alt Hacker NewsI do. I’m going to take a wild guess that you are an old head like me, male, and lived your youth in the wonderful internet free of commercialisation of human interaction, free to roam and find new cool things and people, a wonderful library of Alexandria to learn and spend time in.
Discuss what the experience was/is to zoomers and younger, especially girls. Did you try to play a silly online game with your friends while being constantly harassed by 3-4 adult men? How many times someone offered you money (in form of “lootboxes”) to get nude pictures of you when you were severely underage? Or was on every site you visited an algorithm pushing on your face content about how you should embrace anorexia, start gambling on what Trump says on TV, use drugs, or simply do a suicide?
Hey fellow unc’s, we really need to stop nostalgising on the computer childhood of our youth and listen to the kids (as well as a bunch of research on the topic) and face the fact that the internet of the friendly geeks and nerds of the yesterday does not exist anymore. Things have to change, if we want to have any kind of working society left whatsoever.
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A bit further up there's a really nice comment about how those studies are just garbage.
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I completely agree with you, but what this shows is a momentous change in the landscape of the internet, facilitated by mass marketing, data collection, commercialisation and even financialisation of digital game assets.
This is a huge shift that cannot be rectified by simple age filters.
Being realistic about the problem requires being realistic about ill-conceived solutions with conspicuous benefits for commercial actors.
Besides an array of largely static, non-interactive websites, there is no hard line between content that is suitable for young eyes and not.