[jofla_net]

Maybe, but as a parent, I believe its an embarrassment to expect to radically retrofit a society in such ways as to make up for my own negligent lack of responsibility for my own children, which I do take quite seriously. Not to mention the myriad of resultant unintended consequences which invariably arise when such systems(of which i'm quite familiar) are brought to bear. Though I do speak from such a position of professional neutrality, as I would gain no benefit at all from implementing such a ubiquitously mandated system. Perhaps if things were different, I'd think otherwise.

[doright]

In my opinion "we need mandatory age verification" is an admission that we can't really address the overarching issue of parents that can't/won't parent at a good enough level. Narcissistic parenting without any added access to questionable content on a smartphone is still... narcissistic parenting. The definition of "parent better" differs between people and is often non-negotiable, even way before anything involving CPS occurs. Not to mention, the content being withheld will become available at adulthood anyway, and can still be harmful if the person has not been given the tools to navigate it well.

Admittedly the bar is far higher with ubiquitous social media and smartphones. I'm not sure a parenting license system would ever work out in practice. Yet a lot of issues stemming from upbringing can cause irreversible harm and I don't feel like those root causes are brought up that much in the broader discussion about mental health symptoms.

It pains me to think that some amount of debilitating childhood trauma is unavoidable, but content restriction at least sounds like an actionable problem that doesn't require uprooting the fabric of society to correct.