Sorry I did not say whom I was replying to, part was in reply to you and part to other comments. I agree with your statement that most children have no reason and no business to use the internet, on the other hand the access does not need to be regular and taken for granted for damage to occur (e.g. the poster HakunaMatada only had occasional access). I also respectfully disagree with your “8th grade” threshold, as an 8th grader, unless I am grossly miscalculating US school system, is probably Bar Mitzvah already or close to it.
With other forbidden items there is lots of social pressure, there’s the awareness they are forbidden, teenagers are also dissuaded by other parents’ awareness that people who have a forbidden or undesirable habit are not welcome as our/their children’s friends. There are many things that stand in the way of someone who is considering purchase or use of inappropriate items, all the way to fear / shame of being seen while purchasing or using.
Perhaps the tolerance towards internet can partially be explained by the fact many frum people don’t use it at all, as well as by the lack of technical awareness: malware and spyware alone – and legal liabilities on top of it – are enough of a threat to bring nonjewish and nonreligious internet users to implement heavy filtering. Someone already mentioned Cisco’s content filtering, which prides itself with “not interfering with the user’s experience” i.e. the user will hardly be able to realize that a filter is in place. They do so with BYOD in their own workplace, i.e. with employees who are professional network managers who know a thing or two.
I do not think we can say “inadvertent access to unwanted content” is only popups or banners, advertising sites we would not visit otherwise (and perhaps, not even imagine they existed). I think it is much more likely that a good and well-intentioned person with access to unfiltered internet joins Facebook for a sensible reason, say in order to keep in touch with someone overseas, and then, the problems begin.
As you wrote, no one really maintains that “one size fits all”. It’s no different than with clothing. But most people are shorter than 2.10m. Also, there are good reasons (including practical reasons) to separate our work environment which, for some, will need to be completely unfiltered (and probably with some “unsolicited” audits running there), and our own activity of web surfing, search, emails.
Chag Sameach & gmar chatima tova 🙂