alt Hacker NewsI've been on the internet for more than 20 years. It got a lot worse in the last 10. Individuals maybe shaped it in the early days, but the disastrous mess we have today is from the monetization and ensuing garbage that was pushed onto the world by some very profitable tech companies.
Undo the damage or otherwise come up with a way to shield kids from it. I won't let my own kids anywhere near the open web the way it is today. It's poison for young minds and needs to be fixed or gated off. Like alcohol at this point.
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The last line in my statement answers your question. If you leave it up to government to try and regulate a medium you are asking for trouble. Its like telling a news source what they can and cant release news wise because a portion of the population (kids) are harmed by the information.
I understand where you are coming from but age gating is not the answer for a communication medium.
It comes from a combination of things that always existed getting online and the monetization of the attention economy. Influence operations (both corporate and governmental) are the source of most of the problems. Bots, influencers pushing propaganda, etc. I suspect you are actually a bot but others might read this so...
The biggest changes to the Internet over the last few years are usually in the political spaces. There are a few other things but mostly its political. Those other things always existed but now they are online. But this isn't the fault of the communications medium, its the ills of society leaking into online spaces. If we banned those things online, you still as a parent have to worry about them happening IRL. Its better to talk to your kids about these dangers honestly and it always has been. Its always been easier to just prevent your children from being exposed to those dangers but that usually backfires later on. Banning unpopular political discourse to do that has never been the answer to these issues. But in this case, banning discourse is the goal and children are just the excuse. As proof of this, the same government pushing this only instituted a real drinking age in the last 10 years, in a country known for making liquor.