>"Back to the issue here - there is nothing to stop a young person to be able to learn technology. I did the greatest part of my computer tech learning before eever using UseNet. Seems like nice graduated process. Learn about the basics on a standalone computer"

BINGO. +100

Non-smartphone for basic communication/text and done. And if the parent wants to go further, THEN dive into an internet connection with lockdown whitelist for older kids and gradually work them up to the insane world.

>"A few parents might be able to manage severe restrictions but at great cost to their relationship with their children given that their peers will not be so restricted."

Like I said, it has to become a new social norm. Then there won't be that type of pressure.

>"You cannot configure IPv6 on the "cloud key" device or on the dedicated CCTV appliances, it just picks up an address from SLAAC/DHCPv6 but doesn't display it anywhere in the UI.
There is no DDNS support within the cloud key device"

A "cloud key" or "nvr" is not a gateway. I was talking about gateways.

>"Who maintains the whitelist?"

The parents/agents.

>"What if a site you think should be on the whitelist is not? Should CNN be on it? What about MSNBC? Fox? "

It doesn't have to be perfect to be effective. But having a news site on the whitelist for children would be incredibly stupid.

>"Making your kid unemployable."

Nonsense. What does using the Internet have to do with being employable?

>"Make a parent unemployable unless there are technical options not requiring constant supervision."

There are, it is called a locked-down whitelist. Or not having the devices.

>"And how is that to be policed?"

Like anything else that is restricted for children by parents and their agents. It won't be perfect, but adequate.

>"They need those devices for a lot of other stuff: school work is online."

And in those cases, a locked-down device with a whitelist will work quite nicely. Their agents (presumable the schools) should be able to manage that task.

>"I think we have a misunderstanding here. "Children" was used in the parent-child relationship sense to mean teenagers. Not biological children."

All minors need some level of protection from the wild internet. I do agree it would not necessarily be the same for an 8 year old as a 16 year old. Parents would have to play an active role in deciding how much access and to where/when, at what age. But what is common know is to throw an unrestricted device at almost any age child. And that is essentially child neglect/endangerment/abuse.

>"I may be getting the wrong impression, but are you also in favour of "abstinence only" sex education? Or no sex ed in schools? (Parents only)"

Children should get sex education around the time right before puberty, for sure; and probably more completely a few years later, as well. Abstinence should, absolutely, be one of the things taught. It is the only thing that will 100% prevent pregnancy and STD. But to assume it will be accepted by all would be foolish, so all methods should be discussed as well, without making it sound like it is socially acceptable for minors to engage in sexual intercourse.

>"Lets face it, you cannot keep kids out of any mainstream social activity humans do. As soon as they are interested, they will find a way in.

If your objective is no access ever, anywhere, you are correct. If your objective is to severely restrict access, that is 100% doable. And that obsessive overuse of the devices is the main problem, not occasional/accidental exposure. More-so if it becomes the social norm that kids should not have unsupervised access to unrestricted, internet-connected devices. Restricting access by "papers please" to a few sites isn't going to do it. And it creates lots of other problems.

>"Trying to prevent them will only cause harm and have zero benefits."

Totally disagree.

You go ahead and NOT restrict access to children running into the street, guns, alcohol, dangerous chemicals, horror movies, tobacco, knives, alone time in swimming pools, walking alone at night in city streets, prescription meds, explosives, etc, and get back with us. Or do you think it is not worth trying....

>"this policy can be viewed as a measure that reinforces parental responsibility rather than undermining it."

No, it absolves parents of further responsibility and gives them even MORE excuses to not take the devices away or give them in the first place.

>"Many parents have expressed difficulty in managing their children's exposure to social media's potential harms, including addictive algorithms and inappropriate content."

Utter nonsense. The difficulty they are expressing is of their own making by GIVING CHILDREN ACCESS TO THESE DEVICES. Sometimes parents have to say NO. And we need a new social norm that also says NO. We don't need laws to try and police a few social media sites when millions of nasty sites and predators are out there. Parents need to take control. And if they can't effectively manage lockdown whitelist filtering, then the answer is a non-smartphone with no apps or browser and no internet-connected tablets/computers.

>" It shifts enforcement to platforms, alleviating the burden on parents to constantly monitor or restrict usage alone"

Exactly. It absolves them of responsibility and gives them a false sense of security. While at the same time punishing all adults who want to use the internet freely, without "papers please" tracking.

>"Also most parents aren't tech savvy and they always lose the cat and mouse game of internet access control"

Agreed. So no device = no game. Easy. There needs to be a new social norm that it is NOT OK to give these devices to kids or give them unsupervised access.

If you can't correctly restrict the devices, then they shouldn't have access to them. But we need to do better at getting effective tools to parents and stop trying to police the internet. There are millions of sites that children should not browse. Trying to restrict just "social media" by demanding ID of every user not only won't fix the problem, it creates lots of new ones as well.

>"Right. Because without kids damaging their mental health on social media, democracy dies. Sure."

They are, indeed, damaging their mental health, for sure. Which is why kids should not have ANY unsupervised access to unrestricted, internet-connected DEVICES. That is where the focus should be, not on ruining the whole internet for everyone.

But "democracy dies" has nothing to do with it, that is just the buzz word of the last few years.

Right. That is Linux. It is not "GNU OS". GNU doesn't have a production-ready kernel (or a kernel actually used by anything of any significance), and that is the core of an OS. Without Linux, it is not an OS. So the author and page designer is/are calling a Linux distribution or "GNU/Linux" by "GNU OS", which is very misleading.

>"official extension language of the GNU operating system"

"GNU operating system?" Has Herd been dragged out of the dust bin or something?

>"There were a lot of UI things the old extensions could do that they no longer can."

That is true. And I have been critical of them for it. The stated reason was to prevent bugs and make things easier to maintain. Not sure I completely agree with that.

>"All these new features should have been provided as extensions"

Agreed. Although most of those things were rather small, and you can just disable them (so they don't use much RAM and no CPU).

>" about:config could have a description column but doesn't"

That is a great idea.

>"You can't consider anything in there as documented."

Well, no. But it is documented on Mozilla's site.

>"Yeah, there's a ton of idiots who say they don't like change X so they'll switch to a browser which has even more things they claim to dislike."

Yes, that is what drives me most crazy. Of course there is always room for improvement, but these people who are hyper-critical and claim to use some other browser because of something, which is the same OR WORSE in other browsers are irrational.