this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2024
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I know I’m an old cranky Lemmy user and in the distinct minority here, where my impression is that the average age is somewhere in the 20s.
But as 40-something dad of four, I can wholeheartedly say that I would approve of this. And I’m saying this as a bleeding-heart “let people make their own choices”.
But I do believe we will come to view smartphone access (leading to Social media access and 1000s ephemeral Snapchat and WhatsApp groups) for under 16s like we now do selling cigarettes to children.
Before people decide how wrong I am, I’d really like them to try and raise children with smart phone and a race-to-the-bottom challenge where some absentee-parents child gets a smart phone in year 4 and then it sets off an avalanche.
Parent controls do not work on iPhone. And when I say “they don’t work” I don’t mean “they’re not effective”. I mean they’re broken and do not work. If Apple gave a shit and actually fixed it and if accounts on SoMe sites were age verified I’d feel very different about it.
I kind of agree with the idea but it's absolutely not enforceable in any practical way. What we need is more awareness and parental control, but other than that, I'm not sure what else could be done that wouldn't screw everyone over. (Like identity and age control, which would be an absolute nightmare)
I actually disagree that identity control is required. We already have in place the post office EasyID (Yoti) system and we already have PASS cards. It isn’t hard to imagine extending that system and simply saying “if you’re allowing an account from the U.K., you must verify the age using this third party system”. Agreeing that someone is over 16 and knowing everything about them is two very different things.
It’s only hard to imagine it because we’ve never tried.