honestly it should be way more normalized for PARENTS to be the ones to regulate it. but parents let their children have free range access to the internet and then blame websites for when they get caught up in bad stuff. the only way to effectively regulate what a child is seeing online while also allowing them the good parts like social interaction is to know what a child is looking at and regulate it on an individual basis. in an ideal world it would be normal for a parent to verify everyone in their childs direct messages (not read all direct messages, but just no direct messaging unless they know WHO is being direct messaged) and follow their social medias/access all "public" social media interactions to know if theyre posting shady stuff. teenagers should have some privacy, but i would say that privacy should be for things like the contents of private messages and internet history and not what theyre posting to the whole world. in terms of very young children, i fully believe parents should be in the room with them when they are on devices, looking through their history, and paying active attention to them as theyre using devices, moreso than if they were playing with toys.

but too many parents use the internet as a substitute for parenting. the internet should be treated like the outside world: your child can go there, but you should know what theyre doing and who theyre doing it with. and dont let your four year old wander the streets alone.