Technology

What can I, as a regular guy, do to help make this happen?

I'm gonna give credit to Lightning Hopkins a hell of a lot earlier than I do Kaczynski

I have siblings like that. Literally never seen them parent. I've changed more of their kids' diapers than I have seen them do, and I have no kids. It's kind of irritating in an understatement kind of way. My poor niblings

It seems like a pretty common thing for people to expect that the luxuries of modern technology include not having to do anything you don't want to, including being present for your own life.

People make self-destructive choices every day. (insert "always have been" 🌏🧑‍🚀🔫🧑‍🚀)

I see this as more like the patriot act- gover ent and big tech are pushing to elevate concerns of "the children's safety" to violate our privacy and sell data. Same way the patriot act is so you can "keep all the evil bad man terrorists" at bay but really it's an excuse to violate our rights "legally" in the name of "safety".

I think you’re correct in both aspects for sure. Parents are certainly less involved, for the most part, in informing their kids of literally anything. It is much easier to ‘offload any and all responsibilities’ as you put it. iPad kids are a good example of this. Handing a 2yr old a video device and walking away is not parenting. This is an issue with many many topics from internet safety, to general life things, to talks about their bodies. Parents do not want to parent.

I’d also agree, largely, the parents just don’t know, or care. Privacy is, unfortunately, a niche thing to know and care about.

"Age Verification" is just them attaching "THINK OF THE CHILDREN" to their push to have every single bit of information about every person on the planet.

Social media functions as a kind of gatekeeper for public interactions, not unlike credit scores, driver's licenses, and college degrees. The absence of a presence on social media is not only socially debilitating (you're cut out of the information stream for local events and public amenities) but a red-flag for college recruiters and employers. It's much like how not using a credit card regularly in your teens/20s impacts your ability to access low-interest lending in your 30s/40s. Or not having a driver's license interferes with your right to vote.

State officials have been searching for a kind of uniform, iron-clad, easily verifiable public ID for ages. Linking your online presence (a thing that you need for a myriad of daily tasks) to your ID becomes a pathway to this goal. Universal, non-transferable digital ID becomes a wicked two-edged sword as it both exhaustively tracks the "documented" individuals and neatly severs the "undocumented" from society.

Basically don't allow ads for kids and only show social media posts from their friends in chronological order instead of any fancy algorithm. Also make them liable for showing scams to minors. That kills most profit.