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Originally Posted by ThirdOfFive
I agree that parenting is "different" today, for many reasons; one biggie being that many parents these days are parents by default, and many of them have their own problems relating to substance abuse, serial relationships, etc. In my opinion the primary responsibility of a good parent is and always has been to impart VALUES to their children. Unfortunately, two-married-parent households that teach values not just by words but by example is becoming more and more rare.
Unless a child is provably at-risk (and I suppose an argument could be made for that, in this case), I generally don't favor government stepping in. But in this particular place I think the emphasis is in the wrong place. Rather than banning sites so that KIDS cannot access provably dangerous sites, why not penalize PARENTS when it is proven that their children access such sites? Such a move would take the onus of parenting away from the government and place it squarely back on the parent(s), where it belongs.
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For sure! If a kid is being bullied in school on a website, hammer the parents and crack down with fines on the host server. It is a lot like smoking, drinking, or watching rated R movies though. Kids will break the rules. I don’t think Tik Tok or others are necessarily a good influence, but then neither is gaming where you gain points while killing as many as you can. The issue is larger than laws we have or the laws that can fix our problems. I don’t like laws that block free speech, but then a law against yelling “fire” in a crowded movie theater was passed too.
Kids can and should be treated different than adults, they don’t always know better. The internet is basically unfiltered for all. Should it remain unfiltered for the more vulnerable youth, or just let them get crushed?