Because it is totally reasonable to expect parents to have total surveillance of all their kids every single moment of kids life up to 18 years old.

The only thing it achieves is ever growing helicopter parenting and related anxieties ... while the same people who complained about parents not controlling everything complain when they try.

We expect shops and passerbys to not sell porn or steal from kids in real life.

Stealing from anyone is already illegal, so that's not relevant here. And I don't think kids seeing porn is particularly harmful.

> And I don't think kids seeing porn is particularly harmful.

That's not what is happening on Facebook and there is no way I could believe you genuinely think that's what everyone is talking about. Did you even read the article? Porn isn't mentioned once. Pedophiles are asking kids to send them photos, trying to connect with them to arrange sex. You, upthread, told me that the sexual solicitation of minors was only harmful "subjectively" whatever that means.

Does this logic extend to other things society has deemed vices? Should it be soley on the parents to prevent your kid from accessing drugs? What about cigarettes/weed/alcohol? Or anything that society has put in place age-based or other legal gates.

Now imagine all government restrictions on these are removed, and there is a store within walking distance of your house that is staffed by employees that will willingly, without question, sell these items to your kids and their friends? Is it still all on the parents to prevent access?

What about if this store has advertisements specifically targeted toward children? Or has discounts on cigarettes/alcohol/... aimed at the lower age brackets? "First pack free if you're under 18".

Now put this "store" on the internet, accessible from your kid's cellular device.

There's a spectrum here.

> Does this logic extend to other things society has deemed vices?

Yes. When a child is too young, parents should be directly preventing access to those vices. As their children get older, parents should have instilled enough values into their children that constant surveillance is no longer required.

Do you have children? Were you ever a child? It really doesn't sound like it. It's easy to stop a 4 year old from going to the liquor store. Basically impossible to stop a 14 year old. And 14 year old kids will do all kinds of dumb stuff for approval/attention from friends or (especially) the opposite sex.

Doing dumb stuff and experimenting as a teenager is part of growing up. I don't see anything wrong with that.

If social media is harmful to children, each child deserves to be protected, no matter what is their parents' opinion. This is obvious for other harmful things, we don't argue that it is up to parents to decide if their child should be allowed to use alcohol or cigarettes.

Harm is subjective and I'd much rather parents make that call than the government.

And there absolutely isn't consensus on when it's harmful to give children alcohol. Many would say it's good to give a child a glass of wine at a family dinner so that they learn to drink responsibly.

Msot agree that cigarettes are harmful at all ages, so that's not really relevant.

The government already made the call, that's why due to child privacy or other protection laws, terms of service of social media platforms require age 13 or up. My complain is that companies pretend they are unable to enforce it.

>Harm is subjective and I'd much rather parents make that call than the government.

Is that what Meta's research indicated?

Its subjectivity is a fact, so no research required.

Are you saying that the sexual predation of minors is not objectively harmful to them? Are you aware that the sexual solicitation of a minor is a crime?

I don't agree that anything can be objectively harmful. I personally agree that it is harmful for minors up to some age. So again I would maintain it's the parents' responsibility to protect them until they reach that age.

Do you think the sexual solicitation of minors should not be illegal? Whether or not it's the parent's responsibility to protect their own children is besides the point. It can also be true that others facilitate and turn a blind eye. I can only assume you think a party in the scenario (one who connects a child with a sexual solicitor) should bear no responsibility? Either civilly or criminally?

> I don't agree that anything can be objectively harmful.

How principled of you. Why don't you go shoot yourself in the head and report back.

If there is sexual activity involving a minor, yes, the parents should be able to pursue criminal and civil cases. Solicitation without any actions doesn't seem that important.

Well, I'm pretty sure every state in the US disagrees with you and I'm not going to be continuing this conversation any further given that you think it's fine for adults to solicit sex from minors so long as "actions" don't happen (again, whatever the heck that actually means). I need to shower this thread off of me.

Ahaha, by this logic we should just ban vaccines if that's popular.

Yawn. Is this supposed to be charming? Principled? I don't get your shtick. People act like it's politics but it really comes off more as just being foremost disagreable and unreasonable.

Jumping into a conversation about pedophiles to offer that their harms are only subjective is just ridiculous but for some reason I gave you the benefit of the doubt, but I've come to realize that was wrong.

How do you expect your child to react when they end up the only ones in their classes left our of whatever others are doing?

If there are good reasons to restrict them, I'd expect them to deal with it.

I never had access to cable television or video games growing up, while nearly all my classmates did. It wasn't a big deal.

> It wasn't a big deal

You seem unsocialized, for what it's worth. Probably still not something TV or video games would fix.

All the responsibility should be put on the parents? I suggest you run through scenarios of what that might look like....

Yes. What scenario did you have in mind?

if that were the most effective solution to the problem, we wouldn't be having this conversation. just because something appears to be simple doesn't mean it will be effective.

I laughed out loud at this. It is the stupidest thing I have ever heard.

I'll give you a hard reason of which you must not be aware: it actually takes two parents to have a child.

Think about why that's important. If one parent is too addicted to their own usage of Instagram, and models that for the kids, the kids will pull that towards them, no matter what the other parent does.

You cannot monitor children constantly, unless you are are, say, a billionaire tech executive who has willingly ignored all data to show that his products have damaged society and children in pursuit of personal profit.

There is only one person in the world that can afford to do what you suggest, and his initials are MZ.

It's pretty trivial to block access to certain sites or apps. Or better yet, you raise your kids well so that you don't need to rely on technology to keep them away from bad things.

If I block them when the kids are with me, and then my ex-wife unblocks them when the kids are with her, the hordes are past the gate.

I'll do my best raising my kids well, as you said.

Well that's an inherent problem of having multiple people with custody of a single child.

Ideally a compromise can be reached, but in extreme cases I suppose it could end up with litigation. But still, this is a private dispute, not something that should require outsourcing parenting to the government.