Comment by Okawari | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Okawari | Hacker News Reader

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We have cars, and kids are not allowed to drive them. Yet we do not have mechanisms in place to ensure kids aren't driving cars because the responsibility falls on the parents, and it works. By and large, parents understand the threats and navigate this requirement perfectly fine; outliers are few enough that we can deal with them on an individual basis.

The reason the current system doesn't work when it comes to unfettered internet access is either that parents by and large don't actually agree with the threat assessment of said internet access for kids, or they ignore it because the consequences of doing so are disproportionately small. Personally, my vote is that they just don't think it's that big of a problem.

To me, the ideal solution would be more granular and better parental control configurations, especially on the web. Pair that with preconfigured devices that have "unremovable" parental controls, branded as "kids/youth phones." If parents care about this, they'll buy those phones for their kids and the problem is solved. If they don't, then this isn't something parents want, and we shouldn't really pursue it further.

Parents haven't asked for help keeping their children from driving their car though.

> The reason the current system doesn't work when it comes to unfettered internet access is either that parents by and large don't actually agree with the threat assessment of said internet access for kids, or they ignore it because the consequences of doing so are disproportionately small.

Sometimes parents know their children, and what's best for them, better than faceless politicians (who we've seen are often attracted to said children for some reason).

Growing up in my household there was a time when I was allowed to read and watch whatever I found interesting. My younger brother was not. That was because my parents knew us and judged that at my level of maturity I was unlikely to be negatively impacted, whereas my brother would get nightmares or copy-cat things he saw that he definitely shouldn't.

That's how it should be. Yes, there are bad parents who will decide poorly. That's the cost of freedom.

I sympathetic to this perspective, as a parent, but also, there are just a lot of kids out there with bad parents.

My personal philosophy is that parents have a duty to raise their children but that duty is on behalf of the society into which the children will eventually enter. Consequently, a just society may sometimes impose itself on parental freedoms (in the case of neglect, for example) because, in the end, the child's ultimate guardian and responsibility is the society itself, not the parents. The internet is full of material exposure to which, for children, could reasonably be construed as neglect or abuse, and it is insufficient to leave the entirety of the responsibility to the parents, in that case.

I don't know why Americans are so obsessed with freedom as if were the only social good that a society can pursue. There are many things which make life worth living, that contribute to flourishing, and freedom is high on that list, but its not the only thing.

All that said, I don't approve of age checks of the sort being proposed everywhere now. We can do a lot better at mitigating these problems without damaging privacy so much.

I think that the individual does not raise children on behalf of society, I think that society raises children on behalf of the individual. I also think that when society fails to keep up it's end of the deal, the individual should have the right to walk away from it.

Your stance is also reasonable, and I understand it. I just happen to disagree with it at a pretty fundamental level.

> I don't know why Americans are so obsessed with freedom as if were the only social good that a society can pursue.

It's an interesting question isn't it? The balance between what is best for the individual, and what is best for society and who gets to decide exactly where the balance should be is probably one of the most fundamental problems that face humans.

Personally, I'm so far left that I've almost gone right. I think that others should be able to raise their children however they'd like unless it rises to the level of genuine violent abuse. Just making different moral, political, or lifestyle choices alone should never cost someone their right to parent.

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