Comment Re:Good! (Score 1) 143
And besides the major complications of just verifying it in the first place, try setting up your <13yo child to use their own Microsoft account just so they can play the Minecraft game they got, or use their own laptop. I had to basically yank my 10yo nephew out of his "family group" and lie to Microsoft about his age just so he wouldn't be constantly triggering "you're not authorized to use Chrome, let me ask your parents if you can use it for the next 2 hours" on his new laptop.
If there are going to be mandated controls over what kids can and cannot do based on their age, then the parents also need to be given extremely fine-grained controls over what they can and cannot do without constant approvals. I don't particularly have a problem with the mandated default being "no", as long as parents are presented with independently-verified information about the pros and cons of allowing access to X, Y, or Z before they enable access.
It also means that there must be useful and comprehensible audit logs of everything that happens with a child's account, and parents should have access to *all* of the child's data. I believe this is the case with FB Messenger for Kids, though I trust my child and the friends we've linked to him enough that I have not yet had to access it, though that may change in the future as he gets older.
But this is going to require a *major* restructuring of how all of these companies manage data, let alone access to various services.
If there are going to be mandated controls over what kids can and cannot do based on their age, then the parents also need to be given extremely fine-grained controls over what they can and cannot do without constant approvals. I don't particularly have a problem with the mandated default being "no", as long as parents are presented with independently-verified information about the pros and cons of allowing access to X, Y, or Z before they enable access.
It also means that there must be useful and comprehensible audit logs of everything that happens with a child's account, and parents should have access to *all* of the child's data. I believe this is the case with FB Messenger for Kids, though I trust my child and the friends we've linked to him enough that I have not yet had to access it, though that may change in the future as he gets older.
But this is going to require a *major* restructuring of how all of these companies manage data, let alone access to various services.