Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Parents don’t have the right to get their kids a tattoo, vote or buy alcohol before a regulated age. Is this different?



Actually, in many states there is no minimum age to get a tattoo with parental consent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_tattooing_in_t...


Likewise for cosmetic surgical modification of the penis by a doctor, or puncturing the earlobe by a non-medical-professional.


That is…shocking


Missouri law allows minors to consume alcohol if purchased by a parent or legal guardian and consumed on their private property.

edit: Apparently Missouri is not the only state. I had trouble finding a definitive list though. There are also other exceptions such as wine during religious service.


While there are exceptions, and in general exceptions seem pretty common, they still require businesses to officially get approval and it gives power to parents to enforce rules that would otherwise be hard to do so. Even with the exceptions for children to legally be allowed to drink, I would be surprised if that led to more kids drinking than alcohol obtained illegally, which means the question should be back on how well does the law work (obviously not perfectly, but there is a large gap between perfect and so poorly that it is useless purely from an efficiency perspective).


So your answer is yes?

Your position is that decisions about youth access to social media should be fully taken from the parents and made by govs instead. Penalties can be assumed from your examples.

This is the reality that you want imposed on parents and children - yes?


Is your position that no age limits should exist for anything?


I never said that. You introduced that notion to the conversation.


There's actually a really simple and elegant penalty - forfeiture of the device used to access the social media. With all seized devices to then be wiped and donated to low income school districts/families. This gets more complex when using something like a school computer, but I think it's a pretty nice solution outside of that. That's going to be a tremendous deterrent, yet also not particularly draconian.


Yep thats what low income families need: more cell phones.


Now they too can get on social media!


This is already the reality for alcohol and plenty of other things. Maybe not everywhere. Reality check: parents giving unrestricted access to these things are usually perceived as irresponsible.




Consider applying for YC's Spring batch! Applications are open till Feb 11.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: