[philipallstar]

We should assign one or two adults to children who provide for them, and prevent various dangers, including online ones, from reaching them. It sounds like a lot of effort, but it is also the most important task on the planet.

[harshreality]

A generation of kids have grown up with just such assigned adults, who overwhelmingly did not apply sufficient oversight to the kids' use of social media.

In large part that's because, if they'd done so, the kids would've been socially isolated from their peers, at least the most normal ones with the most normal parents, which are the kinds of friends most other normal parents want their kids to have.

It's a collective action problem, except instead of "I can be better off if I ignore what I know is best for society", it's "if I ignore what I know is best for my kids psychologically, they will still have friends, and social media brainrot is a lesser evil than socially isolating my kid from all the normal kids at school."

And also, giving kids social media interaction devices is a convenient form of babysitting. It reduces up-front effort of parenting.

[recursive-call]

>In large part that's because, if they'd done so, the kids would've been socially isolated from their peers, at least the most normal ones with the most normal parents, which are the kinds of friends most other normal parents want their kids to have.

I never had any of the popular social medias when I was growing up, and I wasn’t isolated from anybody aside from the one bloke who insisted on doing all his texting via instagram. I’m in uni now and people kind of laugh when I ask them for a phone number, but if anything it’s improved my social status.

>And also, giving kids social media interaction devices is a convenient form of babysitting. It reduces up-front effort of parenting.

This is the real issue to me. Parents are overworked and exhausted because you can’t support a family on one salary, so there’s no more stay-at-home parents. I was extremely lucky in that my mom’s firm got bought out when I was in 5th grade and she retired on the severance package. Parenting is a full time job and society needs to treat it like one. If stay-at-home parents got a salary from the government, 90% of what’s wrong with kids would be solved (and the falling birthrate issue too).

[philipallstar]

> Parents are overworked and exhausted because you can’t support a family on one salary, so there’s no more stay-at-home parents.

This is a natural consequence of women joining the workforce en masse. This isn't a social comment, but rather an economic one. It made couples have much more buying power, so they could bid massively more. They they worked stressful jobs for the next 30 years to pay the bank back, while the older person they sold it to got loads of cash.

And single women (or mums), who this was supposed to help, now instead of working extra hard to compete economically against single-income households, now have to compete against two-income households.

[shhsjajaaj]

Hard disagree. It’s the “phone kids” with behavior issues and their parents are usually similar. It’s time to get serious about stupid people being stupid and not calling it “normal”.

[CJefferson]

So do we get rid of all laws which distinguish children? Why bother with limiting selling alcohol to children if we can just let the parents do it?

My problem is I don’t think anyone is (seriously) suggesting we get rid of the laws protecting children in the physical world, and having nieces and nephews, they nowadays spend more time in the virtual world than the physical world, often with their friends so it’s hard to track what they do.

[philipallstar]

> Why bother with limiting selling alcohol to children if we can just let the parents do it?

Because children can be in the outside world, which has shops. It's not the same as parents choosing to buy their child a very expensive device.

[intended]

It isn’t working, and the assigned adults are asking for these changes.

What is the next step?

Ok, that sounds snarky, but this is where we are. Parents are asking for age controls, and governments are happy to give them what they want, with them getting an added level over privacy.