I remember when I started my non-profit that my lawyer explained:
NY takes the attitude that you're trying to do something wrong, and they need to protect the public by tightly regulating your non-profit activities. Other jurisdictions take a different approach. They assume positive intent, and regulate accordingly. It's why NY isn't a great place to register your company.
The perspective one adopts informs their world-view and flows into any subsequent actions. Makes sense, right?
Yet, most parents raise their kids to see the world as a dangerous place and then wonder why the world is a dangerous place.
I stumbled across this today and it's worth pausing to reflect on each phrase:
I'm not sure why this came up today, but it was linked to the original research (not the source of this quote):
I think the same can be said about kids & technology. Parents can come from a place that it's dangerous and therefore should be tightly monitored or controlled.
I don't agree with that sentiment. Yes, technology can be dangerous in many different ways. But so can literally anything else. The thing is, as compared to, let's say, guns... you can avoid guns (in a major city where there's no need for hunting/protection in the same way) but you can't avoid technology.
And, for fucks sake, even "technology" is too broad a term. There's a huge difference between TV and writing code, or between watching porn on the web (block all websites!) and publishing a blog to learn how to influence people with ideas. As parents, preparing our kids and helping them model healthy relationships (starting with the relationship between parent and child) is the best way to protect them on- (and off-) line.
Helping our children understand the opportunity technology presents is one of the most important things parents can do. Technology is not something we build our lives on top of, like most modern conveniences, but rather something woven into the fabric of our very existence.
We will all be better served if our kids take the point of view in alignment to the opportunity, rather than the danger.
Postscript
Coincidentally, shortly after hitting publish, I saw this article urging people to also see the positive side of crypto:
