I absolutely agree that parents do play a role and have some responsibilities for both their and their childrens internet literacy, as well as for what their children access on the internet. I also agree that companies bear some responsibility (for making their platforms addictive on purpose in order to make money off of people they already know are underaged.

I just really want to put forth other ideas for fixing this problem that don’t involve companies being forced by law to enact ID verification when they can’t be trusted to safeguard such information and it feeds into the information database they already have, which will more than likely be used to violate the privacy of their users.

If the government absolutely must get involved making it illegal to produce and give access to a platform found to be addictive would be a start, but so would media and internet literacy education, both of which are solutions that don’t violate the privacy of minors or adults.

Digital media literacy is part of the education system in Denmark and some other European countries and it’s been beneficial to their populace. I think it could be a good solution.

The harm doesn’t come from the aspects of infinite scroll, auto play, or algorithmic examples in a vacuum.

But we have statistically proven that when you gamify the system and the content can be considered harmful to consume too much of, those two factors are what makes it dangerous.

Tricking the brain into doing something harmful to itself by gamification is the problem. The algorithm, auto play and infinite scroll are just mechanisms to facilitate that. Novelty only plays a small part in that. The algorithm by itself doesn’t provide a dopamine hit. The infinite scroll by itself doesn’t provide a dopamine hit. The auto play feature by itself doesn’t cause a dopamine hit.

Even when you combine all three the dopamine hit won’t come if the content being pushed isn’t sufficient to cause a rush of dopamine. And that dopamine rush often comes from things like upvotes and downvotes, and badges, and achievements. Follower counts and other metrics that the individual users use to get dopamine are being weaponized against them to make money. And it was intentional on the part of meta execs.

I have a question. What if it’s not just at a parenting level. What if it’s also at a school in level? Because I think at least partially there is a disconnect between media and internet literacy and people of all ages including children and parents.

I think we’re going to need such skills going forward and that there exist places in the world where students are being taught such things and are benefiting from them significantly.

Yet the immediate knee jerk reactions seem to be blame the parents and blame the companies that facilitate the access to the content.

It doesn’t have to be a parents by themselves against the world system. But it also can’t just be a “companies protecting the children” system because that’s not what companies do or are for? The need to maintain a profit margin flies directly in the face of the aim to hold companies responsible and the laws seem to be intent on capping the monetary consequences of a breach of the law.

I do feel that the least a parent should be required to do before complaining to a governing body that they find someone else is “harming” their child is to show that they have done their due diligence to protect said child. We punish parents for willful negligence and child endangerment all the time. I don’t understand why this is different but I also wonder if there are other options for educating both children and adults that could help the situation significantly.

And we took up arms because they can pry my cat videos from my cold dead hands?

While I agree that your situation isn’t an edge case (I found dads locked porn collection of VHS tapes and learned that that lock could be circumvented with a fridge magnet) at the age of 9?

But on the other hand, let’s say you post something to the internet that may be considered not okay for children. And let’s say that thing is about gun powder (which you absolutely can make from foraging natural ingredients). It’s your personal website, it’s labeled as not intended for children and you aren’t a big company so you don’t have the ability to just hire another company for things like age verification.

Then you get sued by a regulatory body in another country because you didn’t adhere to their laws? Does that sound reasonable to you?

If a parent or guardian is taking every precaution to keep their kid safe that is reasonable within the law and that kid still gains access to something that can harm them that’s an accident. If the parent takes no precautions and allows their child that they are legally responsible for the well being and safety of to raw dog life with no precautions whatsoever because that’s too hard, or they don’t care or whatever, then it seems reasonable to me that they be held responsible under the law.

Their right to have a third party protect their children ends at my right to privacy which to me extends to my right to anonymity specifically because it has already been shown that without anonymity privacy just doesn’t exist in this age of the internet.

What does that mean? It means that companies that collect your data but promise “privacy” cannot be trusted to uphold that promise, which means the only option left is to be as anonymous as possible.

I want you to understand that I do agree that when one kid figures out the loophole, that loophole spreads like wild fire.

But on the other hand, if a child figured out how to turn off the security system to the family car, grabbed the keys and went for a joyride with their friends, is it the fault of the parents or the fault of the car manufacturer? Because one of them is legally liable under the law.

Would it be acceptable to have to send your thumbprint to BMW every time you wanted to drive your car?

I did not understand. I’ll see myself out.

Blacklisting it on your router would at least prevent it from trying to connect to an open WiFi network like your own guest network which some people just don’t turn off or password protect.

If you are one of those people and you’re reading this turn that off. You can share your wifi via QR code these days from just about any smart phone. Turn it off.

Do you think that only apple TVs have wifi chips?

If you don’t have the technical know how to physically lobotomize the TV’s wifi chip, simply blocking its mac address would suffice.