou 2mo ago

Half these laws are literally just about giving parents tools to do so. Like the California digital age assurance act which, despite the name, does not assure age. It assures (provides certainty about) how parental controls should work.

jollyllama 2mo ago

They don't actually care about children being protected. If they did, who in their right mind would trust the government to pull it off? It's like people who send their kids to public school thinking they're really going to be safe and educated. They're either rolling their dice with the best option they have, knowing there's a significant likelihood of failure, or checking a box. "My kid's in school, I did what I needed to do, now it's someone else's problem."

dennis_jeeves2 2mo ago
> "My kid's in school, I did what I needed to do, now it's someone else's problem." You got it right. This is exactly the attitude of most parents.
fn-mote 2mo ago
> It's like people who send their kids to public school thinking they're really going to be safe and educated I really feel like I missed the /s or something. Or possibly the poster went to a much worse public school than I did? (USA public = government funded.) Reducing a challenge like education to a sound bite to win an argument on HN lowers the level of dialog. Also, where I live the majority of people trust the government enough to send their children to public school, and it isn’t clear that the pay-for schools are much better.
- jollyllama 2mo ago
  As of 2025, the majority of American adults are dissatisfied with the public education system [0]. [0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/1612/education.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/1612/education.aspx
- eks391 2mo ago
  I obviously can't speak for everyone, but even when I was in school, I knew (thought) schools primary purpose was to babysit kids and teens so any damage they were doing was in a contained environment. Education was just busy work and safety is definitely a goal but a difficult objective. When I went to college, I met friends with dramatically different experiences in their schools than I had, and that was the first time the idea that school was more than just a babysitting camp had crossed my mind. My school was safe from exterior threats, and they took the bomb threats and jail breaks very seriously, even holding us in our classrooms late into the day until the perpetrator was caught, but internal threats caused by kids would always outnumber the teachers capacity to thwart. My parents choose where we lived based on the school having the least violence in the area so I know my experience wasn't even on the extreme end. Edit: I realize I didn't address education. In short, in successful because my mom put a lot of work trying to educate me and ensure I took homework seriously. Even though I hardly attended my classes, I graduated top 10% because submitting homework was all you needed to do to surpass your peers. Any kids whose only educational influence was school itself, at least where I grew up, didn't receive much of an education.

lonelyasacloud 2mo ago

> The right people to protect children are those responsible for them - their parents and guardians. How does the ability to successfully reproduce confer expertise in protecting children from perils of the 21st century, specifically internet porn, hate speech, cyber bullying, addictive platform design, etc? > If there is a problem with children not being sufficiently protected, that is > the level at which to solve it. Society creates the greater environment that kids grow up in. And we all then pay for the problems when they occur because of those sh*tty environments. Pushing fixing it all onto parents is like trying to get kids to be healthy when they are driven everywhere, surrounded by fast food joints and bombarded with junk food adverts. Claiming that it would be different with a little more public service information and tools on top ... well the obesity rates would beg to differ. Ultimately, society creates the greater environment and lives with consequences, as such society cannot not be involved in any meaningful attempt to deliver improvements.

pickleRick243 2mo ago
Society is made up of families, i.e. children and parents. So yes of course it's up to society to solve these problems, tautologically. But that's not what you meant. Everywhere you wrote "society", you really meant "government". Might as well be honest about it.

CFI_Initiative 2mo ago

How about looking at this from a different angle? All this time, we have been asking children to adopt to internet or giving parents tools and information to adapt children’s to the internet. Instead, what if we ask ourselves a different question in this age of AI? Can we not build an internet that adapts to children? And provide progressive digital wellbeing. Coz that’s what we have been doing in physical world for children. We build schools and playgrounds for children, set speed limits near schools, and even medicine is packaged specifically for children. But on the Internet, we do the opposite. Isn't it the time to reimagine the Internet for children?