Every single Australian's ID will have to be verified (in order to confirm their age).
Depending on the degree of cooperation (/coercion) the Australian government has with social media companies, the Aus Govt will be able to access citizen social media data with relative ease. So no more pseudo anonymous accounts (or, at least, they'll be made more difficult, especially for non-technical folk).
Reminds of the 'chilling effect' of measures of bygone decades.
My personal hunch is legacy media is largely driving this, due to them seeing the writing on the wall and knowing 'social media' is their biggest threat. If young people get their information from sites like bluesky, twitter, podcasts and reddit, they may never watch a mainstream news program or read an online newspaper. Bad for business. This measure is a great way of eradicating some competition.
How many under 16s read newspapers or watch news anyway?
All you need to do is look up the mental health stats since the iPhone release to see why parents are massively concerned. There has never been a time when an alert parent didn’t have a fair idea of what info a kid was exposed to. This is why going to university is such an awakening.
Now the parents basically need a background in infosec to stop their kids accessing hardcore porn, violence and other mind bending content. That only works in your household. Do you stop play dates? Single your kids out as weird by banning all device use?
Societal norms do not move at the speed of technology, so regulation needs to be applied unless there’s another alternative.
> stop their kids accessing hardcore porn, violence and other mind bending content.
Note that sites offering all of the above are not among the social media sites required to verify Australian's ages. Which should come across as odd, if protecting kids is what this is about.
> Every single Australian's ID will have to be verified (in order to confirm their age). > > Depending on the degree of cooperation (/coercion) the Australian government has with social media companies, the Aus Govt will be able to access citizen social media data with relative ease. So no more pseudo anonymous accounts (or, at least, they'll be made more difficult, especially for non-technical folk).
This isn't a given. It is quite possible to build a reasonably anonymous system to verify age at signup.
As a simplified model: the government creates a website where with your government id/login, they will give you an age-verification-valid-for-5-minutes token - basically just "holder is 16+" signed with their signature & the current time. Websites request a new valid token at signup. End result is that government only knows you're _maybe_ doing _something_ 16+, and the website doesn't know who you are, just that you're old enough (this is clearly improveable, it's just a basic example).
Whether anything like this will be implemented is a hard question of course. The current alternatives I've seen seem to be a fully privatised version of this, where a private company has a video call where you hold up your ID - that eliminates the government, but seems like a whole bunch of privacy concerns in itself too (not to mention being wildly inefficient & probably not very reliable).
This is one of the main motivating examples for attribute-based credentials, which provably only reveal the selected attribute to verifiers.
> My personal hunch is legacy media is largely driving this, due to them seeing the writing on the wall and knowing 'social media' is their biggest threat
For anyone that thinks this is tin foil hat stuff, remember the Australian government passed a law that Facebook and Google MUST pay Rupert Murdoch money everytime someone clicks a link on one of those sites to a Rupert Murdoch owned media company (basically all of them).
Yes, really. It only applies to Google and Facebook, and money must be paid to only Rupert Murdoch.
Utterly lost the plot.
> My personal hunch is legacy media is largely driving this
The level of conspiracy theory about the “mainstream media” feels out of control at times. Legacy media’s control over the population is already gone (as you stated), with what leverage would they be forcing this?
Occam’s Razor: voters are genuinely concerned about the effect social media is having on kids. As a parent I hear about these concerns a lot. That is what is driving this, no matter how badly thought out the implementation is.
Australia doesn't (yet) have a thriving podcast and 'new media' landscape as the US recently discovered it had. Many Australians get their news from one of two large companies (News Corp and Nine Entertainment). Those companies therefore still have massive influence over electorates and therefore over politicians.
From the 2 minute mark in this video explains some of the scheming that had been going on: https://twitter.com/ABCmediawatch/status/1860995847418474952
> voters are genuinely concerned about the effect social media is having on kids.
But where are they hearing about these effects that get them so concerned? Is it the Australian news?
Australian news is fairly concentrated and is mostly owned by one family. A family that got a law passed forcing only Google and Facebook to pay pretty much only them.
The conspiracy isn't that far fetched.
> But where are they hearing about these effects that get them so concerned? Is it the Australian news?
Their friends who have kids?
People still talk to other people.
One thing I don't understand: if you and other parents are so concerned about this... why let your children use those sites?
This feels equivalent to “if you don’t like smoking, just don’t smoke”.
Like I said in my original post I don’t think this stuff is specific to kids. I think social media has an equivalent to “second hand smoke” that poisons society whether or not we individually engage with it. And yes, classrooms are full of it.
I would like to see some evidence before I buy this conspiracy theory. If anything, I feel like legacy media is too lazy and entrenched to even consider this
So lazy that they successfully lobbied governments to ruin their relation with big tech companies like facebook, google etc
To give newspapers 100s of millions of free money just for the “privilege” of linking to their article, a “link tax”.
They are lazy about reporting news without a bias, but they are perfectly active when it comes to lobbying.
Legacy media are indeed lazy and stupid, but all that's stopping them is the Australian parliament, who are lazier and stupider.
Like the spirit, dislike the execution.
Passing legislation to “protect the kids” is politically easy. Bans are simple. Much more effective, IMO, would be to legislate the way social networks behave. Stop their most addictive patterns. Adults are just as susceptible as kids in my experience. If there needs to be anything kid specific, perhaps a block on using the service during school hours, or only for X hours a day.
>Much more effective, IMO, would be to legislate the way social networks behave. Stop their most addictive patterns.
We are less likely to change behavioral pattern after that period though, like we probably won’t see someone start to smoke at 45. It doesn’t mean it’s impossible of course, but past that age it looks like brains are already on track to become old reactionaries and generate complaints about how things used to be better before.
I was already generating complaints about how things used to be better before by the age of, like, 10. Nowadays I have a huge list.
Easiest way it to limit Ads.
If you are selling more ads than there are minutes in a day * population some large enough group is getting mind fucked.
In my experience, the ads are the _least_ harmful parts of social media. It's the regular accounts that are causing FOMO and mental health issues by displaying unrealistic lifestyles that the majority of people won't ever achieve.
Much more effective, if it were ever able to actually pass. Which it won’t within reasonable time.
Time for drastic measures.
Good luck with that, these companies weight more than most countries. Meta &co won't disclose their secret sauce and/or change their algorithms because a small country asked politely.
Social medias are like petrol, we're addicted and they provide way too much power to the people controlling them, we all know what the right moves are but nobody will pull the trigger.
I agree with you that changing the behaviour of the networks would be better, but what actions does a state like Australia really have here?
If they just say, "change", it must be backed up by a threat -- "we will fine you" or "we will ban you" are, I think, the most obvious threats available to a state.
But fines can be tricky to exact across borders, especially with bigger states, and if Australia says "change or we'll ban you later", the networks may play chicken and deal with it later, when the threat is real.
Starting with "you're banned" means it's painful now, and it's on the networks to prove they've changed and win a way back in, if they care. They might suddenly be willing to listen to how they need to change to get back in, and get that work done.
I'm not really in favour of bans on access to information or networks of people communicating, but a(n effective) ban does seem like a potentially effective tool to motivate action, even if it lacks nuance and doesn't solve the real problems.
I say "an effective" ban there because, come on, if it's just an age verifier then teenagers will figure it out and the whole thing is toothless, not ruthless.
I think the execution is bad because I don’t know how it’s going to be enforced. It explicitly says you can’t use government ID.
Well when then fuck are social media companies going to take their responsibility seriously?
Governments should not be in the business of telling tech companies how to design software.
Honest observers will look back on the anti-social-media movement as a moral panic. It isn't so much that social media is good, it's that the proper attitude toward new, scary things is to integrate them into your life in a healthy way rather than banning them.
And if we should ban anything it's drugs and gambling, not tiktok
> it's that the proper attitude toward new, scary things is to integrate them into your life in a healthy way rather than banning them
Exactly, just like we did with DDT, leaded paint, leaded gas, freon in fridges, uranium in lipsticks, PFAS, food additives, &c.
> Governments should not be in the business of telling tech companies how to design software.
And tech companies should't be in the business of influencing who will govern you
> Governments should not be in the business of telling tech companies how to design software.
This sounds a lot like "Governments should not be in the business of telling tobacco companies how to design cigarettes." Social media use is a problem for developing brains. I'm not saying I like Australia's plan, but, like the person you're replying to, I like the spirit of it.
> And if we should ban anything it's drugs and gambling, not tiktok
You realise children can legally do neither, right?
Government should be in the business of improving citizens lives. As another commenter said, left to their own devices companies would still be using leaded paint everywhere if it was 1c cheaper per gallon. I’ve grown very tired of this “any regulation is bad regulation” viewpoint, it doesn’t hold up to the slightest bit of scrutiny.
> I've grown very tired of this “any regulation is bad regulation” viewpoint, it doesn’t hold up to the slightest bit of scrutiny.
This is sneering, where you don't respond to a particular poster's point, but instead attack an unrelated (and even fictional) group of people based on something you don't like, or an attitude that you subjectively perceive to be common. Precisely zero people in this thread have made the claim that "any regulation is bad regulation", and in fact the person you responded to specifically called out drugs and gambling as things that they would be open to regulating.
Sneering is against the HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), boring, unenlightening, not intellectually gratifying, and degrades the quality of the site. Please don't do it.
[EDIT: removed a snarky reply, need to remind myself not to engage with off topic trolling]
Sneering is one of the things posters are specifically requested not to do: "Please don't sneer".
> Ctrl-F “sneering”, no results
Ctrl-F for "sneer" - or just read the guidelines, as you should have before posting, and clearly did not:
> Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
> I for one find dismissing a thought by pointing to the big board of rules to be boring, unenlightening and not intellectually gratifying. But that’s just me.
You did not read the rest of my comment, then, which pointed out why sneering is bad. Or maybe you did, because you quoted it, but then chose to forget what you quoted?
Separate from the enumerated rules, it's pretty obvious why this kind of behavior - both in your original comment, and your reply - is generally anti-intellectual, and better suited for Reddit than HN.
If you're not going to follow the guidelines, and going to act in such a hostile and shallow manner, then perhaps you should go somewhere else.
Some regulations are good. Like the ones regulating drugs and gambling (that have been largely dismantled).
But we don't need the government to protect people from Facebook!
Why don’t we? Cigarettes are harmful to people, they get regulated. If Facebook is harmful, why not regulate it?
So you really not see a difference between _lung cancer_ and "my teenager is moody"?
The evidence that Facebook harms people is extremely iffy.
>The evidence that Facebook harms people is extremely iffy.
Funny because internal documents at Facebook said exactly that about teenagers:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/09/16/faceboo...
https://fairplayforkids.org/facebook-research-children/
https://theconversation.com/states-sue-meta-for-knowingly-hu...
Do you not see the difference between “my teenager is moody” and “depression”? Using minimizing language here helps no one.
I agree that there should be more formal research into the effects of social media but as a parent I see concern about the effects of social media in conversation with other parents and teachers all the time. It is something we all witness in our own lives to some extent or another.
“We should let this run rampant while we investigate it fully” and “we should block this while we investigate it fully” are both valid viewpoints. And if voters want the latter it only makes sense for the government to be responsive to that.
It's very hard, maybe impossible, to answer the question of whether social media harms people. It's like asking if TV, video games, etc harm people. Maybe -- but I don't trust the studies and at any rate, these are things people should decide for themselves and their families.
Why gambling but not Facebook?
Among other things, there is solid evidence that the move toward gambling in the US has been a disaster. This is a topic that's fairly easy to study in objective terms.
The evidence for social media harming people is highly disputed and, I would say, largely unconvincing. For one thing, it relies on self-reported subjective well-being.
I'm not sure how you define "harm", but I think a reduction in "self-reported subjective well-being" is one of the more robust definitions.
> But we don't need the government to protect people from Facebook!
Says who exactly ?
We definitely do. Just enforcing the laws would do, as drugs and gambling is a good amount of social media ads revenue
Just like how we look at the anti tobacco movement as a moral panic? I think not.
If you’re tempted to think “this isn’t worth it, too hard to enforce without affecting something else”… read “The Anxious Generation” by Jonathan Haidt. There is very real, irreparable harm being done to young people, and it merits trying to make it right, not just surrendering to it.
Surely the problem of verifying a property of someone (the Boolean of “is over X age”) without sharing further details, is a surmountable problem given all the cryptographic technologies at our disposal. If a government wants to make this possible, given they know everyone’s birthdate, they could.
I have tried to find good scientific evidence that shows that social media is a net negative for kids and or adults. I have been unable to do so.
Reports that I read on conventional media sites often summarize government reports, but they do so incorrectly. And when I go and read the government reports, they present a much more balanced picture than the summaries would suggest. In particular, for marginalized teens, social media represents a unique avenue to connect with teens in similar situations, which provides a significant support network.
I know it's popular now to say that social media is the root of all evil, but I would be very curious to see a scientific justification for banning it for kids under 16. Just a few years ago, this was a concern presented as 'screen time', but I had similar problems there. There's no real evidence to suggest that looking at a screen is the problem...the much more difficult and interesting problem is what you're doing when you're looking at the screen. There's a similar dynamic in play with social media, I think.
For example, Hacker News is the only social media that I use, and I feel that I use it very differently than folks that use Instagram, for example. Can they be effectively conflated?
> I have tried to find good scientific evidence that shows that social media is a net negative for kids and or adults. I have been unable to do so.
> For example, Hacker News is the only social media that I use
Try spending an hour a day on tiktok (average tiktok user screen time) and 30 min a day on instagram (average ig user screen time) for a year and report back. This shit is crack cocaine for kids
> I have tried to find good scientific evidence that shows that social media is a net negative for kids and or adults. I have been unable to do so.
Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company documents show (wsj.com)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28523688
Facebook proven to negatively impact mental health (tau.ac.il)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32938622
Testimony to House committee by former Facebook executive Tim Kendall (house.gov)
Parents should be more responsible. That's it. This measure is, potentially, deeply ingraining the (terrible) idea that the State is responsible instead, so when all these young kids have children, they, just as their parents, will lack the ability to take responsibility and make their children more responsible by proxy, and so on, and so forth. It's a never ending cycle that is perpetuated by not tackling the problem at its real source.
The difficulty is co-ordination. My job as a "responsible parent" is much more difficult if I have to fight prevailing social norms and my kids perceive they are being excluded from conversations and arbitrarily cut off from their peers.
The social media ban is similar to the logic behind gaming limits in China. The idea is that while the controls themselves are easily circumvented, it gives everyone an excuse to do the right thing.
Parents don't have infinite "control tokens". I only have time & energy to put my foot down about a limited number of things. It is much easier to establish conventions around responsible behaviour if the whole community is behind it.
I am OK with this ban for the same reason I'm OK with tobacco sellers being not allowed to sell to under 18s.
This, I would go so far as keeping kids from social media is in conflict with (arguably) one of the most important jobs parents have which is getting kids into social interactions. (E.g. by teaching them good manners so others will play with them)
How does a parent compete with trillion dollar corporations that hire psychologist, cognitive scientists, and neuroscientists to make their apps highly addictive?
Being honest here because just telling parents to deal with a societal ill seems very shortsighted and comes from an immense place of priviledge.
The information theory problem is how to do so without creating a government ledger of every platform that every person uses, and a government kill switch to disable any platform the government doesn’t like.
> Surely the problem of verifying a property of someone (the Boolean of “is over X age”) without sharing further details, is a surmountable problem given all the cryptographic technologies at our disposal.
Only if preserving privacy is the goal and I'm sure we both know it isn't.
I guess it will become self-fulfilling if everyone denies that there are privacy friendly options. Legislatures globally are starting to take this seriously so chances are it's happening one way or another.
The Anxious Generation is poorly researched pop science book that people believe to be true because it feels intuitively right to them.
On the surface it seems very similar to a book he previously worked on, The Coddling of the American Mind which is also full of poorly researched pop science that confirms biases people already had.
Kind of an "airport book"
Is this just your opinion, or is there a scientific retort I can read?
Is Nature "scientific" enough?
Indeed, the challenge is already resolved in Europe by eID/EIDAS in a privacy respecting way, so the technology exists and it's already proven on a large scale.
My issue with this idealistic and understandable perspective is that it completely ignores all historical precedent in the modern age. That is to say: if you think the government is going to use this as anything other than an opportunity to turn all those little dots on the GPS tracker into fully-authenticated names and profiles they can keep tabs on 24/7, I have a bridge to sell you.
And if you think the third parties they contract out the tracking to won’t sell that info/access for profit, I have some magic beans as well.
I support keeping kids protected. I’m just not naive enough to think the current governments of the world have any interest in achieving that goal while maintaining any semblance of privacy for their citizens.
Frankly I want Australia to go ahead with this law so the rest of us can have a test case for it. If it works well we can copy it with tweaks. If not, then we know to seek other options.
"Ban social media for everyone because it might be bad for some kids" is as fragile as an argument as "ban guns for everyone because some bad guy might get his hands on one."
Well, "ban guns for everyone because some bad guy might get his hands on one" has always been the law in my country, and it has worked out extremely well. There has never been a mass shooting here, ever.
I'm definitely not going to ID myself to go on social media. Then I'll just quit. Even a parameter linked to my real ID is not acceptable to me.
Luckily I don't live in Australia but I find this a troubling development.
I generally think that children's access to the internet needs to be more closely monitored. You wouldn't allow your child to walk up to random strangers in the street without you there, why do we allow it online? I have on a few occasions had to protect a child from an adult in an online group.
What concerns me here is how this will be enforced. The only way to implement this is with IDs to check birth dates, and some method to confirm you are the person on the ID. You could imagine this being consolidated into a government ID system to 'protect your data', and to mean you only have to validate once. These accounts will be permanently attached to real people, and I think it will have a chilling effect on free speech. It's all fun and games until the government of the day considers your speech as a threat.
One can see this being expanded too, so that you would need to provide ID to use the internet more generally. ISPs could be told to selectively deliver web pages from DNS based on your ID, which would be most effective on mobile devices and less so on wired networks. My ISP already blocks websites.
I think a more fundamental question is whether the nanny state should be telling you how to raise your children, what content they can consume and who they can interact with. Suddenly you find your children consuming content only from a Z-wing bias because the government of the day hates Y-wing politics.
This is the most horrifying thing in all of this. People with a prison guard mentality are already thinking how to enforce the rules in an even stricter way. Rules that are violating freedom of information, one of the most basics Western freedoms. Yes, there are no repreciations for the violating them at first, the frog is getting boiled slowly, but give it a few years and people who let their child use social media will be treated as criminals and put in prisons. Everything "for the sake of children."
My friend is a media lawyer in Australia
He can’t even advise if some video game developers he represents’ multiplayer games are exempt from the ban
He says the legislation is just an under defined word salad
Note this was several days ago and it may have been amended in the mean time
This is a trend in lawmaking in Australia, and it's seriously damaging. It's basically written so the Government's Minister of Communications gets to decide who to directly target (or not target) with the law.
Basically allows them to arbitarily apply the law to some parties and not others, with no right of appeal. That does lead to potential constitutionality concerns, but it would take years for it to be struck down if so, if a service is affected and eventually gets it before the High Court.
Isn’t that what the electorate desires?
By electing personable but mediocore, sometimes even incompetent, MPs over the intelligent but aloof candidates.
Someone or some committee, somewhere, still has to actually work out all the details, and if it’s not done in Parliament, because the average MP literally can’t grasp even half the agenda items, it has to be done elsewhere.
Edit: And even that is probably being too optimistic, I’ve heard of MPs who can’t even remember the key facts and figures from the last 100 executive summaries they’ve read. Let alone any detail within the reports whatsoever.
I started losing faith in democracy since Brexit. It is still better than other forms of governance, that seems like a low bar.
People making “protest” votes without bothering to understand the consequences, single issue voters, young people who don’t even bother to vote, dumb/racist/misogynist voters…
Democracy only works if voters take it seriously, only if media is at least reasonably honest/competent etc. Across the world, this is not the case today. Britain, U.S, India, Australia …
> dumb/racist/misogynist voters…
> Democracy only works if voters take it seriously
Do you mean democracy only works when all people vote for options that you think are sensible?
Im afraid you seem to have the wrong end of the stick when it comes to democracy. The whole point of it is that everyone, including people you disagree with, get to have a say. Calling people names like dumb and racist is just a crass result of disagreeing with somebody, and then extrapolating their entire personality based on an opinion.
Democracy works when everyone has the choice to vote, and excercises that choice. If 70% of the population suddenly voted to extradite all people with dark skin to Africa, under the rules of democracy you would need to accept that choice as correct and support it. If you decided to say the result was racist and that it shouldnt be carried out, then you are diagreeing with democracy full stop. In that situation you may as well just have a dictatorship, as what it boils down to is one person thinks everyone else should do what that person thinks is right.
If you feel that people should support and agree with what you think is right you need to do the same to everyone else in the world, including people whose opinion is drastically different from your own. Even if you feel it is wrong.
Calling people names and belittling their peronal opinions and judgements is only further sowing seeds of division and hate.
Representatives democracy also only works if representatives take it seriously too. Much (if not most) elected ones serves their personal agenda before the voters interests, let alone those of who can’t/don’t vote.
There’s also no universal _Truth_ that someone can grab entirely and as you noted information is essential but humans can’t be omniscient and you always miss something.
- "If others players cheat, I would loose by following the rules"
- "all i know is I know nothing".
Those two reasons explain why abstention or white/protest/defence votes can be fact based with a logical reasoning IMO.
Maybe we've gone full circle here, since internet discourse drives much of that angry shallow populism.
What about spirit of the law vs letter of the law?
> He says the legislation is just an under defined word salad
This might be on purpose. I've heard many say online that this law is sold as "save the children" but is designed to be used to get everyone to provide ID when they go/public/message online.
> He can’t even advise if some video game developers he represents’ multiplayer games are exempt from the ban
Bad for video game dev's business, and great for lawyers! The interpretation of the law will get clarified by many lawsuits (costing businesses a lot).
I’m not sure how I’m going to be able to sleep tonight knowing the child exploitation industry is experiencing an existential crisis.
"He can’t even advise if some video game developers he represents’ multiplayer games are exempt from the ban"
There are a lot of issues with this legislation, but I'm not sure this is one of them. Games like Roblox are so exploitative, they're probably worse for children than most social media.
See, for example: https://www.eurogamer.net/roblox-exploiting-young-game-devel...
Roblox already filters out a lot of words, including links (to social media and whatnot especially). They filter so many words they may just shut down the chats entirely.
The point is not about whether video games should be exempt, it's about being able to tell whether they are covered by this law or not
I'd guess that some games should be banned too but not everything. Something like Street Fighter is widely different from Roblox for example.
The problem with a badly written law is how can you decide which is which?
> I'd guess that some games should be banned too but not everything. Something like Street Fighter is widely different from Roblox for example.
Which one do you want banned?
I picked street fighter because you don't interact with your opponent other than fight him (I haven't played the last game though, maybe that's changed).
I have to strongly agree here. Video games are not free from the social media problems that we are trying to free ourselves from. We also have parents and close family that have been caught in outrage nets, and who knows when, if they will ever be free? We know the pipeline for right-wing grifters.
Who doesn't have any taters in the family these days? A literal human trafficker and pimp who has been in prison is giving advice to our youth in droves. More than you will ever know. My family members stopped talking about it, and started complaining about how we can't talk about things anymore once they discovered that outside of their bubble people know what these monsters/grifters actually do.
I wonder if we should even call this social media at this point. More like interactive TV 3.0. All the feeds are heavily ad infested and “promoted” content appears from “infliences” .. some people shadow banned while others artificially boosted up your feed.
All designed to maximize your attention but also sway your opinion.
The social part of social media seems to have gone mostly by the wayside.
“Did you see the new dance this one kid did in Texas” like like, hashtag, loved it , repost, etc … not really building much of a social relationship, or perhaps it is and just seems a bit off to us older folks,
Here in Austria in fourth grade kids take a little test for their bicycling skill. Not that it matters much in a car-centric country, but people forget that cycling, even in company with a parent, give kids the chance to learn the necessary traffic rules. Why not have something similar for social media or as the problem seems to be general conduct in social media, educate the kids and give them better ways to raise the alarm when things to bad. Just banning kids won't help them much.
Here in Australia we teach kids real bicycling skills like how to socially share bets with their friends on the Sportsbet app for Tour de France 2025.[1][2] Thankfully this bill doesn't restrict Australian kids from learning these important life lessons every few minutes within a 10 hour long loop of Baby Shark.
[1] https://www.sportsbet.com.au/betting/cycling/tour-de-france/...
Right. Let's do the same for drugs.
Irony aside, these platforms are addictive and polarizing by design. I doubt a little test will change anything.
You're being facetious but I genuinely think it's a good idea to normalise drugs. I believe that part of the problem with drugs is that they're considered forbidden, so if you share my viewpoint then it's not too dissimilar to the problems with social media or other addictive-but-bad-for-you products.
> as the problem seems to be general conduct in social media
is that the problem? I'd have thought the problem is more about the ill effects of social media on children, not the children's behavior on said social media.
This sounds like a good idea, at least actively educate them about the psychological game they may choose to play
It’s not trivial to teach someone about a subject we don’t understand ourselves.
My thoughts immediately go to all the queer kids in rural areas who stand to be cut off from the only support networks they have.
I think messaging apps are exempted so hopefully online communities in places like Discord will be perfectly fine
My thoughts immediately go to all the children who will not have to talk to MAPs without knowing it....you know the 99.9%.
What do you mean with MAPs? Sorry, haven't seen the acronym before.
Pedophiles. I had no idea "MAP" had a foothold anywhere but their own communities.
Sorry, I was not sure if I would be flagged by HN users for using the right word, but as you can see beeing downvoted already says allot.
> My thoughts immediately go to all the queer kids in rural areas who stand to be cut off from the only support networks they have
I shared those concerns at first - as that was similar to my situation (though less lgbt+ but more just on-the-spectrum stuff), but if the article is correct then I find myself strongly in support (so-far...): my impression is that this is targeting the kinds of vacuous mass-market "engagement"-driven social-media services that us HN denizens aren't exactly fans of: Facebook, Instagram, the like. The article says that sites like YouTube and IM services are exempt.
> Messaging apps, "online gaming services" and "services with the primary purpose of supporting the health and education of end-users" will not fall under the ban, as well as sites like YouTube that do not require users to log in to access the platform.
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For an anecdote: when I was middle-school-aged and unsupervised on the net, the "mainstream" platforms of the day (AOL Groups, I guess?) were just as unappealing then as Facebook is today (fortunately I wasn't on AOL anyway) - instead I found my home in places you get to via IRC - or extremely niche phpNuke-then-phpBB sites: these places aren't run by companies, just basement-dwelling sysadmins so they'd be exempt I imagine, so it doesn't look like any harm will come to those kinds of places.
For those youngsters-that-dont-fit-in starting their journey of self-discovery, I think getting banned from Facebook is a good start. Who wants their parents (and let's be honest: it's only our parents on Facebook now anyway) to get notified about your joining a cybergoth meetup group.
...now if only we could ban everyone else off Facebook too.
> I shared those concerns at first - as that was similar to my situation (though less lgbt+ but more just on-the-spectrum stuff)
The catch is, unfortunately, that our social media data trails make it all to feasible to detect which of us is on the spectrum using machine learning.
And which if our kids have what is vulgarly called "daddy issues."
And which of us are beginning to succumb to schizophrenia.
We've only begun to see the creepy dystopian consequences of centrally archived social media.
Any and all kids in rural areas.
Experience deprivation is a very real thing. I grew up in a desolate rural area, circa the 1980s and 1990s. The Internet - WebChatBroadcasting, ICQ, IRC, etc - was like a gift from the gods in the early 1990s.
Cutting off young teens from access to the world via 'social media,' is a human rights violation.
The idea that social media is like a Meta commercial, all making new friends and video calls to smiling Grandparents, etc. is a fabrication, presumably one that a lot of HN folks have a vested interest in maintaining. Kids are lonelier now than they have ever been.
This has been one of the hard things to deal with working in tech. Tech has advanced so much but am I happier or more connected to people than my parents were at my age? Not really. I've had an existential crisis recently about what all this work I've been doing is for. Outside of work I've been using less and less tech and I think I've been happier (like today I have a physical cookbook and a couple handwritten recipes instead of using recipes on my phone).
The internet today is a very different place from the 90's. I really hope your children don't have access to the sickest, shallowest, most addictive and most dangerous place on the net.
> Cutting off young teens from access to the world via 'social media,' is a human rights violation.
Is that more or less of a human rights violation than preventing children from buying alcohol, preventing them from buying cigarettes, preventing them from buying pornography, preventing them from voting, preventing them from working full time, preventing them from entering into contracts, or preventing them from driving an automobile?
I'd say human rights violation is a bit of a stretch - the negative impact of social media use on an adolescent's psychological well-being is well documented - so possibly even the exact opposite.
That very reason was raised in parliament, during question time by one senator, but neither side (LNP/Labor) gives a shit.
> The Internet - WebChatBroadcasting, ICQ, IRC, etc - was like a gift from the gods in the early 1990s.
I grew up in a wealthy very tech-savvy area, and most kids except the really geeky like me didn't get internet until the mid or late 1990s, so you weren't as "backwards" as you think. You would have still been on the bleeding edge to have internet in the early 1990s.
I'm torn here because I think there is very real harm being done with social media not just to kids but to adults as well but you should look at anything being "to protect the children" with extreme prejudice as it is likely just a power grab and way to reduce privacy. The saying "never let a good tragedy go to waste" comes to mind here.
Handwringing over possibilities is a great way to accomplish nothing.
This is going to be an interesting experiment to watch.
Because if I know kids, they will find any creative way they can to circumvent the ban.
And even worse is if some actor out there starts catering to kids by publishing "proxy services".
My opinion on this is that it's the same as banning drugs. People want to use them, and will find any way to use them.
Reminder that, often, that which is intended to be passed as a measure to enforce moral rules or increase security is actually a way to deprive you of your privacy.
What about Legacy idea? Can they still watch TV and read news papers? Isn't this a form a giving control to legacy media especially when in US their influence is decreasing?
Another privacy killing feature coming from a government who can't help themselves from knowing every little detail about everyone's private life.
Yes, this is flawed legislation, and yes kids will find ways to bypass these protections.
But I think this is a step in the right direction. There is clear evidence of the harms caused by social media, especially for adolescents. We have to start trying things - albeit imperfectly - to get to a better place. We can learn a lot from the outcomes of this experiment.
> kids will find ways to bypass these protections.
But this is a change in law. Yes kids will easily be able to access social media if they want to, but it will be illegal and punishable.
The key feedback that was unaniamous from all the experts that managed to reply to the Government's 24-hour consultation period was that they all agreed a blanket ban is the worst way to approach the platform (they were all ignored by all but a few Senators).
An interesting part of the ban is that kids will be banned from Instagram, but sites like 4chan (and ovbiously anything on the dark web, which teens might now be more motivated to access) will be out of the reach of it...
We have taken such steps in many areas now, and it simply does not work. We can keep trying this old, tired method, but it does not work. I do not want ID verification for the Internet either, to be honest.
Nice of you to volunteer others as experimental subjects.
World is divided by people who grew up with social media and people who didn't. I'd imagine there's already ample longitudinal metrics to extrapolate differences and draw conclusions between the two groups. The experiment's not really whether social media is bad for adolescents, but whether one can successfully legislate to reduce social media use among them. Not holding my breath.
The fact that kids are going to circumvent the rules means that it's going to be a wild back and forth between companies and the courts when they do.
Guess Australia will get a lot of kids well-versed in VPN use.
According to recent studies kids don't know what a file or a folder is and can't even copy/paste anymore, I think we have a good margin.
I've recently been teaching kids to code (in Aus) - 7 year olds already know about VPNs, and use them to circumvent various roadblocks to playing roblox!
What we'll learn first is how schools use the new law as a tool for limiting device access in general and kids spend 8 hours a day reliving Gen-X.
Until they ban VPNs. Moral panics acknowledge no bounds of sanity.
What they're really saying is that all websites will add a 'are you really over 16' checkbox?
Apparently the gov has been setting up their own system for that:
https://www.esafety.gov.au/newsroom/media-releases/statement...
What happens if the account belongs to the parent but all the content is by the child?
Careful there, you've potentially just thought about this more deeply than any of the politicians in our Parliament has...
Yes, because kids love when parents are all up in their social media accounts watching their interactions. What about parents who just buy their kids booze?
As a father of 4 ranging from 10 to 30+, I certainly hope the law will not practically work and that kids will find a way to use social media.
Interesting. My kids aren't allowed on social media, and they're happier and less moody than their friends who are addicted to it. They see it, and don't even want social media anymore because their friends spend so much time on their phones rather than being present and having real experiences.
I don't think I would wish social media on any child, though I believe it's a problem that can be solved not by more laws, but by better parenting.
This is pure insanity. This ban is something the Soviet Union or China would do, not the free world.
It wasn't that long ago that Americans were calling TikTok a "Chinese weapon of war and mass indoctrination" and wanting it banned.
To say nothing of everyone wanting Section 230 repealed and the government to regulate social media, requiring a court order for moderation, banning "algorithms" or making social media entirely illegal. The attitude behind this is absolutely endemic across the "free world." Australia is simply a bit further ahead of the curve as far as turning the moral panic over pedos and groomers and Chinese mind control into authoritarian action. As soon as the new regime gets settled in the US I'm sure we'll see something similar. Musk has already made vague threats along those lines.
Is the actual discussed measure available somewhere ? Looking around none of the articles discussing this had references to official documents.
Judging from the info in the article:
- kids will have one year to see which platforms are not categorized as SNS, yet can be used as such.
- kids stuck with brainwashing parents, especially in remote rural areas, will have it a bit more tougher I guess.
This was rushed through with a public comment period of 24 hours.
It's going to be a mess, while the spirit is well intentioned it has edge cases up the wazoo, foot guns galore, and stinks of back door government ID for adults.
Pretty much the only media outlet in Australia that stood up with questions and non fawning commentary was Crikey:
eg: https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/11/26/teen-social-media-ban-s...
and: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Acrikey.com.au+social+...
This was deeply rooted in traditional media ( Murdoch News et al ) in AU putting pressure on the Government in AU to take action against Facebook & Co. after the ceasation of payments for linking to news media.
for-profit media unapologetically uses what little influence they have left to smear their competitors, hence all the drivel: "think of the children / fear the evil russians!" about social media and "think of the copyright holders / fear the evil terminators!" about AI.
God wills it, ten years from now they will all be out of job. The publications will still be there, of course, but the shilling will be delegated to LLMs prompted by Bangladeshi youths for $5 a day, with a few meatsack editors to set the tone.
https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/bi... (explanatory memorandum here: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/em...)
And the amendment to the first reading which was agreed to today which has the bits about ID verification being disallowed: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/am... (supplementary explanatory memorandum here: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/em...)
Not disallowed, just they also have to offer an alternative.
Question is why hasn't Australia created a Digital ID system that can prove you're >= 16 years old without giving away other info?
I think that is utopian to believe that a government would do that but go no further.
Australian voters have not shown enthusiasm for general-purpose government identification in the past. It was a factor in the 1987 federal election - the "Australia Card".
Australia has something called a Tax File Number which uniquely identifies adults. They may be tempted to backdoor the TFN into an modern take on the Australia Card.
One of the arguments against unified government ID is that it leads to the country feeling more like a police state, where you have to earn your identity everywhere you go. I have lived in a country that does have universal ID cards, where even the mailman will demand to see your ID as a condition of delivering items.
A general digital ID online would behave like a very-reliable cookie that could help advertisers to identify you. All the commercial services will be identifying as social media companies. Feeling similar to the do-you-accept-our-cookies buttons, it would force adults to identify, and filter away the children with no spending power.
In the spirit of "Falsehoods programmers believe in"[1] for human ages:
* Not all people know their age.[2]
* Even if people do know their age they may not have any means to prove their age.[2]
* Even if people know their age, they may know their age only in a calendar system which is ambiguous or with a margin of error.[3]
* Even if people have documentation proving their age, the documentation may provide an approximate age or use a calendar system which is ambiguous or with a margin of error.[3]
* Even if people have documentation proving their age, they may know it to be incorrect.
* People may have multiple documents each nominating a different age.
* People may be reissued with new documents changing their recognised age.
* Even if the government tries to guess someone's unknown age, it's an inexact science and could be revised later.
[1] https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood
[2] https://www.racgp.org.au/getattachment/fe71891a-aafe-453f-a3...
[3] Example calendar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igbo_calendar
It's vibes based - the definitions could cover almost any online service, but the Minister of Communications gets to decide who will be targeted.
They have zero detail on how to verify anybody's age. But massive fines if the tech companies fail. Basically the only reliable way to do it would be to ID everyone, but then they had to sort of mostly rule that out in a rushed amendment yesterday to get it past the Conservatives (Liberal/National Party) because they neeed their votes in the Senate.
So basically they're asking tech companies to come up with magical technology to perfectly know how old someone is without any identification.
What if the platform is not registered as a business in Australia? You can't fine it if it's not a legal entity there. Simply setup a php Facebook clone and host it in another country.
"Simply" If you're making money from aussie customers, you need to comply to aussie rules
How will the Australian government compel such companies to comply?
Just by blocking the network traffic. Plenty of countries do this with sites they don’t like for various reasons.
Yes VPNs blah blah. But it will be pretty hard to operate some rogue social site when you can’t sell any respectable ads besides maybe porn sites and malware, and are only accessible via VPN. Pretty high barrier to adoption for a brand new site.
I was wondering how "social media" was defined. Anyone got a link to the actual bill?
From the article:
> "Messaging apps," "online gaming services" and "services with the primary purpose of supporting the health and education of end-users" will not fall under the ban, as well as sites like YouTube that do not require users to log in to access the platform.
Almost every "social" apps are basically messaging apps these days. What's the differentiating factor between banned and not banned? Having an algorithmic feed? So YouTube is not banned because its doesn't require users to log in to access the plaform? Can Instagram enable browsing without logging in (and disable some features except DM) to avoid the ban then?
Also, now kids can create YouTube accounts to use shorts as Instagram reels, community posts as Instagram Posts and subscribe to each other. But hey, that's not a "Social media" right?
(i) the sole purpose, or a significant purpose, of the service is to enable online social interaction between 2 or more end-users;
(ii) the service allows end-users to link to, or interact with, some or all of the other end-users;
(iii) the service allows end-users to post material on the service;
With every passing year I can’t help but think Jonathan Haidt was right all along. I think this will be a very successful law in terms of positive societal impact. But I do worry about the negative repercussions of being able to ban means of practicing free speech. Australia already has a bad track record for that.
If this is not enforced properly, it's meaningless. Just like the fight against piracy.
The main point here is probably to force ID control and have a constant flux of fully identified users on the networks ?
The gov gets at least full legal check of any SNS account.
From the article:
> Social media companies also won't be able to force users to provide government identification, including the Digital ID, to assess their age.
The actual law doesn't fully rule it out (there was an amendment to kind-of add that but it's fuzzy so ID could still be part of it).
But it's basically unenforcable without doing ID, it's going to fall in a heap eventually. The Australian Governement talks big game in tech regulation but almost every single thing they do (like the 'eSafety Comissioner' with their truly extradorinary powers) fails because they are very, very incompetent when it comes to technology.
I think former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull accidentally summed it up (talking about encryption) when he literally claimed that "The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia".
I can’t get behind a ban because we’re fighting an unstoppable force: the connected future. This is the world we live in and kids will have to “evolve” to their new environment.
I think parents and schools need to change the role they play.
> I think parents and schools need to change the role they play.
It's not that I directly disagree, but honestly I don't think parents and schools have much of a fighting chance against companies like TikTok, SnapChat YouTube or Facebook. We need to create rules that prevent companies from employing addictive algorithms which locks users in cycles of endless mind numbing doom scrolling. Once the social media companies have changed their "algorithms" and recommendation engines or removed them entirely, then we can start talking about what parents and schools can do.
What changes are you recommending?
Kids are looking for community. Connections with other people who they share experiences with (and can make more experiences together). They're looking for others who see the world the way they do.
The solution is more face to face time with other families on a regular basis. Replace Facebook with actual faces.
This is not true. We have a technological tool to block all of that connected future if we want to. It's called "government" and it can even choose to destroy all landlines, jam all satellite signals en fire Rockets at satellites that want to fly over their land while connecting to people on the ground. This IS an option. Maybe not the best or simplest...
Nothing unstoppable about it. It’s about as straightforward and controlling access to tobacco or alcohol.
Or marijuana or cocaine. It’s super easy for the government to deny access to things people want by fiat, as evidenced by the fact that nobody does cocaine anymore.
I know this is targeting social media but just pointing out that there is no evidence screen time is affecting kids development and pretty solid evidence that it doesn't have much effect at all.
https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/news-events/no-evidence-screen-time...
What is social media? Is HN social media? Is a news paper site with a comment section social media? And FB-messenger, is that part of it?
The Online Safety Act 2021 (https://www.legislation.gov.au/C2021A00076/latest/text) says:
(1) For the purposes of this Act, social media service means: (a) an electronic service that satisfies the following conditions: (i) the sole or primary purpose of the service is to enable online social interaction between 2 or more end‑users; (ii) the service allows end‑users to link to, or interact with, some or all of the other end‑users; (iii) the service allows end‑users to post material on the service; (iv) such other conditions (if any) as are set out in the legislative rules; or (b) an electronic service specified in the legislative rules; but does not include an exempt service (as defined by subsection (4)). Note: Online social interaction does not include (for example) online business interaction.
Since "business interaction" is mentioned as an example of something that is not "social interaction" one might plausibly claim that "social interaction" should be interpreted quite narrowly, and then one could claim both that the primary purpose of HN is not interaction at all (it's a new aggregator) and that any interaction that does happen to take place in the comments is not "social" interaction but some other kind of interaction.
(It really does say "2 or more" rather than "two or more".)
Don't worry, this is performative law making. There's going ot be an election in March, probably called in January. So the government will probably return, then fix and alter this when they work out just how impossible it will be to enforce.
OR, everyone in Australia is going to have to prove their age to use social media, and TBH, social media ain't that great. It just may be the cold shower we all need.
Questions about how this is going to be implemented and enforced from a technical and legal perspective are missing the point/benefit: this is about empowering parents and collectively changing behaviours.
"It's against the law so no you can't" isn't going to work with EVERY 14 year old. But it will work for many and hopefully that's enough.
I actually see this as potentially damaging to society. "It's against the law for you to use any website that lets you look at cat pictures and make any contact with anybody else" is so silly that kids are going to see right through that, and rightly not care about following it. So they're going to have less respect for the rule of law generally...
I'm very big on compentent laws, but also on just not having silly laws. It devalues the whole system...
(I would also wonder how many 14-year olds you know if you think this would work for many, but also I suppose that could be a cultural difference)
Some notes:
* It is illegal for a platform to provide children with a social media account, not for the child to create an account. Circumvention of this by the child is not illegal.
* No grandfathering - all accounts under 16 once this takes effect (which won't be until this time next year at earliest) must be deactivated.
* Maximum fine (per instance?) is 50 million AUD (about 32 million USD)
* The legislation is vague on the technical details, although it does specifically mandate that platforms cannot use government-issued ID of any kind (including digital ID).
I don't have a horse in this race but in my opinion a more graceful way to deal with this is to freeze the account until the under-16 is over-16 so they don't lose their friend connections, history, etc... The under 16 should have time to add a comment saying how to contact them otherwise. Discord group, etc... There must be a reason to remove the account that I can not see.
Ideally they do lose all of that. That’s the root of the problem.
It may include all my friends from primary school and a photos of my late grandma.
(Disclaimer: I'm so old that at 16 I didn't ever had email. Please don't delete all my old stuff.)
> Ideally they do lose all of that. That’s the root of the problem.
Where is the problem with this?
The problem rather is that the user did not create a private backup of the data that he wants to keep.
Possible contact with pedophiles, groomers, etc.
Once the child is over 16, they can add all their real-world friends again.
Could a possible solution there be to use the same language detection platforms used for detecting terrorist activity to also flag possible grooming for human moderator review? Or might that be too subjective for current language models leading to many false positives?
AKA stupid paranoia.
This is far too pat a dismissal of something which happens regularly. You can argue that it’s not frequent enough to justify this action or would happen anyway through other means but it’s a real problem which isn’t so freakishly rare that we can dismiss it.
Discord is for people over 13 years of age in many countries, yet there are many minors there. It is not working.
I’m not saying anything about specific services, only that there is a legitimate concern which can’t simply be dismissed without reason.
Leisure Suit Larry was ahead of its time with its age verification system.
For those of us who weren’t around at the time, could you d on what made it good? Thanks!
what made it good?
Less good, more fun. To 'prove' that you were over 18 you had answer a series of multiple choice questions [1] about pop culture that most kids almost certainly wouldn't know. Pre internet, finding the answer was surprisingly hard without asking an adult. The main result was that 10 year old me knew a surprisingly large number of obscure facts of about US culture, like who Spiro Agnew was and that Ronald Reagan once starred in a movie with a monkey.
Eventually we found out that you could press some magic key combination to skip the question all together.
[1] https://allowe.com/games/larry/tips-manuals/lsl1-age-quiz.ht...
LLM knows, thus the children know. Parents know, thus the children may easily know. It sounds fun but its practical value is questionable.
They asked questions grown ups would know but likely not kids. I remember one questions about The Beatles for example.
https://allowe.com/games/larry/tips-manuals/lsl1-age-quiz.ht...
Edit: Added link
How do they plan on verifying age without using a government id?
> The legislation is vague on the technical details, although it does specifically mandate that platforms cannot use government-issued ID of any kind (including digital ID).
That's unexpectedly sane from a law like this. Hopefully they can figure out some zero-knowledge proof of age. (But then there's nothing stopping adults from creating and selling proof values to kids.)
> But then there's nothing stopping adults from creating and selling proof values to kids
That's also true for alcohol and tobacco.
That wasn't in the original bill and it was only amended to add that yesterday, because it wouldn't get past the Conservative (Liberal/National Party) whose votes they needed to ram it through Parliament with almost no scrutiny otherwise (the hastily drafted bill only having been introduced the Friday before the final sitting week of the year).
That's more of the sort of behavior one expects from legislators making broad surveillance apparatuses under guise of protecting children on the internet.
Make absolutely no mistake. The real reason why politicians push through these anti-social media laws is to prevent children from networking and discussing and sharing revolutionary ideas.
These laws are designed to prevent generations from establishing a baseline sociopolitical coherency and unity.
I was subject to a home firewall and computer use surveillance as a child for the exact same reason, because my cult guardians did not want me encountering unapproved ideas or networking with like-minded individuals who might weaken their ability to control and brainwash me.
I was treated as a criminal, and so my response was to educate myself deeply in how to succeed as a criminal. I learned to hack my imposed surveillance systems, and then hack websites on the web. I learned how to lie and manipulate authority in order to survive without compromising my internal compass. I collectivized with other hackers.
Is that the path we want every child subject to these bans to take? I fortunately have a moral and ethical foundation which led to me using my skills for good, but I am certainly capable of quite a lot of things that wouldn't be a net good for society, and I know how to get away with it. Perhaps we shouldn't teach a generation of repressed children these skills, and institutionalize them from a young age in opposition to society.
This is the exact same mechanism used to criminalize cannabis smokers. Smoking cannabis in my late teens and early twenties in a state where it was illegal led me to learning quite a lot about how to navigate the criminal underbelly of the world. The "gateway drug" rhetoric becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, enacted by the very people who lie through their teeth about their intentions.
Oppose these laws. Violently, if necessary. If you are a child, learn how to protect yourself online, familiarize yourself with security culture, and continue to safely and covertly network with other children online.
Form strong bonds. Collectivize. Create art, study politics and science. Make lasting, useful connections. Broadcast and distribute your opinions and demands of your governing bodies.
This is what being a child growing up on the internet is about. I owe everything in my life to my formative years on the internet. It was an escape hatch from my abusive home. I learned a lot, and formed precious memories joining and starting forums and chat rooms in my youth. I would probably be dead today without the web.
Attack the real problem. The techniques which certain social media sites use to manipulate and hook children and others are well-documented. Ban them. Make an example of their practitioners. The web that I grew up on did not have these problems.
Fuck Australia, and fuck every other person who dares to suggest that children should not be allowed to congregate safely online and be allowed to navigate society and culture according to their own compass.
I think it's safe to say that, in under-16s, cyberbullying and susceptibility to intentionally addictive social media algorithms are a bit more of a common problem than revolutionary activities. Any would-be Che Guevaras can put in the time arousing the working class in person until such time as they can grow facial hair.
Then we attack the systemic issues, instead of pushing through intentionally vague legislation. Some of the similar legislation being explored by multiple US states is frightening.
Opposing a social media law “violently” is not an appropriate call to action. That said, the web of yesteryear and the way kids use social media today could not be any more different. Kids mindlessly scrolling through oceans of vanity, teen girls with more and more suicidal, being stuck in the high-school bullying social environment 24/7. The laws are a response to a real issue — especially as parents themselves get addicted / stuck in the same ways. They have kids and are rightfully fearful. I grew up in the same awesome web, but it sucks now, commercialized and tapped for every last cent it can produce.
Rising up violently to protect my child's right to scroll mindless on TikTok for hours? No. Social media today is unrecognisable to the internet that you, or I grew up with.
Children will always network, and share ideas and form community. They don't need to do it on a platform designed to exploit as much of their attention as possible as a way to sell advertisements.
I think children should be able to congregate safely online. If you think a meta-owned platform is a good place to do that, I've got bad news for you.
I think a lot of my generation owes a lot to the internet during our formative years too, but the idea that Meta offers anything other than a curated stream of addictive ragebait nowadays is for the birds. Maybe this ban will encourage teenagers to hang out in less corporately owned spaces online. I can hope.
An outright ban probably won't work, but it sends a signal that perhaps society needs to use the internet better to be a benefit.
You may also be just the right age to have had access to an internet less dominated by doomscrolling and bullying.
I think there was a ton of bullying depending on what part of the internet you spent your time in, but importantly it was very easy to find inclusive, safe spaces.
Today, it is not as easy. This is probably part of why so many have moved to group chats and direct messages for online interaction in recent years.
Sorry, but it’s rubbish.
Are you saying that all the people who were 16 and grew up without social media had no social connections? Didn’t form strong bonds with their peers?
Social media is absolutely terrible for kids. Social media absolutely destroyed social skills in teens.
I personally lived in a very backwater state, surrounded by racist conservatives, and was raised hardcore Catholic by extremely abusive guardians. I owe every single ounce of my rationality to the web and the ideas and people I encountered there.
Facebook, etc are definitely terrible for kids. But the wording of these laws is intentionally vague, in order for these kinds of laws to be used according to the whim of the incumbent, as a tool of oppression.
I hate to break it to you, but rest of the world is not US and have different socio-cultural dynamics.
Regardless. We should optimize the outcomes for the collective good, and not for the corner cases. Of course it has its cost.
Even the US is not anything like the childhood environment described by GP, for most children.
I think that's pretty obvious, no?
The entire point is that I got to grow up with a wide variety of opinions and ideas from people across the world.
I have good friends all over the world today thanks to the web. We have influenced and helped each other over the years. We depend on each other. That's not a corner case.
> I got to grow up with a wide variety of opinions and ideas from people across the world.
You got to grow up with the vocal minority on the internet, in otherwords the 4% of the worlds population which is most extreme in their views and most arrogant in how they express them.
I hope this is coming to the UK (the Commonwealth makes this easier, I think...). I have a 15 years of daughter and we've been able to keep her away from the cesspool of social media but some people just don't care / not aware