Apologies I had a technical difficulty and posted the same comment several times.

I guess in response to your last paragraph, the issue is the predatory nature of the attention addiction machines these companies make.

You could compare it to a child that got in to a van that had “free candy” written on the side. The door was open, if you assume someone was standing next to the van asking the kid to get in, that would be advertising. Now the kid gets abducted. Their “attention” is held hostage in the case of social media etc.

Now, would the parents have had to tell the kids to not get in to a van with free candy written on it for them to be able to report it to the police? Bad luck otherwise? Now what if every month a new van rocks up with more bells and whistles, its a different colour, its got flames down the side, whatever - the point is its different and cool and more appealing each time. More kids go missing. The “predators” have figured out what makes these kids tick and what makes them more likely to get in the van every time.

It’s a bit of an out there and confronting comparison but really, these companies are praying on your mental instead of your physical, which apparently is free game. They are still predators.

They know the harm their platforms cause, they suppress studies that report that harm, they cover it up, they fight tooth and nail and spend millions lobbying government to let them continue to do it.

Back on track sorry, schools are also responsible but you run in to the same issues once companies start targetting school kids like google did with chromebooks - the shittest PCs sold at a loss just so they could attempt to hook the younger generation in to their ecosystem of surveilance and advertising early.

Companies will NEVER protect the children. They will only ever protect shareholders, profits and their pedo CEOs.

Real change will only ever come from real (not sponsored) education, government legislation that isnt bullshit (I dont know what this would look like but ID checking isnt it) and holding the tech bros increasingly accountable for their fucked up apps.

We all did dumb shit as kids, but tech wasnt anywhere near what it is now.

These platforms need to be punished and held to account for the pervasive technology they have designed for profit, these things (FB, insta. Tiktok etc) shouldnt be able to exist in the first place in their current state. There were no guard rails put in place - just like the flood of AI, technology moves so much quicker than legislation can keep up and companys do really shitty things with that.

I believe it starts at a parenting level, but it’s much more difficult to manage these days compared to 20 years ago. Age verification bullshit is not the answer but parents need to be given some form of help againt these fuckers and their incredibly easy to access addiction machines.