Listen, I get it. The things that "kids these days" are up to is always seen as unholy and dangerous by everyone once they turn 30: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic
I'm actually pro the idea of regulating your child's use of technology at the parent level. But giving the tools to government to shut off access to communication for certain groups of people because parenting is hard is such a dangerous precedent to set.
Once the mechanisms and tools to do this are in place, you're one piece of regulation away from removing the idea of privacy altogether and policing all forms of communication. You're forever building the infrastructure to enable 1984, making it super easy to turn on, and hoping the people in power never once abuse it.
All over Europe right now there's some insane things being proposed by domestic politicians. In Denmark, the same people pushing for chat control have proposed a total and complete ban on VPNs.
The impulse to safety is an understandable one in the context of children. But we aren't going to form a successful, independent, and flourishing next generation by hiding them from a huge part of modern life until some arbitrary age, and suddenly unlocking access to it in adulthood.
> one piece of regulation away from removing the idea of privacy altogether and policing all forms of communication. You're building the infrastructure to create 1984.
Politicians attempt this all over Europe, but Britain is trying especially hard, with surprisingly little pushback. Not just the internet, also their state-run and state-accessible CCTV networks, now even with face detection. The idea of giving up privacy for the greater good is surprisingly normalized in the UK
I don't think it's a coincidence that 1984 is set in England and was written by an Englishman
Why are so many parents completely OK with abdicating responsibility like this? Dealing with peer pressure and adolescence is something every parent needs to figure out how to do, sans governmental intervention.
In many European countries, parents have already handed the majority of their child raising duties to the state.
If your kid is in state-subsidized daycare from 8am-5pm every day and bedtime is at 730pm, your child is effectively interfacing with and being entirely raised by a life setup by the state for bulk processing far more than any bespoke one setup by you as a parent.
When you've already distanced your involvement so much, it's only natural these same people would want to remove additional parenting duties off their plate so they can further lead a fully automated life devoid of responsibility or anything uncomfortable like setting limits for your child. Because who wants to take care of their children or their parents? Yuck. Let the immigrant brown people do it while we simultaneously scapegoat them for our own economic failings.
I'm actually pro the idea of regulating your child's use of technology at the parent level. But giving the tools to government to shut off access to communication for certain groups of people because parenting is hard is such a dangerous precedent to set.
Once the mechanisms and tools to do this are in place, you're one piece of regulation away from removing the idea of privacy altogether and policing all forms of communication. You're forever building the infrastructure to enable 1984, making it super easy to turn on, and hoping the people in power never once abuse it.
All over Europe right now there's some insane things being proposed by domestic politicians. In Denmark, the same people pushing for chat control have proposed a total and complete ban on VPNs.
The impulse to safety is an understandable one in the context of children. But we aren't going to form a successful, independent, and flourishing next generation by hiding them from a huge part of modern life until some arbitrary age, and suddenly unlocking access to it in adulthood.