Ask Lemmy

Here's some ideas, in no particular order or combination:

• Police stings, "how to catch a predator" style offense
• Actually investigate and convict pedophiles(US issue)
• Ban the use of real names and PII information. Sign up for FaceSpace? Cool here's a randomly generated username. If you try to dox yourself or others you're banned
• Ban social media? Like websites tailored to have you post about yourself, selfies, etc. Lemmy definitely leans towards being social media, but I don't see it as social media.
• Force companies to actually develop, use, and improve parental controls

On the last point, let's use Steam as an example. I as a parent should be able to make a "child" account, with its own username, password, and maybe separate email. And then on that child account I should be able to blacklist all features by default and only whitelist what I want. Like only allow the child account to have access to the "Library" view. So when the account is signed into directly it can only see "Library" unless I enter a PIN or password to authenticate being an adult. I can buy games for that child account and/or add the child account to my family share and whitelist games 1-by-1 for my child to have access to.

YouTube is also a good example. I should be able to create a child YouTube account and only allow ABC YouTube channel for that account to have access to. Or tie it to a child Google account and I can restrict everything on an android tablet down to each individual app.

As a tech geek and now parent of a child, the parental controls are lacking HARD for pretty much every service and platform out there. My children are still too young to understand this stuff, but I already know the best thing I can do for my children are:

• Teach them Internet safety as early as possible(no real names, no posting addresses, people WILL target you and want to rape/traffick/exploit you)
• Explain the psychology around social media, peer pressure, advertisements, etc
• No personal device(smart phone, computer) for them until middle school(10-12 years old) at the earliest
• Take an active effort in using the Internet with them in appropriate ways as young as possible

Notice I didn't say "no Internet" until X age. I think restricting the Internet from your child entirely until some arbitrary age will be more negative than positive. It's like not teaching your child how to swim because you're afraid they'll drown, but then they're 18 and you tell them to jump into the ocean because YOU'RE ready while they're not.