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?
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)
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 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
Should anyone use social media as it exists today? Is it really social media anymore? Does that mask really cover all the horribleness
What should it be called? Agreed that the vast majority of it is a dumpster fire of lies and brain rot, but what would you rename it?
I don’t see it getting better before it gets much worse. Exploitation is the closest legal term. This is something we have literally never seen before as a species. It’s like naming a whole new animal or landmark - nothing to be done in haste. So much of the discussion is useless because it’s been framed in the favor of our abusers. In almost every facet, from the server to your phone - it’s just trying to suck every bit of labor it can to feed the cycle.
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…
Fine both the parent and the social media company for every offense.
IMO, even if it’s “banned”/“prohibited” or whatever, kids will do whatever they have to do to enable them to do what they want to do. If they want to use social media, then they’ll lie, cheat or otherwise manipulate the system into getting access.
With all that being said, maybe regulate social media for kids so that adults don’t have enough access to prey on them. Beyond that, as long as they’re not posting gore, or nudes or something equally inappropriate, let them do what they want.
Patents would be so familiar with this conundrum. Eventually you need to let your kids learn their own lessons and do as they wish. Your choice is whether you want to support your kid in what they want to do, or if you’re going to try to impose rules on them, which has a nontrivial chance of alienating them, and they tell you nothing about their decisions, and won’t come to you for help or guidance when things get rough.
As a son who was repeatedly alienated and is now estranged, I lived on the other side of such a situation. My story is my own, and I won’t assume anyone else’s situation.
If you’re facing this decision as a parent, please be understanding and accepting of what your child decides, then stand by in case things go sideways. If your child in that scenario, I’m so very sorry for what’s happening, and how these things inevitably end. Take care of yourself.
Your story seems to have far more going on than social media, and I question how it conflates something as extreme as estrangement with rules being imposed specifically regarding the subject at hand. Because there would be some serious personal issues on your end if you were abandoning family due to their limiting your social media access.
Yeah, kids can find their way around a lot of things if they really want. A parent’s job is to limit everyday harm within reason, and prevent the directly harmful ones like drinking and driving or whatever. Yeah, kids need rules too, you can’t not have them. Within reason.
As a parent there are a lot of ways you can prevent social media use, and with modern tech it’s pretty easy - along with multiple honest discussions about why social media use can have negative effects on people, and the fact that yes, they will indeed be given access to social media at some legit point that isn’t stupid like “When you are 18…”
Unfortunately there is no way to sufficiently regulate social media to prevent the access you describe. The corpos don’t want it because it would place the cost of designing, monitoring, and responsibility for such a system on them. People don’t want government interference in free speech and always bring up slippery slope arguments. And there would always be those, kids and content makers, trying to find their way around the rules. So it’s up to parents to, y’know, make rules and be parents.
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.
Penalize companies for marketing to kids. No ad money, no benefit.
Yes. I hope the rest of the world will begin addressing the issue.
There’s a wealth of information linking negative mental health to social media use (hell, read stories about QAnon), and I look at regulating social media among kids the same way we regulate cigarette smoking. Will it be perfect? No. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing.
It doesn’t matter what you think. Kids will do what they want to do and that’s that, so everything else is a question of how much time and money and posturing people want to do.
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)
What about abused children? Gay kids with homophobic parents? Depressed kids who need access to a suicide hotline?
You do know that access to all those things still exists without smartphones, right?
You said “not just social media”, implying you wanted to ban smartphones in addition to social media. Those things are social media. If drag has misunderstood and you don’t want to ban social media for children, feel free to correct drag
Again, support for all those things exists outside social media and smart phones.
It’s really good for kids to learn how to do these things for themselves without reliance on technology.
Y’all never would have survived the 80s.
You mean during the AIDS epidemic when many gay people died because of lack of access to information on safe sex?
Yeah, we would’ve…
Oh, there was plenty of information and support from other people, what got folks killed was the lack of information, funding, and support from the government.
Where I grew up, in the 80s, the place was called Looking Glass and they’re still around. We didn’t need social media or a smart phone to find them.
I mean, you can’t really do it without parents.
But there could be a law that any phone tied to a number a minor possesses is locked down so it can’t install the apps. It wouldn’t stop web based, but apps seem to be a worse problem for various reasons.
It’s not even so much the content that’s the problem, it’s the delivery mechanism, how it effects dopamine release, and how damaging those changes can be to a developing brain.
Its similar to the lootbox system that was regulated in various countries. Human brains will keep trying the next item in their feed because there’s a chance something good shows up. If every post was good it would actually cause less addiction.
But a child has shit tier impulse control. They’ll going to keep pulling the proverbial level forever, wading thru shit for the slightest dopamine hit. All the meanwhile still being influenced by what they scroll past.
Yes, parents obviously still pay an important role. But we regulate many things for people under the age of 18 to generally good effect.
I don’t believe it’s something for the government to enforce. Any law that requires a nongovernment agency to collect identification means that identification is at risk of being stollen and means it will be used to track the person. If every person using the internet will have to prove their age everywhere, it’s going to be a mess.
Whatever company has the worst security will have all the IDs stollen and used everywhere else. And I’m sure at first, it will be used so that criminals can frame others for their online crimes really easily.
I mean how do you prove the person using the internet is the one in the ID over the internet. It’s easy enough to just use the picture on the ID and some “AI” to produce a fake image if they’re going to require taking a picture of who’s using it or something like that. This won’t stop any minors from accessing information they shouldn’t. The only way to do that is through education to make them realize they don’t want to access that information and then give them the tools to avoid it. Not try to keep it from them. That just makes them want it more and to have to become criminals to do it. And further, if they’re committing that minor crime just to do something normal it desensitizes them to more serious crimes because they don’t understand the reasoning for them. Which is why making minor stuff that doesn’t affect anyone but the offender a crime is always a bad idea.
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.
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.
No as a Teenager.
