A lot of parents sadly lack any kinds of skills to use those tools nor even know that they exist.
As far as laws with potential to repress freedom of expression go, wouldn’t public government programs or campaigns to train & educate parents be a less compromising way to meet such needs without raising issues of liberty, privacy, coercion?
If they actually worked, sure. I’ve been a parent for nearly 20 years now and at least in here there’s always been some kind of programs, information campaingns, news articles, tools and pretty much everything you can imagine to help keeping your kids safe. You obviously don’t buy porn magazines for your teens and don’t show news from war zones to your young kids and keep eye on the movies/shows they watch, but somehow every precaution is lost when it comes to the internet. I don’t know if it’s lack of understanding in general (as in what you can find from the net) or if it’s just the easy way out since you don’t need to learn how to apply limits on devices, but somehow (at least in here, based on what I’ve seen/heard) it’s not taken as seriously as PG-ratings on physical media.
And in that a system-wide setting on devices which would include allowed PG-rating on HTTP-headers (or equivalent) might be a decent solution. Obviously parents still need to pay at least some attention on the devices their kids use, but that wouldn’t require setting up a pihole on your network which blocks tiktok. However, as I said, that’s helpful tool to the parents only as long as it’s just a field on a local user account for the device, not something you’d need online services to verify.
Technically that would be pretty easy to implement and even if it’s just an extension to HTTP headers that would cover nearly all of the use cases today. Sure, the kids interested in tech could bypass that pretty easily, but that applies to nearly all of the parental controls anyways. But all those benefits obviously vanish if the age setting needs verification from someone else than the parent and it’s not stored just locally in the device. Building systems for adults to verify their age in order to look some bare nipples is a colossally stupid idea, but I’d guess nearly all of us here on fediverse already understand that.
Not sure that part’s absolutely necessary: if it’s publicly promoted to the extent that parents don’t have an excuse (eg, time, cost, access) other than low willpower/interest they are reasonably accountable for, then the public has fulfilled its duty to empower parents to direct the rearing of their children while protecting everyone’s fundamental rights.
However, I also think interested parents would popularly adopt voluntary solutions with enough public resources committed to promote & provide them in a major way.
While the public expense may seem extra, I think the government’s duty to protect fundamental rights justifies the expense.
Another comment mentions legislatively commissioned studies that suggest solutions similar to yours, but broader & less intrusive.
Recommendations included
A broad, national, private sector conversation should be encouraged on the development of next-generation systems for labeling, rating, and identifying content reflecting the convergence of old and new media.
Government and the private sector should undertake a major education campaign to promote public awareness of technologies and methods available to protect children online.
They also stressed the importance of adult involvement to provide child supervision & teach children internet safety, information literacy, & skills to evaluate inappropriate messages.
If the government had pursued these recommendations (it didn’t), I think it would have succeeded.
It’s also worth noting those & newer studies found client-side filters more effective than age verification for a number of reasons.
false positives & negatives are low & can be corrected
filters all internet protocols (not only HTTP or successors) regardless of geographic origin (including those beyond legal jurisdiction) or dynamism (eg, live chats also filtered)
highly granular (eg, can filter sections inside web pages)
You obviously don’t buy porn magazines for your teens and don’t show news from war zones to your young kids and keep eye on the movies/shows they watch
Though Australia isn’t the US, the US federal courts had an interesting opinion there: parents may always allow their children to access protected speech.
Even with sex-related materials, the Supreme Court has stated
the prohibition against sales to minors does not bar parents who so desire from purchasing the magazines for their children.
They regarded as constitutionally defective laws that impose a single standard of public morality.
Instead, they’d allow laws that “support the right of parents to deal with the morals of their children as they see fit”.
Laws that take away parental control are also impermissible.
“It is cardinal with us that the custody, care and nurture of the child reside first in the parents, whose primary function and freedom include preparation for obligations the state can neither supply nor hinder.” Prince v. Massachusetts, supra, at 166.
In another decision, they regard & defend parental responsibility & discretion in leaving access open to children.
The Fabulous Associates […]. Id. at 788. The court noted that “[i]n this respect, the decision a parent must make is comparable to whether to keep sexually explicit books on the shelf or subscribe to adult magazines. No constitutional principle is implicated. The responsibility for making such choices is where our society has traditionally placed it — on the shoulders of the parent.”
So, according to them, presenting such content to children ought to be left up to their parents, and laws shouldn’t infringe on their right to do that.
There are all kinds of laws regarding on how parents should treat their children and one might argue that keeping non-age appropriate material away from them is a reasonable line to draw into. For example in here with movies it’s pretty common practice (depending on a theater) to allow kids to ‘higher age bracket’ PG-rating with a guardian.
But the whole problem, at least from my point of view, can’t be solved only by either technological or legal barriers or solutions. Parenting is a tough job and from what I can see there’s really not enough support for them to do the job. “It takes a village to raise a child” used to be pretty commonly understood approach where all individuals from school bus drivers and cashiers played their small part on educating kids on how to behave and how the world works. Today it’s just rules and regulations which adults can use to hide behind and avoid taking any kind of responsibility and also, at least on some cases, the same rules say that you’re not even allowed to intervene if kids are being kids and do something stupid.
Obviously a lot of things are better now too than even in the 80s and 90s when I was a stupid kid, but I’d say something is also lost on the way.
As far as laws with potential to repress freedom of expression go, wouldn’t public government programs or campaigns to train & educate parents be a less compromising way to meet such needs without raising issues of liberty, privacy, coercion?
If they actually worked, sure. I’ve been a parent for nearly 20 years now and at least in here there’s always been some kind of programs, information campaingns, news articles, tools and pretty much everything you can imagine to help keeping your kids safe. You obviously don’t buy porn magazines for your teens and don’t show news from war zones to your young kids and keep eye on the movies/shows they watch, but somehow every precaution is lost when it comes to the internet. I don’t know if it’s lack of understanding in general (as in what you can find from the net) or if it’s just the easy way out since you don’t need to learn how to apply limits on devices, but somehow (at least in here, based on what I’ve seen/heard) it’s not taken as seriously as PG-ratings on physical media.
And in that a system-wide setting on devices which would include allowed PG-rating on HTTP-headers (or equivalent) might be a decent solution. Obviously parents still need to pay at least some attention on the devices their kids use, but that wouldn’t require setting up a pihole on your network which blocks tiktok. However, as I said, that’s helpful tool to the parents only as long as it’s just a field on a local user account for the device, not something you’d need online services to verify.
Technically that would be pretty easy to implement and even if it’s just an extension to HTTP headers that would cover nearly all of the use cases today. Sure, the kids interested in tech could bypass that pretty easily, but that applies to nearly all of the parental controls anyways. But all those benefits obviously vanish if the age setting needs verification from someone else than the parent and it’s not stored just locally in the device. Building systems for adults to verify their age in order to look some bare nipples is a colossally stupid idea, but I’d guess nearly all of us here on fediverse already understand that.
Not sure that part’s absolutely necessary: if it’s publicly promoted to the extent that parents don’t have an excuse (eg, time, cost, access) other than low willpower/interest they are reasonably accountable for, then the public has fulfilled its duty to empower parents to direct the rearing of their children while protecting everyone’s fundamental rights. However, I also think interested parents would popularly adopt voluntary solutions with enough public resources committed to promote & provide them in a major way. While the public expense may seem extra, I think the government’s duty to protect fundamental rights justifies the expense.
Another comment mentions legislatively commissioned studies that suggest solutions similar to yours, but broader & less intrusive. Recommendations included
They also stressed the importance of adult involvement to provide child supervision & teach children internet safety, information literacy, & skills to evaluate inappropriate messages. If the government had pursued these recommendations (it didn’t), I think it would have succeeded.
It’s also worth noting those & newer studies found client-side filters more effective than age verification for a number of reasons.
Though Australia isn’t the US, the US federal courts had an interesting opinion there: parents may always allow their children to access protected speech. Even with sex-related materials, the Supreme Court has stated
They regarded as constitutionally defective laws that impose a single standard of public morality. Instead, they’d allow laws that “support the right of parents to deal with the morals of their children as they see fit”. Laws that take away parental control are also impermissible.
In another decision, they regard & defend parental responsibility & discretion in leaving access open to children.
So, according to them, presenting such content to children ought to be left up to their parents, and laws shouldn’t infringe on their right to do that.
There are all kinds of laws regarding on how parents should treat their children and one might argue that keeping non-age appropriate material away from them is a reasonable line to draw into. For example in here with movies it’s pretty common practice (depending on a theater) to allow kids to ‘higher age bracket’ PG-rating with a guardian.
But the whole problem, at least from my point of view, can’t be solved only by either technological or legal barriers or solutions. Parenting is a tough job and from what I can see there’s really not enough support for them to do the job. “It takes a village to raise a child” used to be pretty commonly understood approach where all individuals from school bus drivers and cashiers played their small part on educating kids on how to behave and how the world works. Today it’s just rules and regulations which adults can use to hide behind and avoid taking any kind of responsibility and also, at least on some cases, the same rules say that you’re not even allowed to intervene if kids are being kids and do something stupid.
Obviously a lot of things are better now too than even in the 80s and 90s when I was a stupid kid, but I’d say something is also lost on the way.