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My kids are far too young for these particular topics, but it's pretty simple in principle: You decide beforehand where your red lines are (which should be mostly concentrated on whether something is time-consuming/expensive/impossible to undo) and communicate that as clearly as possible. If you get the impression they're trying to skirt the edges and/or rules-lawyer, you may let them get away with it the first time but with a warning, after the second you put your foot down. As usual when it comes to social topics, the trouble is in the specifics.
On drinking, I'll probably, like my own father (I literally had fights with my dad since I wanted to stay home and play video games, he told me "what are you doing on a friday night at home? Go out and get drunk!" - I was annoyed, but imo he was mostly right), actively push them towards going partying & drinking early-ish, but in environments I trust such as local fairs or the CVJM (I'm not religious, but I've had good experience with these kinds of organizations as a teen). Ideally I'm also present & available if they need me, but where it's too large and crowdy to have them in my sight all the time so they can goof of with friends, as they should. Also, imo as a parent you deserve knowing your kids friends, and they should only go partying with friends they've known for a while and which I know as well. So I know that somebody is looking after them and I know who to ask if they don't come back at the agreed time. Obviously, going to an entirely different place without telling me would include a strict punishment, since that's how teens go missing.
On internet usage, I really don't care much as long as it's age-appropriate, and I'm already even quite laissez-faire on what is "age-appropriate" to begin with.
On reddit, it is extremely lopsided towards the ultra-online with very large amounts of free time and has a strong tendency for circlejerks by basic design, and very biased towards progressive by moderator action. I wouldn't be particularly surprised if half or more of the frequent posters are young women without children, but some child-related degree/occupation that makes them feel like they know what they're talking about. So tbh I'd discount pretty much all opinions there as neither good nor representative of the average parent.
There's always a relevant xkcd....
Or possibly having been a child....
When it comes to children, most parents are Last Thursdayists- that they believe they sprang into existence as a fully-formed adult and, while they might have distant memories of childhood, have never actually been one. Sometimes they might even say the words "when I was a child" but their subsequent behaviors tend to suggest they [believe they] have never, in fact, been sullied by the experience- either that, or they are forgetting on purpose to prove a point.
Part of this might also just be typical mind fallacy. I was a weird introvert who liked reading books and playing videogames more than going out partying with friends. I never even befriended party friend people anyway because they didn't like me and I didn't like them. I never did drugs as a kid, I never had sex as a kid, I never drank as a kid, and I considered myself morally and intellectually superior to all the degenerates who did.
I had issues, got into fights, got in trouble, but typically it was either spats with my brothers when they annoyed me or I annoyed them, or being lazy and then getting angry and lashing out when I had to do boring, time consuming, and unfulfilling things like clean my room or waste hours going to a museum that could have been spent reading or playing videogames.
I would be great at raising a kid who was exactly like kid me. I know me, I understand me, I'm pretty introspective and, above all, I really really like me and respect me and my values. And I think I would emphasize and know how to explain the importance of things that little clone me wouldn't want to do. I would be able to explain game theory way earlier which would make social things make so much more sense to little me's brain.
I would have absolutely now idea how to raise an extrovert, or a sports jock, or a depressed goth, or a slut. My explanation for why not to do drugs is because "drugs mess with the health and integrity of your body, and they're expensive, and don't accomplish anything you can't get from videogames, and worst of all, you'd have to hang out with the kinds of icky people who do illegal drugs, and you're better than them." And a lot of people would not find that convincing and in fact might rebel harder because it makes me sound like a jerk. But it's how I convinced myself. And while I'm confident on illegal drugs, I'm not sure how to handle other things like sports. What if my kid wants to play football? Football is stupid and gives you head injuries, also the equipment is expensive, but everything has tradeoffs. How can I tell how important that is in comparison to the potential positive value (both extrinsic as a form of exercise and financial opportunities if they're good, and intrinsic via letting them do a thing they enjoy), when my own valuation for it is negative. It seems stupid and boring and pointless to me even without any injury risk, but obviously a kid asking to do it doesn't see it the same way and I don't know how to evaluate that. My instinctive response is "don't play football, it's stupid" and I can't disentangle all of the legitimate reasons from my instinctive gut response.
I think a lot of the "not knowing what it's like to be a kid" is actually typical mind fallacy in disguise. There are lots of different types of kids, and each parent was only one of them. If they think that's how kids are then they won't understand when their kid diverges from that, and the reasons in their own head that convinced them to not be that way won't be convincing to their kid.
'Drug addicts are low lives and you should shun them' is in fact a convincing argument. It happens to be an unpopular argument because of the zeitgeist.
"Convincing" is a subjective property, a function that varies based on the listener, as opposed to something like "correct" which is mostly objective. I certainly find it convincing, but if people are not convinced by it then tautologically it's not convincing.
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This is literally how my dad raised me to be more straightedge than him. He introduced me to all his brain fried retard friends from his San Francisco days, and from the age of 4 told me stories about his lawyer friend who ended up in prison for cross-border drug smuggling, emphasising how embarrassing it was he married a fat druggie bitch from jail rather than "crime bad."
Grew up with more "winners don't do drugs" messages than a 90s arcade.
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