Imo kids younger than 16 have no business being on a social network unless it’s specifically for learning like YouTube . And past that age they won’t need parental controls.
Discussion
I respect your opinon, saw a similar article on it today. But I think people associate social media to an "addictive, self-centered" platform as oppose to a "free speech, closest to democracy, crowd source media, innovative" at large when it comes to kids (or adults) and that's often because of corporate incentives ie tik tok and ig. And it doesn't have to be a war between corporate incentives and govt blanket laws - its really up to the parents
I completely agree that kids are addicted to it, i often see parents who just dump their phones or video games to their kids to distract them. But I have also seen young kids who have figured out ways to help their parent's business and promote events with social media. Kids under 16 are not stupid.
I think giving parents the ability to tune that knobs of parental control would help them decide on what works better for their kids.
eh, I'll throw my kids outside to play, or play games - at least they'll learn strategy, teamwork, perhaps a bit of history that way. better than endless scrolling dopamine snorts
hehe you sound like my sister and she is a great mom and my nephews who are homeschooled have better social engagement that many kids their age or older who attend regular schools in a social environment but are hooked to their phones. And as much as these boys are only12, read more books than i do in a year and teaching me new words, they also know how to use YouTube to learn yoyo tricks, basketball, build better paperplanes etc - but that's dependent on parents and attentiveness.
Most parents are not like you guys, hence govt would loveeee to step in and "control" the situation - which can be dangerous because limiting external free knowledge would lead to the infusion of "gov't based education only" is a disaster for these kids . And hence the easiest way to aid the parents is to enable parental control that they can manage - and even that can be "default" settings for people who don't want to make the calls and "advance" for those who do.