I'm quite sure that many of us have heard the words, 'parental guidance is advised,' also, we have seen the option of 'parental controlling TV, devices and although I have not checked, that should likely be on social media platforms.
See, with the way technology is going, and how early on younger persons are given devices to handle, it is imperative that what they consume is checked inorder that they do not come across content that is unsuitable or inappropriate.
I was in elementary(primary) school, i think, when I got a phone of my own. Back then, I recall, I was most concerned with playing dress-up games and listening to my jams. There wasn't even so much going on with the social media space until 2go came to play and then Favebook began to gain traffic. Even then, I recall there was not so much inappropriate contents available as there were not so many people who used there and there weren't looped and crazy about content creation as is the case now.
Nowadays, everyone creates content. I can't begin to tell how many young ones are content creators. It makes me wonder if they spend time upskilling other areas of their lives, if they're enjoying actually being kids at all and if it's really their choices to stand and act for the camera given how frequent most of them update their pages(i knowthat for some, their parents/guardian handle these pages, but then....)
I remember once when a parent was dragged online, on Facebook, for making her child take up certain content roles that most people found inappropriate for the child. The mother's reply was something along the lines of, 'it's my child and I can male her do whatever I want. Go and use your own child(ren) to create the content that you think is right.'
Funny stuff.
Personally, i have no qualms for who does what. I think it's okay that kids create contents too, maybe. There's lots of good stuff they could do but these days, given monetization and the benefits of good online presence/influencing, not many people bother to curate the kinds of contents these younger ones make as well as what they get exposed to.
Growing up, it was often said that 'it takes a village to raise a child. And that's why along life and growth's way, we get to learn from different persons. A child learns from home, from teachers at school, from religious leader(s), on amd on . Even on the media space, it takes collective effort to regulate what can or cannot be seen by certain persons.
While it is a guardian/parent's duty to first give their wards proper orientation of what all this is about, the good and bad sides too, there are available features on TV and gadgets that blocks the child from seeing certain things. A friend of mine, a married lady has the devices of her young children connected and mirrored to hers without their knowledge. You know, you can not be too careful, as just giving advices and limiting their reach might not be enough. Now she gets to know what they're up to. More especially, if they thread a site that they shouldn't, she gets alerted. The only issue therre is, what happens with the gadgets of their friends and the likes.
See, what I'm driving at is that there's only so much that a parent is capable of. I jist think that certain contents should never be found on some platforms. Many of them should be censored. Many begin to use phones at young ages and get into the media space soon after and sadly, there's not social media for people of a certain age bracket and given how saturated with unwholesome stuff the entire internet is, it's unlikely that these kids would not come across them.
However, even these would not suffice.
There just have to be designed a system whereby young persons have no access whatsoever to what they shouldn't especially by playing one of those defiant tricks where they claim ages that they're not, inorder to gain access.
Thanks for gracing this post.
Greetings!