I saw this article, which made me think about it…
Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes world-first laws
Seeing what kind of brainrot kids are watching, makes me think it’s a good idea. I wouldn’t say all content is bad, but most kids will get hooked on trash content that is intentionally designed to grab their attention.
What would be an effective way to enforce a restriction with the fewest possible side effects? And who should be the one enforcing that restriction in your opinion?
There is no real need to regulate kids on devices … leave that up to the parents to figure out.
What we need is to regulate every major corporately owned social media company. Regulate and control them like they do for newspapers, magazines or television. Put them under complete regulatory control across the board so that we can regain some normalcy in public perception of reality and politics everywhere.
It’s a pipe dream I know … but in the meantime, no matter what anyone says or does … if social media companies are not regulated, everything and everyone is going to hell in a hand basket.
Controversial opinion:
In the future we are going to look back on seeing children use iPads that directly connect them to the most sophisticated engagement and manipulation algorithms ever as something as horrid as a child smoking a cigarette, or doing any other drug
Now obviously this is an issue, but many of the suggested solutions are lacking.
Remember: the phones in our pocket are turing complete, any software solution can be undone by another software solution
Hardware flaws baked into chipsets will be inevitably exploited by the worst of humanity
What we need is a LEGAL framework to this issue
We need to see that allowing a full 5g 2.5ghZ portal to the unknown is simply absolutely harmful for a child to get there hands on without parental or educational supervision
I suspect it really should work like regulating a drug, allow more and more unsupervised compute and networking as the child ages
That way kids can still have dumb phones for basic safety and comms.
I suspect laws will be applied like alcohol within the home, to allow for family owned game systems and such
But lapses that lead to actual demonstrated harm such as mental illness leading to bodily harm or violence due to radicalization need to be treated as if a parent just fed their child alcohol without care. Or at least enabled them to it if it’s evident that they didn’t even try
Straight up it’s also a cultural shift 13-16 yr olds gaming at home under parental guidance, but not being bought significant personal compute since it would not be sold to them or for the purpose of giving to them
Usage in school where they get education on information technology and the harms and good it can do all fine and good , but seeing babies with iPads at the mall seen as badly as letting them smoke (and the secondhand smoke from all the brainrot leading to brainrotted adult)
I really am curious if anyone could demonstrate a link to the amount of access to compute and network bandwidth as a child ages, and the incidence of anxiety, social, or mood disorders.
One of the things I feel really thankful for is that the available compute and network I had access to grew up with me essentially, allowing me to generally see the harms of full scale manipulating social algorithms and avoid them.
I feel like my mental health has been greatly benefitted by staying away from such platforms.
This isn’t even like a social media only thing. There’s so many worse things a kid could get their eyes and ears on with the compute we just hand them Willy nilly
In the future we are going to look back on seeing children use iPads that directly connect them to the most sophisticated engagement and manipulation algorithms ever as something as horrid as a child smoking a cigarette, or doing any other drug
Are we looking at video games this way now?
Depends on the game. Some of them, absolutely. Roblox is one that comes to mind, probably Fortnite as well. And one shouldn’t even start on mobile games.
I don’t think that kids should be banned from social media. Instead they should be taught how to handle it in an individually and socially healthy way. Namely:
- how to spot misinformation
- how to spot manipulation
- how to protect yourself online
- how to engage constructively with other people
- etc.
This could be taught by parents, school, or even their own peers. But I think that all three should play a role.
That’s something most children can’t understand it’s basically adding up to an entire multi years school course what you’re proposing and the way the education system is going in many countries id say good luck. It’s not like as easy as saying oh little Charlie that’s fake info because you should read xyZ scientific papers on climate change. Kids are fucking stupid even while going to school. People are constantly coming up with new ways to trick people and kids are above all the easiest to trick.
That’s something most children can’t understand
We’re talking about children and teens. A 6yo eating bullshit is natural; a 13yo doing it should not. Please don’t be disingenuous, stop oversimplifying = distorting things.
it’s basically adding up to an entire multi years school course what you’re proposing
Full stop here. That is not even remotely close to what I said, stop lying.
I’m not going to waste my time further with you.
Teens are also stupid it is easy to simplify you probably don’t have children nor work around them. They dont need social media so early. Spotted the Russian Facebook employee. You’re a waste of everyone’s time.
The biggest reason why not is that it requires the implementation of centralized tracking systems for everyone to confirm ID for accessing these services, which is a privacy nightmare and takes way too much agency away from individuals. If Reddit or something bans me for a stupid reason or because their broad brush modbots malfunctioned, I should be able to evade that ban with enough care and effort, and the government shouldn’t help them make sure I can’t. I should also have the ability to use social media pseudonymously without being subject to corporate tracking.
The other reason, of course, is that banning children from social media cuts them off from participating in society or having any sort of a public voice. That’s fucked up too.
I think kids using regular social media is a result of there being no more sites for kids.
When I was a terminally online unloved kid told to go away whenever I breathed in my family’s presence, I wasn’t browsing Facebook and Twitter. I was playing on KOL, GirlSense, Nicktropolis, and games I pirated. I was creative so I also pirated art, movie, and game making software and sunk hours into hobbies. Back on the internet, I’d also play flash games and pirate TV shows and movies.
The sites we have today are aimed at toddlers. Sites for teens are just gone now. But does it even matter? Teenagers are treated like they’re 18 the minute they’re 13. It’s shameful to like cartoons and videos games at 13. It’s shameful to not have a job and live alone at 13. You’re supposed to grind anti aging care, have a job, speedrun school, have children, have a car, and be rich at that time. Teens bully other teens for being teens. Society is ruined beyond repair. Banning children from using the internet will only breed more tech savvy minors who will still use the internet. It’s way too late.
Absolutely not. Anything you put in is likely going to have privacy issues for both adults and children, and you forget how smart children are. I know we had firewalls and all kinds of shit when I was in school, and I was the person who taught everybody else how to bypass them in like five minutes. There is not a filter in the world you can put up that are going to keep children from the content that they actually want to look at.
Have you ever heard of the great firewall of China? It’s always a budget issue, not a technical issue. We can block what we want with the right resources.
I think the better question is who has not heard of the Great Firewall of China, but it can still be bypassed. In fact, I’ve even spoken on a podcast with somebody from China by passing the firewall while we were talking.
The great firewall of China doesn’t work, lol, tech literate people use Tor.
I Present: using a VPN
I prohibit my kids from social media. I encourage other patents to do the same.
I don’t think anyone should use social media with an engagement algorithm, no matter what age
We can’t even keep knives out of prisons. How tf are we supposed to keep kids off the Internet?
Right!? Kids will make their own Internet and social media from old phones and outdated routers laying around…
Not just social media, they shouldn’t have access to smart phones either, not until a minimum age. 13/15/16, something like that.
Make them learn to figure things out on their own.
Here, school OBLIGATE the parents to give them a smartphone. My teenager sister has one (she’s special needs but even if she wasn’t the kids need a phone with internet, to check school stuff like reunions and school fees)
Wow. These comments are really interesting. And they make me feel old.
A lot of them revolve around some version of the old trope of “everyone else is doing it” regarding access which I refuse to believe even the younger people on here think is a legit argument. Seriously. There’s also no shortage of comments that reinforce the idea that SM is kindof an addiction with the lengths some suggest be gone to for access or that access is some kind of right or necessity.
Generations past got by fine without all the tech and modern versions of SM, so we can dispose of all the drama surrounding any negative effects of limiting access. That’s strictly a social problem of haves/have nots. Being of an age to have kids myself and friends with kids I see all levels of social media access for both kids and adults. For some, it’s pretty much an addiction. They can’t keep their faces out of their phones watching tiktoks, shorts, snaps, or whatever. Their day revolves around that content.
A couple friends’ kids went down the rabbit hole and have had unfettered access to the internet for years. They all want their own channels, to be YT creators, buy shit like Stanley mugs, and do all the stuff they saw online, and all while being under 18. There have already been problems with inappropriate images and texts, adults online, and law enforcement. It’s a mess. Probably the more extreme end of things.
Others just stare at their phone all the time. Put it down for a minute, pick it right back up.
Our kids, who do have some social media access, complain that hanging out with their friends with more access to SM can often devolve into people just staring at their phones. Nobody wants to do anything else except watch “brain rot.” Their words, not mine. Seems to be a growing awareness among zoomers and later about SM and some of the problems with it. We have conversations (not us talking AT them) about all the stuff online, SM, etc. and the good/bad about it all.
Anyway, overall SM is a net negative. It seems to be more of a contradiction in terms, “social” media prevents actual social interaction with real people. The making of regulations limiting access is going to be incredibly difficult to effectively apply. Anyone who has tried to take an ipad away from a 4 year old is going to know that trying to do the same to kids and teens thanks to new laws is going to be a pain in the ass. I think most will attempt to work around it, which is disappointing in a lot of ways because parents don’t want to do the hard things - and it’s gonna be really hard seeing as the cat’s been out of the bag for a long time.
No, generations past did not get by fine without social media. They just had no solution to various problems. Two classic ones are eating disorders and marginalized minorities.
I don’t think social media has solved any of that, has it? Nice job taking what I said and twisting it completely out of context.
Yes it’s a cancerous plague on society. It creates a false sense on identity and want. Young peoples minds are constantly bombarded by people telling them how they should think, feel and look
Australia did it somewhat right by banning minors until they are 16. However I feel this may create a stronger desire for some to join much like teens drinking and smoking bud cause it’s forbidden. At 16 you’ll only create a stronger desire to join. As such I feel like it should be pushed back to 20, you’re no longer a teen and as a young adult the temptation to join and let your mind be swayed by bull shit may be less prevalent
I don’t think the government should be banning kids from using certain parts of the internet because of perceived harm. Kids need to explore the internet for themselves in order to learn first-hand about the dangers. I mean, the same argument for social media can be applied for everything on the internet. Search engine results are full of scams, are be banning search engines too? News sites are full of misleading information, lets ban news sites? So the only source of information is now from schools who can also be biased and in some places are just regurgitating government propaganda. In red states, schools are constantly telling LGBT+ kids that they are commiting “sins” and they are “mentally ill”, and they might have very conservative parents with no sympathy. Are we really gonna stop kids from going online and seek support? If kids can’t even be allowed to explore the digital world, how are we also allowing them to explore the physical world, where there are physical dangers?
In an ideal scenario, kids should be allowed to freely explore the internet, but should have parents that they trust to talk to in case they face any danger or harassment, so the parents can help them deal with it.
Eventually, kids are gonna grow up, and a kid with zero online experience their entire life suddenly gaining free access to all of the internet is a recipe for disaster.
Its like not teaching kids sex ed, then when they get old enough, they’ll end up having unprotected sex.
Edit: Not to mention, social media ban is not very enforcible. Even in China, an authoritarian regime, is unable to stop kids from gaming, they just steal their grandparents IDs and play anyways. Do y’all really want a democratic country to suspend civil rights and start privacy intrusions?
Nobody should use today’s social media
All prohibitions do is create a space where kids are doing it, but without any discussion about the risks. It’s the abstainance only education model, or the “war on drugs” model.
It doesn’t work, especially when the “authorities” are doing it anyway, and they’re not even quiet about it.
