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I agree it would be nice but it requires more investment than my plan and companies really do not want to spend an extra cent for children safety.

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It is an investment. You build brand loyalty by selling a safe device. Train kids to only use your OS. Then when they're 18 hopefully they stick with your OS.

Furthermore, OS makers could lobby for additional age gates. I.e. a child phone for ages 15 and under, a teenager phone for ages 16-17, an adult phone for 21.

I doubt that. For example, look at iOS "parental controls". Judging by screenshots [1] here, it is a complicated system that requires a parent to be a system administrator not to get lost in hundreds of settings. For example, you might have to manually compile a white list of websites, white list of apps etc.

The system is so complicated that I think many parents simply get confused and do not want to use it.

Instead there should be a single checkbox: "allow safe content only on this device". That's all (and you can leave detailed settings for system administrators).

[1] https://www.internetmatters.org/parental-controls/smartphone...

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