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It varies by country, but I would guess most political leaders didn't grow up in the era of social media, so there isn't some ingrained belief that kids actually need this stuff. And with growing globalization, it makes perfect sense that many new laws would be similar because they are both motivated by the same factors and can be used as examples for each other.
Also, the object - social networks - is global. Yes, all kinds of societies have had alcohol, but alcoholic beverages don't suddenly become 20% more potent or harmful everywhere at once. With centralized platforms, that can happen.
organic, one at a time, "hey, i wonder if other places considered this, how did they word it?" that's not collusion.
don't imagine you know better than aware, organic people who read the newspaper and actually have more life experience and tempered emotion than you do.
humans are "young" for about 20 years, parents are parents to young children for about 20 years, and smartphones have been around for about 20 years. the time seems ripe for those with life experience to draw some conclusions.
(And I'm saying this as someone who doesn't live in the US, nor care to).
Look, I hate (Zuckerberg's) social media just as much as the next person and I would be happy if it were nuked from this planet, but firstly, a lot of this sudden age verification shit to "protect the children" is sus AF, leading me to assume their ulterior motives are surveillance and doxxing of anonymous online free speech, and secondly, I don't think we can put the toothpaste back in the bottle anymore similar how prohibition didn't stop alcohol consumption, it just moved underground.
As long as kids have smartphones, they'll find a way to use social media, or even make their own social media to organize parties, send nudes or flaunt their parents' wealth and bully the poor and ugly kids, the same way how they start drinking beer at 13 even though the legal age for that is 18.
Social media amplifies the worst of human nature, but you won't be able to change human nature. Maybe governments should regulate the amount and type of data collection social media companies can have from their users, instead of regulating their users.
FWIW, in the UK you can learn to drive a tank one year before you're allowed to learn to drive a car. Not go into combat, that's another year, I just mean the learning to drive part.
Back when I myself was that age, I also got a letter published in a national newspaper pointing out the oddity that I was allowed to have sex two years before being allowed to look at photos of other people doing so. Since then, cheap cameras would also make it pertinent (though it was true even back then), that I could not have taken photos of myself performing acts I was allowed to perform.
Some have lower ages with parental consent, this isn't reported in all cases. Some also talk about banning the downloading of apps, again this isn't reported in all cases. Not that I'm going to read 27 national jurisdictions in varying languages to confirm the point.
Also, lol wtf at "and websites and operating systems all need North Korean ID verification to prove you're over 16". Is "North Korean" the new "Communist"?
Why go to the silly conspiracy theory place? Up until then I was in violent agreement, but things don't need to be a conspiracy to be bad. The rules are well-intentioned but poorly thought through, which is devastatingly common for government action in digital spaces; witness the fucking cookie popups (no illuminati involved in that one, just stupidity).
People and lawmakers are just not thinking through the privacy implications for the people who are exempt from these limitations, and the persistent nature of digital paper trails.
Who exactly has a vested interest in starting a worldwide conspiracy to ban social media for kids?
FWIW as an adult in my 30s, social media has caused me far greater harm than even binge drinking. I can't even imagine growing up as a teenager under the social media microscope
Second, age verification systems have a lot to benefit from a government contract.
Third, social media and ad companies would for sure prefer a blanket ban on children rather then a more careful legislation which e.g. ban targeted advertising, or further regulates social media from harmful patterns.
It's a bummer, because I think a platform that follows Facebook's original intent has just as much value in today's world, if not more.
Age 25-65 Coastal elites with luxury beliefs are equally as vulnerable as over 65s, but they hold the levers of actual power, which is far more dangerous.
In general, if someone comes along and says that someone else's rights should be shrunk, I think they should give up those same rights first.
You can just look at the US congress for how this isn't done as they frequently carve out exceptions for themselves and staffers.
We’re not talking about a lifetime ban on social media, the argument is certain kinds of things are gated from people under a certain age because we know those are harmful and can negatively impact your entire life going forward when not done conscientiously, and most people below a certain age do not yet possess the capacity to make an informed decision about their use.
First it was indoor smoking, now it will be for everyone born after 2008 in the UK.
Being licensed to drive is a bit of a different situation as you do have to demonstrate some kind of proficiency, but even still, the government practically has to keep track of this in some way and presumably, that way doesn't involve selling your personal info (if it did, there likely would be the same backlash).
Then there's all the spoofing and the "age gate" software that inevitably needs to be done to do this.
This is sort of - it’s not really the “social media” that’s the problem it’s billion dollar companies getting to push content direct.
I suspect there is not a clear or even uniform definition of what is and is not social media that would be banned for children. Usenet is attributed as being the first social media application from 1979. I presume many here would not include Usenet even though by the technical definition of social media HN and forums in general are in fact also social media, while also at the same time one could make the case that things like TikTok or YouTube shorts are not very “social”, while at the same time being part of the problem people are upset about.
I agree that there is definitely a problem with children and the internet, but frankly, maybe the ban should be for smart phones in general for children, because the same kind of toxic behaviors that I think people are actually calling “social media” can simply just continue in things like telegram and iMessage; aren’t they social media too, especially now with video/image sharing?
I preemptively apologize to anyone if my words are taken as flame bait or personal attacks on anyone that likes social media or smart phones for children, it’s simply my opinion and how I speak and if you don’t like it you can simply disagree and ignore what I say, even if yuppy are a mod.
HN doesn't have this.
I'm worried that while these bans have good intentions, they might be targeting the wrong things. The direction is right, and I'm glad action is being taken, though.
Moderation is another question. On HN again I don't really get the sense that there is a lot of censorship. On Reddit, on the other hand, the behavior of moderators and admins is legitimately frightening once you start paying attention.
Overall I would shut it all down forever if I could, but if I had a limited budget I would prioritize Meta's platforms and similar algorithmic infinite-scroll slop feeds. I think all they do is addict people to scrolling and epistemically poison them without giving any real value back.
Also, there's no ad servicing going on/major profit element for ycombinator here. Doesn't mean there isn't self-promotion/astro-turfing, and it clearly benefits ycombinator's reputation to have this, but it isn't an ad platform with social aspects like social media.
HN is usually not covered.
For example New York's law covers sites with an "addictive feed", and defines "addictive feed" this way:
> "Addictive feed" shall mean a website, online service, online application, or mobile application, or a portion thereof, in which multiple pieces of media generated or shared by users of a website, online service, online application, or mobile application, either concurrently or sequentially, are recommended, selected, or prioritized for display to a user based, in whole or in part, on information associated with the user or the user's device, unless any of the following conditions are met, alone or in combination with one another:
> (a) the recommendation, prioritization, or selection is based on information that is not persistently associated with the user or user's device, and does not concern the user's previous interactions with media generated or shared by other users;
> (b) the recommendation, prioritization, or selection is based on user-selected privacy or accessibility settings, or technical information concerning the user's device;
> (c) the user expressly and unambiguously requested the specific media, media by the author, creator, or poster of media the user has subscribed to, or media shared by users to a page or group the user has subscribed to, provided that the media is not recommended, selected, or prioritized for display based, in whole or in part, on other information associated with the user or the user's device that is not otherwise permissible under this subdivision;
> (d) the user expressly and unambiguously requested that specific media, media by a specified author, creator, or poster of media the user has subscribed to, or media shared by users to a page or group the user has subscribed to pursuant to paragraph (c) of this subdivision, be blocked, prioritized or deprioritized for display, provided that the media is not recommended, selected, or prioritized for display based, in whole or in part, on other information associated with the user or the user's device that is not otherwise permissible under this subdivision;
> (e) the media are direct and private communications;
> (f) the media are recommended, selected, or prioritized only in response to a specific search inquiry by the user;
(> g) the media recommended, selected, or prioritized for display is exclusively next in a pre-existing sequence from the same author, creator, poster, or source; or
> (h) the recommendation, prioritization, or selection is necessary to comply with the provisions of this article and any regulations promulgated pursuant to this article.
They get boring much more quickly and also make me feel guilty about spending time on something so shallow, so it's very self limiting.
What astroturfing? This is the most popular moral panic of our times. Yours is the default normie position...basically what is leading to all this poorly thought out legislation being emotionally shouted by the mob into existence.
Just so you're aware, all the worst laws are the ones created when the populace has been emotionally riled up into a mob over something, and where people refuse to rationally look the reality of the issue. See also: nuclear power, 9/11, the 90s satanic panic, violent video games in the 2000s, jazz music in the 1920s, the subliminal lyrics trials of the 80s, etc. etc.
Most of the actual academic literature suggests this is a giant moral panic.
The funniest part of all of it is the "social media mental health crisis" that millennials think they're saving their children from doesn't even exist anymore. All the dominant platforms of today are not based on the social graph. Nobody is getting bullied on their timeline or seeing all the parties they weren't invited to anymore. The most popular platform right now is essentially short form MTV.
If we're banning that and any website with "social" functions, anything with comments or upvotes like this website needs to be included.
You're cheering on identity gating the entire internet and a giant erosion of privacy. But again, your mind is made up already and as you've said, no rational thought can change it. So enjoy the new world of unintended consequences you're creating. When this moral panic is over, you may look back with a few regrets like everyone has over the Patriot Act.
I think in recent years the infinite scroll of auto-generated content that bamboozles your brain is considered way worse than seeing the parties you weren't invited to. I think you're the one that's being "millenial" and thinking this is related to cyberbulling or whatever.
> And if its just any website with "social" functions, this one should be included!
This is actually a reasonable take and is being discussed elsewhere -- the "social" tag doesn't really apply any more. "Algorithmic brain-engaging drip feed" would be more apt.
It's all motivated around the idea of there being a "teen mental health epidemic from social media" (which has very little support in the recent academic literature).
It's all worries about the 2010s era social graph driven by Jonathan Haidt's 8 year old podcast book tour...nobody wants to acknowledge the social graph doesn't even exist anymore!
There are problems with social media, yes. However, these problems exist for children and adults. A reasonable way to tackle this issue would be to make social media safer for everyone, not just to exclude kids. These problems are not solved with an age check, and if the age check requires handing over PII, that introduces additional problems. We have to wonder what the motivation here is, and if we aren't heading towards giving up freedom for perceived security.
You may or may not be acting as an apologist for the sleaziest, worst industry on earth here, but you certainly sound like it, even if it is unintentional. As this is hacker news, P(makes money working for sleazy, terrible companies) is high so you'll have to accept this obvious interpretation.
Look, I actually kind of agree with you, but social media _already has all the PII_ to an extent unparalleled in history. Come on. "We have to wonder what the motivation here is"?
More importantly, smoking is a well defined activity but "social media" is anything but - using your analogy, "social media" can be everything from milk to veges to plain water - all of which you want to ban because they're all sold in the same stores where cigarettes are sold. In other words - starve the kids.
Further, school and legacy media can be more toxic than a well designed social media site for kids - vague bans leave the door open to legacy toxicity while closing it to web-based media that could counter the bad sources.
It's far better to focus on toxicity, identify what "smoking" is and what not, regardless of where the "tobacco" might be hidden. After some consensus is achieved, go after the providers, the same way the tobacco companies were sued onto oblivion.
Why do so many people go after the kids instead of after the providers? Too chicken to take on the big ones?
I feel like it's more the marketing campaign making them seem "uncool" and unhealthy that is responsible for the decline in smokers.
That's changing now of course, smoking is becoming cool again thanks to the bans and legislation. The UK's new total ban on smoking will literally create more young smokers lol.
These companies need to do what's best for shareholders, which means do the most addicting and damaging thing. Besides that, we have almost 20 years of evidence of attempting to fix it.
Where it's gotten us is that social media is a tool for the president to broadcast threats of genocide to millions of people. Banning or restricting that kind of platform is not the same as the PATRIOT act.
Prohibition doesn’t work. Educating consumers and holding companies accountable works. It historically takes time though for that pressure to accumulate to the point of having political will.
We also need teen social media education - like we have about alcohol and drugs. Where we’re frank about the real research. Don’t moralize. Talk about the realities of the situation.
Excessive drinking was curtailed by 70% during the alcohol prohibition era, and acute drinking was a problem (it was more concentrated).
There is zero doubt how much healthier at least some people would have been.
The price paid was limiting freedom for many, and some increase in crime.
Allowing children to smoke and drink from age 12 would be a social disaster, it's not even an argument - obviously - the 'prohibition' works - and in that case, there's nary any negative externality.
Yes, there is 'lost economic potential' from not having kids buy smokes, there is a degree of authoritarianism, but those are trade-offs we are happy to make.
The question is the degree of restrictions on basic freedom, and the direct / indirect externalizations - aka 'underground pubs', 'black market', 'lost benefits' etc.
For social media - kids 'sneaking' onto regular social media is hardly an enormous hazard.
There are also 'critical mass' problems - for example, its' very hard to get people away from a system if they will 'feel left out'.
The negative externalizations of a teen social media ban are likely most related to the positive aspects of social media aka community, connection etc outside of school.
Twitch, for example, I think is fine for kids.
There is probably a happy medium that's a bit nicer, for example, banning phones in schools is something that everyone seems to be ok with - that sets a good baseline.
We may want other social media places for 12-18 to have parental opt-ins and to be a bit more assertive around harassment and bullying - which is a very serious thing, and very pernicious as well. It's really hard to monitor.
Creating 'PG spaces' is probably what most parents want.
The worst negative externalization from all of this is probably state-implemented age verification, identity issues, and the leaks, failures and excessive authoritarianism that can come about aka 'slippery slope', which is a serious argument. Even then - there are smart ways to do this which avoid many of those risks.
The negative externality is the huge amount of young adults damaging their bodies with excessive alcohol consumption in college because they never learned to drink healthily. The US with its late legal age for alcohol has a far bigger problem with youth alcohol abuse than European countries where youth are introduced to alcohol earlier.
Given that alcohol is carcinogenic, there is no such thing as "drinking healthily".
That point aside, alcoholism rates in the Eastern EU are much higher than the US. And Russia/Belarus leads the world. I don't think younger drinking age correlates very well with reduced rates of alcoholism.
The legal age for alcohol is 18 in France.
This idea of 'US binging' doesn't really hold that much water, though one could very well argue that 21 is just 'too old' - the fact is, these are as much cultural issues as anything else.
Same with Japan, they are 'polite drunk', it's not even quite the same thing.
Take the argument and apply it to smoking or cocaine, fentanyl and you see that it doesn't really work out.
It really depends.
US could have lower drinking age, possibly 'permitted with parents at 16' - but - a much more responsible culture overall as well. It's hard.
I don't disagree we need to look at algorithmic recommendations as a major issue, but these social media bans are not that. The fact they are all being brought about globally at the same time suggests some ulterior motives.
Fundamentally, the idea you're going to hide your kid from social media until some arbitrary age, require the entire populace to register identification when visiting any website, and then open the floodgates on these kids at 16 is absolutely moronic. Two years of brain development doesn't suddenly make them learn how to be responsible with it.
As much as Europe wants to abdicate their parenting responsibilities to the state, at some point you have to draw the line and own up to some level of personal responsibility for raising your children.
You can't hide your kids from reality if you want to raise strong, independent and actualized children who will make good choices.
Which is why is also not a solution. Both are bad solutions because we drag our feet into creating safe products for everyone.
Also, you can have both: substance education and prohibition. Those factors need not be exclusive.
It's often buried because the people making money dislike it, so much so that they will lobby the government to impose wide bans. Especially if:
* The ban makes somebody else pay most of the costs of protecting "the children" against their design-choices or business-model.
* The ban gives them a blanket pass for almost any exploitative design against adults or other acceptable targets.
There are groups that would love to be in full control of visible information and parents rightly concerned about social media use by kids.
Not "every parent knows this"; lots of parents fiercely oppose their kids being banned from access to decentralized information and communication sources. Would you prefer your kids get all their information from textbooks written by Glisaine Maxwell's father, all their news from sources owned by zionist-aligned billionaries?
IMHO the solution should involve defining what's natural social media and what is predatory social media. The natural one can be a system that connects real people with each other and operates discovery algorithms that have %100 open source and run on open data. When its real people interacting you can educate around it, you can have anonymous accounts too but you can develop protections against bad actors by actually looking into the thing to see what's happening. In real world that's how people interact and although damage from things like lying or gossip still exist we also have ways to navigate around it by teaching manners, ethics, etiquette, politeness, fairness etc.
Then there's the unnatural social media, that is most of the social media today. It is not a natural human interactions, it is managed human interactions with for profit or influence. Information is hidden from the participants but it is not hidden from the host of the gathering and the host develops tools to create conflicts for its own benefit.
My personal experience is also that 17 year olds in countries where the legal drinking age is 16 drink more than 17 year olds where the drinking age is 18, but I don't have numbers on it.
When are we ever going to get beyond raising awareness/educating bad/arguably-bad things? All of these manufactured wants, needs—totally synthetic. The business model is to prey on people. But the answer is yet more things to lecture about?
By going beyond that I mean real alternatives. Like Christian abstinence organizations might not just have a say-no-to-alcohol stance, sit at home and be bored. No, they sometimes even have social gatherings and activities. They do the same thing for students. The stance towards alcohol-abstinent students is not simply, well you can choose not to drink but heh, most of your peers drink and most of the late-night activities revolve around that. They offer alternatives: alcohol-free activities.
What would I give to be able to opt out of the things that I find bad for myself? Like really, ban myself from say buying cigarettes with my credit card. But is that ever on the table? No. Just the discourse pit of freedom and unfreedom. Where freedom happens to coincide with Big Tech’s bottom line.
And education.
It's also interesting how Windows 11 with it's hard dependency on TPM hardware just happens to be in place at the right time. And how a certain former Microsoft employee just happened to start working on a similar solution for Linux before this all started https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46784572
Why the silly conspiracy theory? Can't something just be stupid and bad but well-intentioned? You really think lawmakers are involved in some secret cabal that wants to track everyone's activities online? If anything, jurisdictions have shown that they are very interested in preventing the tracking of people's activity online, they just don't know how to do it!
Even if you think it is about kids, then take responsibility into your own hands, be a parent and prevent your kids from using it. Or you just want to tell other parents to raise their kids the way you want? Then tell them that, don't hide behind fascist police and justice system to force online ID for adults.
Common but bad argument. You've misunderstood what the age verification control is for. It's to hold online services accountable for illegally providing services to minors. A parent being negligent doesn't mean Facebook should not be held responsible for breaking the law.
It's partly because of the kids.
It's also because social media is part of the USA's soft power projection, and many of us now consider this to be a threat.
It's also because social media has a long history of manipulation for their own gain, against the users' interests, dark patterns, tracking, they fail to back down from and even file lawsuits to continue tracking when tracking itself required (under GDPR etc.) permission that e.g. Meta did not have: https://9to5mac.com/2021/01/28/report-facebook-building-anti...
For "about the kids", consider: given kids have no direct purchasing power, what adverts can they possibly respond to in a way that actually provides gain for the buyer of the advertising slot? They cannot. Therefore, by fighting for the right to keep kids on their sites (despite the huge extra effort that needs to exist to keep them safe on their sites given the inherent ambient hostility that comes with giving everyone direct access to, in Facebook's case, a few billion other humans), at least one of two things must be true: (a) they think they can get kids hooked, and be able to convert them to profitability as adults, and/or (b) they are scamming the people who buy advertising slots, knowing full well the kids who see the ads cannot possibly buy anything. If a third option exists, I cannot guess it.
But what you said - "It's also because social media is part of the USA's soft power projection, and many of us now consider this to be a threat." - strikes me as the most plausible driver behind it, given how chummy Trump and the techbros have become.
I agree with your other observations about SM. But they've all been true from many years. That's why this sudden urge by culturally diverse societies to act now feels suspicious, to me at least.
You shouldn't. I mean, they talk to each other continuously. Them coordinating things is normal. The EU nations will be doing even more coordination, because the EU is a body for the coordination of those nations.
> That's why this sudden urge by culturally diverse societies to act now feels suspicious, to me at least.
We're not all that diverse, really. Ironically, social media may have brought us all together against social media. And it's not really all that sudden, this has been building for many years now.
Similar things due to Trump trying to bully everyone, but specifically NATO, the EU, and the Americas (and all the international stuff DOGE cut) will have a lot more stuff like this, some of which will be coordinated, some of which will be everyone spontaneously making similar decisions. That too will take years… well, unless Trump actually picks a kinetic fight with a NATO country, then political years pass in a few weeks.
Social media companies have shown that they do not give a shit about the mental health of their users, quite the opposite seems to be true. Yes, parents are responsible for teaching their children about the reality of modern social media, but they can only do so within the limits of their abilities and understanding. It's similar to smoking. Yes parents are responsible for teaching their children about the dangers of smoking and encourage them not to, but no one thinks removing the age restriction from tobacco is a sane idea.
Also, does these bans extend to text-only social media such as HN?
And they are probably moving to a system where you need to link your device with a government issued cryptographic ID (i.e. passport) using zero knowledge proofs. With a system that ensures an identity can only be installed on one device at a time.
This means a parent would have to give up all social media accounts and chat apps on their own phone, in order to give their identity to their kids.
The parents don't actually need their adult, childless neighbors to show their IDs to protect their kids, but it seems we're going down that exact path.
The more these laws are enforced, the more we hand over this information to any unscrupulous website operator, app developer, or advertiser. Are we about to hand Elon Musk [0] your kids' PII? How about Zuck, who (friendly reminder) sold your 2nd-factor phone number to advertisers [1]? How about all of the leaks from these ID services [2]? Or how about these services doing far more than Age Verification [3][4]?
Given the terrible track record of data breaches in tech, this means all this information leaks into even worse hands with little recourse for people and no punishment for companies.
From a security and privacy perspective it's in kids' own self-interest and self-protection for them to undermine all of these laws.
0: "I really want to hit the party scene in St Barts or elsewhere and let loose. The invitation is much appreciated, but a peaceful island experience is the opposite of what I’m looking for." https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%2011/EFTA02706...
1: https://www.securityweek.com/facebook-admits-phone-numbers-m...
2: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/06/hack-age-verification-...
3: https://stateofsurveillance.org/news/persona-age-verificatio...
4: https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2026/02/age-verificat...
Amusing Ourselves to Death and Superbloom both describe the same thing: methods of communiation become more efficient and education becomes more simplified, to the point of not being valued.
The nadir of which is Trump shitposting policy decisions on Twitter because he has no literacy, no intellect, and people like him because of that because he's just as uneducated as they are.
Back in the early days of the US intellect was king, it's how the US became what it was as far as I know it.
This social media ban looks very reminiscent and I think it is all about creating a surveillance state, controlling the population to only see images and video in a centrally approved way.
Lonely children aren’t the fault of the government, they’re the fault of parents who let them scroll TikTok in their rooms all day, because actually parenting would be difficult or inconvenient.
A simple solution would be:
There is absolutely no need to identify everyone on the internet, or forbid kids to talk to other kids.If you're European, you should be happy about the law but very angry about how it is going to be implemented. but better than anger, please spread the word on the need to establish a standard protocol for age establishment that does not involve bigtech in any way, shape, or form.
Adults are not better at handling them than kids.
For example, the previous German government was paying influencers for sponsoring heat pumps. All these "content creators" must be paid by someone - left, right, center, oil, nuclear, gas companies, it's like watching TV for its advertisements. Crazy what it has become.
So, that will most likely never change, although that's probably in the top 3 reasons why social media is unusable.
I have 3 kids, 2 use their phones like half an hour at a time, the other is completely hooked, hours and hours. If I don't intervene he doesn't dress in the morning, and continues until he really can't keep his eyes open anymore somewhere around 3am.
For him I use the parental control on my router. All his devices have time limited wifi, and he has no data in his phone plan. Since I've done this he goes outside more, and has developed other interests. Today he actually prepared lunch for us, a 14 year old boy!
My point is, I think it's better to help your kids use their phones moderately instead of completely blocking. I once heard from an alcoholic who always keeps beer in his fridge. Not to drink it, but to be sure you learn to deal with this shit, and wherever the beer is, you can manage not taking it if you don't want it.
I strongly believe humanity needs to find ways to slow down, but the prevailing culture is for everything to go faster and faster, which doesn't leave room for nuance and non-emotional reasoning.
I have to say that I don't believe in most people's ability to teach their children critical thinking, compassion, nuance, etc. Most people barely manage to feed their kids and not mess them up too badly on the emotional side.
Former alcoholic, I got similar advice early on. It was life changing.
Blocking social media is no different from existing laws for cigarettes, alcohol and various other substances. Nothing wrong with using them, but we do restrict self-serve access for developing minds.
Sure, kids will find a way. That said, like a glass of wine at dinner, parents are free to share their social media experiences with their kids; safely, supervised, limited.
I feel like the response of the tech community in the US overlooks the fact other countries don't have many options, nor power to actually make these companies change their ways.
I don't want to see age verification either, but I have limited sympathy for these companies given they've spent the best part of two decades ignoring every attempt at getting them to change and do something themselves.
We've been seeing age verification stuff roll out for a couple of years now and still none of the major companies have done anything to clean their act up (and some, like X, have got way worse) so it's not like they're really helping make a case against these policies.
These are uber-personalized feeds optimized to keep you scrolling to the next item (story / video / post) so companies can show more ads.
"Social media" is a textbook example of a euphemism. We should be calling this what it is: "addiction feeds".
The Australian government should fix that.
press x to doubt
i would need to see some data for that. no way the law had the effect of causing kids to sign up to social media who otherwise, before the law, didnt.
at worst, i could maybe see the law having a 0% effectiveness (i.e. the same number of kids using social media before/after the law). but i think even that is a big stretch.
Delaying from 13 (COPPA) to 16 won't change a thing.
When I was a kid, I was obsessed with Home Alone -- I thought if I had one of those talkboys, I could get some changes made. But in an age where every teen has a recording device in their pocket, I continue to see the kinds of stories that made my blood boil... because when it came time to get the authorities involved they dragged their feet the entire time, if they would even file a report at all, and that inaction is paired with a "zero tolerance" policy on any kind of self defense that sends kids out into the world reluctant to give folks the rightful punch they deserve if they act out (and are entitled to give in most stand your ground states.)
Extending adolescence doesn't solve the root problems here, and conversely, more adults should reread a copy of "1984" and be a little more fearful they're held to the rules and norms they instill on the youth.
There’s been a decent amount of studies to suggest it can actually, since you’ll be pushing the uptake of social media outside the peak age range where things like bullying, body image issues, grooming, etc. start to happen and, therefore, limiting the harm.
It’s also a time when a lot of life-habits start to get set down since 12-13 is when kids start having to assume more responsibility for themselves and begin learning how they manage their time, build their study habits, etc. Not being habituated into doomscrolling during that period seems like it can only be healthy. It’s not as if they’d be cut off from the internet entirely, they’d still have Wikipedia and all the boring, non-attention sapping parts of the web. And they’d still be able to direct-message or group-chat with their friends. They’re just spared the algorithmic feeds.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=623122650149799
Also ban giving toddlers iPads with YouTube.
How do you invest in ad companies that ran ad campaigns for smoking companies.
Outside of this group (which happens to be my peer group) I see a noticeable drop in media literacy and ability to detect bullshit, but that may just be a blind spot for me since I’m part of the aforementioned Millenial group.
The data we have on bans on underage drinking and smoking show that they work. Some kids will still smoke and drink, but the number is reduced, drunk driving accidents go down, and eventually fewer adults abuse alcohol and smoke cigarettes.
The myth about age limits making it forbidden and attracting more kids to do it is just that it’s a myth. Spend some time looking at the studies. They almost universally show that age limits on drinking and smoking are harm reducing.
Second, the peer pressure to drink/smoke has never been as strong as the network effect of social media. Almost all 15-year-olds are on some form of social media, I don't think you can reasonably expect they will suddenly stop wanting to socialise outside school. Their entire identities are built around their online presence; that was never the case with smoking or drinking, at least not on this scale.
I'm sure it will have some effect, but kids are clever, and they have lots of time, they will find ways to bypass these fairly weak bans. Imo, the only way to do this is to provide an alternative along with the ban, like what the Russians are doing with Max as a replacement for Telegram/WhatsApp, though that's not entirely successful either.
Then there’s the contrast between calls for regulating social media for kids followed by the outrage when people realize that 1) products they use are considered social media (Discord, Reddit, Hacker News) and 2) you can’t keep kids out without age checking everyone who uses the product.
sure, just like some kids sneak cigarettes; but the vast majority don't. I disagree that it's symbolic.
I also find this all questionable. A 18 years old is not penalised? So why is that a difference? I should say that I don't use "social" media (unless commenting on a forum is called "social" now), but I find the attempt to explain this ... very poor. I could not try to reason about this. I could not claim it is meant to "protect" anyone at all. Is this pushed by over-eager parents, who don't understand what to do on a technical level? I really hate censorship in general. So, even while I think unsocial media such as Facebook should be gone, I hate any such restrictions. Then again I also don't trust any legislator who pushes for this - I am certain this is to force age-sniffing onto everyone. And then extend this slowly. Step by step. Salami by Salami. Until anonymity is gone.
> hackernews: "Good. It's about time government took action. The only cure for these abusive capitalist companies is government regulation."
> government: passes law requiring age verification at the OS level
> hackernews: "Oh no! How could this happen? We have to fight this you guys. For sure if it weren't for big tech lobbyists we wouldn't have to worry about draconian laws like this."
If you really want to go after abusive capitalists, then go straight to the source. Regulate the things that are making this ban look like a good idea.
We've already had reports of the UK's Online Safety Act resulting in a convenient uptick in defamation lawsuits. Certainly not because the government can now easily track who posted a tweet that ruffled the feathers of someone important. So yeah, at the cynical end, I question the motivation of these laws and at the charitable end, I worry about the direction these laws are moving and their impact.
In the US, Meta in particular is pushing for OS-level age verification [1]. What a surprise. The company without an OS wants OS makers to do it and, more importantly, to be liable for it.
Many purists believe such a move is bad for freedom of expression. I'm sympathetic to this argument to a degree but I think we've shown that it's been a failure. More to the point, whether or not you agree with age verification, it's coming regardless so the only issue really is what form it takes.
This will go beyond social media too. I'm thinking specifically of gambling. I'm including crypto gambling as well as sports betting and prediction markets. In the real world we require you to go to a casino to gamble and you will have your age checked at the door. We've just been removing the barriers to gambling addiction and extending it to minors. My prediction is that this will change.
For anyone who thinks teens will just get around this with VPNs and other workarounds, of course some will. Not everyone will. And blocking such measures will get better over time. Also, network effects will come into play. What will it do if half your friends aren't on social media? What about 75%? 90%?
Also, this is going to cut into advertising to minors. That I think is a win. Companies won't be able to target minors in affected markets. Meta (etc) will be legally responsible for making sure they can't. That's good.
Just like tobacco bans to minors aren'100% effective, neither does this.
[1]: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/reddit-user-uncovers-beh...
The comparison to ID checks when buying cigarettes is missing the point. Human ID checks have few downsides and are relatively high cost to fool.
In the real world, you show your ID to a human and they look at the date of birth and photo. They don't copy or photograph it, they surely won't read let alone remember anything else from your ID, it would be very obvious, costly and dangerous for a criminal to install a hidden camera and secretly record everyone and their IDs. We also don't attach the ID physically to your body and assign an individual police offier to follow you around 24/7 so you don't try to tamper with it somehow.
On the Internet, a securely (safe from bypasses) implemented age verification system makes sure your device is owned and used only by you, that you can't lend it to somebody, that you can't modify or inspect it... It also enables some level of reidentification for catching and prosecuting you if enable access to a minor despite this.
These are two wildly different situations.
I am equally as worried about slop content being pushed to the social media feeds of gullible people of the older gen-x and boomer generations as I am of young people. The general problem of human attention span being monetized as a commodity for social manipulation, political manipulation and just generally selling things (the advertising industry in general) is getting worse, not better.
The social media and children protection bullshit serves only to introduce a mandatory identification for accessing the internet.
And we all laughed at the "conspiracy theorists" who were constantly warning us.
This sums up my understanding of the current situation (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/understand-the-im...)
That isn't anywhere near definitive.
Further it seems to me, this will just allow the tech companies to assume there are no kids, and remove the protections currently available.
Yes there is an issue of quantity, but it seems that we should be focussing on social norms for what is acceptable parenting in the 21st century. I'm 42, probably the lower age range for having a teenage kid, I have a couple of kids myself, and I'm not 100% sure on what the correct approach to take is, as I suspect the situation is for most other parents as the situation is so different to what we experienced at that age.
This is 100% an education issue and they don't understand how harmful that can be to their child's brain.
Governments are focusing on banning things because some reason but real solution is education and support imo.
Similar issue with school shottings. Government wants to ban guns or put controls on schools but they don't invest enough on mental health, it is almost if they are incapable of understanding that a healthy person wouldn't choose to do this.
The social media ussue is similar imo, parents don't understand how harmful it is to the brain. It is harmful for adults and it is even worse for children
It is not. Most parents I know have seen what it does to their kids, but have zero childcare. I have a white-collar remote job and can police my kids. If I was dual-parent working class, I don't think I'd be able to pull it off. I'm glad these laws are getting on the books, so at least the peer pressure of a classroom can get to a good majority of kids.
The kid with the iPad at the restaurant is just saliency bias ("I see it everywhere!"). This is not that different from blaming parents for sending their kids to school hungry or for their kids getting abducted or some such.
Social media is a vortex with a very strong societal pull.
As a parent you can only get your children a smartphone when you decide they are old enough, and then iOS and Android have parental control down to app level.
Decent schools also ban phones now as well.
And you are able to tell this ... how exactly? Why should other parents care about YOUR opinion in this regard? Because ultimately this comes down to a difference in opinion.
Perhaps children should be given locked down phones, with fines for parents who buy non child safe phones for their kids. It would take time for this to take effect but a social media ban would actually be effective at the end.
Alcohol in the UK can be consumed in the house from 5 years old. Which is the point. That societal norms at work. Everyone knows it's not ok to let your young kids get drunk, but we trust society to let parents decide what is appropriate and when.
Where do you live where this is normal?
I’m a parent who spends a lot of time going on walks and to parks with my kids most days of the week.
It’s rare for me to see kids with tablets or phones in their hands. When I do it’s kind of surprising.
Was at my daughter volleyball game a few years back. Sitting in the gym. In walks mom with a baby girl and a boy that looked around 10ish. They sit down. Mom gives the baby the ipad to futz around with. The son? Takes out his book and starts to quietly read.
It was an interesting contrast to say the least.
This is also something I've heard from my son about more kids are getting off of social media, or giving it up for other means to communicate. My son just graduated HS and said all of his peers have left Facebook, Snapchat, X and several others. He said his generation now sees social media as something for Boomers and my (Gen X) generation. He said people think you're lame if you're still on social media. Everything is now back to Discord servers and other platforms like 4Chan. Anonymous, under the radar stuff, out of the prying eyes of adults.
Which social media companies are acknowledging there is a problem and providing data to inform parents?
There was a study shared on Hacker News a few months ago that looked hard to find correlations between different measures and social media use or gaming in kids. It didn’t find any evidence of negative correlations between social media or gaming with different negative effects.
The response here was largely skepticism and disbelief. This topic has jumped out of the realm of evidence and into the range of moral panic. Facts don’t matter any more. The conclusion is assumed.
It’s really sad to see how quickly Hacker News, of all places, is jumping head first into welcoming age restrictions and bans with barely a passing thought to what it means. We already saw with Discord that tech communities really don’t like what age restrictions look like in practice, but whenever you make the topic about “social media” everyone assumes it will only be Facebook or Instagram, never their Reddits or Discords that have to go through identity checks for age verification.
I'd avoid such generalizations. It's a divisive topic, but from what I've seen here, there's always lots of criticism (regarding implementation at the minimum) in the comments and it definitely isn't clear that most would be jumping head first into anything.
> I'm not 100% sure
I don't think anybody was 100% sure social media would be the best thing since sliced bread when they subjected humanity to the experiment, so I don't think you have a whole ton of reason to freak out here. Either they're wrong and can keep moving forward, or they're right and can backtrack. The children will survive and so will you. L
The next generation of plucky startups now have more hoops to jump through, creating a moat around the incumbents.
And even if it is harmful, why is a complete ban the best approach? The internet is a tool. Should you not let kids cook because they might harm themselves? Or do you teach them, so that they can avoid hurting themselves in the future? While avoiding the downside of bringing up kids who can't cook?
Some one in the UK civil service was quoted in the Times, they stated that the online safety act is not about protecting children. It is about controlling the discourse.
This is the 21st century.
It's not even so much the social media itself, but it's the companies controlling social media, who push every lever to try to increase engagement. It's not unlike the cigarette companies back in the day, trying to make them as addictive as possible, with ads everywhere, getting it movies so it's cool, etc.
If we had no-ads, paid subscription social media accounts, no endless scrolling, where social media companies revenue was not tied to time spent in the app, where you only see from people you follow, that would be a whole different conversation.
Meta/ByteDance/Snap/YouTube have f*ed it up, and this is why we can't have nice things.
You zoom zooms had better bust out the guillotines on the boom booms before they send you out to be boom boomed by drones.
The govt will be able to deny computer access for anyone it doesn’t like, for as long as they don’t like them.
There will then be many ‘underground’ internets, which will all be banned, where the underclass lives. It is also where real innovation will live.
It’s a brand new day and our dystopia has new frontiers available for the brave.
Only with very old technology, its possible force ID validation from silicon to server or even to unlock the cpu cores so if it ever comes to what you suggest that will also happen.