It takes a lot of work to be a parent and also monitor all that media consumption/stop all ads. The “average person” isn’t as tech savvy as most of us here and that stuff just doesn’t come as easily to them.

For instance I am very comfortable letting my kids play video games. I play a lot myself, I can make good judgments about what is appropriate for them, what is an appropriate amount of time to play, what is good/bad behavior when playing, what systems are a good choice or if online access (if any) is appropriate. I barely need to think about these things, but for some people this is an incredibly time-consuming, intimidating task.

Is it not ok that parents that spend more time and effort with their kids have better outcomes than parents that spend less time? I’d rather that than have the nanny state regulate everything bad for kids out of existence; we already know what kind of civil rights violations politicians try to justify with children.

It is very hard work raising kids if you are interested in parenting and want to do your best.

The thing is that not everyone's life goal is to be the best parent around. And there is pressure from the society/culture/government to reproduce for healthy economy.

If we as a country want people to have more children, then we need to make their job easier. That may include censorship, age verifications, etc.

You’re making this a very stark, binary choice. Reality is far more nuanced.

Thing is, keeping children out of Instagram, Facebook, or whatever new social media is hyping currently will probably make them kind of weirdos in their bubble, e.g. in school. At least this would be my fear (don't have children). And good luck trying to use any of these ad-infested privacy-invading platforms while trying to avoid ads.

It doesn't have to make them weird, especially if you're in a school district where there are no-phone policies. Otherwise it can be difficult, for sure.

Learning how to stand on your own in school is good practice for doing the same thing in life. By which I’m absolutely not saying “don’t have friends” but rather, you don’t have to be like everyone else.

My kids won’t be on social media until they’re not kids anymore. If none of us take a stand, nothing ever changes.

Your kids will create hidden social media accounts that you don't know about. That's what I would have done in their situation.

Their exposure will still be much less than someone who gives them free reign and lets them sit in the livingroom staring at a phone. They won't be staring at the phone distracted while they're hanging out with the family.

Hiding things from parents is a far bigger problem than staring at a phone in a living room.

No it’s not. Everyone hid things from their parents. I hid soooo much from my parents. It’s fine. It’s normal. It’s far more important to have limited exposure to modern smart phones.

The people who say things like this inevitably are the ones who spend ten minutes with a therapist and the therapist’s eyes go wide

What, exactly, is so problematic about not telling your parents that you smoke weed with your friends before playing video games? What, exactly, is so problematic about not telling your parents who are dangerously religious, that you had sex with your high school girlfriend? These are all normal, innocuous activities of teenagers. A therapist would not think twice about hearing them.

Indeed, I might have done the same. At least that will be a challenge, lacking smart phones.

Being an outlier when the in-group is actively having their brains turned to mush seems like the better of the two outcomes.

This argument is popular but doesn't hold water. If we suppose for the sake of argument that social media is bad for kids, then it is a parent's duty to keep them off it even if that makes the kid unpopular. As an analogy, consider a kid whose social circle is all shooting heroin. Would it then become acceptable to let your kid do heroin? Of course not. Similarly, even if all the other kids are on social media, it doesn't become acceptable to let your kid use social media (going with the assumed premise that it's bad for them).

Half of the country is teaching their kids to take religion literally and never question it, and that any news story that you don’t like isn’t real, simply because you disagree with it.

Handing over an iPad is the least of the issues facing a large portion of our youth and frankly they might be better off if their parents did sit them in front of it and walk away.

One of the important purposes of a society is to improve the raising of kids who might not be raised well by their parents alone, because it is a valuable outcome to everyone.

You don't choose who you get born to, so if society chooses to say "If you get born to a shitty person, you will suffer immensely and we will do nothing about it", that is a bad society.

Nobody deserves to suffer due to an accident of birth.

Also, "It takes a village to raise a child" is not exactly metaphorical.