“Kids should not have unsupervised access to the internet” is largely said by a generation that grew up with said access. You ask them “what about you,” and they’ll say “no, I don’t think it was bad that I had it.”

…Huh?

How can someone spend the entirety of their childhood staring at iPads and screens, not see any problem with it, then say modern kids shouldn’t? The answer is complicated, but if your attention span is like that of a TikTok-guzzling 13 year old, the gist is this: the internet is different now.

That’s not what paradox means

I was inspired to write this after seeing a screenshot of a Tumblr post while scrolling through Instagram (a habit I should probably break). Here’s the post in question. It reads:

No, kids should not have unsupervised acess to the internet. Yes, I got that and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Its a paradox.

As a student of philosophy, allow me get this out of the way: no, it’s not a paradox. There’s a really fantastic video by jan Misali of seximal.net, which classifies all the different ways “paradox” is used. When someone says “paradox”, they might mean a logical contradiction, or a counterintuitive fact, or a question that you simply can’t answer, or they might just be some guy getting really confused and using the word when they shouldn’t. In this case, it’s that last one. Tumblr user catgirl-catboy is just confused. This is not a paradox.

The reason it only sounds contradictory and isn’t cognitive dissonance is because, well, time exists. To say $X$ about when you were a kid, but say $\neg X$¹ about today’s kids, is to say changing circumstances require changing strategies. This is just stumbling over the ambiguity of language. If I say $Y$, am I saying $Y$ conditionally, as in, under current circumstances, or am I saying $Y$ absolutely, for everyone, always? In general, it’s probably best to assume the former. It’s very rare that something is “always” best. Unless the person you’re talking to is dumb.

For a logical example:

$Bx$ - it is bad for $x$ to be on the internet

When I say “it’s bad for kids to be on the internet”, which of the following am I saying?

$\exists x Bx$ - There is some group of kids for which it is bad for them to be on the internet

$\forall xBx$ - It is bad for any group of kids—any kid—to be on the internet.

The answer is neither. Logic does not line up neatly with natural language. Everytime you pretend it does, you make yourself a fool.

Kid’s those days and kid’s these days

So we’ve got something like this going on:

  childhood
   │
   │   some change
   │        │
   ▼        ▼
◄─────────────────────►
                   ▲
                   │
         today's kids

Which, to be honest, doesn’t say much. You could copy this timeline into basically any conversation where people complain about “kids these days” and it would apply just as much. Things change. Entropy exists. We need to be specific.

One good way to get specific is to pull up some numbers. Young adults, largely Gen Z at time of writing², were born sometime around the turn of the millenia, being the first generation to not remember the 9/11 terrorist attacks. So, arbitrarily picking a year, let’s compare modern internet usage to usage in the year 2000.

According to the US Census Bureau, in the year 2000, 36% of people 3-17 years old³ used the internet at home. 18 million minors, at the time.

Now, my intial reaction is that this sounds pretty high already. I mean, more than a third of kids, that early? But, get this: in 2021, that had risen to 97%. That’s about 70 million people. Holy shit.

The takeaway? Having used the internet as a kid used to be a subculture. You could connect with people over being one of the 1 in 3 dorks who browsed forums and played internet games. Today, using the internet is effectively an inextricable part of childhood. Even if your parents keep you away from it at home, you can almost guarentee that your school will require you to use it. Especially after COVID. Point being, using the internet and being a kid are no longer separate things. Consequently, the impact the digital age has on impressionable minds has exploded.

The impact the digital age has on impressionable minds

It (the impact the digital age has on impressionable minds) has exploded.

People largely have this conversation in absolutes, saying things like “having the internet as a kid was good for me” or “having internet access was bad.” The truth, as always, lies in shades of gray.

For an example, try to forget the present for a moment. How has childhood internet use affected modern people? Well, I’m biased, as I consider myself part of the group that has been helped by it. My curiousity and drive to learn lead to the internet teaching me a great many things I otherwise never would’ve learned. I wouldn’t care about computer science nor philosophy, my two greatest passions, if it weren’t for the web. But that isn’t true for everyone.

Many friends my age have stories of the innocence they were robbed of by the internet. I’ve heard stories of kids scrolling through the 50/50 subreddit—where each image is either something gorey or totally harmless—on the bus home from school. Stories of kids being traumatized by the now-defunct LiveLeak. 2 girls 1 cup is a notable example. I remember when the video, and kids talking about it, spread like wildfire in my elementary school. I never watched it, but a number of my peers did. Is that what the internet should be exposing kids to?

“Well,” the argument goes, “it’s nowhere near as bad as what kids are being exposed to today.” Consider this: the worst thing that could’ve realistically happened to me on the internet as a kid was being grossed out. Sure, I might lose some innocence along the way, but I can generally be expected to recover. Compare that to the worst thing that could happen to modern kids.

The worst things that could happen to modern kids

You remember the Nazis? From history class? They’re back, apparently. Not the same guys, no. It’s not like zombie Adolf clawed his way out of the ground and started posting dogwhistles⁴ on 4chan. No, like, new guys, who want to take up the banner of those chucklefucks from 20th century Germany. And—shocker—they’re on the internet. Kids use the internet. Do I need to spell it out?

But it’s more complicated than that. Take a moment to consider the algorithm⁵. Really, truly. Take a moment to realize that the internet is dominated by massive corporations with social media platforms built on cold, unfeeling, profit-maximizing algorithms.

Consider: there is no guarentee that the safety of children is profitable. There is no guarentee that radicalizing kids and teens isn’t profitable.

Do you notice where your algorithms push you? Does your TikTok for-you page seem like something you’re in control of, or something that knows you better than you know yourself? If even fully edjucated adults aren’t fully aware of how algorithms are affecting them, what hope do kids have? This isn’t fantasy. We’ve already seen evidence of the TikTok algorithm pushing further and further into the radical right, or pushing into unhealthy mental health content.

The worst case scenario used to be “ew, yucky!” (along with a collection of horror stories of real crimes facilitated by the internet). Today, the worst case scenario might be a child’s mental health spiraling as they get radicalized into being a far-right white supremacist. The most advanced recommendation algorithms of the modern age are like a shotgun blast when aimed at a child.

The moral of the story, as previously stated, is this: the internet is different now. If/when I have kids, I wish they could grow up with the internet I had as a kid. I wish they could consume the innocent content that I was lucky to stumble into, I wish they could exist in a world where “digital footprint” wasn’t a recognized term.

But alas.

The internet, a tool, should’ve made things easier. It did not, at least not in any simple way. For parents, educators, and citizens more broadly, it is more important than ever to invest resources and time into not just monitoring and restricting a kid’s internet usage, but teaching them to understand and navigate the modern internet and its pitfalls. Of course, then we’d have to know how to navigate it ourselves in the first place. One step at a time, I suppose. One things for sure: I’m not giving my kid an iPad.