this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2023
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I think everyone can agree that child safety is important. But the fact internet as it stands is not safe for kids is completely undeniable.
As always, however, censorship is not the solution, especially not if it's headed by government. I'm honestly not sure what the solution is.
We've had an answer since the Internet was created: don't let kids have unsupervised access to it.
Instead we give toddlers tablets before they can read.
It's inconsequential anyway. This bill was never really about kids in the first place.
I'm very much against this bill, I don't even think it will help kids any, but lets admit that this is very much easier said than done. If we really mean to be honest, this is just something we say to mean "it's not our problem, don't bother us with it". But it's not a solved problem, even remotely.
Assuming a moderately tech savvy parent, which is not a given, there are so many alternate ways to access sketchy content, and supposedly child-friendly platforms are so poorly moderated that very few parents can truly manage to control what their kids see. Even YouTube Kids and Roblox are full of stuff that shouldn't be there.
Then there's the matter of longer and longer shifts that parents face today, and consequently the diminishing time they have to watch over their children. We also went from wired internet and a single shared household computer to everyone having smartphones and Wi-Fi in every corner. A parent can do everything right and their kid might still end up exposed to inappropriate content by their friend during recess because their parents didn't bother with any of it.
I don't want the internet to be child-proofed or that this is used as an excuse for government overreach, but I don't envy parents who need to deal with this matter today.
Facts. Just talking to educated people today, it is clear that there is a major disparity in knowledge and understanding when it comes to technology.
And yeah. Download Tor for free and bada-bing bada-boom, your kid now has access to not only the entire internet, but also the actual dark side of the Internet. Which is arguably an even worse environment than just straight-up internet.
For now, the only real solution is good parenting. Which again, as you mentioned, is getting harder and harder.
Somewhat off-topic, but the general trend of anti-family sentiment in society troubles me for a number of reasons.