I dare say, those of us GenX crew, now parents, who grew up with networks (LAN first and heck we used to troll each other on Unisys systems in the school library) and then the interNet non local systems on 4800baud, have a better handle on what social media actually is.  Everything else has been a new veneer on passing notes in class... Until recently.  Up until the past 10 years or so it was all human edited.  Posts got attention or did not. Posts then got up voted (or Dugg, karma, liked) for more attention by mostly humans (bots were always an issue for commercial spam even in IRC days).  A-B testing was human created and scored on KPI.  What's changed is heatmaps and algos that are no longer in human control but purely focused on improving KPIs, especially stickiness, which generates more ad revenue and profitability while usefulness be damned.

Children, these days, are becoming products of the machines we produced. The question you need to ask yourself, when it comes to restrictions, is where your responsibility as an adult in the child's life ends and where the state begins.  Now, being that this post is on NOSTR I bet I know what you all think.  And, yes, that is pandering to a silo of exceptionally bright individuals (more pandering, you're welcome) but unfortunately the world ain't like that for the most part.  So you're job is to wake more people up, both children, and adults, to be situationally aware.  If you don't, the state will continue to step in and restrict to their benefit.