Parental Controls Are Abusive, And Awful, Lazy Parenting
Parents don't actually want to sit there and teach their kids how to moderate screentime usage or safely navigate the internet and social media on their own, so they take the easier lazy way that doesn't prepare them for the real world at all, and violates their basic autonomy, trust, and boundaries in the process. The parental controls I see described by both the people who use them and kids/teens who are victims of them, where they need permission to download a fucking app, have the device automatically shut down after a half hour no matter what they're doing, spy on their private texts with friends, or function as essentially a 24/7 screenshares with their parents are totally beyond lunacy, *for any age*. What would literally be considered stalking, unlawful surveillance, gross invasion of reasomable privacy to adults, is legal to do to kids.
I'd like to bring attention to other childrens rights related laws that exist in the US specifically (maybe this partly applies to other countries too but probably less, so am against US bans more), that show how none of this is about child safety.
- Medical neglect of sick kids for religious reasons is still legal in over 30 states. Search the Rita Swann "CHILD" foundation for some day-ruining horror stories on this. Parents are legally allowed to let kids suffer totally unnecessarily as long as it's not "life threatening" (and this exception isn't even there in some states), by denying them treatment for "personal belief reasons" letting them painfully die from curable conditions. More than half the country legalizes child torture and negligent homicide for "religious reasons" but claims this banning nonsense of for the "kids health and safety" smh.
https://childrenshealthcare.org/policy-legal/
Child marriage is a huge uphill battle to end in the majority of states, including democratic states like California where there's *no age limit* to marriage. Hundreds of people vote in these state government and/or federal congress to keep loopholes allowing adults to rape minors. They cannot say with a straight face they're worrying about kids "exposure to porn" by not making social media 18+, when they go out of their way to legalize 30 year olds marrying 15 year olds, and simultaneously having *custody* of them whete they can't even file for divorce until 18.
Florida, one of the states that's aggressively pushing the under 18 universal social media ban, just abolished vaccine mandates in schools. You cannot with a straight face claim to worry about the "negative health effects of screentime" on kids when you don't think it should be mandatory to vaccinate them against Measles or Polio, or think Vitamin k shots at birth (totally harmless) should be optional. That scary blue light from phones but it's ok to risk them being totally blind at birth. It's laughably onion-level insane.
Contraception/abortion access. Majority of states make it very difficult for minors to access menstrual medication and abortion from either total bans or requiring parental consent. If you're going to force 10 yo sexual assault victims to give birth, you are in no way shape or form qualified to advocate for "protecting kids online". Imagine thinking the minimum age should be 16 or 18 to chat on reddit while being fine with traumatizing a tiny elementary school kid. I also wouldn't be surprised if certain states are pushing these bans solely to stop minors from accessing reproductive healthcare, like they've already done tracking women with flock cameras across state lines..etc.
The US being the only country to refuse to ratify the UN Child Rights Convention articles giving them the most basic fundamental human rights as people. The US doesn't believe kids should have a say in any matters that affect them or that parental punishment should be regulated/limited in anyway, and wants to keep corporal punishment legal (violence), which is mostly what the UNCRC is about. Refusal is apparently mainly due to "religious opposition"..etc and other typical excuses. If the government can't even agree that kids should have the most basic, minimal rights and consieration in things that affect their lives and health and well being, it has no business passing any national social media bans for kids.
They don't care about kids health in the slightest it is purely about control. They don't want their kids going online and seeing any common sense or real world info that will make it harder to brainwash them with BS propaganda. Abusive parents don't want kids to be able to ask for help online, or even realize that their abuse isn't normal when a few clicks on the internet would help them do. It's a way for parents to choose who their kids friends can be based on their own bigotted or irrational beliefs when they can choose what contacts are allowed or not, or isolate them completely at the tap of a screen. Violating an older teens privacy and boundaries is also one of the worst things you can do to their mental health and showing them you are not a trustworthy person to come to with anything, and can literally trigger lifelong trust and paranoia OCD issues knowing you're seeing every click they make. Kids/teens in toxic households often need contact with the outside world such as their friends, taking that away is devastating and cruel. Lastly, it doesn't leave them with any real life coping skills or moderation skills for when they inevitably do have full unrestricted access to the internet as adults. They're child abuse and should be banned. This is beyond simply parental controls and app bans, this is a systemic problem with how children are not treated as human being in this country.