I totally agree but the UK government – particular Labour – doesn't want people to take responsibility really, because that would take from their own 'power'. There's nothing the UK loves more than a stupid population hooked on benefits and devoid of education, critical thinking and financial freedom.
I think the Greens are opposed to it, and maybe Reform in one of their populist speeches, but the majority of UK representatives seem to support this law.
Based on this poll, most Britons also support the OSA: https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/britons-back-online-safety-acts-...
Then the bill payer can enable or disable access for three categories
* Under 18s
* Over 18s
* Unknown
as they are the bill payer and entering into a credit agreement requires you to be over 18. If you wanted belt and braces the phone companies doing PAYG could set it to disabled unless you authenticate your age to avoid the "buy simcard for cash" loophole.
ISPs could choose to implement finer grained controls in their routers. The majority of the big ISPs would likely block the "over 18" category by default.
It's an interesting idea. I presume that the there would be similar laws to selling guns. So there would need to be the national ID card and checks when selling any internet-enabled device. TVs, phones, cameras etc.
I as, a parent would probably need a phone safe, into which I could place my phone when I wasn't using it (though I suppose conceal-carry would be permissible). I;d probably want to have biometric locks on my TV, Chromecast etc etc and the children wouldn't be able to use the TV unsupervised unless all smart functions were locked down.
Doesn't sound particularly cool.
Some parents are awful at parenting, so much so it makes me question why they had kids if they clearly don't care about bringing them up properly.
It's a no brainer that kids should have minimal screen exposure. There's even organisations which specifically state the most ideal screen time (basically none up to 18 months, 1 hour max up to 5 years old). iPad children will be a detriment to the future of any country.
The screen time is bad enough, without the sloppy content you can very easily find online. The best ways to destroy a kid are to saddle them with social media, media consumption and porn/gambling/vices at an early age. Their brain is being fried during development.
Phones can have passcodes, fingerprint readers, facial recognition (for parents face) to keep kids off them.
Devices can have multiple user accounts, each with different purposes and applications. On my linux laptop, I have two accounts, one for work & one for personal, with distinct applications and configuration.
If all else fail, each manufacturer can product a simple device that can only chat & call with parents in case of emergencies. Can be a simple smart watch or pager like design, or just a dumb phone.
We are at the point where children should not even be exposed to the news (which is primarily incendiary politics these days) unless it is a major event. Smart TV's has so much garbage on them, why should they be allowed to even watch what they want on it?
Either way, ALL of these requires the parents to actually be parents. We can create the perfect technological solution but if the parents expose the child to porn/drugs/social media etc etc and fry their brains, it is a parental problem and not a tech problem.
wait... wut? Gun ownership for 12yo's? wtf :D
Though the idea of "internet only for adults" is not that bad IMHO. Yes, internet is (well, at least was advertised as) infinite-resource-of-knowledge but we know how it turned out - IMHO minority of underage use it to spend hours reading wikipedia and instead spend hours glued to crap like tiktok (though crap like that should be banned altogether as well :D)
One of my colleagues had Child Services round, as their daughter had told her school he was abusing her, because he confiscated her mobile (that he was paying for).
Good luck "parenting" any child in this day and age, when any seemingly minor things you think you can do as a parent, lead to that sort of outcome.
How'd you keep a kid off the internet, when they're happy to say anything to the authorities get that internet access back?
My kids have learned a huge amount from the internet. I have guided them, discussed what are credible resources, the harms possible etc, who they talk to and what they tell them....
There are solutions that would make it easier for parents - people need tools to manage this. Require that children use child safe SIM cards in their phones (they are available already - EE advertisers them). Home internet connections should be by filtered by default that can then be turned off (or off for particular devices in the ISP supplied router that most people have).
The people writing these laws don't know about DNS.
This isn't really relevant because what is considered "suitable for under 18s" varies wildly per country. Some countries ban rainbow flags, others will happily sell alcohol to 16-year-olds. Plus, 99.99% of websites don't care about this and will be blocked by default if you block the "unknown" category. Grandma isn't going to call their ISP and ask to unblock pornography because the American knitting forum she's on doesn't know how to add TXT records.
Technical solutions don't solve political problems.
> The majority of the big ISPs would likely block the "over 18" category by default.
Existing UK legislation already requires them to do that.
[1] - https://www.rtalabel.org/index.php?content=howtofaq#single
Who do you want your kids to communicate with over the internet ?
I’m consistently shocked at how authoritarian and draconian HN comments can be. Throwing parents in prison if their 12 year old uses the internet? Jail them and send their kids to foster care? This is your plan for improving the lives of children?
I’m surprised by all of the comments assuming the internet can’t possibly have any value for kids in any way, shape, or form. Did HN commenters grow up and forget what it’s like to be a kid with friends? With an interest in games or technology or discovery?
12 year olds are not buying their own iPhones and monthly service plans contracts.
Creating a national ID system for this is a weird suggestion that would have no impact on kids whatsoever but would create another centralized database for adults and make basic purchases more difficult and prone to tracking. Why even suggest this?
You can tell who doesn’t have kids by the way they extrapolate from the most extreme anecdotes they’ve heard anywhere.
As a parent, I guarantee you that children calling CPS for having rules imposed is not a common occurrence. You can’t really believe that any household with children is getting visited by CPS whenever they ground their kids.
I am a parent of 2 young kids. Its supremely easier for me to just fuck off, give them screens, any screens and do my own thing, rather than get up and just fucking spend time with them, no screens just physical fun and games. Add mental dimensions to the games as much as you want, but they need to be manual, analog, electricity can be max in form of some physical buttons.
There are 2 types of parents among my peers - those who at least try to be a good parent, most of the time. Literally everybody knows how screens or junk food are damaging, there is no escaping to ignorance of this simple fact. The other type, they are a failure themselves - often obese themselves, empty shallow life without proper healthy passions, glued to their own phones all the time, evenings spent mainly in front of TVs. The type, when they die (and have the time to reflect before) are full of regrets and hate.
Without major exception, kids reflect very well into which category their parents fall into. My best childhood friend falls firmly into second category - whole family is obese (while he was multiple times a wrestling national gold medalist in his late teens and ripped). He is a heavy smoker, both cigarettes and pot, quiet mild alcoholic by his own admission (his wife too given how she gulps whole bottles of wine), no hobbies apart from gardening, no passions, just displays everywhere. Unsurprisingly, their kids are the same, just glued to screens, overweight. They never stood the chance, its always a sad experience to visit them.
All this while he thinks how good their live is compared to many people around them. Subconsciousness desperately ironing reality so they feel better about their lives, despite seeing facts every day from all directions how that ain't true. It keeps breaking my heart every time.
The prime responsibility of a parent towards their child is to do their utmost to raise a happy, well balanced individual who knows what they want in their lives and once adult (or even before) will just get up and go for it, whatever it is. I would personally add a pinch of self-discipline to make it all more probable, also a rare sight these days. Now how many parents around you are like this.
I think it’s bad for society to treat adults as children, I’m happy that it should be made obviously available (there’s some merit to the argument that tech-illiterate parents often don’t know devices they give their kids have parental controls at all), but not on by default.
This is already the case in UK, has been for years. The bill payer needs to prove age with an ID to lift IP level blocks from some default age blocklist.
It doesn't work well because obviously a lot of internet is shared amongst a household, and the blocklist is too broad to make it annoying enough that any adults will remove it. Then of course you can always just use a VPN same as with the current situation.
I'm a parent, and it's hard, but 0% of it is hard because of the government meddling in my parenting.
Putting the onus on the ISPs operating in the UK rather than the sites operating globally is much easier to implement than trying to enforce your laws on foreign companies.
That's if you want the outcome to block a certain list of sites by default.
As you say in reality we already have that. The question thus is what's the real point of the move, because it's not to stop 15 year olds jacking off.
As bad as it is to treat adults as children, it is equally (or worse) to treat children as adults.
Parental control only get you so far. Even if we conjure the perfect tech system to manage this, remember that children were being exploited long before the internet. Bending the internet will not solve the problem, just alleviate the current flavour of child abuse, and force it back offline.
Oh, and a good chunk of abuse happens by friends & family, not strangers.
All cause the parent thought it was "cute" that their daughter/son has an instagram/snapchat/etc account. I think parents deep down knows what is going on but cannot face that reality. Or the parents live vicariously through them, trying to relive that self-discovery process as they monitor the devices.
Before that, porn was printed on paper magazines and, not surprisingly, sought out by and distributed among curious teenagers.