This is actually significantly worse now. The video game Roblox alone is awash in tens of thousands of cases of attempted grooming or child endangerment, according to their own metrics, and that's just what they have detected.

This is a parenting issue. The internet doesn’t need training wheels. No offense to those children, but their parents are complete failures.

20+ years ago kids would play out on the street unsupervised with their friends from the neighbourhood from the age of 6-8 and all the adults would look out for each others' kids. It's only recently that everyone's retreated inside onto their screens that all sense of community has been lost and you get comments like this.

At some point you reach a critical mass of personal responsibility failures where you need a systemic solution.

Even if the internet doesn't need training wheels, the video game where the average player is 12 might.

that's absolutely horrible, but it's not like it doesn't happen today; maybe even worse today with all the different social media

Literally nothing got better for your far fetched use case, nothing.

If anything it got worse.