More to the point, if a kid walked into a convenience store and the clerk sold them a pack of cigarettes, the clerk wouldn't get off the hook by claiming, "well, the parents are responsible for their kids." I'm also not sure how one would justify holding parents legally liable for crimes they played no role in committing.
I'm not saying that I agree with these laws. They appear to be taking things too far. But that has more to do with there being no clear way to define sites that are only of interest to adults (no gatekeeping needed) and sites that should be restricted to adults.
This is already a thing.
https://www.bu.edu/articles/2024/charging-parents-for-childs...
Once upon a time they idea that Americans would surrender all of their God Given rights for an illusion of security was considered absurd, but that's where we're at.
Either way, I genuinely don't believe "let's just hope parents... start doing better?" is a solution.
Work on building self confidence.
My family relentlessly called me stupid and lazy to the point where a cyberbully would of been an upgrade.
You can always turn your phone off.
A lot of God awful parents treat their kids like trash and blame everyone else when Timmy doesn't get into Harvard.
Of all the people I've met with rough upbringings not a single one blamed anything outside of bad parenting.
Being a parent ( especially a step parent) is extremely hard.
100 years ago bad parents blamed dime novels.
50 years ago it was rock music.
Could you clarify that, and maybe take into account the fact that this is indeed completely unprecedented?
If you have time, I also would love to hear how “parents should do better” fits into a plan where parents DO do better.
I have knives in my kitchen. Do I give it to them and let them run around the neighborhood? I could but there are consequences and I would be held accountable for it.
Social media = knives or as some other commenter pointed out, similar to letting your kids play in traffic.
You’ll have the burden of needing to explain how any innocuous comparison you make still holds when we’ve never seen that kind of reversal in all of the time we’ve been watching as a society.
Too bad?
Too bad!
The state can't control those things, it can control putting an age restriction on certain websites. Unless you are advocating for the complete abolition of all age restrictions throughout society.
You can let your kid play in traffic. You can let your kid run around with knives. Sure, but when shit hits the fan you'll be luck to pay a hefty fine and lose all social credibility you had. In the worst case you're looking at jail time. Those sort of incentives will tend to smooth these issues out.
I'm glad we're discussing parental liability. It seems no one else is advocating for "social media access is criminal neglect," so I appreciate the novelty.
The current strategy of yelling "parent's should parent" does nothing to influence any sort of result. It's simply ineffective and makes people who say it look like slogan slingers rather than cooperating in any meaningful change.
This is probably the most interesting angle of discussion I’ve seen in the past few days on this topic.
In, say, about a decade this tech bullshit will be regarded as the relentless toxic insanity that it was and we'll be better for it. Social tech CEOs will be lucky to evade prison if I had my way.