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Regulate advertising space and personalization algorithms.
Yes, it will kill a large portion of current economy, so maybe do it slowly. But generally speaking you should be able to find what you want on the internet, not what advertisers want you to see.
There is no "harms of social media" per se. There are harms of unregulated companies that purposefully create addiction machines that are harmful to everyone, young and old alike. Our collective grandma became an antivaxer at the ripe age of 71, our collective dad became racist not at 13 either.
I think that there needs to be education against this. Kids should be aware that it is an addictive product. Our schools should have lessons on objectivity, on how to not have there voices hijacked, on speeding away from the noise of the world.
Cutting it off via a face scan just moves the product. They will still get it. Use culture campaigns.
No gov, no org can have control of this it’s too big until they reign in capitalism. This needs to come from people.
Make our kids better spaces that offer them peace and confidence.
You also cannot blame parents here. Most of us live in societies where a 13 year old can walk home from school on their own, and if they buy cigarettes, alcohol or visit a strip club then the business owner is in trouble. Business owners should figure out how to provide their products safely.
I agree completely
The government already knows all our ages, right? They issue our IDs after all. Have the government provide a "yes, this person is over 18" service. There are ways of providing signed files/tokens which don't contain personal information.
If the government wants to write a law, then I think it's reasonable they're also responsible to help with a solution.
In order to provide a "yes, this person is over 18" service for a vendor, the vendor has to know which real name (or other personally identifiable piece of information) to look up, don't they?
So if you have to provide the vendor with a real name, phone number, ID card number or selfie that identifies the account "draco_aeneus@mander.xyz" with "John Doe/555-4556/X1234567" that eliminates your anonymity, they've accomplished surveillance over your personal opinions and whatever other content you share. The real problem isn't age verification, the problem is they're trying to eliminate anonymity.
The vendor/site does not need to know a name.
The idea is that people already trust the government with their identifying info. So what the government can do is issue, for example, an opaque "age ID" that is only to be used with an "over 18?" service hosted by the government. Then anyone visiting a website with age-restrictions would provide their age ID, which tells the site nothing about the user. The site checks the "over 18?" service. At no point do arbitrary websites need to collect identifying info.
Now obviously as I've described it, there are multiple problems:
One solution is to make the age ID into a "one time password" (OTP). Much like an authenticator app, you could have an app provided by the government which generates a new random OTP on request, and it would expire in a minute or so. Then users provide that instead of a constant age ID. Like before, the site checks the "over 18?" service using the OTP.
It's still not perfect, but you'll never solve the "adult buying beer for kids" trick without counterproductive measures. There are probably some additional tricks to make it better, but I don't want to get too far into it.
EDIT: One more point. Having this "over 18?" service is itself a privacy risk, because it relies heavily on your trust in the government not to conspire with the sites you are visiting or to just log info about all of the age-restricted sites you visit. There are apparently solutions to this problem involving zero-knowledge proofs, but I don't know quite enough to explain that entirely here.
EDIT2: I got curious and did a little more reading. The zero-knowledge proof idea kinda fails to prevent credential sharing, unless you rely on some kind of hardware cryptographic vault thing. I'm not sure if that ends up being strictly better than the service idea.
Another way you might prevent the govt from logging all of the age-restricted sites you visit is to put the service behind something like Tor to make the requesting site anonymous. But this still doesn't prevent the govt from just knowing that you visited some age-restricted site at a specific time. Still not ideal.
The OTP solution seems like a really good idea actually
There are apparently solutions to this problem involving zero-knowledge proofs
If something like this could work, that would be the best solution in my opinion
@ageedizzle@piefed.ca @asklemmy@lemmy.world
Back when I was 8yo, I got my first PC. I was always a nerdy kid who used to disassembly my own toys in order to see how it works. As expected, this happened upon my first contact with a PC, except I realized I could disassembly it using the keyboard: suddenly, I was tinkering with DHTML and ActiveX (XP+IE6), I was coding. I was just 8yo.
This was largely self-taught (I was always lone wolf who prefered studying rather than socializing, fearing the bullying), but I also got into discussion boards and Orkut comms, with my first searches having been "theory": then I found places about Game Theory, Chaos Theory, and even shady things such as Conspiracy Theory. The latter, a very significant part of my life, teached me dialetics and how to debate abstract, systemic ideas.
If it wasn't for me getting into social media during my early teens, I wouldn't have most of the knowledge I got today. Maybe "ignorance is a bliss" (Cypher), maybe I'd be more socializable, maybe I'd be a socially-normal man living a socially-normal life. I'd hardly become the non-conformist I am today. I'd hardly have left christianity.
As for "adult content", my first contact wasn't using that PC: it was actually broadcasted TV, Brazilian TV programmes such as "Pânico na TV" (a humoristic program, featuring "Paniquetes", dancers in suggestive outfits, and Sabrina Sato, a presenter also in suggestive outfits), "Banheira do Gugu" (TV segment from "Domingo Legal", featured by Gugu Liberato, where there was this pool with naked ppl swimming live), "Pegadinhas do Sílvio Santos" (TV segment featuring pranks, often suggestive situations such as upskirting). All of these were openly broadcasted, regardless the audience age.
Then there was school, colleagues bullying me, and sometimes bullying involved... situations, unpleasant at the moment, but later led me to... nvm. School never got to stop the bullyings, I was even bullied by teachers!
There was family as well, cousins who may had been SA'd me, I don't know, I'm even unable to remember!
Now, 30yo, I see the hypocritical conundrum from society: all of sudden "we need to protect kids". Really!? What's being done for EXTERMINATING school bullying? What's being done for EXTERMINATING SA from the face of Earth?!
Social media can be bad, I can agree, but just banning kids from social media won't protect them from the situations beyond this RGB veil. Hell, there was not a single punishment involving the biggest CSA scandal ever, but "sOcIAL mEdIA bAaD"!
Not to say how it will lead to cognitive dissonance in a world where almost all societal aspects became digital, especially after COVID. I mean, I can't toss my devices and go Luddite: gov compels me to have ID app, jobs compel me to have acc in a bank that'll require me their banking app. This world became irreversibly digital, this is an inflection point in human history. Banning kids from digital may end up doing more harm than good.
By not allowing parents to outsource the responsibilities of being a parent.
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.
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.
Well said
I must state I lack any experience with parenting, but I have this to add:
Both Android and iOS have parental controls built in, just block whatever you don't want your kid to access. There are tools out there that parents can install on devices that are basically spyware for their kids. Parents have to actually use the existing tools, at least what is built in with the OS of the device. Make the iPad not an addictive content serving machine, but instead something with hand picked games, or whatever other apps you trust. Even non tech savvy users could enable parental features.
This. Content providers should at most be required to mark inappropriate content with some kind of http header or meta tag to make client-side filtering easier.
Parental controls have been an effective way for decades.
yeah, but that would require, you know, parenting, which is something we can't do.
Unfortunately a lot of parental controls aren't that helpful, and they're more of an afterthought
I agree with parenting in general though
Don't let your kids use it at a young age.
I didnt get a phone with internet until I was 12.
I didnt get an internet phone plan until I was ~15
And my family could not be called technically advanced. Me right now is working in IT. So it didnt hinder me
The only problem with that is that these days not having a phone wpuld be socially isolating
By getting rid of shitty corporate social media that makes money by exploiting people.
This is like suggesting that the solution to protecting your kids from tigers roaming the street is to lock them in their rooms. Nah, just rid of the fucking tigers.
As long as corporate social media is closed source, it would be hard to know if a no-advertising policy is being fully adhered to. A good example of this is the class action lawsuit against Chrome’s incognito mode: for years, Chrome got away with collecting personal browsing data when people browsed in incognito mode despite insisting that they didn’t do that. Something similar might happen with social media. To get around that, there could be a legal requirement for social media to be open source. That might run into issues with intellectual property law though, and the lobbying against it would be so intense that I’m not sure if a law like that would ever pass without massive political will.
The good news: approaches have already been developed to mostly allow this. The bad news: incompetent or lazy or corrupt people try to NOT implement these, and doomers always show up to loudly say that everything sucks and we should all just live in despair.
Nothing is perfect, but implementing the stuff mentioned below would be a big improvement to balancing privacy and security compared to virtually all previous human history. It involves the government implementing a few things and citizens having new ID-type-things that are not like photo IDs.
If these systems are set up correctly, a person can digitally prove that they are 18 years or older, but without providing ANY other information. Not there name or photo or anything other than 'yup. I'm 18+. Let me do my thing.'
Here are three critical tools to leverage, and do a bit of research on:
Verifiable Credential (VC)
What it is: A digitally signed attestation about you, issued by a trusted entity (e.g. a country government).
Example: a university issues you a credential saying “PositiveNoise earned a Master’s degree in 2008.”
Structure: Typically uses the W3C Verifiable Credentials standard — it’s a JSON document signed cryptographically by the issuer.
Key idea: You hold it (not them). You can present it later to anyone (“verifier”) to prove something about yourself, and the verifier can confirm the signature without calling the issuer.
Analogy: A digital version of a stamped diploma or driver’s license, but one that lives in your own encrypted wallet rather than a government database.
Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP)
What it is: A cryptographic technique that lets you prove a statement is true without revealing the underlying data.
Example: Prove “I am over 18” without showing your exact birthdate.
In relation to VCs: VCs can include data that can be selectively revealed or proven via ZKPs, so you never have to expose full documents.
Analogy: Showing only the needed part of your ID through a frosted window, but mathematically guaranteed.
Digital ID Wallet
What it is: The software or hardware container where you store and manage your Verifiable Credentials.
Think of it like a crypto wallet, but instead of coins, it holds identity proofs (e.g., driver’s license, student ID, health certificate).
In relation to the others:
It stores your VCs (the signed attestations).
It lets you create ZK proofs on demand when sharing data.
It maintains control and consent: you decide when and what to share.
Analogy: A private digital passport holder that can generate “proof slips” without handing over the whole passport.
If we’re being optimistic, then the process you’ve described would also help cut back on bots and influence campaigns
Here's some ideas, in no particular order or combination:
On the last point, let's use Steam as an example. I as a parent should be able to make a "child" account, with its own username, password, and maybe separate email. And then on that child account I should be able to blacklist all features by default and only whitelist what I want. Like only allow the child account to have access to the "Library" view. So when the account is signed into directly it can only see "Library" unless I enter a PIN or password to authenticate being an adult. I can buy games for that child account and/or add the child account to my family share and whitelist games 1-by-1 for my child to have access to.
YouTube is also a good example. I should be able to create a child YouTube account and only allow ABC YouTube channel for that account to have access to. Or tie it to a child Google account and I can restrict everything on an android tablet down to each individual app.
As a tech geek and now parent of a child, the parental controls are lacking HARD for pretty much every service and platform out there. My children are still too young to understand this stuff, but I already know the best thing I can do for my children are:
Notice I didn't say "no Internet" until X age. I think restricting the Internet from your child entirely until some arbitrary age will be more negative than positive. It's like not teaching your child how to swim because you're afraid they'll drown, but then they're 18 and you tell them to jump into the ocean because YOU'RE ready while they're not.
Just education in general
People said the exact same thing about books, radio, TV, movies, video games and music.
You come up with some sort of arbitrary rating system. Any child with intent will find a way around it, and eventually they'll try to find a way to protect their kids from something else.
Counter argument: alcohol, weed, tobacco, cocaine, drinking and driving, speeding, and acid were all so incredibly commonplace that people were confused when they were phased out or delegalised.
Social media is not on the same level as books, radio, tv, movies, video games and music. The sacred sextuple.
Social media is, however, similar to the afforementioned things, in that partaking in the substance or activity regularly gives you illusions that it benefits much more than it really does, whike ultimately just being bad for you and predisposing you to binging.
I think people are ao defensive over social media because A) they're addicted and of course B) they're worried kids won't be educated on political issues, which i think is probably the more pressing issue than privacy. Becauae we already don't have privacy on mainstream SM
Social media does seem unique though just because of how addictive it is. If you look into the details of how meta targets children and intentionally tries to addict them it paints a pretty sinister picture: https://techoversight.org/2026/01/25/top-report-mdl-jan-25/
Well, with that comment, I think you have your answer.
Parents gotta parent.
Maybe parent your children better, it is your job, not the government's.
Somethings are just banned for children, like smoking or drinking or getting tattoos. Its not always a matter of parenting
But those things are also something you have to physically go into a building to get, social media is consumed primarily in the home, where parents are in control of what their children can and can't do, proper parenting, instead of trying to be your kids friend, will go a lot further than more government oversight and legislation.
Unironically just don't let them on until 16 (ideally) 15 or 14 if we're a bit liberal with it.
Kids younger than that should be limited to whatsapp and texting.
Maybe we sbould even roll out a social media License. It's a pretty damaging thing, but some people push back hard against that because it's like a drug to them. Some adults can't even really be trusted with it.
This is a deeply unpopular take, but here goes.
There's loads of comments here saying "parents gotta parent", which of course is absolutely true.
The problem is, it's difficult to maintain a "no social" policy with your kid if every other kid in their peer group is engaging together on social media.
If there are government mandated age verification checks on social media, then even if they're trivial to bypass, at least it allows parents to stand together with other parents.
My position is, age verification isn't perfect, but it's better than nothing. I guess we'll see what teachers say about the current measures in the coming months.
If there are government mandated age verification checks on social media, then even if they're trivial to bypass, at least it allows parents to stand together with other parents.
Many, if not most, social media sites already have this in the form of a “I assert I’m over 13” button during account creation
I don't know why no one has said it, but get rid of social media as we know it. That's the actual only solution. The harms of social media applies to all ages. It's the capitalist side of social media that is the danger. Put limits on advertising and suddenly the algorithms to keep you engaged/ angry/ addicted are pointless, and suddenly social media isn't as harmful.
You cannot. Any platform with somewhat private communications and kids will have predators on it.
ZERO amount of government surveillance will ever be enough to substitute for a good parent. However, IF we need the feds, it should absolutely be for dismantling CP rings (those that work forces...) and insane subculture like 09a and school shooter fan sites.
Make platforms responsible for the content that people upload. This will basically make any large scale social media unable to exist without prohibitive moderation costs.
I have been pro banning all for-profit social media for years. I can live without Reddit. Especially now with Lemmy and fediverse. I can even live with no social media whatsoever. We should probably ban all porn too. It is just as brain rotting as social media. I say this as someone who does watch porn. I can live without it if society gets better from banning it.
as someone who does watch porn
If you can live without it you should try to live without it now. I understand that it's hard to do so, but still.
