Not having it be regulated makes it a lot harder for parents to do their job, because the kids with responsible parents are getting peer-pressured by the kids with irresponsible parents.

Or put another way: you're not making parents do their jobs; you're making their jobs impossible by forcing them to choose between ruining their kid's mental health by letting her be exposed to social media, or ruin her mental health by forcing her to be ostracised for not using social media.

The only way to have a successful outcome is to force everyone else's kids not to use it, not just your own, and no amount of rugged individualist good parenting can accomplish that by itself!

That said, I am extremely sympathetic to the arguments against age verification laws too, which is why my preferred solution would be to fucking outlaw and destroy corporate social media entirely, for kids and adults alike!

Oh won't someone think of the parents though?! How can they be expected to parent their own children, oh the humanity

Durable societies are unfortunately bound to have such inconveniences for some in exchange for the betterment of many.

Tech companies have released the equivalent of digital opium so they and the government are accountable.

When we look back at the opioid epidemic of the 90s we don't blame the addicts or their families (well I suppose we did at one point, without the benefit of hindsight or a bigger picture view), we blame the Sacklers, pharmaceutical companies, doctors that took kickbacks etc.

I'd hate for us to make the same mistake just because the drug is delivered in a way we don't completely understand yet.

It's also not as simple as asking parents to simply be better at parenting, whatever that may mean. The drug is already out on the street, widely available, and ridiculously addictive. Keeping your child from it is not only depriving them of a dopamine hit that their brains are not developed enough to simply ignore (even most adults are addicted) and it is in many cases relegating them to social ostracization.

This is far beyond what one parent or group of parents can fix. It requires a societal level change which generally needs to come from the government, whether we like it or not.

I'd be happy to hear out possible solutions and, as a parent, share what is viable and what isn't. It would be nice to hear from other parents also.

Most parents won't. People are people. Those that would want to have to ballance the risk of excluding their children from the collective.

One lawmaker proposed a law that would make it illegal to allow your children to see "drag" so none of this has to deal with parents doing their jobs and everything to deal with giving Nazis control over what other people are allowed to see

It's already started, for porn. The kids don't have to prove their age, they don't have proper ID. So EVERYONE ELSE has to prove THEIR ages, and if you can't, you are assumed to be underage.

See how well that works for the Nazis? Now they get to identify EVERYBODY who is on the Internet with their legal IDs, and they will know exactly who posted that nasty meme of Trump.

But it's okay, because it protects the children.

And evidence shows that it made mental health worse, because of course it did. But at least they aren't protesting the Gaza genocide so mission acomplished