>What happens when parents don’t lock the liquor cabinet? When they smoke in front of their kids? When they leave porn laying on the table?
The state can't control those things, it can control putting an age restriction on certain websites. Unless you are advocating for the complete abolition of all age restrictions throughout society.
My parents always kept a few bottles of wine in a cabinet in the living room. If 8 year old me wanted wine, I could have drunk a whole bottle while they were away and there was no way they could have stopped me. Yet I didn't drink my parents' wine, nor did I grow up alcoholic.
Kudos for resisting alcohol as an eight year old. How does that apply to all the kiddos whose lives are impacted by social media? Kind of a "them problem"?
How is it more like leaving a liquor cabinet open than not buckling them up with seatbelts?
I'm glad we're discussing parental liability. It seems no one else is advocating for "social media access is criminal neglect," so I appreciate the novelty.
I would love to have this be the argument. Parents would typically agree that giving your kids heroin, for instance, should result in prison time. Yet I doubt they would argue the same for social media! Perhaps there should be discussions about what neglect looks like with regards to internet access and whether or not we need societal boundaries around this, enforced via punishing parents, rather than punishing everyone.
Giving children access to social media should have the same parental neglect charges as giving them heroin.
The current strategy of yelling "parent's should parent" does nothing to influence any sort of result. It's simply ineffective and makes people who say it look like slogan slingers rather than cooperating in any meaningful change.
Too bad!