It's easy to say be a better parent, or produce a better environment for your kid, but it's not as easy to help people with that. If we can make social media healthier for everyone, that's a big deal.
Now, all the video services have feedback loops where they can determine what keeps people glued and provide more of that. Some "programs" like cocomelon have dialled that up to 11.
The only defence is the terrible parental controls and/or taking devices away. That almost always results in "fights".
not a perfect defense, but a very good one.
I get parents use it to babysit their kids. That's bad parenting. I'm a parent. I know it's not easy, and tempting to use it.
But you're not supposed to yield to those temptations. Part of being a leader, which is what being a parent is, is sucking it up.
And, yes, you can regulate cocaine too. There's nothing stopping us from taking the business away from drug-dealers and having actual health professionals distribute it in sensible ways.
idc how potentially beneficial screens may be, in the future (now?) we will start treating screens like smoking
Some of us are still in the "smoking can be good for you stage"
My message is basically, make it non-taboo, educate, give people tools to manage their behavior, prosecute predatory behaviors. To regulate social media, we can heavily regulate ads in social media; make ad algos, feed algos, recommendation engines transparent by law, in a way inspectable by individuals as well as journalists; put legal constraints on what these algos can do; use cryptography to get rid of fake accs and bots, without compromising anyone's privacy.
the best thing that can be done right now, rather than waiting for a broken government to fix our problems, is to admit to ourselves and parents that kids should not receive phones or iPads
it's not a good thing! taboos serve a purpose and it absolutely should be a cultural taboo.