Summary
A YouGov poll revealed that 77% of Germans support banning social media for those under 16, similar to a new Australian law.
The survey found that 82% believe social media harms young people, citing harmful content and addiction.
In Australia, the law fines platforms up to AUD 49.5 million (€30.5M) for allowing under-16s to create accounts, with enforcement trials set before implementation next year. Critics
Real question: how is anyone supposed to implement this without eliminating anonymity for those services?
German ID already has a feature for this if I remember correctly. You can use it to cryptographically prove your age without revealing your identity. Problem is, no one is trusting that it’s really anonymous.
Lets do it in the US too.
It’s not like those republicans in government are gonna use this “kids addicted to social media” as an excuse to enforce ID verifications to go online, right? Think about the children!
From what I understand of the Australian law, companies are prohibited from requiring a government-issued ID. In practical terms, how can this law be implemented, then? Bypassing a prompt that asks for a birthday is as easy as just lying. Other than requiring an ID, I honestly can’t fathom a way this would actually work. I suppose you could require a active credit card number, but that would exclude adults and kids over 16.
It’s Facebook, kids will post pictures of themselves.
now Facebook has to close the accounts that are reported.
then it only effects the stupider children, not all children.
Not that hard. When you allow reporting and then removal of their accounts. They may get through but their accounts are removed rapidly.
So you want people to report others accounts as being under age? There’s absolutely zero way that could go wrong or has ever gone wrong in history.
Ffs. Don’t copy us germany. The social media ban is not a good policy.
Not worry chap…Nobody ain’t doing nuthin’
As an Australian social media isn’t the problem, like the internet isnt the problem, its commersialisation thats the problem. The need to grow the custoner base sees outrageous behaviours from corporations like Meta, Google, Apple etal but that’s what they’re incentivised to do, so that’s what happens.
This legilisation won’t solve shit. The government and the polotical class forcing citizens to use Facebook or Twitter to get information, they could start there.
Absolutely social media is the problem.
The echo chambers, the propagation of facist ideology, the state sponsored misinformation campaigns, the anti-intellectualism, all made possible by social media. No where else could these banes on modern democracy and society have been so easily bred but on social media.
The networks that do the most damage were specifically engineered that way due to the profit motive rewarding engagement of all sorts above positive connection. Social media is the problem, but it’s only that way because of the economic and commercial factors involved. Individuals can always be assholes, but nobody has miserable memories of myspace and MSN online as genocide-facilitating false news propagators, because they weren’t specifically designed to make people angry and breathlessly message everyone they know about a perceived problem.
Social media has the capacity to connect disparate groups of people, become a forum for interests, and open the world up to new perspectives and information - the intentional monopolisation of that promise by frankly, evil, multinationals is the root cause of the issue - not the technology itself.
Australia’s new law will do fucking nothing, and as many experts have suggested, will probably make the issues worse. Bullying isn’t limited to social media, so a child that previously found refuge by connecting with like-minded friends elsewhere or staying in touch when living remote, now gets to be ‘saved’ by being kicked off the platform and left with only the real-life bullying they endure at school. Counterproductive.
Additionally, if the platforms are such violent cesspools for children, why is it then acceptable for them to continue with their perverse rage-bait designs, so long as the user is over 16? The government should instead be regulating the mechanics and algorithms of the sites to make them safer, more reasonable and positive entities - rather than just giving up on any meaningful regulation and saying that meta is fine, because a 17 year old can get bullied in person instead of a 35 year old having revenge porn posted of them, or a 72 year old falling down a facebook conspiracy rabbit hole is a-ok.
This legislation was half-baked, forced through with little-to-no debate, stands to worsen the stranglehold of monopolised tech. It places the responsibility of parenting onto facebook, twitter, etc. which are the last entities in the damn world that should get to define ‘safety’ or police responsible usage. It does absolutely nothing to address the serious fundamental problems that pervade our modern, highly concentrated technology ecosystems, and actually gives them a free pass to allow the sites to fester even more (bringing in more profit as people doom-scroll longer, viewing more ads, when their specific fears and annoyances are deliberately tabulated and curated to make them as angry, paranoid, isolated, unhappy, and antagonistic as possible) by saying that it’s a foregone conclusion that social media is evil, and we can’t fix that, so why even try? /s
If they actually wanted to fix this problem, investing in education and help resources, probing into the design and function of these sites would be the way to do it. We’ve just scored a massive own goal at Zuckerberg, et. al’s benefit, by asking them to police themselves and sacrificing everyone over the age of 16 to the hellscape of media as it is, instead of as it could be.
I’m 63 and addicted to social media. Checkmate government lackey.
It makes me wonder if the result of this ban in Australia will see a rise in forums and chat rooms.
One can only hope.
Ain’t that still social media, same with multiplayer games though I don’t know the law itself I could be wrong.
No, social media is driven by algorithms that control what you see and how much you see. Chat rooms and forums are old school, more analog. You chat with other people in realtime and are able to choose the posts you want to see.
Get off my lawn kids!
It seems that most in Germany do not understand they’ll give even more of their online freedom away for no net gain.
Let’s mandate state-sanctioned age verification. Some service may accept this, other won’t. First loss. Then, some kids will get around that with complacent parents. Other will be pressured into it. In the end, it won’t work as a full ban. So, either turn a blind eye to the whole situation (then why bother in the first place), or make it worse: only one account per ID maybe. Big second loss there. And even if it works, it’s ignoring that some sites that would qualify as “social media” are the only communication outlet some people have. Third huge loss.
This will only be a terrible annoyance to everyone, prevent some services from growing or even exist, to the benefit of kids using their parents accounts anyway or VPNing around it. They learned how to do that very quickly for other online content.
Laws and rules that are unenforceable at scale are only useful to pin more faults on people when needed, not to help them.
So sad that this will cause social media services to decline
You forgot the /s. “Unexpected end of line error in line 182”
Sorry i don’t understand what you are saying, did you mean to close your comment with “/c” to indicate comedy?
Sarcasm starts with an S unless you are being sarcastic, which is even more funny if you are.
In HTML and stuff, you would write something like:
<s “sarcastic comment that makes everyone laugh” /s>
Oops, sorry, I flubbed it. Oh well.
Aha…sarcasm in a comment to a sarcastic comment.
And so many dipshit billionaires will become common man…Aint it good at least in this way.
I was being sarcastic
Libs will do anything but touch the corp :v
Lots of people believe things not supported by science.
News at 11.
I mean science does show this generation has very high incidence of anxiety, depression, suicide etc. Not saying social media is all of it, but it’s probably a very big cause.
“Probably”
This is your definition of scientific?
Thanks for proving my point.
great account to follow regarding the science on the subject: https://ohai.social/@Garwboy/113554246823274751
Let’s remember the ban in Australia concerns platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit and X. Exemptions will apply to services such as YouTube, messenger kids, whatsapp, kids helpline and google classroom.
The account you provided starts by stating that “the most rigorous analysis” found little/no significant evidence , but fails to link to them. He immediately lumps together smartphone and social media, then goes on justifying the importance of both with arguments that clearly concern almost exclusively smartphones.
This ban is about social media, not smartphones altogether.
Garwboy’s arguments:
-
they let kids stay connected with friends, foster a community, allow coordination of activities: he’s talking about smartphones.
-
they allow access to school work, references, important resources: again, smartphones/the internet
-
they allow access to support, help and guidance from experienced and informed individuals and groups: this point I’ll give to him; as for years, Reddit has served that very purpose for me. Who knows what that site has become though.
-
he compares them to roads (roads kill children every year, but they save many lives, make the world go round,…): again this whole comparison is only valid for smartphones.
-
they are a refuge for children who experience abuse at home: this is probably true, but it is not an argument about how social media helps in these situations. I could say the same about drugs .
Which brings us to my point of view: social media are, for many, a drug. A bit of it can be good, fun and even sometimes make your like better, but we have to acknowledge the negative side, which in my opinion can have devastating effects in a person’s mental, especially when the mental is still in its forming stage.
but we have to acknowledge the negative side, which in my opinion […]
I don’t do opinions. Burnett (a neuroscientist) has linked many sources - maybe you just need to read a bit more.
Additionally, your claims about what’s “smartphones” and what’s “social media” are strange - my kids use Snapchat to communicate. Do you think they use SMS?? How old are your kids?
Look it’s my opinion from personal experience, just disregard it if it bothers you.
I read the whole series of posts but didn’t see them, I guess I needed to search some more - my bad.
I’m not saying social media doesn’t let you do all those things, I’m saying you don’t need it to do them.
I don’t have kids and never used Snapchat, but what does Snapchat provide that helps them communicate better than let’s say WhatsApp?
Edit: I went to dig on Burnett’s page for the links you tell me about. All I found was a radio interview of a doctor on radio Boston, an article from the Sunday times about Burnett’s book and an article on Wales online, also about the book.
Could you link me to the relevant articles I must have missed?
Edit 2: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7364393/ Found this article that combines different studies made on the subject. Around halfway through the page you will find the results of some of these studies and you will see the answer isn’t clear.
I don’t have kids
Yeah I think you should abstain from having opinions on what their generation is doing then. In the whole of human history no older generation has ever been correct regarding what the upcoming generation should or shouldn’t do.
The study you link says the exact same thing as Burnett does. It doesn’t support “social media is bad for kids”.
edit:
In all, the available meta-analytic evidence suggests that SNS use is weakly associated with higher levels of ill-being [14,17, 18, 19, 20] but also with higher levels of well-being [17,19], a result that suggests that ill-being is not simply the flip-side of well-being and vice versa, and that both outcomes should be investigated in their own right [11,39]. Finally, all meta-analyses reported considerable variability in the reported associations. For example, in the meta-analysis by Ivie et al. [14], the reported associations of SMU with depressive symptoms ranged from r = −.10 to r = +.33.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X21001500
In the whole of human history no older generation has ever been correct regarding what the upcoming generation should or should not do
I may not be a scientist but I know enough about history that any statement that says “in the whole of human history…” and doesn’t finish with death or taxes is bullshit.
Was the older generation wrong when they told there kids not to do crack when it started becoming popular in the 80s? granted I’m pretty against the war on drugs but even if we do fully legalize we should still keep it away from kids because:
- It can be addictive and addiction and developing brains aren’t a good combination.
- It is a major decision with positives and negatives that a child can’t fully understand
Both of those are true , albeit to a far lesser extent, for social media.
-
Yeah the level of scientific illiteracy in favor of self-righteous yammering was actually surprising for me to find on Lemmy. Who all upvoted that “probably” comment? smh.
And even worse: bad polling amplifies the interpretation the pollsters want to see.
In this case, there’s no link to or mention of the actual question. Just the in favor/not in favor distribution.
Did they ask “the government should implement laws to ban children” or did it say “rules to prevent children from signing up”?
Did they mention the age limit? Asking any children and teenagers might lead to very different results.
And so on. If you can’t find the exact question, polls like this are useless.
Important thing about these laws is that they are for everybody. I would find it interesting if they asked, “Would you be willing to show your ID to go online?”. “Would you be okay with the government requiring you to show your ID to go on reddit?”
An even higher percentage — 82% — were “absolutely certain” or “somewhat certain” that social media use is in some way bad for children and teenagers.
What’s the percentage of those who are “absolutely certain” or “somewhat certain” that authoritarian adults wanting to control teenagers’ lives out of a belief that the former know what’s actually best for the latter is “in some way bad” for children and teenagers?
Whatever it is, it certainly includes me.
The thing is, older people can remember what life was like before the younger people were born.
For me, I had to find a playboy out in nature, which was like winning the lottery, or you had to know someone, which was weird. Nowadays you just google it and you can watch grandma scat porn on auto for days. As a fully grown adult I know which life was actually better, the one with less granny scat. I didn’t jerk off as much but I went outside and socialized with people and played hacky sack because that’s what my friends did or looked through their mtg cards, or waxed a curb and tried to pull off some rondey mullen shit.
The internet as we know it and the world we built around it is not good for people, the kind of social media that we have is not good for people. I don’t think we need government regulations, in some ways sure, but what we really need is education and understanding. We need a pro-people movement that prioritizes quality of life in a meaningful way.
I absolutely agree that the modern internet has been turned into a corporate rage-bait hellscape, but do keep in mind that every generation that’s ever lived feels that their childhood was better and safer than what exists today. It’s human nature to prefer our fondest memories at our most carefree point in life - but although ipad babies are a scourge that terrify me, it’s important to remember that children aren’t all drooling fortnight zombies these days either.
I’m aware of rosy retrospection and declinism bias, I actually hated my childhood and I think about how amazing things now all the time. I use to deliver pizza with a paper map and no cell phone.
Notice I didn’t say that we need to roll back to the 90’s. Tech is good, it feeds my family, but its not good for people in its current form. I’m reluctant to give my child access to computers and the internet, she’s only 2 now but her eyes sparkle when she sees a screen and as soon as we show her a video she goes from borderline adhd to comatose. Screens have a lot of power over peoples attention so we should be careful about what we put in them, for the well being of the end user.
All they have to do is say they are doing it to protect their children and the pitch forks come out.
Banning social media is the easy cowardly thing to do. Are our representatives to afraid to regulate big tech?
Force these shitters to make their products healthier for all age groups. Yes it’s hard. Grow the fuck up, put on your big boy underpants and do your fucking job.
Force these shitters to make their products healthier for all age groups.
There’s a lot of nuance here, but in general I agree. Hank (of vlogbrothers and SciShow fame), summed this problem up brilliantly. To paraphrase: social media is engagement based, not quality based. Upvote/like content on all you want, but misinformation, propaganda, rage bait, and doom-scrolling fodder will dominate any platform where the only valued metric is eyeball time.
So, the top-down solution would be to somehow strictly define how for-profit ranked media feeds and news aggregators are allowed to operate. Unintended consequences of such a law aside, I think it’s possible to legally define a “well-behaved” social media site, but it won’t be easy.
Begin with the “cherry-picking”:
-
Disinformation gets cut out.
-
Fact-checking is protected-speech, not immediately-auto-deleted-because-it-harms-profitable-disinformation.
-
Ideological-prejudice gets cut out.
-
The major racisms: sex/gender racism, skin racism, class racism, & national racism, get stomped.
-
Correct & true journalism ( going to require independent ratings for individuals & organizations & for sub-branches-of-organizations ) gets automatically & consistently boosted.
You put those in-place, & MASSIVE improvement is inescapable.
The Problem™??
Big Tech WON’T TOLERATE anything interfering with their highjacking of the world, with their asserting their claim to monarchic/polyarchic world rule.
EVER.
Try linking a Wikipedia article, to fact-check something, on yt…
Autodeleted!
Rabies is their means-of-gaining-possession-of-the-world, & NOTHING can be tolerated to interfere with their rabies/means.
No matter how many humans die, in which circumstances their platforms helped enforce.
For-profit-corporations are psychopaths, by default…
So long as we continue maintaining-otherwise, they continue winning…
until it’s too late.
( & we don’t get told when it is too late, either: that’s movie-fantasy plot-point, not reality )
_ /\ _
-
Those under 16 will definitely see this as patronising. In a way, they’re right. Social media is bad for everybody—not just young people. It needs to be destroyed.
Queer kids and kids in abusive households can just die, apparently.
No ban is proposed on IRC or email.
What are you on
Some vulnerable people (yes, that include kids) are manipulated and cut from external contacts, and sometimes online services are their only way to communicate. A lot of such services could fall under the “social media” category indiscriminately, making it harder to use, and cutting their only source of communications.
Think like countries banning TOR and the like to root out journalist, but on a smaller scale.
Is empathy a drug now?
It’s good that you feel empathic with the vulnerable, and I truly mean that, but I fail to recognize the connection to the actual news
See, for kids who have little to no supportive or safe people, especially adults, in their lives, the internet is a very, very important lifeline that allows them to connect with someone who can help them or at least make them feel better.
i dunno ab this bc social media is vague. corporate sites that pump out politically divisive content, misinformation, harmful content, etc. should be a bigger target? when i was a teenager, using social media platforms to connect to queer spaces was essential for me, but i was on reddit and tumblr rather than instagram or tiktok. its a tough line between protecting minors and restricting their freedom on their behalf. sucks that parents cant just step up and do what’s right, because the law can be unnecessarily suffocating. at the very least, seems like its the companies, not the kids, who’d be punished. curious to see how this plays out.
edit: spelling is hard
