In 2014 Microsoft researcher and ed-tech advocate danah boyd wrote a piece for Time magazine entitled “Let Kids Run Wild Online” in which she advocates for children to be allowed to explore the Internet and social media free from parental constraints. She labeled parents’ monitoring of their children’s online activities as “helicopter parenting” and likens it to parents who won’t let their kids go outside or go to a playground unmonitored. That’s not a reasonable comparison. Imagine a playground where there were stashes of porn under the slide and the swings, and a significant number of the
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