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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
byviperidaenz ( 2515578 ) writes:
... unless parents approve more time
Virginia must leave the parenting decisions where they belong: with parents
Sounds to me like Virginia is trying to give parents tools to enforce their decisions.
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byPowercntrl ( 458442 ) writes:
Sounds to me like Virginia is trying to give parents tools to enforce their decisions.
Both iOS [apple.com] and Android [google.com] have built-in parental screen time limit functionality. Why is the government getting involved?
byTomahawk ( 1343 ) writes:
If one wishes to play devil's advocate:
Because many parents don't do this. If the parents won't do a good job bringing up their kids, someone has to.
Is it the States' responsibilities to fix bad parents' choices? Very probably not.
bymarkdavis ( 642305 ) writes:
>"If one wishes to play devil's advocate:
Because many parents don't do this. If the parents won't do a good job bringing up their kids, someone has to."
There are so many other more effective things that could be done. Some examples that pop into my mind:
1) Spend some money on public service education that it is NOT OK to give children unrestricted or unsupervised access to the internet.
2) Incentivize development of additional age-controls and whitelisting functionality ON DEVICES, under parental control
3) Foster development of VOLUNTARY flags on sites so locked-down devices can detect inappropriate content and add to filters.
4) Make it an actual crime for parents/agents to give devices to children that have unrestricted access to the internet.
Of those, I think #1 is the most important. We need to change the culture and norms to be that parents/agents should be responsible and restrict children's devices. They will then be shamed by others, and probably seek out tools, and hopefully the market will respond with more/better tools.
Personally, I think giving children unrestricted/unsupervised access to the internet is child abuse, or at least child endangerment. Both of which are already ILLEGAL.
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byambrandt12 ( 6486220 ) writes:
Woohoo! And, how well do 'public service announcements' help with girls in high school or before getting pregnant? Same for smoking.
Maybe not give the kid an $800 cellphone... give'em a flip phone, and block their laptop and PS5/XBox from accessing social media at your modem... little Suzy can use the family computer to check Facebook where the parents can supervise stuff.
Back when we got the internet at home, that was the AOL 7 (that's what was available in my area) days... I had to have dad sign in so I
bymarkdavis ( 642305 ) writes:
>"Woohoo! And, how well do 'public service announcements' help with girls in high school or before getting pregnant? Same for smoking."
The service is targeted at adults, not minors. We know they are not effective on minors. Minors have poor judgement, focus, reasoning, wisdom, etc. Which is why they shouldn't be accessing the internet on unrestricted devices.
>"Maybe not give the kid an $800 cellphone... give'em a flip phone [...]"
Or a $200 phone/tablet, but with appropriate parental controls and wh
bycmseagle ( 1195671 ) writes:
Woohoo! And, how well do 'public service announcements' help with girls in high school or before getting pregnant? Same for smoking.
Odd to pick out two societal issues with rates at near historic lows. Public education campaigns paired with other interventions (e.g. tobacco advertising bans) can work.
byOcker3 ( 1232550 ) writes:
I'd say the biggest factor discouraging parents from being more involved in their kid's lives is time, too many people working long hours, commuting long hours, etc. Too many employers demanding on-site work rather than remote, because they made complicated land/office use deals that have nothing to do with their core business operations. If a person can complete 8 hours of in-office tasks in 3 hours at home, pay them for the work and let them do their own thing, like raising kids, or planting carrots.
bymarkdavis ( 642305 ) writes:
>"I'd say the biggest factor discouraging parents from being more involved in their kid's lives is time"
As far a devices, I think it is mostly just lack of awareness and available tools. I would like to see awareness rise a LOT and tools become more visual and available. A parent shouldn't need to know a whole lot of "tech" to get an appropriate device for their child. When they get a phone/tablet/whatever, it should ask if this is going to be used by a minor and walk the parent through setting up rem
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bymarkdavis ( 642305 ) writes:
>"Sounds to me like Virginia is trying to give parents tools to enforce their decisions."
No it is not. It is usurping parents' abilities and at the expense of ALL adults while not actually protecting children. Parental controls need to be on the devices children use, not on all sites that any person of any age with any device might visit.
"Social Media" isn't even defined in the bill/law. There are going to be many MILLIONS of inappropriate sites that children will STILL be able to access that are tota
byddtmm ( 549094 ) writes:
Sounds to me that Virginia has not though this through.
byambrandt12 ( 6486220 ) writes:
So... the parents can do the parenting thing after both get back from their jobs at 6:30, the parents have dinner (Burger King), Bobby is busy killing everything possible in CoD, and Suzy hasn't put her phone down since school got out.
Sure, the parent(s) can turn on the parental controls on the device, except the kids are smart enough to figure out how to bypass them.
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