One of the important purposes of a society is to improve the raising of kids who might not be raised well by their parents alone, because it is a valuable outcome to everyone.

You don't choose who you get born to, so if society chooses to say "If you get born to a shitty person, you will suffer immensely and we will do nothing about it", that is a bad society.

Nobody deserves to suffer due to an accident of birth.

Also, "It takes a village to raise a child" is not exactly metaphorical.

Half of the country is teaching their kids to take religion literally and never question it, and that any news story that you don’t like isn’t real, simply because you disagree with it.

Handing over an iPad is the least of the issues facing a large portion of our youth and frankly they might be better off if their parents did sit them in front of it and walk away.

It takes a lot of work to be a parent and also monitor all that media consumption/stop all ads. The “average person” isn’t as tech savvy as most of us here and that stuff just doesn’t come as easily to them.

For instance I am very comfortable letting my kids play video games. I play a lot myself, I can make good judgments about what is appropriate for them, what is an appropriate amount of time to play, what is good/bad behavior when playing, what systems are a good choice or if online access (if any) is appropriate. I barely need to think about these things, but for some people this is an incredibly time-consuming, intimidating task.

Thing is, keeping children out of Instagram, Facebook, or whatever new social media is hyping currently will probably make them kind of weirdos in their bubble, e.g. in school. At least this would be my fear (don't have children). And good luck trying to use any of these ad-infested privacy-invading platforms while trying to avoid ads.