I’ve thought about it, but that’s still technology trying to solve a societal problem, and my experience is that doesn’t work (it just makes someone a lot of money by giving them data to exploit). Don’t get me wrong, I am still all for said services existing as an option for parents to leverage, but it’s not my thing.

My soapbox is addressing the crux of the social problem: we have built a society where both parents in most families have to work full-time jobs to have a chance at making ends meet, increasingly taking on extra overtime or gig work to improve their odds of paying the bills. This means children have no consistent adult available in their lives to engage with them: nurture, monitor, teach, mentor, demonstrate, assist, etc.

I want to build a society where only one parent has to work, and the other (whoever they are, I am not advocating a return to “traditional gender role” bullshit) can stay at home full-time. This way someone is always available to engage with the child and ensure their safety at home, with the suite of knock-on benefits that entails for the child’s development.

I don’t want to make a child-safe planet at the expense of children lacking present and available parents; I want a world where parents aren’t so wiped from working multiple jobs and struggling to pay rent or buy food that their children become a forced secondary concern.

You have said it all. I have kids, but it's basically impossible to age gate everything, my solution for a long time besides screen time restrictions was having terrible internet connections. We were still using Verizon copperwire till 3 years ago, slow, high latency, dropped service all the time, had to restart the router daily.

It worked enough for 1 device to watch a movie or 3 people to do basic tasks, but there was no multiple screens displaying madness at all times. Apps just failed to load and you had to restart, it was absolutely fabulous.

The big problem is that schools require them to have and use the internet. I have no idea why. It's not better, it's not like they use Wikipedia, no it's a mish mash of private companies selling edu-ware to buzzword aficionados in administration.

But having no computers would be fine, at least till high school, at minimum.

I would also like to see this happen, but the developed world as a whole seems to be moving away from single working parents. Even across very different cultures. I’d like to see a change, but I’m not sure how it could happen.

The closest thing we have is the stay at home working parent, which has grown after COVID. This is a lot better than neither parent being at home, but unless it’s a very easy job, they still won’t be able to supervise much. I also think some of these newer “email jobs” are facing competition from overseas workers and AI. Unless politicians learn to find value in having a stay at home parent, and supporting that through policy, these jobs may go away as quickly as they arrived.

I think the stay-at-home working parent idea is a good one as a transition stage, but ultimately this is a large problem that'll require years of reforms and fundamental changes to accomplish - a plurality of society must be on board and willing to sacrifice to make it happen, because employers never will be despite the research data showing the benefits of these approaches.

It's hard playing the long game, but we need more folks to do it. The big, important problems of life are never solved in a single fiscal year, after all.

Cell phone companies like AT&T could offer kid-lines (with filtered Internet access) and Google and Apple could provide kid-modes on their phones that don't allow VPNs or apps to be installed that parents do not approve of.

Maybe there might already be ways to prevent VPNs/apps, but it doesn't seem to be easy and/or publicized.

Don't worry the kid mode is coming on all devices, one thing you wouldn't want kids doing is sideloading applications after all.

I think this is the wrong approach, an example is youtube kids. There seems to be a abundance of inappropriate content for kids on there. These companies don't actually care about you or your kids they care about profit.

Only (hopefully most) parents care about their kids. They have the power to push a solution as a collective so the solution should empower them to choose and not not take power away from them and others (for example adults without kids). The age verification mandated on a government level constitutes to limiting access to content, and in my eyes that is censorship.

Either a kid phone built on AOSP or a kid-focused MDM system, coupled with kid-focused apps, would seem to be sufficient. No need to go to the carriers.