Discord has announced that it's rolling out age verification checks globally from March – and the decision has sparked fury from many privacy-conscious users.
Hear me out. Maybe, if you are a parent, its your duty to keep an eye on your child, and exert some control over the spaces and people they interact with?
My kids had full internet use with only porn and advertising blocking, except for “homework time”, as well as no restrictions on video games (except for fucking Roblox). They recently graduated high-school at the top of their class and continue doing great in university.
They grew up to be nice, well-rounded young men who make friends easily, aren’t assholes, aren’t glued to their cell phones (which they had since they were little), don’t mindlessly watch TV, can easily switch tasks and “buckle down” when they have to, and have a great work ethic. They grew up with the attitude that internet/cell phones are tools, not rewards or distractions. Once they hit high-school I found I no longer needed to monitor them (and it was starting to feel creepy and invasive). When they had to study they studied, on their own without prompting or timers.
I had no worries because I know how to read papers, and there was (and still is) ABSOLUTELY ZERO evidence that doing so would be harming, but in fact the reverse is true.
Kids grow up to be like their parents. Don’t want them to be assholes? Then don’t be an asshole. Want them to grow up with a reading habit? Then read for yourself. It’s that easy.
It’s interesting to see that their friends who had strict internet/gaming rules ended up turning into complete shitheads they no longer associate with.
Kids don’t always grow up to be their parents.
I found such a broad statement to put such a sour taste in my mouth when I read it.
Feels pretty privledged, and like, good for you, but damn this statement … Is very broad, dare I say arrogant. Plenty of good kids come from shitty people and vice versa.
Anyway, enjoy your adult kids and thanks for sharing
I feel like it will be more common to heavily restrict the tech access of children as people who actually grew up using the internet become parents.
I also plan to restrict my (future hypothetical) children from internet access until 13 or so, depending on maturity. So your comment gives me some optimism in that regard.
My nephew plays lots of on online games. My sister checks in with me to make sure that he is both playing games that are appropriate for him, and with people who are appropriate to play with. We’ve setup a discord specifically for him and his friends, and the account he uses is actually my sister’s account, on her own device, so she has direct control over what communities he’s on in discord, who he talks to, and what content he is exposed to.
He is not allowed to play public lobby games with out her supervision, or a trusted “chaperone” (one of many IRL friend and family members) being in the lobby with him. This is as much about protecting him from harmful content, as it is about teaching him proper gaming etiquette. He was showing some toxic behaviors (greifing mainly) and I shut that down pretty quick.
Conservatives have been using the “think of the children line” to justify Draconian overeach for years. All while simultaneously doing everything in their power to take away programs that help children.
Minnesota recently used their tax on billionaires to expand education and provide free lunch to children so while the party isn’t perfect they are not at all comparable.
What makes them so similar is first pass the post it guarantees a two party system and the practice of gerrymandering creating safe seats. The worst Democrats are the ones with the safest seats. If you want positive change start there.
The conservative belief is that children are basically property and as such can be used for hard labor and kept from appropriate healthcare… But then when it comes to porn, Big Government has to do everything for them.
Before the internet, parents could exert control by knowing where their children were physically going and who they were talking to over the phone.
Even in the '90s and 2000s, parents could control a child’s Internet use by limiting time on the family computer.
Nowadays? Just about every child has a tablet or phone. Even the ones who don’t have devices at home, or have their device use monitored at home, have access to school devices.
Exerting control over a child’s online activity now means monitoring everything they do on every device they have access to, including during the eight hours per day or so that they’re on devices for school work. No parent has time for that. And if the child is deliberately trying to hide some kind of illicit online activity, monitoring becomes an order of magnitude more difficult, because, again, children have access to their own devices, school devices, their friends’ devices, library devices, and dozens of other devices a parent may not even know about and has no ability to monitor.
I’m frankly horrified by the increasing requirements for real identity verification but let’s not pretend being a parent is the same as it was in the '70s.
You went to a school where they had no controls over what you could and couldn’t access?
My school was blocking harmful content on their computers when i was there in the mid to late 2000s.
When i got home i had something called CyberSitter on my computer in my room that sent logs of all my internet usage as reports to my dad.
It took me until 16 when i went out and bought my own computer with my own money before i had “unfettered” access to the internet.
Were these tools impenetrable fortresses? no, of course not. but they were a damn sight better than the ISP level blocks and legislating the “good” companies out of existence that the UK (and others) Government is currently engaged in.
Not that any of this is really about “protecting kids” anyway
Before the internet, parents could exert control by knowing where their children were physically going and who they were talking to over the phone.
Yes, by paying attention to their children.
Even in the '90s and 2000s, parents could control a child’s Internet use by limiting time on the family computer.
Yep, by paying attention to when the kid was on the computer and what they were doing on there.
Nowadays? Just about every child has a tablet or phone. Even the ones who don’t have devices at home, or have their device use monitored at home, have access to school devices.
If you give a child a tablet or phone, you should probably pay attention to what they are doing with it. You wouldn’t just give them a full tool box to play with unsupervised.
Exerting control over a child’s online activity now means monitoring everything they do on every device they have access to, including during the eight hours per day or so that they’re on devices for school work
Yep, by paying attention to the kid.
No parent has time for that.
Bullshit. You need to pay attention to your kids, that’s a basic fucking part of parenting.
And if the child is deliberately trying to hide some kind of illicit online activity, monitoring becomes an order of magnitude more difficult
Maybe you should pay attention to your kid and not let them have unsupervised access to the whole Internet until they are ready for it?
because, again, children have access to their own devices, school devices, their friends’ devices, library devices, and dozens of other devices a parent may not even know about and has no ability to monitor.
Actually, you do have an ability to monitor who your kid spends time with, and when. It’s called parenting.
I’m frankly horrified by the increasing requirements for real identity verification but let’s not pretend being a parent is the same as it was in the '70s.
Let’s not pretend that phones and the Internet only started existing in 2026 too. I was a child in the 90’s, during the real “Wild West” days of the internet. If anything, parents have more tools and controls over what their child can access in 2026 than they did in 2000. There weren’t “child” cellphone controls when I got my first phone. My dad didn’t give me one until I both needed it, and was mature enough to have it. The parental controls on my old Window 2000 machine were laughably easy to defeat. Do you know what kept me out of trouble though? My dad paid attention to when I used the computer, what I was doing on there, and how much I was doing it.
Either parent your kid, or don’t, but it is not my job to make sure your kid is coddled on the internet.
Either parent your kid, or don’t, but it is not my job to make sure your kid is coddled on the internet.
As a recently new parent myself, your post is great. And as a IT nerd, your post is also infuriating.
It is so beyond easy nowadays to monitor and restrict your child’s access to online content. Seeing the post you’re replying to just reminds me of everyone I’ve ever talked to that had X issue and their only response is “throw hands up in the air after trying nothing”.
My kids are still too young to be reasoned with, but my wife and I agreed that:
No dedicated personal phone until middle school, and it ain’t gonna be some top of the line iphone
No “tablet kid” bullshit
No unfettered YouTube access
So far our oldest loves finding our phones and can open the camera app from the lockscreen and she runs around taking photos. So we’ve been letting that slide…but we don’t unlock the phone, so it’s a compromise we’ve made as she LOVES taking photos and seeing photos, which I want to encourage. As for content watching we have a TV with Plex and if there’s something we approve of on YouTube and we want our kids to watch it(Ms. Rachel), then I download the YouTube video and put it on my Plex server. No ads, no algorithm auto played videos, just pure approved content. And we have classic cartoons(Rolie Polie Olie) and disney/pixar/ghibli movies, etc.
Of course if your kid is at school with no phone but its recess and their friend has a phone with zero limits…yeah I can’t control that. But I can at least parent my kid to know that I don’t like that and I don’t want them to participate it.
Also when they’re a bit older(5 or 6 years old) I plan on teaching them internet safety. Don’t post PII, don’t visit certain websites, always use an adblocker/ublock, only talk to people online that you know in real life, etc. I do plan on playing video games with them(if they have an interest) and I know that will eventually lead to online lobbies, but I am hoping to teach them in private Minecraft servers certain etiquette first and go from there.
I’m both excited and terrified, but this is my job as a parent!
Long ago, I had a co-worker ask me if fortnite was okay for their kid to play, and I said “I don’t know. Why don’t you go play fortnight with your kid this weekend and see for yourself” and it was like a switch flipped in their head. Playing games online with your kids is something you can do, both to see how people are interacting with them, and to see how they are interacting with other people. I think it is really important too, that kids (especially only-childs) see other people gaming online first hand, so they can see that the person on the other end could just as easily be their mom, or grandpa, or another human being, and not just a bot that they can antagonize without consequence.
Like, have a conversation with them. Treat them like a person, a real human being, with thoughts and feelings and basic decision making capabilities, instead of treating them like a wild animal that needs to be leashed.
Everyone immediately thinks “it’s impossible for parents to be aware of and block everything they don’t want their kids to look at on the Internet!”. But maybe the first step should just be talking to your kids about what you do/do not want then looking at on the Internet, and trusting that they’ll heed your warnings. Tight fisted control over what your kids can/can’t see on the Internet should be the last resort.
Exactly, how can you limit a child who knows internet and technology more than their parents? Like, if I was a child I don’t think they could limit me at all
Exactly, it’s basically impossible to control as a parent, but just blaming the parents is a simple solution for many. Everybody loves their easy solutions to complex issues: left, right and center.
I hear you. I guess shitty parents is a good enough reason to let a company monetize your PII for a bit before they (or one of their customers) gets hacked and dumps to the dark web.
Okay. Cool that’s what I said too. Just… the way you said it sounded like you were advocating for using bad parenting as a pretext for massive breaches of privacy and identity security.
The way you said it sounded like you were advocating for parents to watch their kids every second of every day, and if they don’t then whatever happens is their fault.
If your child steals a car, are you allowed to say “I can’t watch my kids all time time” and get off consequence free?
Of course not. Do I think it is realistic for parents to keep an eye on their kid 100% of the time, of course not… But, I do expect that parents raise their kids in a progressively less restrictive manner and provide access to more autonomy as the child mautures? Absolutely, and I don’t think it is unreasonable to extend that progressive loosening of the parental leash in the real world to children on the internet. You shouldn’t have to watch your kids all the time on the internet, if they are old enough and mature enough to be on there unsupervised. If they aren’t ready for unsupervised access to the internet, then you shouldn’t allow it.
Hear me out. Maybe, if you are a parent, its your duty to keep an eye on your child, and exert some control over the spaces and people they interact with?
Absofucking- lutely!
My 12 year old has zero unsupervised access to the internet. Zero. “But they’ll suffer sociallly!”
Will they? My son has tons of friends and they play sports and Nerf guns. And, he can read. A whole chapter book, on his own, without prompting.
Suffer socially, ask the “incels” who have recovered if the internet access they had as teens “helped them socially”.
My kids had full internet use with only porn and advertising blocking, except for “homework time”, as well as no restrictions on video games (except for fucking Roblox). They recently graduated high-school at the top of their class and continue doing great in university.
They grew up to be nice, well-rounded young men who make friends easily, aren’t assholes, aren’t glued to their cell phones (which they had since they were little), don’t mindlessly watch TV, can easily switch tasks and “buckle down” when they have to, and have a great work ethic. They grew up with the attitude that internet/cell phones are tools, not rewards or distractions. Once they hit high-school I found I no longer needed to monitor them (and it was starting to feel creepy and invasive). When they had to study they studied, on their own without prompting or timers.
I had no worries because I know how to read papers, and there was (and still is) ABSOLUTELY ZERO evidence that doing so would be harming, but in fact the reverse is true.
Kids grow up to be like their parents. Don’t want them to be assholes? Then don’t be an asshole. Want them to grow up with a reading habit? Then read for yourself. It’s that easy.
It’s interesting to see that their friends who had strict internet/gaming rules ended up turning into complete shitheads they no longer associate with.
Lot of pride here… Good for you?
Kids don’t always grow up to be their parents. I found such a broad statement to put such a sour taste in my mouth when I read it.
Feels pretty privledged, and like, good for you, but damn this statement … Is very broad, dare I say arrogant. Plenty of good kids come from shitty people and vice versa.
Anyway, enjoy your adult kids and thanks for sharing
I feel like it will be more common to heavily restrict the tech access of children as people who actually grew up using the internet become parents.
I also plan to restrict my (future hypothetical) children from internet access until 13 or so, depending on maturity. So your comment gives me some optimism in that regard.
My nephew plays lots of on online games. My sister checks in with me to make sure that he is both playing games that are appropriate for him, and with people who are appropriate to play with. We’ve setup a discord specifically for him and his friends, and the account he uses is actually my sister’s account, on her own device, so she has direct control over what communities he’s on in discord, who he talks to, and what content he is exposed to.
He is not allowed to play public lobby games with out her supervision, or a trusted “chaperone” (one of many IRL friend and family members) being in the lobby with him. This is as much about protecting him from harmful content, as it is about teaching him proper gaming etiquette. He was showing some toxic behaviors (greifing mainly) and I shut that down pretty quick.
Conservatives have been using the “think of the children line” to justify Draconian overeach for years. All while simultaneously doing everything in their power to take away programs that help children.
Let’s not act like the dems don’t do some of the same shit.
And no I’m not both sidesing this shit…just saying that the dems/left uses this reasoning a lot as well.
Minnesota recently used their tax on billionaires to expand education and provide free lunch to children so while the party isn’t perfect they are not at all comparable.
What makes them so similar is first pass the post it guarantees a two party system and the practice of gerrymandering creating safe seats. The worst Democrats are the ones with the safest seats. If you want positive change start there.
We’re talking about trying to pass legislation in the name of “think of the children” logic. KOSA is a fairly recent one that is from the dems.
Off the top of my head I can only think of Lieberman and honestly the ESRB was a reasonable compromise.
Tipper gore? KOSA
What’s tipper gore got to do with anything in the last thirty years? And kosa was bipartisan and died in the house.
30 years is a blink in time. You do realize laws don’t magically stop being potential issues after a few years right?
The Patriot Act which was bipartisan was passed almost 30 years ago now (25 years ago) now.
KOSA was introduced by a Dem.
You’re reaching to pull a both sides. Regardless republican platform positions harm children, Democratic ones feed them.
deleted by creator
You’re mostly correct, but Dems are not left in any political paradigm with the slightest awareness of the existence of non-American countries.
political parties aren’t real. Their only purpose is market segmentation.
It doesn’t matter which teams win in sports, billionaires own all the leagues.
Bugger off ml bot.
I, too, attack the source when I cannot refute the claim
The conservative belief is that children are basically property and as such can be used for hard labor and kept from appropriate healthcare… But then when it comes to porn, Big Government has to do everything for them.
Nobody ever said it was a consistent ideology.
As a parent: 100% agree
And how do you , practically, do that?
Before the internet, parents could exert control by knowing where their children were physically going and who they were talking to over the phone.
Even in the '90s and 2000s, parents could control a child’s Internet use by limiting time on the family computer.
Nowadays? Just about every child has a tablet or phone. Even the ones who don’t have devices at home, or have their device use monitored at home, have access to school devices.
Exerting control over a child’s online activity now means monitoring everything they do on every device they have access to, including during the eight hours per day or so that they’re on devices for school work. No parent has time for that. And if the child is deliberately trying to hide some kind of illicit online activity, monitoring becomes an order of magnitude more difficult, because, again, children have access to their own devices, school devices, their friends’ devices, library devices, and dozens of other devices a parent may not even know about and has no ability to monitor.
I’m frankly horrified by the increasing requirements for real identity verification but let’s not pretend being a parent is the same as it was in the '70s.
You went to a school where they had no controls over what you could and couldn’t access?
My school was blocking harmful content on their computers when i was there in the mid to late 2000s.
When i got home i had something called CyberSitter on my computer in my room that sent logs of all my internet usage as reports to my dad.
It took me until 16 when i went out and bought my own computer with my own money before i had “unfettered” access to the internet.
Were these tools impenetrable fortresses? no, of course not. but they were a damn sight better than the ISP level blocks and legislating the “good” companies out of existence that the UK (and others) Government is currently engaged in.
Not that any of this is really about “protecting kids” anyway
By paying attention to your child.
Yes, by paying attention to their children.
Yep, by paying attention to when the kid was on the computer and what they were doing on there.
If you give a child a tablet or phone, you should probably pay attention to what they are doing with it. You wouldn’t just give them a full tool box to play with unsupervised.
Yep, by paying attention to the kid.
Bullshit. You need to pay attention to your kids, that’s a basic fucking part of parenting.
Maybe you should pay attention to your kid and not let them have unsupervised access to the whole Internet until they are ready for it?
Actually, you do have an ability to monitor who your kid spends time with, and when. It’s called parenting.
Let’s not pretend that phones and the Internet only started existing in 2026 too. I was a child in the 90’s, during the real “Wild West” days of the internet. If anything, parents have more tools and controls over what their child can access in 2026 than they did in 2000. There weren’t “child” cellphone controls when I got my first phone. My dad didn’t give me one until I both needed it, and was mature enough to have it. The parental controls on my old Window 2000 machine were laughably easy to defeat. Do you know what kept me out of trouble though? My dad paid attention to when I used the computer, what I was doing on there, and how much I was doing it.
Either parent your kid, or don’t, but it is not my job to make sure your kid is coddled on the internet.
As a recently new parent myself, your post is great. And as a IT nerd, your post is also infuriating.
It is so beyond easy nowadays to monitor and restrict your child’s access to online content. Seeing the post you’re replying to just reminds me of everyone I’ve ever talked to that had X issue and their only response is “throw hands up in the air after trying nothing”.
My kids are still too young to be reasoned with, but my wife and I agreed that:
So far our oldest loves finding our phones and can open the camera app from the lockscreen and she runs around taking photos. So we’ve been letting that slide…but we don’t unlock the phone, so it’s a compromise we’ve made as she LOVES taking photos and seeing photos, which I want to encourage. As for content watching we have a TV with Plex and if there’s something we approve of on YouTube and we want our kids to watch it(Ms. Rachel), then I download the YouTube video and put it on my Plex server. No ads, no algorithm auto played videos, just pure approved content. And we have classic cartoons(Rolie Polie Olie) and disney/pixar/ghibli movies, etc.
Of course if your kid is at school with no phone but its recess and their friend has a phone with zero limits…yeah I can’t control that. But I can at least parent my kid to know that I don’t like that and I don’t want them to participate it.
Also when they’re a bit older(5 or 6 years old) I plan on teaching them internet safety. Don’t post PII, don’t visit certain websites, always use an adblocker/ublock, only talk to people online that you know in real life, etc. I do plan on playing video games with them(if they have an interest) and I know that will eventually lead to online lobbies, but I am hoping to teach them in private Minecraft servers certain etiquette first and go from there.
I’m both excited and terrified, but this is my job as a parent!
It sounds like you are doing the right things.
Long ago, I had a co-worker ask me if fortnite was okay for their kid to play, and I said “I don’t know. Why don’t you go play fortnight with your kid this weekend and see for yourself” and it was like a switch flipped in their head. Playing games online with your kids is something you can do, both to see how people are interacting with them, and to see how they are interacting with other people. I think it is really important too, that kids (especially only-childs) see other people gaming online first hand, so they can see that the person on the other end could just as easily be their mom, or grandpa, or another human being, and not just a bot that they can antagonize without consequence.
By talking to your fucking kids lmao
Like, have a conversation with them. Treat them like a person, a real human being, with thoughts and feelings and basic decision making capabilities, instead of treating them like a wild animal that needs to be leashed.
Everyone immediately thinks “it’s impossible for parents to be aware of and block everything they don’t want their kids to look at on the Internet!”. But maybe the first step should just be talking to your kids about what you do/do not want then looking at on the Internet, and trusting that they’ll heed your warnings. Tight fisted control over what your kids can/can’t see on the Internet should be the last resort.
Devices given to children can be configured to restrict access to unwanted things. Obviously, school networks already are.
The only uncontrollable thing would be kids seeing things via friends with less observant parents, but that is not a new thing.
No, it’s the not the same but there are options you’re ignoring.
We don’t need to kid-proof all of society. Adults deserve things like freedom and privacy and to not be treated like children.
You dont give children tablets and phone, full stop.
Exactly, how can you limit a child who knows internet and technology more than their parents? Like, if I was a child I don’t think they could limit me at all
Exactly, it’s basically impossible to control as a parent, but just blaming the parents is a simple solution for many. Everybody loves their easy solutions to complex issues: left, right and center.
No it isn’t.
Be a better parent.
Or, better yet: Don’t have kids you aren’t capable of raising properly.
If this all sounds too complicated, you aren’t a capable parent.
I don’t give a shit if it’s difficult, you chose to be a parent fucking deal with it and don’t make it everybody else’s problem
It’s not impossible - parental controls can be used and school networks don’t HAVE to allow access to Porn Hub
Hear me out: parents are irresponsible, and also can’t watch their kids 24/7
I hear you. I guess shitty parents is a good enough reason to let a company monetize your PII for a bit before they (or one of their customers) gets hacked and dumps to the dark web.
It’s not, but that doesn’t make your argument any more sensible.
Ah, so maybe shitty parents isn’t a good enough reason to let a company monetize and eventually lose your PII to the dark web?
That is what I said, yes.
Okay. Cool that’s what I said too. Just… the way you said it sounded like you were advocating for using bad parenting as a pretext for massive breaches of privacy and identity security.
The way you said it sounded like you were advocating for parents to watch their kids every second of every day, and if they don’t then whatever happens is their fault.
If your child steals a car, are you allowed to say “I can’t watch my kids all time time” and get off consequence free?
Of course not. Do I think it is realistic for parents to keep an eye on their kid 100% of the time, of course not… But, I do expect that parents raise their kids in a progressively less restrictive manner and provide access to more autonomy as the child mautures? Absolutely, and I don’t think it is unreasonable to extend that progressive loosening of the parental leash in the real world to children on the internet. You shouldn’t have to watch your kids all the time on the internet, if they are old enough and mature enough to be on there unsupervised. If they aren’t ready for unsupervised access to the internet, then you shouldn’t allow it.
So are you for or against mass surveillance veiled as “child safety”?
Should be pretty evident from the comment.
I can’t help but see their comment as a joke. One can only hope