Parents are expected to do more than you can imagine and everyone has an opinion on how they’re supposed to do it, especially in the US. You’re a terrible parent if you can’t keep a 5 year old from ever alerting somebody to their presence, but you’re also a terrible parent if you give them an iPad for a few minutes so they don’t bother people.

This whole thing where parents are expected to do it all themselves is actually a new phenomenon. Historically, across basically every culture, it was up to the community to raise all the kids together. To sacrifice and make compromises together.

Your parents likely didn’t have to deal with YouTube. There were basic laws in place that guarantee the content on broadcast TV fell within certain limits. Was that unacceptable to you as well? It strikes me that you take for granted the fact that you could never have been exposed to Alex Jones as a child. Let’s not pretend your parents knew everything you watched and saw, they just knew it could only be so bad most of the time. Yet you now expect parents to know everything on every screen in front of their kids with no assistance ever as the “attention economy” machine attacks all of us. It’s not a fair fight at all and your response is “parents just solve it yourselves” without a second thought.

I do not agree with all these age verification and surveillance state initiatives we are seeing. I am categorically against them. But your philosophy is harmful and frankly selfish. You live in a community. You have to make compromises.