First things first: Meta is a terrible company that has spent years making terrible decisions and being terrible at explaining the challenges of social media trust & safety, all while prioritiz…
I have a question. What if it’s not just at a parenting level. What if it’s also at a school in level? Because I think at least partially there is a disconnect between media and internet literacy and people of all ages including children and parents.
I think we’re going to need such skills going forward and that there exist places in the world where students are being taught such things and are benefiting from them significantly.
Yet the immediate knee jerk reactions seem to be blame the parents and blame the companies that facilitate the access to the content.
It doesn’t have to be a parents by themselves against the world system. But it also can’t just be a “companies protecting the children” system because that’s not what companies do or are for? The need to maintain a profit margin flies directly in the face of the aim to hold companies responsible and the laws seem to be intent on capping the monetary consequences of a breach of the law.
I do feel that the least a parent should be required to do before complaining to a governing body that they find someone else is “harming” their child is to show that they have done their due diligence to protect said child. We punish parents for willful negligence and child endangerment all the time. I don’t understand why this is different but I also wonder if there are other options for educating both children and adults that could help the situation significantly.
I guess in response to your last paragraph, the issue is the predatory nature of the attention addiction machines these companies make.
You could compare it to a child that got in to a van that had “free candy” written on the side. The door was open, if you assume someone was standing next to the van asking the kid to get in, that would be advertising. Now the kid gets abducted. Their “attention” is held hostage in the case of social media etc.
Now, would the parents have had to tell the kids to not get in to a van with free candy written on it for them to be able to report it to the police? Bad luck otherwise? Now what if every month a new van rocks up with more bells and whistles, its a different colour, its got flames down the side, whatever - the point is its different and cool and more appealing each time. More kids go missing. The “predators” have figured out what makes these kids tick and what makes them more likely to get in the van every time.
It’s a bit of an out there and confronting comparison but really, these companies are praying on your mental instead of your physical, which apparently is free game. They are still predators.
They know the harm their platforms cause, they suppress studies that report that harm, they cover it up, they fight tooth and nail and spend millions lobbying government to let them continue to do it.
Back on track sorry, schools are also responsible but you run in to the same issues once companies start targetting school kids like google did with chromebooks - the shittest PCs sold at a loss just so they could attempt to hook the younger generation in to their ecosystem of surveilance and advertising early.
Companies will NEVER protect the children. They will only ever protect shareholders, profits and their pedo CEOs.
Real change will only ever come from real (not sponsored) education, government legislation that isnt bullshit (I dont know what this would look like but ID checking isnt it) and holding the tech bros increasingly accountable for their fucked up apps.
I think you make some good points here, but just for context, I do think that there is a level of responsibility on the parents here in combination with the companies. There’s plenty of “online literacy” classes that I think would be appropriate for adolescent education. I’m the unfortunate benefactor of needing to master cursive as a class one year and then typing the next year. Schools would be more beneficial if they included teaching kids internet literacy. They can probably drop some of the old stuff. They also don’t teach several other things like financial literacy in many situations (despite heavy capitalist leanings in real life). The education system sucks, but that is not an excuse to let iPad kids control my freedoms, and the root cause for age verification has never been about protecting children in the first place.
I have a question. What if it’s not just at a parenting level. What if it’s also at a school in level? Because I think at least partially there is a disconnect between media and internet literacy and people of all ages including children and parents.
I think we’re going to need such skills going forward and that there exist places in the world where students are being taught such things and are benefiting from them significantly.
Yet the immediate knee jerk reactions seem to be blame the parents and blame the companies that facilitate the access to the content.
It doesn’t have to be a parents by themselves against the world system. But it also can’t just be a “companies protecting the children” system because that’s not what companies do or are for? The need to maintain a profit margin flies directly in the face of the aim to hold companies responsible and the laws seem to be intent on capping the monetary consequences of a breach of the law.
I do feel that the least a parent should be required to do before complaining to a governing body that they find someone else is “harming” their child is to show that they have done their due diligence to protect said child. We punish parents for willful negligence and child endangerment all the time. I don’t understand why this is different but I also wonder if there are other options for educating both children and adults that could help the situation significantly.
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deleted by creator
I guess in response to your last paragraph, the issue is the predatory nature of the attention addiction machines these companies make.
You could compare it to a child that got in to a van that had “free candy” written on the side. The door was open, if you assume someone was standing next to the van asking the kid to get in, that would be advertising. Now the kid gets abducted. Their “attention” is held hostage in the case of social media etc.
Now, would the parents have had to tell the kids to not get in to a van with free candy written on it for them to be able to report it to the police? Bad luck otherwise? Now what if every month a new van rocks up with more bells and whistles, its a different colour, its got flames down the side, whatever - the point is its different and cool and more appealing each time. More kids go missing. The “predators” have figured out what makes these kids tick and what makes them more likely to get in the van every time.
It’s a bit of an out there and confronting comparison but really, these companies are praying on your mental instead of your physical, which apparently is free game. They are still predators.
They know the harm their platforms cause, they suppress studies that report that harm, they cover it up, they fight tooth and nail and spend millions lobbying government to let them continue to do it.
Back on track sorry, schools are also responsible but you run in to the same issues once companies start targetting school kids like google did with chromebooks - the shittest PCs sold at a loss just so they could attempt to hook the younger generation in to their ecosystem of surveilance and advertising early.
Companies will NEVER protect the children. They will only ever protect shareholders, profits and their pedo CEOs.
Real change will only ever come from real (not sponsored) education, government legislation that isnt bullshit (I dont know what this would look like but ID checking isnt it) and holding the tech bros increasingly accountable for their fucked up apps.
I think you make some good points here, but just for context, I do think that there is a level of responsibility on the parents here in combination with the companies. There’s plenty of “online literacy” classes that I think would be appropriate for adolescent education. I’m the unfortunate benefactor of needing to master cursive as a class one year and then typing the next year. Schools would be more beneficial if they included teaching kids internet literacy. They can probably drop some of the old stuff. They also don’t teach several other things like financial literacy in many situations (despite heavy capitalist leanings in real life). The education system sucks, but that is not an excuse to let iPad kids control my freedoms, and the root cause for age verification has never been about protecting children in the first place.