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
This sounds good on paper until you realize that what is considered “social media” is up to whoever happens to hold that position. Even ignoring the fact that it’s unenforceable anyway, unless you require a real ID, wish is just straight up worse for all sorts of reasons.
The idea is nice, but actually putting it into law without opening the door to censorship and other side effects is just not plausible.
Edit: also, Everytime you read about a poll like this, ask yourself: what was the question they asked? Did it provide any context? Did it require any understanding of the actual underlying issues and laws? Or was it some variation of “think of the children”?
I think the question was; “how can we protect the kids when obviously their parents have failed?”
Parent here. Having an extra reason to explain why my son won’t be doing something that some of his friends are is helpful.
Even ignoring the fact that it’s unenforceable anyway, unless you require a real ID, wish is just straight up worse for all sorts of reasons.
It is possible to verify age using a real ID without sharing other details from that ID with a social media company with apps like https://www.yivi.app/en/
The politicians in charge of making the laws often lack the understanding needed to make privacy respecting laws. So it’s possible, it’s just not happening. They also listen to actual experts ready to little, but do listen to lobbyists.
This also doesn’t address the censorship side of the problems.
Just for a random example, literally the first thing I thought of: let’s say there’s a youth movement to affect climate change, or some other issue. They organize general protests, boycotts on “bad companies” and are starting to get somewhere (politically and affecting the bottom lines of these companies). This is coordinated using some online communication platform, think Reddit, lemmy or whatever (Facebook, whatever). Those that want it to “go away” can just include that in the list of sites that fall under thes “youth protection” laws.
Then there’s laws like that being extended it abused to do things that weren’t originally intended, which is also hard to safeguard against. Future legislation might extend the age range from 16 to 18, then to 21. With the list of blocked sites also growing conveniently alongside, and boom you got a nice censorship platform. Not saying that will happen, but making sure it can’t is what’s hard.
You’re right. I’m not arguing that this whole thing is a good idea. I just pointed out that it would be possible to implement without sharing real IDs with the social media platforms. It would not be unenforceable as the top comment said.
yeah no way I’m trusting a corpo like that with my data thanks
Which corporation are you talking about? The app i linked is open source and originally developed by SIDN. You can verify what details it shares. In a case like this that should only be “the person logging in 16 year or older”
Censoring social media?
Sounds like another benefit!
It’s not censorship. Social media isn’t the street. It’s mostly private companies and when you post something it’s like saying something inside the building of a private company and not on the street.
The law is about regulating the companies and who can access these spaces.
Lots of countries have a similar law for work. You have age restriction and speech limits by law.
And yes, you can ask for a physical ID and even mandate an in person account opening. Or, you built a national account and social media must use it to allow access.
Most of the people where I live are in favor of this and even until majority including smartphones.
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.
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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.
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:
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they let kids stay connected with friends, foster a community, allow coordination of activities: he’s talking about smartphones.
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they allow access to school work, references, important resources: again, smartphones/the internet
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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!
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.
I’m 63 and addicted to social media. Checkmate government lackey.
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.
Urgh. This is a tough one. Social media has been a part of asymmetric warfare for at least the past ten years, and I don’t want my kids to be bombarded with propaganda from Russian and Chinese-funded far-right groups like the AfD.
At the same time, I understand how important it is for kids to explore the internet on their own.
If I had the choice, I would ban TikTok and Instagram.
But if that’s not possible – then honestly, ban everything. I will then work something out with my kids myself.
At the same time, I understand how important it is for kids to explore the internet on their own.
No more though. It’s more important that they spend time at the fresh air & play. The internet has become pretty useless outside of wikipedia & social media, and social media has become pretty toxic outside of a few spots (like we can hopefully keep lemmy).
- everything is ridden with ads
- news websites locked behind paywalls
- news websites reporting agenda-driven propaganda
- major email providers auto-classify emails from smaller providers as spam (despite correct SPF entries)
- every good service that is not decentralized, eventually gets hit by enshittification due reap profits
I would absolutely support a 100% social media ban for all centralized networks (corporation controlled). Because they are used not only to damage the brains of children, but those of adults as well (see Eastern German elections). Only federated chat systems / social media should be allowed. But that’s where our fascist overlords have a conflict of interest - they desperately want to see everything we communicate - and chat control (literally, fuck you EU) is not possible in federated networks.
Oh, I have to disagree strongly. Precisely because the internet has gotten worse, it’s even more important for children to learn how to navigate it effectively.
Take my former colleague as an example: a 45-year-old downloading a “better zip tool” from a Russian website full of awful spelling and dubious claims.
Kids need to learn about ad blockers, VPNs, and how to identify fake news. Not teaching them these skills leaves them far more vulnerable to online threats than if they were taught how to handle these issues from an early age. And as many people tell you, the best way to truly learn about something is by doing it yourself.
The internet is only going to become more relevant in the future.
Oh, I have to disagree strongly. Precisely because the internet has gotten worse, it’s even more important for children to learn how to navigate it effectively.
Okay, you have a point there. But in a way, that doesn’t refute my point - the opposite of “learning how to navigate it effectively” is letting children have access to it on their own. It would need to be taught in school, by qualified teachers (who don’t exist in sufficient quantity).
The internet is only going to become more relevant in the future.
I am not so sure about this - because I have seen it evolve over the past decades, and as I previously pointed out, it’s become mostly ads, propaganda and bullshit. The only reason people spend more time online is because of the addictive mechanisms in most modern smartphone apps. Me, not using those, I find myself spending less and less time on the internet.
Okay, you have a point there. But in a way, that doesn’t refute my point - the opposite of “learning how to navigate it effectively” is letting children have access to it on their own. It would need to be taught in school, by qualified teachers (who don’t exist in sufficient quantity).
Of course, children need basic training on how to use the internet, and I know it’s going to be tedious, but I will explain to them why I think it’s not good for them to use TikTok and Instagram—at least until they’re 14, 15, or 16.
You will, and I would - but for every person who’s somewhat qualified to explain that, there will be dozens who aren’t :/ And even for those who are, the children might not listen because … well they’re children and peer pressure is high in school.
I would absolutely favor a complete ban on corporate social media just because it gives billionaire scumbags a direct algorithmic wire into the brains of the most malleable, most vulnerable part of the population. And you can already see it in how young men on average have become more toxic, misogynist and authority loving in Europe & the DS (divided states, get used to the acronym)
but for every person who’s somewhat qualified to explain that, there will be dozens who aren’t
That’s sadly 100% true. I’m not against all corporate social media, at least not for now. For example, YouTube is my main source of entertainment, but I use NewPipe to avoid ads and algorithms. And I will try to teach my kids to do the same. My main concern is TikTok and Instagram.
That said, I’d rather see all corporate social media banned for children than continue as things are now. I would then tailor a solution for my kids that I see fit.
The problem with corporate social media is that things can go downhill very quickly - just look at shitter… Imagine youtube got bought by the same useless dipshit who was born with a golden spoon in his mouth and never invented anything…
Otherwise, we’re in full agreement, I guess :)
The True Problem, is that an actual-safe-space is required, for kids,
& that costs investment to produce, & to maintain.
We pay for kindergarten & schools to be safe-spaces, don’t we?
Children’s forming brains require healthy place, right?
Same is required for internet, for them.
So, a “walled garden” with wikipedia ( not the gore-centered stuff, & there seems to be some of that on there ), & TVTropes,
etc, is required for them to develop their minds healthy,
but the only “successful” walled-gardens were made with machiavellian intent, thus-far…
Apple’s walled-garden, Microsoft’s, AOL’s, Google’s, etc…
Nobody’s done a not-for-profit edition for humanitarian reasons…
Big Tech’d sabotage it any way they could, in order to “prove” it “doesn’t work”
( it’ll never be seen in Google News, Facebook may well disappear all references to it, Apple wouldn’t permit it on their platform’s App Store, etc… )
Exterminating-alternative is required when the stakes are world-possession, right?
NO competitor allowed, right??
Nobody’s got the spine to create the required walled-garden which simultaneously gives children
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access to meaningful friends
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lots of learning opportunities & learning-means
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gamefied learning, like projects-done-together on interesting-to-them subjects, with real accomplishings, like Science Fairs can be, irl
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systematic stomping of abuse, predators, bullying, etc…
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systematic training them in sane privacy-habits, device-health habits ( update your apps weekly! Reboot your device weekly! Use antivirus! )
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systematically training all children in critical-thinking, dismantling ideology-programming as completely as possible, from the next-generation
etc.
& if anybody did have the spine, then it’d be force-disallowed by Big Tech.
Humankind waited too long to care, & now the bad-guys own the whole “game”, it looks like, to me…
Human children never will know what honest, proper, supportive systematic-development through interesting challenges, & safe growing-up can be, because our-generations wouldn’t do what was required, when we had leverage to be able to do it.
“fighting over crumbs” is all that’s left, it looks like…
( lobbied “representatives” wouldn’t allow world-integrity to violate their owners’ interests, either, obviously… )
Sorry for my bitterness, but I’m old.
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Ffs. Don’t copy us germany. The social media ban is not a good policy.
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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.
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.
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You forgot the /s. “Unexpected end of line error in line 182”
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Oops, sorry, I flubbed it. Oh well.
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>
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Queer kids and kids in abusive households can just die, apparently.
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.
No ban is proposed on IRC or email.
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.
Libs will do anything but touch the corp :v
I’m just waiting until people realise that it won’t work.
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”:
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Disinformation gets cut out.
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Fact-checking is protected-speech, not immediately-auto-deleted-because-it-harms-profitable-disinformation.
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Ideological-prejudice gets cut out.
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The major racisms: sex/gender racism, skin racism, class racism, & national racism, get stomped.
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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…
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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 )
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Whatever it takes to make the kids support genocide.
What is the connection between kids using social media and kids opposing genocide? It seems to me like the exact opposite is more likely, among kids and adults using social media.
I thought kids online were supporting Palestine.
