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> because …, there is no longer any culture of letting kids go out and socialise

Are you frakking kidding me? We can bring that back. That’s no reason to allow social media + mobile phones to poison society and youth.

> We can bring that back. I agree with all of your points. I am not 100% sure how to do this (if anyone has guidance I would appreciate the insight). My personal anecdote is that my 8yo goes to school with other children who's parents have a low understanding of the impact social media is having on them and their children. I was shocked when my daughter came home and told me that her best friend had an iPhone and a Tiktok account. I spoke with her friend's Mom about it and she said that it's fine because she follows her and sees everything that she's doing on it. I respectfully disagreed but this is very real. I expect that over the next couple of years the majority of her friend's socializing will move into messaging apps. I am terrified.

I was a freerange when I was a kid. from about the age of 6 I was left in the garden/scrubland out the back, to be feral with about 4-12 other kids that lived on houses that backed onto the same scrubland.

My wife is and was horrified by this. She was shuttled to other kids houses, and never allowed to go off on their own until deep into her teens.

Objectively kids are much much safer now, however they are not allowed freedom outside. Most of this is because of safety (where are they, are they being abused, have they been run over, are they in a gang, etc etc)

So _you_ as a parent need to entertain them

Giving your kid "the internet" shuts them up, and means you can do other things. However that comes with a bunch of risks that most parents aren't aware of.

I don't have kids yet but I would certainly want them to be free-range. I guess now we have tech like Find My, it should give parents more peace of mind?

> We need to provide spaces for kids to be kids, and safe.

That sounds as though you believe spaces such as these no longer exist?

(Full disclosure: have three kids, don't track their location, don't believe they are "unsafe" going to play outside)

> stops all notifications after 20:00

Better to stop absolutely all notifications. When I need to know if someone of my friends is asking something I can open a chat app and check. If something is urgent then just a phone call. The amount of distractions is enormous, thus disabling it by law might be more effective solution, otherwise intellectual decline/underdevelopment of the future society is predetermined.

Whilst I understand your point, I don't think banning notifications is actually a good step.

They are a symptom of something else. For group chat, its missing out on socialising, Nobody wants that. How do you allow kids to socialise via mobile phone is that actual question there.

For video based stuff, _what_ are they being exposed to? how tightly does the selection algorithm push the viewer into certain categories? Who is making that media, and why?

Given that UK had the BBC to "inform and entertain", why are we outsourcing the entertain and leaving the "inform" to people sponsored by shady companies and malicious actors?

Just need to ban (make it criminal) to advertise to and track kids. Eliminate the incentives and solve nearly all social media problems with kids overnight (along with most garbage mobile games).

I agree, we need to regulate tech more thoughtfully, yet we also need to rebuild a culture that allows kids to connect

> there is no longer any culture of letting kids go out and socialise.

Could this have died due to tech?

I don't think so, it started much earlier than that. Unless tech includes having a television in the living room.

There was the Great Satanic Panic in the 1980s and 90s, and there were more and more places where you need a car to get anywhere. Urban crime, or at least the perception of it, also did its part. It started much earlier than the smartphone era in the US and the UK, but there's still parts of the Nordics and other places where kids go out to socialise and play in the forests or fields or whatever's around today.

Tech on the one hand has given kids a new way to socialise, even if you can't meet up in person for whatever reason, you can still video call and play minecraft together. The other side of that is all the advertising and tracking and addiction-fuelling. The particular combination of always with you, always notifying you, and turning the addiction-generators up to 11 that you get on a smartphone seems to be a whole other level though.

I wanted to make another point but I've got a ping because someone has posted on discord, sorry brb.

"Unless tech includes having a television in the living room."

I mean, technology as such wasn't born together with the internet.

Not really, no.

People have been talking about the "death of the third place" for a while, now.

Car-centric cities make allowing kids outside too dangerous.

Tech as in TV? See Roald Dhal views on TV and kids.

I remember growing up in the 80s and 90s, in a suburb with forest and playground in walking distance, there were less and less kids outside, or for shorter duration.

TV, cable TV and video games just killed everything.

It was less tech and more the worry about kidnapping and antisocial behaviour.

As people became "less local" as in, you didn't know the people in your street, it meant that unaccompanied kids could be more of a shit without their parent's finding out.

More old people getting or feeling threatened meant that something must be done. ASBOs were one thing, but also the feat that your kids might be mixed up in that sort of stuff, meant that free-range kids were the preserve of "seen to be failing" families