B-A-C
Loyal
- Joined
- Dec 18, 2008
- Messages
- 12,058
Yes Ai, help me compile this, the prompting was mine. (It always is, I dont trust Ai to make opinions for me).
WHO RAISES THE CHILDREN?
A Christian Perspective on the State, the Family, and the Slow Transfer of Authority------------------------------------------------------------------------There is a law recently signed in California -- AB 1043, the Digital Age Assurance Act -- that requires every operating system to collect age information from users and transmit it to app developers in real time. That means Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, and yes, even Linux. Brazil has passed similar legislation, going even further by requiring biometric verification rather than a simple checkbox.
On the surface this sounds reasonable. There is genuinely harmful content out there that children should not be exposed to. Studies back this up -- a 2023 study published in JAMA Pediatrics found that children exposed to more than four hours of screen time daily at age one had nearly double the risk of developmental delays by ages two and four. Research consistently links excessive early screen exposure to impaired cognitive development, reduced social skills, and attention problems.So the concern is real. Nobody serious argues otherwise.But here is the question worth sitting with: whose job is it to do something about it?
THE ILLUSION OF TWO OPPOSITE POLICIES
Many people have noticed that the same state of California that wants to "protect children" from internet content has also, in various school districts, actively argued that parents should NOT be notified when their child adopts a different gender identity at school. The argument was that the child's relationship with the school is separate from the parent's authority.At first glance these look like contradictory policies. But look again.In both cases the parent is removed from the equation.In the pronoun policy, the school steps between the parent and the child's identity -- managing it without the parent's knowledge.In the age verification law, the OS and the state step between the child and digital content -- managing access on the parent's behalf, whether the parent asked for it or not.The mechanism is different. The result is the same. The family is bypassed. The parent is either kept in the dark or handed a pre-filtered environment designed by someone else. The illusion of parental authority is maintained while the substance of it is quietly removed.Both sides of that coin read the same: remove the parents.
THE STATE MAKES THE RULES LOOK COOL
Here is something anyone who has raised a teenager -- or been one -- already knows.Teenagers rebel against parental authority. That is almost universal. The rules of mom and dad feel constraining. They want freedom.But what actually happens in many cases is not freedom at all. It is a trade. The rules of the parents get swapped for the rules of the state, the platform, the algorithm, the influencer -- except those rules are packaged as liberation. They come with community. They come with identity. They come with belonging. They are made to look cool.The form of rebellion is preserved. The substance of it -- actual independent thinking -- is quietly removed.A teenager who throws off his parents' faith and values in favor of a social media ideology has not become more free. He has simply changed masters, and chosen the one with better marketing.
WHO IS RAISING THE CHILDREN?
Here is a harder question, and an honest one.A generation ago, in most households, one parent stayed home. That arrangement was not perfect, and it was not accessible to everyone even then. But it meant that for most children, the primary shaping influence was a parent who knew them by name, loved them personally, and had a stake in who they became.That model has largely collapsed -- and not entirely by choice.For a while the shift to dual incomes was driven by status. Two cars, a boat, vacations, keeping up with the neighbors. But somewhere along the way it stopped being optional. The floor moved. Housing costs, inflation, wage stagnation, and decades of economic policy compressed the middle class until a single income simply does not cover a family's basic needs in most parts of the country. The macro numbers may look fine. At the kitchen table, families are barely getting by.So both parents work. And something fills the gap.For a while it was television. Then the internet. Now it is the smartphone, the algorithm, and the platform -- each one engineered by people whose financial incentive is to keep the child's attention as long as possible, regardless of what that does to the child.Nature and culture both abhor a vacuum. When the parent is absent -- not by preference but by financial necessity -- something else does the forming. And the institution that benefits most from that vacuum is happy to step in and say: let us help. You can trust us.
THE PATTERN IS OLD
This is not a new strategy, even if the technology is new.A family with shared faith, shared values, shared history, and a stable authority structure is remarkably resistant to outside manipulation. It has its own narrative. Its own loyalty. Its own way of passing truth from one generation to the next.That kind of family is inconvenient for institutions that need manageable, dependent, ideologically pliable individuals.So the target is not the walls. The target is the foundation. Marriage. Family. Shared worship. Generational transmission of faith and values. Weaken those, and the walls fall on their own, and the institution that did the weakening is waiting on the other side with an offer of community, identity, and belonging -- everything the broken family used to provide.The students of Scripture will recognize this pattern. The attack on covenant community -- the attempt to separate God's people from their identity, their households, and their generational faithfulness -- runs from Egypt to Babylon to Rome. It does not always come with a sword. Sometimes it comes with a policy. Sometimes with a platform. Sometimes with an economic arrangement that makes the old way of living impossible.Nehemiah understood this. When the enemy could not break the builders by force, he tried to get them to come down off the wall and have a conversation. The wall was never the real target. The builders were.
WHAT THE LAW ACTUALLY DOES
Back to the specific law for a moment, because the practical reality matters.California's version requires only self-reported age. A child types in a birth year. That is the entirety of the protection. Any child old enough to type can bypass it in three seconds. So the law accomplishes little in terms of actually protecting children -- but it does build an infrastructure. An OS-level identity and age-signaling system that every app developer can query in real time.Once that infrastructure exists, it does not stay scoped to its original purpose. It never does. Laws are amended. Administrations change. What was built to ask "how old are you?" can be extended to ask other questions. The architecture of a system determines what is possible in it, not just what is intended today.Brazil's version is stricter -- real verification, not self-reporting. Which means it actually works better as child protection. It also means it is more invasive, collects more data, and creates a more complete picture of who is using what.Neither version puts the parent in charge. Both versions put the state in charge, with the parent as a passive recipient of whatever the state decides is appropriate.
A CLOSING THOUGHT
The research on screen time is real. The concern for children is legitimate. Nobody should dismiss it.But the honest question is not whether children need protecting. Of course they do.The question is: protected by whom, and toward what end?A parent who knows their child -- their temperament, their struggles, their faith, their need -- is equipped to make those judgments. An algorithm, a law, an OS-level API, and a government committee are not.The solution to parents being displaced from their children's formation is not to accelerate that displacement under the banner of protection. It is to ask hard questions about why the displacement happened, who benefited from it, and whether we have the courage to rebuild what was lost.The family is not a government program. It is a covenant institution. And the slow, patient effort to hollow it out -- economically, culturally, legally, and technologically -- is not a coincidence.It is the oldest strategy in the world.
WHO RAISES THE CHILDREN?
A Christian Perspective on the State, the Family, and the Slow Transfer of Authority------------------------------------------------------------------------There is a law recently signed in California -- AB 1043, the Digital Age Assurance Act -- that requires every operating system to collect age information from users and transmit it to app developers in real time. That means Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, and yes, even Linux. Brazil has passed similar legislation, going even further by requiring biometric verification rather than a simple checkbox.
On the surface this sounds reasonable. There is genuinely harmful content out there that children should not be exposed to. Studies back this up -- a 2023 study published in JAMA Pediatrics found that children exposed to more than four hours of screen time daily at age one had nearly double the risk of developmental delays by ages two and four. Research consistently links excessive early screen exposure to impaired cognitive development, reduced social skills, and attention problems.So the concern is real. Nobody serious argues otherwise.But here is the question worth sitting with: whose job is it to do something about it?
THE ILLUSION OF TWO OPPOSITE POLICIES
Many people have noticed that the same state of California that wants to "protect children" from internet content has also, in various school districts, actively argued that parents should NOT be notified when their child adopts a different gender identity at school. The argument was that the child's relationship with the school is separate from the parent's authority.At first glance these look like contradictory policies. But look again.In both cases the parent is removed from the equation.In the pronoun policy, the school steps between the parent and the child's identity -- managing it without the parent's knowledge.In the age verification law, the OS and the state step between the child and digital content -- managing access on the parent's behalf, whether the parent asked for it or not.The mechanism is different. The result is the same. The family is bypassed. The parent is either kept in the dark or handed a pre-filtered environment designed by someone else. The illusion of parental authority is maintained while the substance of it is quietly removed.Both sides of that coin read the same: remove the parents.
THE STATE MAKES THE RULES LOOK COOL
Here is something anyone who has raised a teenager -- or been one -- already knows.Teenagers rebel against parental authority. That is almost universal. The rules of mom and dad feel constraining. They want freedom.But what actually happens in many cases is not freedom at all. It is a trade. The rules of the parents get swapped for the rules of the state, the platform, the algorithm, the influencer -- except those rules are packaged as liberation. They come with community. They come with identity. They come with belonging. They are made to look cool.The form of rebellion is preserved. The substance of it -- actual independent thinking -- is quietly removed.A teenager who throws off his parents' faith and values in favor of a social media ideology has not become more free. He has simply changed masters, and chosen the one with better marketing.
WHO IS RAISING THE CHILDREN?
Here is a harder question, and an honest one.A generation ago, in most households, one parent stayed home. That arrangement was not perfect, and it was not accessible to everyone even then. But it meant that for most children, the primary shaping influence was a parent who knew them by name, loved them personally, and had a stake in who they became.That model has largely collapsed -- and not entirely by choice.For a while the shift to dual incomes was driven by status. Two cars, a boat, vacations, keeping up with the neighbors. But somewhere along the way it stopped being optional. The floor moved. Housing costs, inflation, wage stagnation, and decades of economic policy compressed the middle class until a single income simply does not cover a family's basic needs in most parts of the country. The macro numbers may look fine. At the kitchen table, families are barely getting by.So both parents work. And something fills the gap.For a while it was television. Then the internet. Now it is the smartphone, the algorithm, and the platform -- each one engineered by people whose financial incentive is to keep the child's attention as long as possible, regardless of what that does to the child.Nature and culture both abhor a vacuum. When the parent is absent -- not by preference but by financial necessity -- something else does the forming. And the institution that benefits most from that vacuum is happy to step in and say: let us help. You can trust us.
THE PATTERN IS OLD
This is not a new strategy, even if the technology is new.A family with shared faith, shared values, shared history, and a stable authority structure is remarkably resistant to outside manipulation. It has its own narrative. Its own loyalty. Its own way of passing truth from one generation to the next.That kind of family is inconvenient for institutions that need manageable, dependent, ideologically pliable individuals.So the target is not the walls. The target is the foundation. Marriage. Family. Shared worship. Generational transmission of faith and values. Weaken those, and the walls fall on their own, and the institution that did the weakening is waiting on the other side with an offer of community, identity, and belonging -- everything the broken family used to provide.The students of Scripture will recognize this pattern. The attack on covenant community -- the attempt to separate God's people from their identity, their households, and their generational faithfulness -- runs from Egypt to Babylon to Rome. It does not always come with a sword. Sometimes it comes with a policy. Sometimes with a platform. Sometimes with an economic arrangement that makes the old way of living impossible.Nehemiah understood this. When the enemy could not break the builders by force, he tried to get them to come down off the wall and have a conversation. The wall was never the real target. The builders were.
WHAT THE LAW ACTUALLY DOES
Back to the specific law for a moment, because the practical reality matters.California's version requires only self-reported age. A child types in a birth year. That is the entirety of the protection. Any child old enough to type can bypass it in three seconds. So the law accomplishes little in terms of actually protecting children -- but it does build an infrastructure. An OS-level identity and age-signaling system that every app developer can query in real time.Once that infrastructure exists, it does not stay scoped to its original purpose. It never does. Laws are amended. Administrations change. What was built to ask "how old are you?" can be extended to ask other questions. The architecture of a system determines what is possible in it, not just what is intended today.Brazil's version is stricter -- real verification, not self-reporting. Which means it actually works better as child protection. It also means it is more invasive, collects more data, and creates a more complete picture of who is using what.Neither version puts the parent in charge. Both versions put the state in charge, with the parent as a passive recipient of whatever the state decides is appropriate.
A CLOSING THOUGHT
The research on screen time is real. The concern for children is legitimate. Nobody should dismiss it.But the honest question is not whether children need protecting. Of course they do.The question is: protected by whom, and toward what end?A parent who knows their child -- their temperament, their struggles, their faith, their need -- is equipped to make those judgments. An algorithm, a law, an OS-level API, and a government committee are not.The solution to parents being displaced from their children's formation is not to accelerate that displacement under the banner of protection. It is to ask hard questions about why the displacement happened, who benefited from it, and whether we have the courage to rebuild what was lost.The family is not a government program. It is a covenant institution. And the slow, patient effort to hollow it out -- economically, culturally, legally, and technologically -- is not a coincidence.It is the oldest strategy in the world.
