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Notes -
Just because parents don't know what a collective action problem is doesn't mean they can't identify one. Not everyone works off of formal logic, parents can recognize that instagram is bad for kids at the same time as kids being socially isolated by being the only one not on instagram is bad for kids.
I have a previous thread about very conservative parents being better at their jobs, and my sources overemphasized discipline as a factor. Lots of the commentary was basically about how 'discipline' meant setting limits on social media. Plausibly your theory about parents feeling disempowered is supported therein; but short of spreading the folkways of the rightmost 10-20% or so of the population more broadly(and I have another thread about that), the best way to solve this specific problem of teen social media use is to make a law against it. They won't follow it voluntarily but it will let their parents enforce it.
Of course, I would prefer to be a selective libertarian and empower the rightmost 10-20% of the population by not doing anything to prevent the rest of it from self destructing. This is not out of a general commitment to freedom. But it's entirely understandable to me why social media bans that nobody knows how to enforce would be welcomed by parents.
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