Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by kennyadam 46 days ago
Is that how it should work? The worst of us can’t be trusted to to behave appropriately in one area of life, therefore everyone must be banned from it?
3 comments

That's how it works everywhere with lots of other things. Drugs, alcohol, gambling, etc. Given the amount of money that's gone into making social media as addictive as possible and the majority of mobile games really being gambling masquerading as games why should they be treated any differently?
Bucketing everybody who can't efficiently regulate children's access to the internet as "the worst of us" is unrealistic, and hideous. It's disgusting (or, charitably, inexperienced) of you to use these words.

As I age, I understand more and more the non-realism of the argument "monitor your kids" in relation to the internet specifically. Everything else? Sure. The internet? That's like restricting a kid's access to the planet. The notion is out of touch and elitist.

I don't think these regulations are necessarily correct in their specifics, but they are absolutely a shadow of something necessary to protect our species. It's time we stop being be so glib about such a hugely important topic and recognize its actual complexity.

Yes, if US tech companies exploitative behaviour is a net negative for children in our society then banning it doesn't seem unreasonable.
It would be sensible to ban the exploitative behaviour in that case, no? IMO the bad parts of social media are equally bad for adults and children.
No, this is pretty arguably in the category of things that are more harmful to children than adults (gambling, drinking, etc). I'm not saying that we shouldn't ban it for adults - only that the impact is not equal.