I think people have a right to know the world’s ugly, harsh facts and crazy opinions. Not knowing something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
I think the solution is to remind them of all the good facts and reasonable opinions. Warn about particularly bad stuff like gore (and do block this content from children until they reach young adulthood). And most importantly, teach them how to better manage their thoughts and emotions (techniques from therapy), so they can learn about bad stuff without being hurt or biased from it.
Then again, this take is from my own ignorance and personality. Maybe I haven’t been exposed to the real ugly stuff, or maybe I’m better at not reacting to stuff emotionally than others. But the main issue with restricting harsh information is, not knowing something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Also, often young people compare their lives to unrealistic images portrayed through social media influencers, and get depressed when their life seems worse. So even "positive" content can be a source of depression.
Newspapers bring you that, once per day. And social media brings a lot more than that.
People need to learn that the news is biased and uses fallacies like the slippery slope to make harsh reality sound even harsh than it actually is.
The trick social media companies use is convincing people that all they're doing is giving people access to "information". They are not; they're just creating addiction machines. It should be self evident that wikipedia or a minimalist blog with a comment box is in an entirely different solar system from facebook's algorithm that keeps track of how long you scroll and then shows you something you're likely to interact with right before you're supposed to close the app, manipulating your emotions to keep you "engaged" longer.
>Our descendants will create better platforms that can allow users to better filter for their emotional needs and they'll likely have better tools to understand their own emotions.
We already have them. My kids won't be able to access the internet until they figure out how to navigate the command line.
In the beginning ...
The distribution channel isn't the main issue, it is that the role of a parent is more complicated than it ever was and parents are not keeping up.
In the past you had to ensure that your kid doesn't pick up negative influences from the kids around them. Today you need to be more proactive in ensuring that they don't pick up negative influences from the multitudes of misguided people unrestricted by geography who's half-formed views are propagated as long as they are interesting and make people feel good about themselves in the short term.
All the time, every day, forever?
Not sure what society you're living in but here in the western world the push for censorship is constant.
Most dont let young children have access to pornography and extremely violent content for example. Historically, this access has been limited both by parents and social groups.
I wouldn't want to rely on my toddlers cognitive tools to digest and defend against a high resolution video of someone being dismembered and beheaded alive.