We could also educate the parents/adults. I feel like a lot of these issues come from the fact that the newer generation(s) have so much more knowledge of what they're using than their elders. Society has changed things and implemented safeguards in the past (seatbelts, driving laws, etc.) Yet for some reason the social media discussion always ends up only presenting two options: Censorship or anarchy.
It doesn't need to be successful on everyone, and you're right that we should also be teaching the kids in order to eventually have a population that's less susceptible to trickery. That said, there was a point when the average citizen couldn't read. When there were no driver's ed classes or requirements. Hell, attitudes can change among adults and that would do a lot: Look at the approval rates for gay marriage and interracial relationships. The gay marriage jump is notable because it happened in a short enough period of time that it is an indication that people who were already adults changed their minds.
We can educate or change things at the population level, we just lack the political will to do so and it's disincentivized for the people in power to orient their efforts that way. I think it's worth taking a good hard look about why our Overton Window has ended up where it has on these issues.
There are also other ways to cope rather than outright bans or anarchy. We could study the physiology of the harm caused and require algorithm changes to demonstrate they don't cause biological panic reactions. We could require some knowledge in order to access social media rather than gatekeeping by age (for the record, I don't think this would work and it's probably not legal in America, but it's interesting that nobody seems to discuss it), etc. Even something as simple as requiring a representative age sample for groups addressing these problems so that we can have the perspectives of both those of us who grew up chronically online and people who have to adjust to this weird new techno world they don't understand since both groups need to live in society.
We could also go meta and ask why education has a low chance of success in adults. What of those variables could we influence? Would an economically secure population be easier to educate? Etc.
