Parental controls have been an effective way for decades.

People said the exact same thing about books, radio, TV, movies, video games and music.

You come up with some sort of arbitrary rating system. Any child with intent will find a way around it, and eventually they'll try to find a way to protect their kids from something else.

Parents gotta parent.

Maybe its time for parents to parent their fucking kids...

By not allowing parents to outsource the responsibilities of being a parent.

By getting rid of shitty corporate social media that makes money by exploiting people.

This is like suggesting that the solution to protecting your kids from tigers roaming the street is to lock them in their rooms. Nah, just rid of the fucking tigers.

Kill the engagement algorithm. Your feed should contain a chronological list of posts made by people you subscribe to. In one stroke you could end the doomscroll - not just for kids, but for everybody. Also, infinite scrolling should be banned.

The book The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt had a really clever idea. Create a regulation for operating systems that requires that their parental controls include an option that labels a device as belonging to a kid. When that option is toggled, requests will include some sort of header that labels the request as originating from a kid. Then, place onus (probably through some sort of legislation) on web platforms to restrict what content is shown to kids.

I think a good middle ground would be minor regulation and education. Forbid places like Instagram, for example, from recommending beauty ads if person is consuming content that may indicate that they are insecure about their bodies. Then ensure that teens/young adults know what tricks social media use to garner engagement, be mentally addictive etc so they can make more informed choices.

Maybe parent your children better, it is your job, not the government's.

I don't know why no one has said it, but get rid of social media as we know it. That's the actual only solution. The harms of social media applies to all ages. It's the capitalist side of social media that is the danger. Put limits on advertising and suddenly the algorithms to keep you engaged/ angry/ addicted are pointless, and suddenly social media isn't as harmful.

Some of it can be accomplished by just setting universal demands for how social media works for all users:

• ban targeted advertising
• make it mandatory for companies to ensure algorithms don't prioritize posts for making users angry, scared or depressed

Stuff like that. These kinds of regulations don't involve ID checks, and could take care of a big chunk of the problem.

Do what my parents did: Only let your kids online for a limited time, while being supervised the whole time. If they could do it back before tools that helped existed, it should be super fucking easy in 2026 with all the parental controls everything offers.

But we also need to educate the parents. There seems to be a huge gap in what Xellenials (people specifically born between 1976 & 1985) were taught about the internet that not one other group/generation was, including full on mellenials, gen alpha and gen z.

I like to think I'm a tech savvy parent and the amount of tooth gnashing to setup and maintain child accounts is incredible. I'm convinced the foxes guarding the henhouse are using dark patterns to make parents give up.

Why can't I just get a notification on my phone saying "Hey, kiddo wants to have screen time. Approve?"

Hell, I'd love a notification saying "Kiddo started watching Mr. Blah." If I got the notification and I didn't want them watching that, I could block the video, or creator with a click. WHY ARE WE NOT AT THIS LEVEL OF CONVENIENCE?

A LOT of these concerns would go away if phones/tablets/tv's had these simple controls. Move those privacy controls into the home and MAKE them so easy a neanderthal could operate them.

If I have to *.newsocialbook.com into my router, you can bet your damn ass that "LiveLaughLoveMom<3" is going to keep demanding that someone else do it for her.

Make parental control filters mandatory. i.e. if your kid is caught on social media, parents get a fine (proportional to their income and wealth, of course). Worked for seatbelts.

Also, make social media less addictive in general. Sure it's dangerous for children, but it's also dangerous for adults, and are those actually well-informed about how purposefully addictive social media is? Facebook etc. make their products as addictive as possible, and on top of that they're also quite selective about which political propaganda is being pushed. And why the fuck is twitter/X still legally available in every European country? They're literally pushing child porn.

I have been pro banning all for-profit social media for years. I can live without Reddit. Especially now with Lemmy and fediverse. I can even live with no social media whatsoever. We should probably ban all porn too. It is just as brain rotting as social media. I say this as someone who does watch porn. I can live without it if society gets better from banning it.

By making it so that social media can’t harm anyone, not just kids.

I cannot emphasize this enough: I do not give a single living fuck what other people's children do on the Internet.

There is no "harms of social media" per se. There are harms of unregulated companies that purposefully create addiction machines that are harmful to everyone, young and old alike. Our collective grandma became an antivaxer at the ripe age of 71, our collective dad became racist not at 13 either.

The hard way? Treat access to the Internet as if about to drive a car or being handed a gun. Along good parenting, responsibility should be taught throughout, and likewise smartphones shouldn't be simply given to children like a Gameboy.

Governments need to setup a digital ID using a trustless authenticator.

Government issues a one-time verified credential (tied to real identity verification, like a passport or SSN check). You get a cryptographic token on your device. When a platform needs to know "is this a real adult citizen?", you present a zero-knowledge proof — yes/no, nothing else. No name, no IP, no persistent identifier the platform can track. The government isn't contacted. The platform learns nothing except the answer to their question.

Stop. Giving. Them. Phones.

Stop whining. No they don't need one. NO THEY DON'T.

No.

No they're not special.

No they're not too busy. Neither are you.

No iPad either.

Stop. Shut up. No. Phones.