In short: you seem to want the Internet to parent your child. I have kids and do not want any of this for them, because all of it is a slippery slope to falling deeper into the surveillance state.

As a parent: do your job and take responsibility for your kids. While it's not trivial this also isn't overly complicated anymore.

The problem is with government mandates.

Apple and Google already ship OSes with comprehensive APIs and parental controls. There's not even any porn on the iOS App Store by policy.

Creating liability for random OS and app developers is absurd, and foreign porn websites aren't going to comply with this anyway.

This.

If your child needs a helmet to use the internet, as the politicians announcing HR8250 seem to think[1], Apple or whomever is free to offer that as a feature. There is no need for this to be legislated, especially when the legislation does not work in open source environments.

[1] Not hyperbole. They said that. It was an analogy, but one that highlights how ignorant of the technology the authors of these bills are.

Reddit and X are on the stores. I guess browsers are on the stores, at least on Android where they aren't necessarily Safari reskins.

You can just configure the device to not give the child the ability to download apps without approval.

I can understand the "baby mode" desire, but as the other reply pointed out, this does not need to be legislated. The big OS companies can easily offer this feature for those that want it.

I'm curious though about all this porn that apparently hides behind a rock on the device and leaps out to corrupt tiny minds when they least suspect it.

Shock websites aside, pornography generally doesn't ambush you. Unless you're a republican giving a presentation and have no idea how that porn got in there.

And, AB1043 specifically exempts websites, so it doesn't protect anyone from the goatse's of the world anyway.

These bills will not do what they purport to do, but they will do a whole lot of bad stuff.

There's already like 17 different parental control solutions out there for every device platform. You can and should use one and don't let your kid go to any website or use any specific app without your approval first.

> "there's a baby driving"

Why does your baby need internet?

> We do want a way to signal there's a kid driving a device.

Which is extremely irresponsible. It creates a false sense of security and abandons your child to the whims of strangers. This seems akin to putting a "please don't hurt me" sticker on your child and then letting them roam around downtown unsupervised.

> But if we can just have a way to put bright orange vests on devices that require special treatment

There is software you can already use which will lock the device down and only allow it to go to pre-approved sites. I'm unwilling to give up any of my civil rights for your level of convenience above this.

Yeah this is the way for sure. The OP forgets that young users advertising their age online with an "orange vest" might not be best idea.

There's almost endless choice of legit quality native apps for kids, curated from trusted sources. These alone far exceed healthy screen time if all were downloaded. Or as you say, curated web links in a locked browser.

How much screen time should kids do anyway, it's crazy how much is available before worrying about WWW on top of their games, apps and videos.

I have a kid. Actually two kids. They have their usage controlled by google family. I review weekly their internet usage, screen time is limited to 2 hours/day. They dont have social media. School research and etc, they do at home, in the "main computer" in our dinning room. Youtube too. In the end is our responsibility to educate and protect our kids. I truly dont see a need for such extra controls if the parents aren't interested in enforcing it.

You wouldn’t drop a toddler in the cbd and expect them to be fine, why would you expect a device to be any different?

You need to be a parent and stop expecting the people around you to do it for you.

Edit: and there are already device level parental controls.

Or just don't give your child unfettered access to screens. There is zero reason your child needs x unmonitored hours with YouTube or Netflix or a browser or anything else.

You put your child in the driver’s seat and expect others to make sure it doesn’t make a wrong turn? Did you really have to give it the keys to this hypothetical car instead of, say, LEGO?

I think you should just give your away children in servitude to neo-feudal overloards. You're halfway there. You clearly don't want to be a parent.