Great idea, let’s get parents to raise their kids.
Now, how do we suddenly make them actually do that? Last I checked this idea has been around about as long as people have been around but it’s still not happening.
Parenting matters, but it’s not the only layer of protection. We don’t rely solely on parents to keep kids from walking into bars or buying cigarettes, we have laws and systems to back them up. Why should the internet be different?
Despite our current parliament sucking ass, I still have some general trust in my country’s government (and culture). So with that in mind:
Our government bodies already have my basic data. Healthcare, census etc. and we use our online banking services to verify identity when accessing the data. It’s simple, and extremely widely used. I really don’t see why it would be so hard to make a relatively simple service that just gives sites that need to know a yes or no answer on if I’m over 18. They don’t need to know my birth date or any other information.
Not let a government or age verification authority know whenever a user is accessing 18+ content
This should be possible but of course the question is if one trusts the government to actually uphold this. Again, with my background, it’s a bit easier for me to speak.
Make it difficult or impossible for a child to fake a proof of adulthood, eg. By downloading an already verified anonymous signing key shared by an adult, etc.
You’ll never patch all the holes. In a perfect world, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. In a perfect world, parents would actually parent their kids and monitor their internet use. Access to adult content doesn’t even come close to being the biggest problem in many cases where some kids parents are fucking up their duties. Drugs, gangs, petty (and not so petty) crime comes to mind. Collective responsibility would be great but since we don’t live in a perfect world where everyone can just agree to a good idea like “take responsibility of your kids”, I’ll settle for trusting a democratic government to have some capacity to pick up those that fall.
I happen to agree with age verification laws. This is a tangent but I would also go a step further in saying that MAINSTREAM internet should not be possible to use without verifying that the user is a real individual person. This would be another yes/no question via a service. Outwardly they don’t have to reveal their identity but even JizzMcCumsocks needs to have a backend verification as a real person. Basically, if any government member uses some service with their own name and has a verification about that, that service must also have a way of verifying that any user is a real person. We have given Xitter way too much power and at the same time, allowed anonymity. Meta services too of course but I think Xitter is one of the worst due to easy and straight forward use. Humanity has shown that we are not equipped to handle the kind of (mis)information flow there is in these spaces. Spaces such as Lemmy can and should operate in full anonymity, as there are natural barriers to entry here, plus it’s less appealing when it’s not even really intended for the kind of use mainstream social media sites are. Here we have a collective and individual responsibility to account for the anonymity and the challenges it brings.
Finland. Genuinely can’t say. I suppose that’s a good thing for everyone involved.
I have very different values than my parents. I know there was a time when things were very rough for them… which unfortunately was also the same time that was very rough for me. Overall I definitely went through more hardship than they did, for much longer. Very alone. But objectively I’m doing pretty fucking good now, despite being technically poor. My parents were middle class, but they did value money more. I value other things and I get to enjoy them. But my parents were pretty happy, though their health failed them too early I think. Trying to avoid the same fate but honestly not looking good on that front. We’ll see.
Would I swap places with my parents? No.
I feel like this was a very Finnish answer…
Interesting question, good job OP!
What? Someone actually gives reasonably actionable suggestions here?
I think people not being able to answer “how does it feel” questions is partly due to the cultural quirk where “what do you think” is replaced with “how do you feel”. Meaning even the asker is in fact posing the question as “what do you think”, rather than inviting actual reflection on one’s emotional state. Think of TV interviews for example.
I also suspect that there’s a subtle desire to make the answer a bit more inarguable. Because it’s socially acceptable to argue about one’s thinking. Less so about feelings. “All feelings are valid” is taken to mean that anything that follows the phrase “I feel…” is automatically true and you’re not allowed to disagree. Which is precisely what the “all feelings are valid” is not about. “All feelings are valid” points to the subjective experience of an emotional state. A war veteran freaking about fireworks is valid. A war veteran saying fireworks mean they are actually getting bombed is not. Rape victim feeling insecure when walking alone is valid. Rape victim saying everyone’s trying to rape them is not. A highly nuanced and volatile issue which people really want to reduce into very simple dogmas.
Yes and I’ve been there. It took me a lot of conscious effort to get past that wall.
It’ll sound weird and it’s possible you might feel a bit inhibited but I strongly recommend trying. It’s just getting your locked up nervous system to cooperate. Kinda like pushing a car to start it up.
Use music with any of these if you want. Find the safest place you can.
You can just go somewhere in nature and sit there until tears come. Sometimes you need to just create space for it.
Another is to actually just make noise. Moan. Shout. Or just hold a note. Whatever. Just keep doing it for a few minutes or so. For whatever reason I like to do this in the car. Not to cry anymore but it’s just become a habit of letting out steam.
Then more involved is to move your body. Shake it. Jostle it. Make more noise and let it sound weird from all the moving. Dance without trying to be good at it. Don’t think about it.
TRE https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FeUioDuJjFI
If you feel a lot of inhibition because of the imagined cosmic judge, be gentle with yourself. Some people get this immediately, for me It took a bit of pushing. I had already tried everything else and sure, cried a tiny bit here and there but still felt like I had a fucking ocean on uncried tears in me. I had to learn to go to it via the body, not the mind.
People hate on Yoga and meditation but it does work for this. Problem generally is in finding competent teachers. But I’ve been on retreats where grown, burly men burst into tears because for the first time in their lives, they actually connect with their nervous system, they’re allowed to be vulnerable and actually FEEL their feelings. Instead of “dealing” with them, “letting them go”, intellectualizing them away, suppressing them or drowning them in substances or work/hobby. It’s a hell of an aha moment.
My bad, I probably should’ve clarified that I meant clicking on it thinking that there’s a respectable porn site on the other end lol but I actually don’t recall ever clicking them, even by accident, so fun to hear there isn’t anything more sophisticated there than just “hey, download this totally not suspicious .exe”. Have you ever tried running those tools on a secure computer?
True. But important to remember their legacy isn’t the only one, just the one that most western people have been deeply exposed to.
Of western people. Particularly Christian people.
This. Exactly this. But because Christian Capitalism needs us to be individuals, being “nothing” must be characterized as a negative.
The only fucking reason people experience the emptiness under all the masks as a negative is because they’ve been conditioned to think there’s supposed to be something there.
Yet the emptiness is the experience of literally everyone who bothers to look. And it is a relief. You’re not anyone, you’re not “supposed” to be one way or another. There’s just an exchange with everything in existence and you can just respond as called in any given situation.
It’s not ADHD. It’s literally everyone. There is no such thing as a true self. That’s just what Disney movies and belief in souls brainwashed us to think.
But that’s a bit arbitrary
Exactly. It’s no more “true self” than any other. Even by themselves, most people play a role for themselves: they replay events of the day or tell themselves other stories and then believe whatever gives them an emotional fix. But it’s not real, and that is true for every other person as well. You are not your story about yourself, you are not someone’s story about you and nobody is your story about them.
Consciousness. Though that too is just a word, which I also don’t believe in. But that’s the best of all the imperfect words that at least point away from matter.
You’re always impacted by something that directs what you end up choosing. Or even thinking. Think of a fruit. Did you choose to think of that fruit? Or did something that falls under the category of fruit just pop into your head? Literally every single thought is like that. Verbal or nonverbal. Sure you can mull over a thing forever if you like, but that too is something you don’t know if you’re going to do before you’re doing it. Or not doing it. I can ask you to go brush your teeth right now. You can deliberate “it’s good for me, no reason not to do it, oh but I already did some time ago, I don’t wanna just do something because this dude online said so, maybe I’ll choose to do it just to prove a point…” endlessly but you have no idea what you end up choosing a single moment sooner than you do. You just tell yourself after the fact that you “chose” to do it or not do it, which also just depends on how attached you are the idea of free will.
Free Will
Materialism (as in, matter being the foundation of reality)
Words
Cat welfare because I like cats, and animal welfare as I consider it my meat tax.
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My point is that we can’t rely on parental oversight only because some plain won’t… and in your case, even actively trying may fail (it’s not your fault). And there’s always going to be loopholes in every system. Clever kids will get by most verifications, and if they don’t, that’s likely to mean the verification gets too invasive to be worth it. The best, though not perfect system is to have parental oversight + impartial verification + platform responsibility. This will reduce but not eradicate the problem.