So where exactly are kids supposed to go? People will go on about "they should just go outside" but kids have literally had the cops called on them for the crime of walking around their own neighborhood "unsupervised". I've seen calls to ban kids from all sorts of places - planes, theme parks, restaurants, libraries. I've seen these "mosquito" things put up to drive kids away from public places. Kids are spending all their time on social media because they have nowhere else to go.
this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2025
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They will create their own places... which might not actually be desirable the government lol
If only this applied to the parents as well... No more using your children online to make a buck as an influencer.
Now kids will be forced to hide being a victim of cyber-bullying from their parents. Great work!
If their parents are social media
If they don't have an online presence and neither do their peers, how would they be cyber bullied?
I'm sure bullying will go on, old school, in the streets, but cyber bullying is one of the things that will go away with this
I think this is great. There are about one or two generations worth of people that had social media while being kids and I think they should stop acting as if it's the end of the world if it would go away. I fully understand that you grew up with it and don't know any netter but believe you me: you can do without, you can survive without, you will be better without.
Go outside, touch grass, have fun, be a kid again.
A few years ago the Australian government spent an enormous amount of money on a proposed firewall to protect the children. After years of development they were ready to pilot test their white elephant, and discovered that, on average, the Australian 12 year old could bypass it in ten minutes.
It's unlikely that the government could even enforce an obstacle as robust as the "are you 18+" checkbox that porn sites opt in to. This new law will not have any influence on under 16s online presence.
Oh those poor kids.
I remember when we banned porn for the under 18s and now nobody under 18 can access porn.
This is my favorite argument against government regulation.
Anything not foolproof definitely isn't worth doing at all.
Theres a scale of influence, with a big difference between foolproof and entirely unenforceable.
In this case, it's effectively unenforceable, so what's the point in wasting time and effort drafting something that won't actually make any difference?
Good luck with that.
It doesnt need to be 100% effective.
It's still not entirely clear how the Australian government thinks they're actually going to enforce this.
Plenty of web services already require you to state your age to use them and I believe a large majority of users just coincidentally happen to be born on January 1st, 1900 as a result.
If they're expecting these tech companies to be gathering and storing peoples' government ID's, or something, somebody needs to carefully explain to them using small words why this is a monumentally stupid idea. Does something need to be done about social media addiction and the rampant sketchy behavior of the tech giants? Yes, probably. Is a blanket ban ever the actual solution to anything? No, very rarely.
It's just apparently all anyone can come up with when they've got government-brain.
I recently switched from 1 January 1900 to 1 January 2000. It feels good to be young again.
What will be interesting for sure is the difference of this approach vs. the porn approach in the southern US. In this case in Australia? Social media companies will tip toe any line they can because there is so much money to be made and they want every dollar.
PornHub? They just blocked access in 17 states instead of even trying to worry about age verification. They're still getting their users, but now they're coming over VPN.
https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/pornhub-florida-vpn-google-searches-skyrocket/
And, Pornhub can probably play the waiting game in those states as well. Enough people in those places will probably get pissed off enough eventually to pressure their legislators into walking those laws back. It might just take a year or two. I imagine everyone involved already knows, but the idiots who wrote the laws need to wait for the headlines to cool off a bit before they can backpedal, in order to save face.
I imagine Facebook or someone of similar size could do the same in Aus. All they have to do is refuse to serve anything to Aussie IP addresses except a message that says, "Sorry, we can't serve your country anymore because of a law passed by [legislator.] Remember, this is all his fault."
Politicians infamously do not give a flying fuck about the opinions of minors, but if they piss everyone else off too the people responsible will either be out on their ears next election or buried under an avalanche of nasty letters from their 40-and-up constituency.
The commissioner is supposed to come up with guidelines for what is a reasonable check, so we find out when they come up with it I guess 🤷
it’s still not entirely clear how the Australian government thinks they’re actually going to enforce this.
"Awww shucks everyone, looks like we don't get to have internet privacy after all. Don't worry, it's FOR THE CHILDREN."
Another way to think about this: Why should you have to give random companies your ID because Australian teens need to prove their age?
Yeah, someone should tell the guy at the bar checking IDs to piss off too. And what's with these fucks at the pharmacy demanding to see my medical license. They shouldn't be hassling me because someone else might be writing illegal scripts.
They've set it up so it's a legal mess. The platforms aren't given any mechanism to actually perform verifications (no double blind id system, for example) but are legally on the hook for each and every under-16 on the platforms. A quote in the article suggests it should be the app stores verifying which is even more fucking stupid.
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Problem: Higher childhood depression rates linked to social media usage, social media caused disruption in education (like usage in schools), privacy violation of minors, etc.
An enforceable, common sense solution: Very strict privacy protection laws, that would end up protecting everybody, including minors. Better, kid friendly urban infrastructure like dedicated bike paths protected from car traffic, better pedestrian areas, parks and so on. Kids will get outside their house if there is a kid friendly outside. A greener, more human friendly outside where you can socialize with other humans would always be preferred over doom scrolling online. For the disruption in education issue, it is very education system dependent.
What solution these people came up with: Make it illegal for individuals under the age of 16 to create social media accounts. How do they enforce this? No idea. Does this solve any of the above problems? No. Is this performative? Yes.
Speaking from personal experience, social media was one of the most liberating tools for me as a kid. I lived in a shitty, conservative country and was gay. Social media told me that I wasn't disgusting. I was always more of a lurker than a poster, so I thankfully didn't really experience being contacted by groomers and so on. However, many of my friends who posted their images and stuff almost always got pedos in their DMs, so that's a very real issue.
I could ask my silly little questions related to astrophysics on Reddit and get really good answers. Noone around me irl was ever interested/able to talk about stuff like this. I could explore different political ideologies, get into related servers on Discord and learn more about this. None of this was possible without social media.
Banning social media outright is such a boomer move lol. Doing so isn't going to solve any real problems associated with childhood social media usage. It's just going to give the jackass parents complaining about this a false sense of security, when the kids still end up suffering.
This is a false dichotomy.
You can regulate social media platforms and have great infrastructure.
Your own childhood sounds tough, but advocating for social media as a way to mitigate shitty communities is a weird take.
This is false false dichotomy.
Privacy protection laws do regulate social media.
Based on what I've seen over the last few years, it's the over-16s that should probably be banned from social media.
Now do 16+
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