Technology

I vehemently dislike "inarguably" claims as it's a similar strategy as "protect the children, you would want to leave a child unprotected, now would you?" and this is a double whammy as it is about protect children so, yeah.

Having said that.

I think there are definitely issues to be resolved.

The way social media keeps kids reeled in is one thing. In the past I saw teenagers doing stuff together, laughing, getting themselves into trouble (as a part of growing up), endless endless chattering together... Now I continuously see groups of teenagers quietly on their phones in a group, only interrupted by every now and then one teen showing something to others.

Just in general, I think little kids should have a bit less media to begin with. Again, I walk over the street and see mother's with tiny kids and they're already glued to the screen instead of looking around. I feel like that generation misses the beauty of the world outside in lieu of constant screen time. I getting, it's nice and quiet for the parents who also want a life, but it seems a lot. It sort of feels like these kids are losing humanity and instead get this new world of only tech, and soon, only AI.

I think there are loads of other issues to be resolved as well. I'm a staunch advocate for banning mobile phones on schools (exceptions where needed) for example.

Having said all that, I don't think that outright banning social media for kids is a good idea either, it doesn't have to be a nothing or everything decision.

One thing could be that social media companies could be forced to publish their selection algorithms, and requiring said algorithms to adhere to a set of laws that ensure kids can interact healthily with their products.

There are loads of other solutions out there. I don't think a full ban is right but leaving it at how it currently is also is not a solution

This is the newest 'think of the children' panic.

Yes, social media is harmful because companies are making it harmful. It's not social media that's the root cause, and wherever kids go next those companies will follow and pollute unless stopped. Social Isolation is not "safety", it's damaging as well, and social media is one of the last, freely-accessible social spaces kids have.

We didn't solve smoking adverts for kids by banning kids from going places where the adverts were, we banned the adverts and penalized the companies doing them.

Haidt ... is campaigning internationally to end the “phone-based childhood”. He says... Videogaming, porn and gambling gave boys such dopamine hits that anything else they did felt boring.

This is pseudo-science.

• https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-neurochemical-self/202106/harsh-truth-about-dopamine
• https://recovered.org/blog/dopamine-addiction-fact-or-clickbait

It's complicated. The current state of the internet is dominated by corporate interests towards maximal profit, and that's driving the way websites and services are structured towards very toxic and addictive patterns. This is bigger than just "social media."

However, as a queer person, I will say that if I didn't have the ability to access the Internet and talk to other queer people without my parents knowing, I would be dead. There are lots of abused kids who lack any other outlets to seek help, talk to people and realize their problems, or otherwise find relief for the crushing weight of familial abuse.

Navigating this issue will require grace, awareness and a willingness to actually address core problems and not just symptoms. It doesn't help that there is an increasing uptick of purity culture and "for the children" legislation that will curtail people's privacy, ability to use the internet and be used to push queer people and their art or narratives off of the stage.

Requiring age verification reduces anonymity and makes it certain that some people will be unable to use the internet safely. Yes, it's important in some cases, but it's also a cost to that.

There's also the fact that western society has systemically ruined all third spaces and other places for children to exist in that isn't their home or school. It used to be that it was possible for kids and teens to spend time at malls, or just wandering around a neighborhood. There were lots of places where they were implicitly allowed to be- but those are overwhelmingly being closed, commericalized or subject to the rising tide of moral panic and paranoia that drives people to call the cops on any group of unknown children they see on their street.

Police violence and severity of response has also heightened, so things that used to be minor, almost expected misdemeanors for children wandering around now carry the literal risk of death.

So children are increasingly isolated, locked down in a context where they cannot explore the world or their own sense of self outside the hovering presence of authority- so they turn to the internet. Cutting that off will have repercussions. Social media wouldn't be so addictive for kids if they had other venues to engage with other people their age that weren't subject to the constant scrutiny of adults.

Without those spaces, they have to turn to the only remaining outlet. This article is woefully inadequate to answer the fundamental, core problems that produce the symptoms we are seeing; and, it's implementation will not rectify the actual problem. It will only add additional stress to the system and produce a greater need to seek out even less safe locations for the people it ostensibly wishes to protect.

No; it's not inarguable.

I do feel that some minor limitations around social media should exist; such as hours of the day you may not be allowed to read or post; but they should be simple age-gates created to privately verify a person's age via a simple SSO/OAuth style token. If you can't authenticate against some privacy respecting identity proving entity you probably aren't old enough and any account(s) you create would be limited.

Not all social media needs to be age-gated either; but social networks could be forced by law to avoid monetizing your account or habits at all if you don't willingly identify. (and by doing so; also CONSENT TO THIS MONETIZATION) In short; if you are not verified they're required to assume you are a child and handle your data as such...with utmost respect to your privacy.

This is ageism. Social media should be banned for everyone.

Videogaming, porn and gambling gave boys such dopamine hits that anything else they did felt boring.

Kids these days don't understand the rush of dumping their entire allowance into 15 minutes of Street Fighter, comitting borderline felonies while riding bicycles around the neighborhood, and then going into the woods to jerk it to that one Playboy before going over Steve's house to worship the devil.

I was expecting a much stronger argument based on the headline.

Personally I'd prefer regulation on how social media is structured and how algorithms operate. First thing I'd do is ban infinite scroll, which corporations like because it increases 'engagement' whilst harming the quality of the experience for their users.

So teens who don't fit in well in the IRL spaces that are available to them should have 0 ways to have social interactions?

If teen me hadn't had the internet, I would have 0 joyful memories whatsoever of my teen years. Anyone sympathizing with the ideas in the OP is in my mind purely evil and oppressive, I have no other words to describe this.

This is exactly the conversation that happened in Parliament over the Australian social media ban and its absurd.

There is a broad recognition that in a regulatory vacuum corporate social media created toxic and addictive "engagement"-maximising algorithms that harm all facets of society exposed to them.

So a solution is proposed: ban it for children.

When exactly, did it become fine for corporations to actively and deliberately harm people as long as they were old enough? How about preventing the harm?

It would be just as easy for a government to ban opaque and engagement maximising feed algorithms. But they went with the option that allows "tech" giants to keep harming the less marketable 80% of the population.

There should really be a different term for Instagram/TikTok/FB/etc style social media sites (I call them "push-style" social media, though "algorithmic" is probably a better term) and websites like public forums, chatting platforms, etc. The former is what I think this article is talking about. The latter seems both fine and necessary these days, even in some cases among children.

As a thought experiment, it's somewhat fascinating to ask what "social media" has done. I don't really consider anything past MySpace truly social. The term now means "let's keep you addicted to posts from people you'll never meet" -- essentially, the modern form of checkstand tabloids.

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Ah, yes. Truly, I cannot argue against this impeccable logic. I am swayed.

I'll cop to not having read the article and I'll say I might, but I can think of some pretty good ones. It's so children and teenagers can tell people when something bad is happening to them. Like being in a child marriage. Or being abused. Or being shot at in school. Or when their community is being preyed upon. Or when they're in a cult. Or when they're kidnapped and they have a phone. Or when they need to advocate for themselves against policy that chiefly affects them. Or when they're afraid something is happening to their friends. Or when they're suicidal. Or when they're lost. I could probably come up with a hundred of these. The thing is that children and teens are half-finished people and we afford people certain rights. So we need to decide if we'd rather treat kids as human or as another group of pawns to control. I loathe this debate.

How would they implement such a law?