I saw this article, which made me think about it…
Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes world-first laws
Seeing what kind of brainrot kids are watching, makes me think it’s a good idea. I wouldn’t say all content is bad, but most kids will get hooked on trash content that is intentionally designed to grab their attention.
What would be an effective way to enforce a restriction with the fewest possible side effects? And who should be the one enforcing that restriction in your opinion?
Yes it’s a cancerous plague on society. It creates a false sense on identity and want. Young peoples minds are constantly bombarded by people telling them how they should think, feel and look
Australia did it somewhat right by banning minors until they are 16. However I feel this may create a stronger desire for some to join much like teens drinking and smoking bud cause it’s forbidden. At 16 you’ll only create a stronger desire to join. As such I feel like it should be pushed back to 20, you’re no longer a teen and as a young adult the temptation to join and let your mind be swayed by bull shit may be less prevalent
In real terms, I have no idea if this is a good move or a bad one. We’ll know more in five years once the Aussie nerds can publish on the effects. I can’t think of a compelling reason not to try it though.
Social media use is bad for everyone. Tech companies have spent billions of dollars refining and optimizing their platforms to maximize engagement and usage at the expense of all other considerations.
I’ve been researching the mental health effects of social media for an unrelated project I am working on. From an incomplete read of the research, social media use has a strong correlation with mental health issues. I haven’t encountered anything peer reviewed that proposes a specific relationship between the two, but my personal (somewhat well informed) guess is that someone will find a link eventually. That’s just where the research I’ve read seems to be headed.
I’d guess they probably have a symbiotic relationship. (Certain kinds of) Mentally ill folks use social media more than others, why or if that is anything more than a red herring is still to be determined, but I have read coverage of other research that suggests that social media might be destroying attention spans (though I haven’t read that research myself yet).
Getting the political system involved in this effort is probably undesirable simply because elected officials seem to have entirely abandoned any pretense of using science to inform policy and are basically puppets for the oligarchy. Voting against the interests of their donors is unlikely.
Fine both the parent and the social media company for every offense.
Wow. These comments are really interesting. And they make me feel old.
A lot of them revolve around some version of the old trope of “everyone else is doing it” regarding access which I refuse to believe even the younger people on here think is a legit argument. Seriously. There’s also no shortage of comments that reinforce the idea that SM is kindof an addiction with the lengths some suggest be gone to for access or that access is some kind of right or necessity.
Generations past got by fine without all the tech and modern versions of SM, so we can dispose of all the drama surrounding any negative effects of limiting access. That’s strictly a social problem of haves/have nots. Being of an age to have kids myself and friends with kids I see all levels of social media access for both kids and adults. For some, it’s pretty much an addiction. They can’t keep their faces out of their phones watching tiktoks, shorts, snaps, or whatever. Their day revolves around that content.
A couple friends’ kids went down the rabbit hole and have had unfettered access to the internet for years. They all want their own channels, to be YT creators, buy shit like Stanley mugs, and do all the stuff they saw online, and all while being under 18. There have already been problems with inappropriate images and texts, adults online, and law enforcement. It’s a mess. Probably the more extreme end of things.
Others just stare at their phone all the time. Put it down for a minute, pick it right back up.
Our kids, who do have some social media access, complain that hanging out with their friends with more access to SM can often devolve into people just staring at their phones. Nobody wants to do anything else except watch “brain rot.” Their words, not mine. Seems to be a growing awareness among zoomers and later about SM and some of the problems with it. We have conversations (not us talking AT them) about all the stuff online, SM, etc. and the good/bad about it all.
Anyway, overall SM is a net negative. It seems to be more of a contradiction in terms, “social” media prevents actual social interaction with real people. The making of regulations limiting access is going to be incredibly difficult to effectively apply. Anyone who has tried to take an ipad away from a 4 year old is going to know that trying to do the same to kids and teens thanks to new laws is going to be a pain in the ass. I think most will attempt to work around it, which is disappointing in a lot of ways because parents don’t want to do the hard things - and it’s gonna be really hard seeing as the cat’s been out of the bag for a long time.
All prohibitions do is create a space where kids are doing it, but without any discussion about the risks. It’s the abstainance only education model, or the “war on drugs” model.
It doesn’t work, especially when the “authorities” are doing it anyway, and they’re not even quiet about it.
IMO, even if it’s “banned”/“prohibited” or whatever, kids will do whatever they have to do to enable them to do what they want to do. If they want to use social media, then they’ll lie, cheat or otherwise manipulate the system into getting access.
With all that being said, maybe regulate social media for kids so that adults don’t have enough access to prey on them. Beyond that, as long as they’re not posting gore, or nudes or something equally inappropriate, let them do what they want.
Patents would be so familiar with this conundrum. Eventually you need to let your kids learn their own lessons and do as they wish. Your choice is whether you want to support your kid in what they want to do, or if you’re going to try to impose rules on them, which has a nontrivial chance of alienating them, and they tell you nothing about their decisions, and won’t come to you for help or guidance when things get rough.
As a son who was repeatedly alienated and is now estranged, I lived on the other side of such a situation. My story is my own, and I won’t assume anyone else’s situation.
If you’re facing this decision as a parent, please be understanding and accepting of what your child decides, then stand by in case things go sideways. If your child in that scenario, I’m so very sorry for what’s happening, and how these things inevitably end. Take care of yourself.
Your story seems to have far more going on than social media, and I question how it conflates something as extreme as estrangement with rules being imposed specifically regarding the subject at hand. Because there would be some serious personal issues on your end if you were abandoning family due to their limiting your social media access.
Yeah, kids can find their way around a lot of things if they really want. A parent’s job is to limit everyday harm within reason, and prevent the directly harmful ones like drinking and driving or whatever. Yeah, kids need rules too, you can’t not have them. Within reason.
As a parent there are a lot of ways you can prevent social media use, and with modern tech it’s pretty easy - along with multiple honest discussions about why social media use can have negative effects on people, and the fact that yes, they will indeed be given access to social media at some legit point that isn’t stupid like “When you are 18…”
Unfortunately there is no way to sufficiently regulate social media to prevent the access you describe. The corpos don’t want it because it would place the cost of designing, monitoring, and responsibility for such a system on them. People don’t want government interference in free speech and always bring up slippery slope arguments. And there would always be those, kids and content makers, trying to find their way around the rules. So it’s up to parents to, y’know, make rules and be parents.
I think kids using regular social media is a result of there being no more sites for kids.
When I was a terminally online unloved kid told to go away whenever I breathed in my family’s presence, I wasn’t browsing Facebook and Twitter. I was playing on KOL, GirlSense, Nicktropolis, and games I pirated. I was creative so I also pirated art, movie, and game making software and sunk hours into hobbies. Back on the internet, I’d also play flash games and pirate TV shows and movies.
The sites we have today are aimed at toddlers. Sites for teens are just gone now. But does it even matter? Teenagers are treated like they’re 18 the minute they’re 13. It’s shameful to like cartoons and videos games at 13. It’s shameful to not have a job and live alone at 13. You’re supposed to grind anti aging care, have a job, speedrun school, have children, have a car, and be rich at that time. Teens bully other teens for being teens. Society is ruined beyond repair. Banning children from using the internet will only breed more tech savvy minors who will still use the internet. It’s way too late.
We can’t even keep knives out of prisons. How tf are we supposed to keep kids off the Internet?
There is no real need to regulate kids on devices … leave that up to the parents to figure out.
What we need is to regulate every major corporately owned social media company. Regulate and control them like they do for newspapers, magazines or television. Put them under complete regulatory control across the board so that we can regain some normalcy in public perception of reality and politics everywhere.
It’s a pipe dream I know … but in the meantime, no matter what anyone says or does … if social media companies are not regulated, everything and everyone is going to hell in a hand basket.
It doesn’t matter what you think. Kids will do what they want to do and that’s that, so everything else is a question of how much time and money and posturing people want to do.
Penalize companies for marketing to kids. No ad money, no benefit.
Should anyone use social media as it exists today? Is it really social media anymore? Does that mask really cover all the horribleness
What should it be called? Agreed that the vast majority of it is a dumpster fire of lies and brain rot, but what would you rename it?
I don’t see it getting better before it gets much worse. Exploitation is the closest legal term. This is something we have literally never seen before as a species. It’s like naming a whole new animal or landmark - nothing to be done in haste. So much of the discussion is useless because it’s been framed in the favor of our abusers. In almost every facet, from the server to your phone - it’s just trying to suck every bit of labor it can to feed the cycle.
Email is social media. Zoom is social media. Suicide hotlines are social media. Kids absolutely need social media. Communication is a human right. Taking away the right to communicate means isolating children from support. How’s this supposed to go for depressed, neurodivergent, or queer kids. This law gives abusive parents more control over their victims.
I can’t remember which article I was reading, probably one on Lemmy, but it said that we know social media algorithms are bad for people and their mental and physical health, that they are divisive, drive extremism, and just in general are not safe for society.
Drugs are regulated to ensure they are safe, so why aren’t social media algorithms regulated the same way? Politicians not understanding the technical details of algorithms is not an excuse - politicians also don’t understand the technical details of drugs, so they have a process involving experts that ensures they are safe.
I think I’m on the side of that article. Social media algorithms are demonstrably unsafe in a range of ways, and it’s not just for under 16s. So I think we should be regulating the algorithms, requiring companies wishing to use them to prove they are safe before they do so. You could pre-approve certain basic ones (rank by date, rank by upvotes minus downvotes with time decay like lemmy, etc). You could issue patents to them like we do with drugs. But all in all, I think I am on the side of fixing the problem rather than pretending to care in the name of saving the kids.
I recall that some years ago Facebook was looking into their algorithm and they found that it was potentially leading to overuse, which might be what you’re thinking of, but what actually happened is that they changed it so that people wouldn’t be using Facebook as much. Of course people who are opposed to social media ignored the second half of the above statement.
Anyway, when you say the algorithms are demonstrably unsafe, you know you’re wrong because you didn’t demonstrate anything, and you didn’t cite anyone demonstrating anything. You can say you think they’re unsafe, but that’s a matter of opinion and we all have our own opinions.
I recall that some years ago Facebook was looking into their algorithm and they found that it was potentially leading to overuse, which might be what you’re thinking of,
No, it was recent, and it was an opinion style piece not news.
but what actually happened is that they changed it so that people wouldn’t be using Facebook as much.
Can you back this up? Were they forced to by a court, or was this before the IPO when facebook was trying to gain ground and didn’t answer to the share market? I can’t imagine they would be allowed to take actions that reduce profits, companies are legally required to maximise value to shareholders.
Anyway, when you say the algorithms are demonstrably unsafe, you know you’re wrong because you didn’t demonstrate anything, and you didn’t cite anyone demonstrating anything. You can say you think they’re unsafe, but that’s a matter of opinion and we all have our own opinions.
I mean it doesn’t take long to find studies like A nationwide study on time spent on social media and self-harm among adolescents or Does mindless scrolling hamper well-being? or How Algorithms Promote Self-Radicalization but I think this misses the point.
You’ve grabbed the part where I made a throwaway comment but missed the point of my post. Facebook is one type of social media, and they use a specific algorithm. Ibuprofen is a specific type of drug. Sometimes ibuprofen can be used in a way that is harmful, but largely it is considered safe. But the producers still had to prove it was safe.
Yes, but leave them the SMSs
