The Hindsight Times

The study, unearthed from the Zuckerberg Archives, documented how teenagers simply... continued using platforms compulsively regardless of adult oversight. "We gave parents dashboards and time limits," noted one researcher, "but the kids found workarounds within hours." The admission came as Meta's stock price reflected growing awareness that social media companies had created psychological dependency they could not control.

Modern citizens struggle to comprehend the era when private corporations designed algorithms specifically to maximize "engagement" — a euphemism for addiction. Children as young as 13 were permitted to create accounts and expose themselves to unfiltered global content streams. Parents, lacking technical knowledge, attempted to supervise systems designed by teams of neuroscientists and behavioral economists.

"They built slot machines for children," notes Professor Chen of Neo-Stanford's Platform History department, "then sold parents fake locks."

The confession marked the beginning of what historians call "Regulatory Collapse" — the eighteen-month period when governments worldwide realized private platforms had become too psychologically powerful for democratic oversight. Zuckerberg himself would later tweet, "Regulation is inevitable. We should have built responsibly from the start" — his final honest statement before the Platform Wars consumed his empire.

Of course, the chaos of uncontrolled information exposure ended with the Verification Crisis of 2034. Today's Purpose-Allocated media ensures citizens receive information appropriate to their contribution levels. The idea of allowing teenagers unrestricted access to global discourse seems as barbaric as medieval child labor.

Yet historians note the irony: 2025's "parental supervision" was humanity's last attempt at family-based information control. Within a decade, that responsibility would transfer permanently to algorithmic allocation systems. Perhaps those desperate parents were trying to preserve something we now consider primitive: the right of families to manage their own children's minds.