> Somewhere along the way I feel it became normal to just let your children do whatever they want online with no supervision and no parental controls.
for those of us who were kids when the internet was basically a social unknown, it's not something that 'became normal', the internet didn't come about censored from the get-go -- these moderation/censorship tools were added in after-the-fact to cope with parental and (more importantly) government worries that children were being victimized via exposure.
and, for the most part, we grew up OK even without the heavy-handed censorship.
>Instead there should be opt in. When a child user is logged in to Windows et all, an allow list should always be in place. And only apps and websites that claim to be child safe should be included.
i'm not necessarily anti-censorship, and i'm never having kids -- my opinion on this is worthless for all practical sake -- but i'll say this : If I didn't have the freedom to tinker and explore with the systems that took up my free-time as a child there is no way I would have grown up to have such expertise now.
Take that however you will. I know nothing of child care but I do recognize the opportunities in my own life that made me grow as an individual; having 'cyber-space' as my 'home' from an early age offered a lot of opportunities that were unique and self-improving.
I feel there's plenty of space for children to tinker, even in an accept list scenario. In fact, it's more so the spaces that empower you to create that would be on it, since they involve no "dangerous" social interaction. Programming environments, drawing and writing applications, game makers, etc.
That said, parents could decide to let their kids use adult user accounts, maybe supervised, or if they trust their child, or depending on their exact age. And if they do, they'd be taking the liability, not the platform whose EULA specifies otherwise.
At least this all seems a much better approach to balance safety of children on the internet, while leaving adults to have whatever free and wild spaces they want for themselves.
The alternative seems to block it for everyone. Or to have some ridiculous requirements like full blown KYC that either mean complete loss of anonymity for everyone, or unsustainable rules that indirectly mean it's not tenable to offer such spaces even to adults.
for those of us who were kids when the internet was basically a social unknown, it's not something that 'became normal', the internet didn't come about censored from the get-go -- these moderation/censorship tools were added in after-the-fact to cope with parental and (more importantly) government worries that children were being victimized via exposure.
and, for the most part, we grew up OK even without the heavy-handed censorship.
>Instead there should be opt in. When a child user is logged in to Windows et all, an allow list should always be in place. And only apps and websites that claim to be child safe should be included.
i'm not necessarily anti-censorship, and i'm never having kids -- my opinion on this is worthless for all practical sake -- but i'll say this : If I didn't have the freedom to tinker and explore with the systems that took up my free-time as a child there is no way I would have grown up to have such expertise now.
Take that however you will. I know nothing of child care but I do recognize the opportunities in my own life that made me grow as an individual; having 'cyber-space' as my 'home' from an early age offered a lot of opportunities that were unique and self-improving.