Today in "Things That Seem 100,000% More Complicated Than They Have To Be:"
The details:
[S]ome prominent children's advocacy, privacy and health groups want to ban user-engagement techniques that, they say, unfairly steer the behavior of minors and hijack their attention. On Thursday morning, a coalition of more than 20 groups filed a petition asking the Federal Trade Commission to prohibit video games like My Talking Tom, as well as social networks like TikTok and other online services, from employing certain attention-grabbing practices that may hook children online.
In particular, the groups asked regulators to prohibit online services from offering unpredictable rewards — a technique that slot machines use — to keep children online.
Yeah...
I mean, wouldn't it just be easier to, you know, take the smartphone away from the kid?
Like, what am I missing here? Isn't it just that simple?
You can just take the smart phone away from the kid who really doesn't have any use for it, right? You can absolutely do that.
I mean, yes, your kid might be upset if you take away his smartphone. But guess what? He'll get over it. He'll be fine!
And then you won't need to go begging the federal government to regulate what your kid consumes on his smart phone (because he won't have one).
