tbf, when most of those posting here were children, access to smartphones/tablets with unrestricted internet connection wasn't a problem
but i do remember my parents actually raising me pretty hands-on, taking care of me not watching stuff I shouldn't be watching which of course existed and was easily available
Access to smartphones/tablets with unrestricted internet connection is only a problem today when parents give their children access to smartphones/tablets with unrestricted internet connections.
Cell phones and tablets don't spontaneously appear whenever a child wants one. Parents have the ability to hand devices over to children when they have time to watch them while they use it and remove those devices from them when they don't.
> Parents have the ability to hand devices over to children when they have time to watch them while they use it and remove those devices from them when they don't.
Sure, if we assume the kids are kept in a locked box at all times, I suppose.
What about when they go to school and use internet devices there? Some of them are even issuing personal laptops. Or they hang out with their friends or go to the library or visit a pc cafe (a bit rare in america, but still...)
Even beyond that, exactly how often are you monitoring what they do at home? Are you watching over their shoulder every hour they have access to an internet device?
Like, kids have been smoking/drinking/having sex/etc while their parents are ignorant for 100s of years, what makes you think parents are suddenly going to be able to supervise all internet access?
When I was a child we didn't even have wifi of any kind and I still did things like sneak down to the family desktop after my parents went to sleep and "surf the web".
None of this is to say that we should created nanny-net that controls the entire internet in the hopes of protecting children, but there's a lot of room between that and doing literally nothing.
I'm reminded of fairly recent efforts to strongly discourage people smoking in movies/tv and banning actual advertising and how effective that was at decreasing the population of smokers, at least until vaping came along.
The point is sometimes we can identify seemingly small areas that will make a large impact and take action there.
