[supermatt]

Why can't these measures be handled via parental control?

Children are using mobiles and tablets almost exclusively, both major providers of which supply tools for parental administration.

Content filtering is already facilitated by existing parental control. Mobile browsers could be made to issue a header if the user is under a certain age. Mobile apps could have access to a flag.

Parents should be responsible for parenting their child - not big tech. Why does it need to be any more complicated than that?

[jajuuka]

That's what blows my mind anytime I hear someone complain about all the vile content on the internet today and that we need to protect children. What about "be a parent" is so impossible to do today? Every device and OS has parental controls for a reason. Yeah they aren't perfect but they will prevent 99% of the content from getting to your kids.

[dan-robertson]

It does feel like the online environment is pretty adversarial and hard for parents to deal with. In particular, it seems hard to pick and choose something reasonable. It doesn’t seem totally unreasonable to want some kind of state action to help represent the many parents and encourage creating better reasonable options.

Lots of things that feel relatively common online feel like they would be very alien and weird situations if they happened offline.

[Braxton1980]

I agree with you but my emotional reaction is similar to the parent comment because many of these parents vote for the party of "stop big government regulations" and "stop government censorship" while also advocating in general for personal responsibility.

So I'm actually against this because I hate the indirect hypocrisy. I want to teach a lesson to Republicans about using overly generalized principals as a political stance.

[hackable_sand]

Grow up in the woods;

Teach the kids to hike and make fire.

[owisd]

There's a cognitive dissonance to the opposition to this:

a) Content controls don't work, what are the government thinking? b) This is parents' problem, they should use content controls.

Individual action doesn't work because it only takes one kid in the class who doesn't have parental controls then everyone loses. There's also obvious workarounds such as VPNs and a teenager walking into a pawn shop with £50 for a second hand smartphone without parental controls.

It also makes no sense that parents can't be bothered to turn on parental controls yet can be bothered to run a national grassroots campaign for this stuff (see e.g. http://smartphonefreechildhood.org)

See also- I Had a Helicopter Mom. I Found Pornhub Anyway: https://www.thefp.com/p/why-are-our-fourth-graders-on-pornhu... 8-year old watches violent porn on friend’s iPad: https://www.thesun.co.uk/fabulous/32857335/son-watched-viole...

Although your idea of an OS-level age flag is also being pushed by the Anxious Generation's Jonathan Haidt, so definitely has merit/traction as an alternative.

[scythe]

I like to point out in these threads that my first exposure to "pornography" was a cunnilingus scene in Al Franken's political tirade Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. I was eleven.

I don't think my parents had realized that scene was in the book. But I don't think it matters that much. Kids are going to encounter sex. In a pre-industrial society, it's pretty likely that children would catch adults having sex at some point during their childhood -- even assuming they didn't see their own parents doing it at a very young age. Privacy used to be more difficult. Houses often had one bedroom.

I don't mean to say that content controls are useless. I think it was probably for the better that I wasn't watching tons of porn in middle school. But I don't think that content controls need to be perfect; we don't need to ensure that the kids are never exposed to any pornographic content. As long as it isn't so accessible that the kid is viewing it regularly, it probably isn't the end of the world. Like in the one story, PornHub didn't even have a checkbox to ask if you were eighteen. Just don't do that. I didn't end up downloading porn intentionally myself until about five years after reading that book.

[Tadpole9181]

> Individual action doesn't work because it only takes one kid in the class who doesn't have parental controls then everyone loses.

The response to this, of course, is that many kids will be educated by their responsible parents.

They will know Santa isn't real or what sex is or why sometimes girls and boys kiss other girls and boys.

Are we going to outlaw teaching your own children about life next? Because they might "spread" the knowledge of... The real world they are about to experience and navigate?

[therealdrag0]

Is there better evidence to the harms of porn than “dopamine” and “lost innocence”? That article written by a 17 year old, I’m old enough to be her parent and I saw hardcore internet porn in 5th grade. This isn’t new. Personally I don’t think it harmed me. But I’m open to hearing studies showing otherwise, not just hand waving.

[hermitcrab]

>Why can't these measures be handled via parental control?

That would be the ideal. Unfortunately, many parents do not have the skills and/or motivation to manage their children's devices.

[tracker1]

For that matter, how many kids manage their parents' devices. Maybe less so today, but for a long time, a lot of children were far more tech savvy than their parents. The contrast between my grandmothers when they were still around was stark. One never fell for anything... the other, I was cleaning malware it felt like quarterly.

My parents for a long time used their neighbor's wifi, despite having their own, because they didn't remember the password.

That said, having the carrier assign certain devices marked as "child" or "adult" or even with a DoB stamp that would change the flag when they became an adult might not be a bad thing. While intrusive would still be better than the forced ID path that some states and countries are striving towards.

[AngryData]

That may have been a half decent excuse for parents 2 decades ago, but it isn't very good now when current parents grew up in the computer age with computers at school and in the vast majority of homes and even 90 year olds are using smart phones daily.

[tracker1]

Like I said, likely less so today. That said, there are still a LOT of people that can use their devices, but have no understanding of security, configuration, etc. My SO can't even handle a password manager, but she can manage live TikTok chats/streams (or whatever they're called) with ease.

That said, it could definitely be done relatively easily at the carrier level, and a really simple addition to browsers, even if only on mobile devices.

[jalapenos]

Taking tyrants' words at face value is collaboration in their tyranny.

This is nothing to do with children, those utterances are just bare faced cover for increased surveillance and control.

[varispeed]

This is because these measures are not about protecting children.

It's a distraction.

Real objective is to further increase the barrier of entry for SMEs to compete (try start your own forum or any kind of challenger to Facebook et al). Government on the other hand gets a tidy surveillance tool as a sweetener.

So whenever time comes to turn a screw on dissent, the law is ready to be used.

Welcome to British corporate fascism.

[pessimizer]

Yes, it is a pretense and the point of mentioning "the children" is to mobilize the child-worshipping demographic who believe, in all cases, that anything that raises any risk to children should be banned, and that this should not be discussed by decent people. The successful child-worshippers also instantly burst into hysterics and aggressive personal attacks when spoken to about the subject (hysterics and tears when they agree, the latter otherwise.) Their success lies in never lowering themselves to discuss anything with anybody. They're here to tell you.

They are an extreme minority of every population (mostly people who aren't interested in politics or civil liberties who enjoy and care about children.) But sensible people are also an extreme minority of the population; we normal people usually aren't so sensible, instead we listen to sensible people and follow their advice.

So the people who want everybody on the internet to identify themselves pit hysterics against measured voices in the media, in order to create a fake controversy that only has to last until the law gets passed. Afterwards, the politicians and commentariat who were directly paid or found personal brand benefit in associating with the hysterics start leaving quotes like: "This isn't what we thought we passed" and "It might be useful to have a review to see if this has gone too far." Then we find out that half the politicians connected with the legislation have connections to an age verification firm which is also an data broker, and has half a billion in contracts with the MoD.

[Jiro]

>Why can't these measures be handled via parental control?

Because the government is lying and this is about spying on the populace, not about parental control.

[nsksl]

That's how it should work but you will find that a majority of parents cba rearing their children so they want the state to do it for them. And this extends to so many things in life that the authoritarian grip is only going to get tighter with time.

[Eisenstein]

Note: the following is not arguing in favor of the UK policy, but is a general observation.

I seriously doubt that the majority of parents want the state to raise their children for them.

By arguing about irresponsible or lazy parents you are latching on to the first, most convenient thing that seems to make sense to you. But I think that is a mistake because not only does it perpetuate some kind of distorted sense of reality where parents don't care about their children and want to hand off all responsibility for them, but it distracts you from the real causal issues.

The fact is that humans have for millions of years acted in various levels of coordination to raise and look after children as a group. Modern society has made this all sorts of dysfunctional, but it still exists.

[supermatt]

> parents cba rearing their children

And THAT is the problem that they should be tackling.

[s_dev]

Ironically any attempt to control this is deemed 'authoritarian' as well.

[alsetmusic]

This is a problem that could be solved with socially funded child care, at least in part. But that's not gonna happen. (Posting from USA; I don't know how this may or may not apply in the UK.)

Either way, if parents had more time to raise their children rather than slave away at jobs to stay above water, I have to think there'd be some improvement in child development.

[nsksl]

Not necessarily. If they want to have uneducated children, let them.

[AngryData]

That is a terrible attitude about education. You are essentially condemning those kids and future generations to a shittier society and shittier lives.

[nsksl]

Maybe so, but it’s better than the alternatives.

[Tadpole9181]

A reminder that it is a legal requirement that children get primary education. It is a crime to not give them an education.

We did that for a reason and it is undoubtedly better than the alternative.

[graemep]

To be fair, it is because the state makes it difficult for them to rear children.

Long working hours and both parents working full time means they do not have the time or the energy. Then you have the state offering help, and encouraging parents to drop them off at school first thing for breakfast club, and then keep them there for after school activities.

[Braxton1980]

"but you will find that a majority of parents cba rearing their children so they want the state to do it for them"

This is normal and what public education is for. Teaching online safety and sex ed should be considered no different than teaching history