alt Hacker News > watching BDSM on their friend’s phones at 12.
When I was 12 our computer was in the living room and shared by everyone. It could access porn but you had to wait till you were the only one in the home.
There's a pretty simple solution here if you don't already see it and I'm not sure why it isn't more acceptable. It solves all the problems you mention. You don't want kids being sucked into social media? Sucked into porn? Constantly staring at their screens?
Have you ever considered not giving your kids smartphones?
Or have you decided the benefits are worth the costs?
Let's be honest here, even with strong government intervention this is always a cat and mouse game. The play of "no smartphone" is going to be far stronger than anything the government can ever do. Why is this not an option?
“No smartphone” is a boundary, and U.S. parents are often raised not to set boundaries under threat of mental, emotional, and/or physical abuse. So it makes perfect sense that we have now-parents completely unable to define and discuss boundaries with their children. Far better to capitulate in the face of an uncertain and not life-threatening risk than to allow their child to ever think that boundaries are healthy, etc. For the unfamiliar, here is a good starting point for understanding the generational cognitive dissonance in play: https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/contradicto...