In the real world, we have more than a century of experience figuring out how to share the world with children to keep them safe while allowing adults to participate in adult-only activities, particularly those involving sex, violence, and addictive substances. .
In the United States of the 18th and 19th centuries, there were essentially no restrictions on children’s consumption of alcohol. However, after the temperance movement’s efforts to publicize the harmful effects of alcohol on families, women, and children, and after the failed Prohibition experiment, states assumed responsibility for regulating alcohol. Over time, each state passed laws prohibiting the sale of alcohol to those under a certain age, usually 21 years old. This established the principle that the responsibility for enforcing the law falls on bars, liquor stores, and casinos that profit from alcohol sales. The idea that parents only should manage their children’s access to alcohol would have seemed absurd to most people.
Likewise, it will soon seem absurd that we ever allowed children of any age to access every place on the Internet where adults go, doing everything adults do, without their parents’ knowledge or consent. The year 2025 will be the year in which humanity remembers that children are different from adults and that they need protection and age restriction in some parts of the digital world.
The dangers are now undeniable. From the dawn of the Internet until 2024, any child who knew how to lie about their age could open an account on almost any platform used by adults, except those that require a credit card. This included hardcore porn sites like Pornhub and the now-defunct site Omegle, where boys could video chat with strangers, some of whom were naked men masturbating. It also included social media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok, all of which are filled with wildly inappropriate content for children and all of which incorporate design features that harm children in various ways.
Concern among parents and educators is now widespread.
In 2023, a survey on children’s health A study conducted by CS Mott Children’s Hospital showed that the issues parents were most concerned about (above school violence, drugs, and bullying) were excessive smartphone use, social media, and workplace safety. Internet. Another survey of school principals in 2024 showed they were equally alarmed by the effect of smartphones on students: 88 percent said they tired and distracted children, and 85 percent believed they amplified violence and bullying. bullying in schools.
It is not surprising that, in 2023, a important unesco report He considered the overwhelming evidence that excessive phone use was correlated with lower school performance and poorer mental health, and called for a ban on smartphones in schools. In 2024, France, Italy, Finland and the Netherlands followed those recommendations and banned digital devices in classrooms. In the United States, the states of Ohio, Indiana, Oklahoma, Virginia and Florida have also imposed restrictions on smartphone use in schools, while US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for warning labels for networking platforms social. Bipartisan legislation addressing these concerns (the Child Online Safety Act) also passed the Senate. This new law, for example, would force technology companies not to target children with personalized algorithms designed to hook them.
In 2025, parents will no longer be alone in addressing this issue. They will be helped by concerned politicians and schools without telephones. Social media companies, on the other hand, will finally recognize (or be forced to recognize by juries and legislatures) that they now own the childhood and are saddled with at least some responsibility for what they are doing to the children.