I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: get parents off their lazy asses and watch over your kid and make sure they are staying safe online.

I’m not even all that old, but growing up in the 90s/00s, we had access to computers at school, and if we were lucky, we had cold computers (computers not connected to the internet) for use for things like games or word processors. We had a family machine that my parents let us use, but generally made sure we only visited sites meant for kids.

If you have kids under 13, monitor them when they use the internet. As they get older, give them a bit more leeway, but explain why porn isn’t great for your mental health. (This includes talking about sex and sexuality of course), how to spot misinformation and why you need to confirm sketchy info, and of course, stranger danger and not getting yourself into bad situations, which includes apps with dark systems and gambling in addition to all the normal dangerous stuff.

You do that, and you avoid most of the problems. The internet will never be a “safe space” for kids the same way a highway never will be a safe space either, despite it facilitating the transfer of goods, services, and transportation. And yet we all will have to learn to use it and how to make the safest possible choices on it while following the written and unwritten rules of the road.