Giving full, unattended access to the internet to a 9 year old? Absolutely nothing. Parents should get a noble prize equivalent for solving "spend more time with your kid" problem.
I didn't say it was Apple's fault, and it's not the parents' fault either. Sometimes kids playing on the street get run over by a car. It's very unfortunate, but no protection is 100% effective. Closeted kids of overprotective parents that never leave them out of sight usually have much worse outcomes than others.
From my personal experience - my parents didn't try to limit or control my online behavior and usage of a computer at all normally, which got me into few weird situations but also allowed me to learn how to recognize and deal with them. When they tried restrictions as a punishment, they never succeeded in any way. At one point when I was around 12-13 years old I simply bought an older laptop they didn't know about.
Today's smartphones are much cheaper, more powerful and widely available - practically every older classmate has one in a drawer somewhere and will happily sell for a few bucks. Let kids learn how to behave online while unattended, because they will be online unattended.
Why wouldn't kids play on the street? What the hell. Should they never leave the boundaries of a building and its garden? I was running and biking all around local forests by myself when I was 10, and my children will do the same. They have a phone, so I am not worried they will hurt themselves without the ability to call me. And they keep posting nice photos to our Telegram group, so I even roughly know what's happening.
Yes, I'm implying that a 9 year old is mature enough to be online - if they have guidance and trust their parent. And yes, children are never too young to start trying out things - again, with guidance and a trusted parent, but that doesn't mean constant oversight. You teach children to look both ways before crossing a road, watch them do it for some time, and then you let them go to school by themselves. I don't understand how are they supposed to develop responsibility and self reliance if there's constantly someone watching.
Seems like your idea of responsible is my idea of sheltered.
Ah, and you'll trust your 9 year old to not talk to strangers online. Many such cases.
Internet is a wild west, without parental control where your 9 yo can go your kid is a click away from something that may disturb them for life. And it's your responsibility to protect them before at least they hit puberty. Don't fuckin trust your 9 yo to not go places on the internet, that's insane. That's just taking off the responsibility off your shoulders.
I trust them not to talk to strangers on the internet much more than I trust them not to talk to strangers in real life, and yet they go to school and outside unattended.
