Re: Government protection, lol
My kids were mostly grown up when social media, internet porn et. al. made the big time.
Bringing up kids when porn was on paper, and the only people you had to worry about influencing them the wrong way were physically present in the locality made it possible to be reasonably certain that they were safe. Even then, there were dangers, but you could educate them about avoiding risks, or even physically restrict what they could do, within reason.
But even in that long-gone world, children were still abused, groomed, and influenced, kidnapped and sometimes even turned against their parents and friends.
I really don't know how modern parents cope. It is not surprising that some who care, but who don't have the skills, knowledge and/or access to technology want to make it 'someone else's problem", which is all that trying to devolve parental responsibility to platforms, schools, councils or the government is. They don't really have any other avenue. But, the organizations they are hoping will do this don't really know how, either.
And, as always, there are too many parents who take the "I can't be bothered, it'll probably come out all right even if I do nothing" path until something happens, whereupon they take to the media shouting about why "somebody" didn't protect their children, and who is going to do something about it!
We can't go backwards, we can't regulate without infringing on someone else's rights. We definitely should not let capitalistic big business take charge. Whatever happened to the idea of altruistic socialism (if that was ever anything more than an idealist's pipe-dream).
Society is doomed, I say.