A child’s mind is different to an adults. It’s a developing mind. Before certain milestones Children don’t understand concepts such as constancy (which is why you don’t let them choose to change gender) or how to decentralize ( “The table hurt me” vs " I hurt myself on the table.") object permanence and many others. Piaget (regrettably French, but we move on) is a very good theorist on the stages of child development. I recommend him to anybody who raises or educates children. That’s why we should censor what children are watching and listening to at certain ages.
Adult minds are supposed to be developed, but the internet seems to be delaying or off setting this in a continuing race to the bottom. Adults do now say, “Your words hurt me,” when the reality is more like, “I hurt myself listening to your words.”
Now the knives are out for Joe and they are trawling through his past to cancel him. It’s pathetic. The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.
Nope. I let my kids moderate their own content. By allowing them to be independent, all my kids have developed emotional IQs and responsible attitudes well beyond their years.
You wouldn’t let your six year old choose to watch hard-core pornography for hours on end, day after day or read terrorist propaganda, I would imagine.
Plenty of societies, past and present, where a 14-year-old was expected to assume the duties of an adult, with the maturity/life skills to match. I suspect part of the problem with the West is not that kids are growing up too early, but that they’re not growing up at all.
I’m not recommending it as a good idea. I’m just pointing out that, by the age of 14, you ought to have enough of a handle on life to not want to spend hours at a time holed up in your room playing videogames and watching porn. In any case I think the “what about porn?” argument is a rather poor approach to the question of free expression because it’s hard to pin down what idea, if any, is being expressed. The terrorism thing is perhaps a better point of debate.
West London. I’m not sure what my location has to do with anything.
What I can tell you, with unwavering certainty, is that allowing your children to choose their own content is a safeguarding issue which falls under the category of neglect. I can also tell you, as an educator, that we are trained to look out for signs that children are being radicalized or exposed to (either by force or through parental neglect) sexually explicit content because they are too young to understand what they are being exposed to. Children cannot choose all of their own content because they are children.
