Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging

truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

What parents today are caught between a rock and a hard place on one hand, allowing kids

online, means exposure to content that threatens their mental health and their innocent.

On the other hand, removing online access threatens to socially isolate kids from their friends

and their peer groups, so what are parents to do?

Earlier this month, social media behemoth TikTok announced that it would soon introduce

new features designed to limit access to the app for users under 18 to just 60 minutes

per day and to help parents monitor usage and to silence notifications.

Unfortunately, these steps are unlikely to provide any silver bullet that parents so desperately

need right now for at least two reasons.

First, the tool itself is flawed.

As commentators have noted, there's nothing to stop minors from continuing to use the

app once the hour limit is reached, which means it's not really a limit.

Instead, at that point, TikTok will simply notify users with a prompt whether or not

to keep using the app.

Though kids under 13 will need parental approval to continue, minors age 13 to 17 can simply

create their own passcode and keep using the app.

Second, parental controls cannot override the ideological commitments of social media platforms.

TikTok's a perfect example.

Last year, the platform updated its community guidelines to prohibit, quote unquote, anti-LGBTQ

...