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by InDemoVeritas 1733 days ago
The assumption is correct. Have you met children?
3 comments

I have children. Their access and usage of devices is my responsibility.
The fact that you have parental responsibilities does not absolve anyone else of their responsibilities. That would be a non sequitur.

But anyway, it’s not reasonable to expect parents to know if this or that app is more likely to increase the risk of suicide. Fortunately I have a government that I pay for that can research this and help me with that.

They can assume all apps increase the risk of suicide.
Any remotely tech-savvy kid can go around you. I did insurmountable amounts of questionable shit when I was under 16. Only thing my parents ever confronted me about was when I forgot to switch off the “let contacts find me” feature in Instagram when I made an account and that was far from the worst way I defied their rules.

There’s a balance to be had here. First there’s the social responsibility- if there isn't something targeted towards kids that is proven to harm their mental health, that is a net good.

There’s also parental responsibility- being a college student I of course do not have the insight necessary here but I feel like I would’ve made better decisions if my parents weren’t as controlling with tech. It was almost a game to me to see what I could get away with. Simple things like adding me to a web filter _when I was in high school_ eroded the trust I had with them. Granted, it took me < 5 minutes to bypass it, but I still felt wronged.

Parenting wise, again, I’m completely unqualified, but I think having an open and honest relationship with technology is a better way than what my parents did. Rather than harping about “everything you do is our business,” being allowed to have some degree of privacy would have fostered trust.

tl;dr there are ethics involved with shipping a product. Don’t offload these ethical decisions entirely to parents, because kids generally don’t give a shit.

source: am 19

Tech-savvy kids don't have this problem. Also you don't need to shut it down for good, only add a little friction.
Pretty much every young teen watches porn or violence/gore/etc online without their parents knowing, either because they search for it or one of their school friends show it to them. That's the reality.
Children aren't the problem. Parents are.
They do have oversight, they just elect not to use it because the devices are pacifiers and their individual lives are more important than that of their family.