My god, what if someone forced a child to eat their vegetables? Or read a book? Or clean their room?? What if someone said a kid can't go to their friend's late night unchaperoned party??

Real answer:

If using a computer is addictive, then parents and schools will manage kids' use of computers (most already do), and arm kids with that knowledge and help them learn to manage it themselves as they get older.

Sending a kid out into the world purposefully ignorant of risks they might face is a terrible idea. This is also why sex ed is important, BTW.

I understand where you are coming from, and don't disagree with you, but we aren't just talking about parents teaching their children.

It's perfectly reasonable for a parent to decide their child should spend time away from computers.

It's also very easy to take this reaction too far. Deciding what a child should do with a computer, or even that a child should not spend more than 10-20min. at a time using a computer seems reasonable, or even necessary to a lot of parents. Such a situation would have been extremely detrimental to my childhood.

It's easy to overcompensate for things like this, just like it is easy to overcompensate for safety. Parents who know better are likely to ignore studies like this, but others will definitely use these studies to excuse their own draconian censorship, privacy violation, etc.

> This is also why sex ed is important, BTW.

Correct thoughtful sex ed is important. Teaching children to stay away from or fear their sexuality is detrimental, yet it is still common practice. It would be nice to be able to expect a reasonable reaction from everyone, but the fact is that we simply can't.

I think the focus of studies like this misses the mark. Children need variety, so it's important for parents to push them out the door from time to time. Unfortunately, a lot of parents find it more important to schedule every moment of their child's life, make every decision for their child, or be somewhere in between. That attitude leads them to awful things like censorship, and privacy intrusion.

Huh, Children’s privacy and liberty are already extremely limited, by definition.

The phone addiction thing is severe for young people, and it’s not comparable to playing games on the computer back in the day.

My stepson responded to the suggestion of placing modest limits on his phone use with genuine anguish.

The problem is compounded by network effects, because vital social connections are now actively mediated through the phones.

Children have little of either privacy or liberty because they are still in the process of learning how best to utilize their privacy and liberty under the guidance of a parent.

Now, if you were to empirically argue (with data/evidence) on the importance of privacy and liberty in children, that’s a different story, but since when was parenting driven by science? :O

> Now, if you were to empirically argue (with data/evidence)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_Wikipedia_cannot...

My personal experiences are valid.

Fear and control would have directly affected me, and I am certain that would have been to my detriment.

It is valid, but it cannot be evidence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence

My point is that this situation does not call for evidence.

Demanding statistics at every turn means you are going to ignore anything that doesn't have it. That's just unreasonable.

Are you worried about parents, or governments?

Both, but mostly the latter.

I know a lot of parents who are over-concerned with their child's "safety". That extends to reading through teenager's texts, severely limiting their exposure to computers, etc.

Naturally, every child is different, and most won't have similar interests to what I had as a child, but speaking from experience: I would not have flourished in such an environment. I would never have had the liberty to mod video games, install Linux, etc. in a situation like that. I wouldn't have even encountered an interest in such things.

A concern with what a child does on his or her own can easily evolve into overbearing control and censorship. I want every parent to understand that.

> I am concerned with any action that takes a child's privacy or liberty from them.

Such as signing them up for a Facebook account, or having their schools force them to use Google hardware and services that track everything they do?

Absolutely!

Also, commonplace firewalls that are made to keep them away from porn, but track them, have serious false-positives, and are often trivially circumvented, giving a false sense of security.

Another thing that really bothers me is that Microsoft convinces practically every school to use their software by giving it to schools "for free", and convincing educators that there are no viable alternatives.

Children usually don't get any opportunity to use a computer freely, i. e. installing other OS's, or even installing software. This means the only opportunities they get are at home, and many don't have their own authority over a real computer at home, either.

It's commonplace for young teenagers to learn how to circumvent arbitrary "security" measures so that they can find liberty, but that isn't always trivial enough to happen. These barriers do more damage than good.