[otterley]

It helped that, at the time, most video was broadcast over the air and thus subject to FCC regulations relating to content, and that advertisers would pull funds from stations and networks that aired content that was too controversial. Other, non-regulated or less regulated (“adult”) content was for pay and the systems had child lockouts.

It’s much easier to relinquish parental control of media exposure when the system helps you out by moderating the content. But the Internet changed everything. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be as a parent to oversee media exposure for their children nowadays without pulling the plug on social media altogether.

[Forgeties79]

Exactly! There was a bare minimum that ensured your kid could only get so far before hitting some sort of barrier. Now it's basically non-existent unless 1) your ISP or service you're using, all private companies at that, decide to give you effective tools that you then have to take time to learn and implement all while knowing you will have to constantly monitor those tools and see how things change (not to mention how your kid changes with time) while trusting those private entities aren't taking advantage of you and your kid. It's maddening.

I am more technoligically literate than most of my peers and even I find I spend a lot of time on this problem. My kids aren't even teens yet, it's going to suck to keep up with this.

[svachalek]

Not just social media but internet bandwidth altogether. If you have an internet connection someone somewhere is using it to push things to your kids.