this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2026
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I'm asking for public policy ideas here. A lot of countries are enacting age verification now. But of course this is a privacy nightmare and is ripe for abuse. At the same time though, I also understand why people are concerned with how kids are using social media. These products are designed to be addictive and are known to cause body image issues and so forth. So what's the middle ground? How can we protect kids from the harms of social media in a way that respects everyone's privacy?

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[–] madnificent@lemmy.world 6 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

I'll reply to this random one with that statement. There's no winning move as a parent.

Problem is being locked out. If your kid is the only one not on social media and all other kids are, your kid will be socially left out.

All kids are on a chat platform you don't support. What do you? Disallow it and give them a social handicap that might scar them, or allow it and take the risk?

The same goes for allowing images on other platforms. Since GDPR schools seem to care. Yet if it's a recording that will be put on social media you can explain your 4 year old why they weren't allowed to participate... It sucks.

I don't know what the right way forward is. I don't think this is it. Something is needed though. We should at least signal what we find acceptable as a society. Bog stupid rules which are trivial to circumvent might be good enough, or perhaps some add campaigns like we did with smoking (hehe, if it's for something we support then adds are good?).

Regardless, the current situation clearly doesn't work. It would be great if we could find and promote the least invasive solutions.

[–] frostedtrailblazer@lemmy.zip 8 points 14 hours ago

I feel that communicating your concerns with other parents and their school can help. I feel it can make sense to have some forms of socialization when they are in middle school or high school, but even then you’d want a pretty locked down system, imo.

I feel that not every parent is going to let their kids use technologically to talk to their friends, especially not all the time. That’s not how I grew up and I was fine developmentally speaking. As a parent you can seek out other parents that live by similar philosophy locally for your kids to have as friends as well.

[–] ageedizzle@piefed.ca 0 points 14 hours ago