I think stuff like this, is trying to recreate a world that doesn't exist anymore. With whom, are you gonna go play in the woods with, that haven't already been bulldozed into housing and strip malls? Do you need to watch YouTube only on a parent's TV that's logged in, even for homework help? Some kids start working at 14 or 15: they can be trusted to work somewhere outside of home, but not online? What about Steam games? What about any games? What about hobby & fan forums, that have nothing to do with "grooming" or grabbing eyeballs? What's next, an Internet license?
The YouTube situation is the biggest self-own in Australia's implementation. Previously kids under 16 could have an account under a parent's Family, and there are full parental controls and monitoring. Now kids can't have these accounts, so they can only access youtube without signing in. Meaning zero parental controls and monitoring. Oh and have you seen what youtube looks like when you're not logged in!?
Fully agree. I have no issues with the social media laws as they don't impact my family at all except for YouTube. Accounts under Family Link control should have been allowed as they are overseen by an 18+ parent.
Youtube should have voluntarily removed shorts and the front page or made them available as a parental control to appease the regulator. When I wrote to the minister they used YouTube's addictive algorithms as justification for including them as social media which I do agree with.
We had curated kids logins with age restrictions, subscriptions, and ad free under premium and also youtube music with individual playlists they used for instrument practice etc. We had to shift music platform. I know we can replicate a lot of this with special apps and browser extensions but this was a single cross platform solution that was working for responsible parents. To be fair it is partly YouTube's fault for prioritizing Shorts and watch time over quality.
Fully agree, responsible parents should not allow their kids (including teenagers) to use Shorts or TikTok. It is a shame that YouTube does not support blocking that crap. It is obvious "Don't be evil" is not Google's motto anymore.
You can create two Google accounts and parental control yourself. You can also use ublock or other browser addons, and of course, NewPipe. Youtube should have more settings for this, it's clearly going down the drain, but it's not like you can do nothing.
Honestly, it's one of the reasons I don't want to pay for Youtube Red, why would I pay for "no ads", when I still feel like I'm the product, because of my complete lack of control over the algorithm and user experience.
> I have no issues with the social media laws as they don't impact my family
This is probably the most common reason for why our society is in the shitters wrt. laws. I find it problematic that people only care after they have been shown they are affected. Look at any anti-privacy laws. No one cares until they get thrown into jail for posting memes online.
>
Youtube should have voluntarily removed shorts and the front page or made them available as a parental control to appease the regulator.
I honestly don't "get" the hate for YouTube Shorts:
While I clearly do prefer long-form videos on YouTube, in my Shorts feed I see videos that are, well, simply more short-form (admittedly because of the short length they are often more "shallow", but for sure not below some level that I would find annoying or unacceptable (and I think I am fast with such strong judgements)). So, at least judging from my Shorts feed, I can barely see any video that I would consider to be objectionable if I were a parent. It is quite possible that the YouTube algorithm detected very fast that I belong to a demographic that is not interested in particular kinds of videos that are perhaps common on YouTube Shorts and thus simply does not show them to me in my Shorts feed, so I am simply not aware of them.
So, seriously: why the huge hate for YouTube Shorts in particular concerning parenting?
> We had to shift music platform. I know we can replicate a lot of this ...
As far as practical solutions go a cheap VPS and a wireguard connection should let you continue with business as usual. From the perspective of YouTube maybe you moved to NZ or something.
> they used YouTube's addictive algorithms as justification for including them as social media
Did they provide YouTube the option of swapping out those algorithms to be exempted from the new law? It seems like this law was perhaps not a bad idea but the execution poorly thought out.
I won't be chasing an increasingly shitty online experience. I imported chromecasts before they were ever released here and had them connected via vpn to a US vps before services like Netflix went global. The pricing and content were really good value back then. Increasingly the relationship with big companies feels abusive. We are moving more towards self hosting, using physical media and changing lifestyle. Disconnecting isn't so bad.
I agree with you in spirit , however nobody was taught how to raise their kids in an age of incessant hyperstimulation , and people in general don't go out of their way to learn things properly
> Now kids can't have these accounts, so they can only access youtube without signing in. Meaning zero parental controls and monitoring
This sounds like a device-control problem. Banning social media and then regulating devices in school should go a long way towards defusing the challenge.
Even with anonymous log-in, the new status quo is a release from algorithmic targeting. (If YouTube is building shadow profiles and knowingly serving under-16-year olds, that can be fixed with enforcement.) I suspect this group of kids will grow up fitter despite the reduced opportunities for helicopter parenting. There are lots of parents who never try, or try and fail, to control and monitor their kids’ online activities. Way more than those who effectively do so.
The problem isn't lack of control, it's the lazy attitude from parents who're shocked that they have to actually do their own job of raising their progeny.
They'd rather abdicate that responsibility to the government, who in turn love the idea because it means more control.
People aren't forced to have kids though.. If they don't really want them or can't accomodate them in their lives just don't have any. I've never had any because I don't want to give up my freedom and relaxation either.
And one income hasn't been enough for much longer than 5 years. Especially in housing.
I see a lot of people around me that seem to pretty much hate having kids and they probably did it just because of social/family pressure or something. They always treat them like a nuisance and fob them off with a tablet. Really, just don't have them then. The world is already so overpopulated which is one of the causes of tension (migration, fighting over resources, climate/pollution).
I would argue that evolution’s primary driving force is not something so easily resisted. It is literally a person’s only purpose when you strip everything else away. I would be careful to handwave away another person’s desire to have children.
5 years ago single income households were feasible for a subset of the population. Yes that subset has been decreasing for a while. But the last 5 years or so have eroded it so much more.
And pointing at struggling children/parents as the source of society’s ills is a low blow. When there are individual humans who have accumulated so much resources that they can feed an entire country for a few days at a single thought and _still_ have enough left over to live comfortably. You are looking at the wrong place to blame, in my opinion.
> It is literally a person’s only purpose when you strip everything else away.
And then you strip that away too, leaving us with our true purpose at the core of everything else - to simply exist. To live and then to die. That is our true purpose.
I'm not pointing at them as a source of society's ills. I don't think society (as in socially) is ill at all, except for conservatives that are trying to tell us how to live our lives.
I do think the human population as-is is unsustainably big though but I'm not blaming individuals for it. And luckily enough the population growth seems to be plateauing anyway. I think it would be great if we shrink by half or so, life would be a lot easier. Yes, the wealth distribution is a massive issue too, but decreasing this will actually make things worse. All these ultra-rich are just sitting on their money. They have as much money as say 100.000 normal people but they are not buying 100.000x as many things. In fact I often wonder why they care so much about accumulating ever more wealth if they already have so much more than they could ever spend in a lifetime.
But once all the poor people in China and India will want to have a big house, a car etc like us then we will really have a resource problem.
But for me having kids is not a purpose at all. Perhaps that colours my ease with which I dismiss it. I just know several parents that mainly talk about their kids in a dismissive/nuisance way and I wonder why they ever bothered to have them in the first place.
Having children is one of the most basic human instincts, and honestly it's kind of disgusting how you dismiss many parents as obviously hating their kids. Do we complain sometimes? Yes, parenting is hard.
It's both. Saying "the problem" is the parents, implying there's one problem and that's it, is ridiculous. There's a lot of factors that go into why raising a good, caring, strong, self sufficient child is difficult.
We see this same type of argument from the "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps; if you weren't lazy you'd succeed" crowd. It's a stupid argument there, and it's just as stupid here. The world is complicated, and working to improve things from multiple angles is good, and improves the changes of success; for everyone.
For that, we have to give control over clients to consumers. In the model of the past the company provides the client and so the client is accountable to the company not the consumer. Only the web browser has ever come close to changing that, but there's not many of us left still fighting for third party clients, even on the web
In my 40s now, I can recall dozens of "we should..." statements from myself and others. Typically, these statements were driven by some personal mishap, and the statement is basically forgotten (because it was never a big deal to begin with). But occasionally, some well-read/educated (often with a philosophical bias) will allow a small complaint to consume them, forcing them to write extensively about it, while the world continues to change at increasing speed.
But there's a huge market for this kind of writing: it's all the other people that have similar thoughts but not the time to actually write it.
I wouldn't mind restricting access for children to certain types of games such as those with gambling (surprise) mechanics. It's a clear example of harmful media that is at least in some cases exclusively engineered and marketed towards children.
The preponderance of evidence, much of it from Meta's own internal communications, indicates that social media harms teens, and especially girls, in ways ranging from sleep deprivation to eating disorders to anxiety to depression to sexual grooming to suicide. Many of us adults see it as a moral duty to try to stop this, though YMMV (your morals may vary). Kids did homework before YouTube; and yes it is reasonable to propose that a teen can babysit outside their home yet not be exposed to hardcore porn on X, etc.
Your argument seems to be a false choice between "either kids play in the woods or they play online in toxic social media hellscapes". Yes it is tragic that some components of a great childhood are impossible now for so many children. But this doesn't imply we must now let them play with guns and matches and razorblades.
I have a friend who works with lots of young people whom she routinely tries to get to come to organized events but they often can't make it because they're attending the funerals of friends who've committed suicide. It's almost unbelievable how bad it is. This genie absolutely must be put back in the bottle by any means possible, and society is trying to figure out how.
You say people did homework before YouTube, that is true; however for me I used YouTube to learn a huge amount outside of school, for example programming. I am vastly a better person for having access to YouTube pre-16 due to the amount of educational content, it is the single best way to learn stuff outside of school when you don't have much money due to being young. I genuinely would know a lot less about many, many topics if I didn't have YouTube before I was 16, and realising that has put me off the idea of a social media ban for children entirely. Although in my head YouTube was/is different to social media; I am not using YouTube to be social unlike how e.g. Instagram may be used.
To me YouTube is more comparable to if TV contained anything you were interested in or wanted to learn about, on demand, for free, and accessible to anyone than it is to social media and therefore maybe shouldn't be grouped with them.
Moral "imperatives" and "think of the children" are major red flags. The genie is not going back in the bottle - technology only moves forward. The answer is simply education - both for children and parents. This is a multi-generational effort but humanity will adapt.
Throwing bans at the problem is not the answer. Legislation is almost never the answer. As many have highlighted this will be twisted into even worse control over human thought.
The problem is simply algorithmic feeds. They are just as destructive for adults and society at large. Maybe there can be some general regulation or tooling in this space, however society really needs to arrive at this itself. Governance originates from society not the other way around. If you need governance to enforce your societal "fix" something is wrong with it.
You can not anticipate the next technological impact - and they _are_ coming. Throwing shit at the wall in the form of law is only going to make things worse for that next change. Education and upbringing has to be much more experimental and adaptive.
The answer is get better at parenting - nobody wants to hear that but that really is it. Look how people bemoan the education system these days. If you trust anyone in education it is a total disaster. Everyone wants an easy fix and the economy places no value on time spent in these pursuits. You can't paper over that with naive laws, trying to do so is only going to make things much worse, both because undoing stupid shit is hard and it ignores the real problems.
There is only so much better parenting can do against giant companies with tons of money and teams of psychologists and engineers designing products to maximally exploit "vulnerabilities" in human minds in order to modify their beliefs, emotions, and behaviors.
I personally don't believe you have ANY evidence. More plausibly you are acting as a "useful idiot" for traditional media.
Now that Australia has banned social media, are you going to admit you were wrong? Or just double down and ban phones? If something is "unbelievable" then you better have good evidence for believing it, not just narratives.
It's a great pity all your woods have been bulldozed.
However the world of woods, wide open spaces, kids with power tools, kids walking for hours with friends and dogs circuiting the beach, caves, forrests and fields very much still exists in many places across the globe.
Kids working for themselves down in the shed making things they can sell for money at a swap meet or market happens here all the time and is a controlled risk - they wear PPE, have knowledge of readily apparent risks and aren't being stalked and crept up on by a netwok of bot assisted groomers.
Yeah, suburbia and even the inner-city in the West has parks, trails and rec centres. If anything, the real fantasy is the idea that kids couldn't engage with something outside. Kids are addicted to each other, social media is just a useful vector when helicopter parents don't permit you to leave the property, except for structured organised activity I.e. expensive league sports
Got welders, maps, legs (useful for walking), ropes, furnaces, hand tools, old cars, old workstations, soldering irons, a kitchen, gardens, paddocks, saddle making tools, radio towers, .. you know, regular house in the country from the 1930s kind of stuff.
I have been building a library for some time as well, and am ready to learn and teach once my child is ready. Frankly, the internet experience when I was young vs now is crazy. For me, it was dial up with some forums and RuneScape open, chatting via texts in game with my buddies who were considered long distance even though we all went to the same church. The pauses in loading gave time to think up good discussion, and playing things took patience. Now everything wants your attention scattered everywhere, and is flashing in your face. I love having ad blockers because of that. Social media has done nothing good for our world I feel like. Yes, connecting is nice but when you are fed things off of not your actual interest or easily searchable same results but instead whatever drives engagement for ads I like to stay well away.
I don't think it's about recreating a world that doesn't exist anymore. It's about limiting exposure of stuff to minds that simply aren't ready for it. The implementation falls short in a number of ways but I kinda get it and I think it's something we as a society will have to take seriously in coming years.
For example, Australia blocks Youtube (like you say) but doesn't block Roblox. That's wild.
For Youtube in particular, I think it'd be sufficient to have child accounts under their parents (as they did and still have elsewhere) that limited certain videos but also, disallowing commenting and probably even reading comments.
A big thing we need to do is shut down Internet gambling and, more importantly, the precursors to gambling, which is anything that promotes the same addictive behavior. That includes all those "free" gotcha games that aren't really games. They're daily chores with random rewards and paid boosts to induce addictive behavior.
Apps like Stake need to be completely removed from the App stores.
I also think Fanduel and DraftKings should be illegal. I'm even leery on young people playing fantasy draft games, even for no money, because it's a gambling pipeline.
Oh and putting your children on the Internet as like a Youtube family? That should be illegal.
Algorithmic feeds in general I think are bad but particularly for young people. Because they're designed to induce addiction and "engagement".
I think phones will soon be good enough (if they're not already) to do background age verifications to make sure the user is of appropriate age via the camera and processed locally (to avoid uploading pictures of minors). At some point I think we'll see that integrated into major platforms.
The point of restrictions isn't to be perfect. It's to create a barrier that makes things more difficult. In years past we did this by, say, only showing more adult content on TV after certain times. Could kids stay up late to watch it? Or tape it once VCRs became coomon? Of course. But it helped.
Just like gambling. Requiring someone to physically go to a casino reduced harm compared to just opening their phone wherever they are. It's a bit like having to go to the store to get ice cream or alcohol or whatever your vice vs just having it in your house or even getting it delivered.
> Algorithmic feeds in general I think are bad but particularly for young people.
Just young people? Have you noticed the trend of political discourse more or less globally? Social media certainly assisted in bringing much government abuse and corruption to light over the past couple decades but I feel it has also had severe negative impacts on civil discourse surrounding contentious topics. Not that things were great to begin with of course.
> I think phones will soon be good enough
No! Absolutely not! Please do not provide authoritarian tech companies with legitimate excuses to lock down the computing devices that we supposedly own! Society has already gone in an extremely dangerous direction there and badly needs to course correct.
// A big thing we need to do is shut down...anything that promotes the same addictive behavior.
Oh great, we're back to the 'destroy the pinball machines' faux-moral outrage. If it wasn't gacha-gaming it would be Coin Pusher machines, or Pinball, or Arcade Machines, or POGs, or Pokemon, or cigarette/bubblegum card collecting or...
//I also think Fanduel and DraftKings should be illegal. I'm even leery on young people playing fantasy draft games, even for no money, because it's a gambling pipeline.
Moral hand-wringing masquerading as ethics. As often attributed to Twayne, "Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it"
//Algorithmic feeds in general I think are bad but particularly for young people. Because they're designed to induce addiction and "engagement".
Ones designed to sell toys, services, or adspace (such as it ever was). Whereas for people of the age of majority (and particularly those in retirement) those same algorithms dictate elections and, increasingly, what constitutes political or domestic 'reality'. I know which I'd prioritise addressing.
//I think phones will soon be good enough (if they're not already) to do background age verifications to make sure the user is of appropriate age via the camera and processed locally
They currently can't do this at emigration points - see the amount of asylum seekers claiming to be unaccompanied children with no birth certs whose claimed age can't be disputed:
With the best will in the world, and the resources and governance policies of a governmental agency tasked with this specific action, it fails constantly. As such, outsourcing it to the tender mercies of Silicon Valley VCs via some App and SaaS solution is farcical.
I think those with the least restraint and control are the loudest to request their current privileges to be stripped away at a societal level, lest they indulge to the point of detriment.
That's something I hadn't thought about actually, if YouTube is being included, that was utterly invaluable for me for my school exams (before and after 16). I thought I wouldn't really have been missing anything with a ban on social media under 16 as I never really used it much anyway, but I had always excluded YouTube from "social media" in my head due to the sheer value of it for education.
My life would've been significantly worse and more importantly I would know a lot less about a lot of topics if I didn't have access to YouTube from age 13+.
It’s weird that something completely normal like 20 years ago is “weird” today.
I might even make it 18 when you’re old enough to sign a EULA. When did something completely normal become weird?
“What’s next, an internet license?”
Oh please god, yes.
You’re own argument about kids not being allowed to play in the woods in the more seems to play into this idea we should just accept a dystopian world.
Surprised to see this seemingly presented positively on HN.
Social media "feels" like it should be uniquely bad for children but the evidence is low-quality and contradictory. For example, high social media use is associated with anxiety and depression, but which direction does that relationship run? Meanwhile there are documented benefits especially for youth who are members of marginalized groups (e.g. LGBTQ). Don't get me wrong, I think there are a lot of problems with the big social media companies. I just think they affect adults too and that we should address them directly.
But setting that aside, the practical implications of age gate laws are terrible. The options are basically to have an LLM guess your age based on your face, or uploading sensitive identity documents to multiple sites and hope they are stored and processed securely and not reused for other purposes.
But OK let's assume social media is always bad for kids and also that someone invents a perfect age gate... kids are just going to find places to hang out online that are less moderated and less regulated and less safe. How is that not worse?
Put it this way: is it good for a child to spend an appreciable fraction of their day browsing social media? Did children previously just have free hours at hand to burn on this? The answer is of course no, there are not more hours in the day after the creation of social media, so its usage comes at the cost of something else in that child's life, usually their precious little downtime where they might plan and think about their own life. Or maybe at the cost of other activities that might be more engaging physically or mentally.
The difference is children back then actually did see their day expand as they were removed from the workforce, making comic book consumption "free" essentially in terms of what it might have replaced just a generation previous.
More so in the cities, not as much in more rural areas where tons of kids were still doing farm work with 10 brothers and sisters along with them in the 40s-60s. After that farms had dropped quite a bit but it was still until the late 70s that farms and farm labor lost enough need for labor that caused most rural kids to completely exist the agricultural sector minus the direct sons and daughters of farmers.
It’s addictive like smoking. Addictive algorithms take away agency. I don’t think there are a lot of kids wishing they read less comic books, or played less DND (there may be some percentage wishing less video games). But it’s not like a classic generational divide where parents don’t understand it and teens are fighting for this stuff, a lot are against it themselves!
Every generation seems to pick their moral panic and then engages in "unintentional concern trolling" over it. The people mean well, but low quality evidence shouldn't be good enough to condemn things.
Indeed. The question is, how good is the evidence?
Serious question, given it kinda feels like Meta's been acting like cigarette companies back in their heyday, while X is acting like it's the plot device of a James Bond villain.
I stopped engaging in such discussions. There are some people who are reasonable and make sense, but the rest are just outright batshit crazy. They want more restraints, more censorship, more anti-privacy crap? Or they equate "good" with addictive? Come on.
Every new generation of moral panic assumes that all the children are using their time fantastically if it were not for the latest issue. Except we've gone through this like five times before so if you did the math on that then probably no kids are using their time fantastically, so social media is probably taking away from time-watching TV. Or maybe playing video games. Or, if you're a satan worshipper, Dungeons & Dragons.
I'd argue computer games are more mentally engaging than social media. It is also completely different than opening the door to anyone from perverts to ad men to foreign influence agents into your mind.
> uploading sensitive identity documents to multiple sites and hope
Go to local liquor store. Present ID. Purchase $1 anonymous age verification card. Problem solved. (Card implementation left to reader.)
> kids are just going to find places to hang out online that are less moderated and less regulated and less safe. How is that not worse?
We used to have to visit a separate forum per community/topic/whatever. There was no realtime feed shoving posts in your face. No algorithm optimizing for engagement. How was that not better?
This is actually a great idea.
It is even compatible with having private companies run the system. The real issue is distribution (online code verification is trivial).
Tbf I believe that a fully government-owned anonymous system should be the goal. The government knows you already, so creating a proof of age anonymous token should also be somewhat trivial. Truth is companies don’t want to forgo the potential profit in data mining, and governments don’t like the actual lack of control and full anonymity, otherwise we’d have this already worldwide
In theory I agree. In practice I have severe misgivings about directly incorporating government issued IDs into mundane online transactions.
I don't want "papers please" to be normalized. If the smart ID can do anonymous attestation of age then it can presumably also share various details with a requesting party. Next thing you know Facespace 365 is requiring you to provide your (attested) full legal name in order to register an account. I find that to be a highly objectionable outcome.
If things escalated beyond basic age checks that also adds hardware requirements. Would I find myself needing a smartcard reader to do anything online? The friction of needing to visit a bank in person seems like a feature to me.
What doesn't bother me is age restricted content guarded by a low fence. The bare minimum required to blunt the impact of something that appears to be analogous to an epidemic.
I may not have been following this topic closely, but I do like this suggestion. Truly anonymous age tokens should be a thing.
However, we're not going to get that because politicians would just say it is open to abuse. Anyone can go to a liquor store and supply alcohol to minors. The same would apply to anonymous age tokens. I don't know if it would be a big issue in practice, but it will in the minds of politicians.
Well first of all people shouldn't have to pay an extra tax to go online, no matter how small, because that $1 won't be $1 for more than a year even if it was legislated to start that way.
Also if such identification cards are that easy to get, it is inevitable that the majority of kids are going to get access to them. I or somebody else could go across town to different stores, get 30 different ID cards, and then sell them for $15 a piece. And that is of course assuming foreign states and people don't break or circumvent the situation and sell ID codes online.
I wouldn't be too concerned about the price. Left to private business it should remain cost competitive. Monopolized by the government legislation dictating the price be set at a small percentage plus costs should be sufficient.
Sure, you could enter the black market. Presumably that would carry similar penalties as selling alcohol to minors. People certainly do that but at least my personal experience growing up in the US was that it was substantially easier to come by narcotics in highschool than it was alcohol.
Why would a foreign state bother to interfere with such a system? Violations are even less harmful than underage alcohol consumption. (Which is itself typically fairly benign. I will never understand why people in the US make such a big deal out of it.)
If you worry about every possible thing that can go wrong you will inevitably arrive at a surveillance state. Thus these eventualities need to balance the downsides imposed by any solution with the downsides of circumvention or other abuse. In this case all that's required is a very minor but legally enforced speedbump to force the hand of website operators and nudge cultural norms towards a healthier place.
Why would foreign bodies interfere? Because it is easy money. Unless you limit the number of, and therefore access to, ID verification proofs it will inevitably be sold on the open market to any and all people. And when the problem comes up, will the state admit failure and cancel the program? Unlikely. They will more likely spend far more effort on personally identifying each person online "for the children" which just puts us back at the same problem again, except minus the cost of this whole ID verification scheme that shouldn't exist to start with.
The government issuing everyone a smart ID that lets them attest anonymously to being of legal age would be better.
But there are age gate laws today, and calls to pass more of them. A hypothetical better way in the future shouldn’t excuse legally mandating a poor implementation today.
We could distribute scratch off cards to stores within a few months. It's incredibly low tech. I can't speak to elsewhere in the world but most (possibly all?) US states run lotteries.
If a given government body can't manage to stand up a web API to validate one time use codes within a few months then they clearly don't have the technical knowhow to manage smart IDs in a secure manner.
My point being that this either doesn't qualify as hypothetical, or if it does, then it indicates gross incompetence to an extent that precludes more complex solutions as a matter of course.
A proposed solution that does not actually exist and is not proven to work is necessarily a hypothetical one. I'm not ruling out various state governments also being incompetent though.
Social media being bad for mental health in childhood is one of the most robust theories I've ever seen for these kind of society-wide problems. You can peruse the After Babel Substack for the evidence if you're not convinced, but Jonathan Haidt has consistently done incredible work here.
All due respect, I do not think the substack of one of the world's leading proponents of the theory that screen time is harmful is a good source for evidence that runs contrary to that narrative.
Here's Nature reviewing his book:
> Hundreds of researchers, myself included, have searched for the kind of large effects suggested by Haidt. Our efforts have produced a mix of no, small and mixed associations. Most data are correlative. When associations over time are found, they suggest not that social-media use predicts or causes depression, but that young people who already have mental-health problems use such platforms more often or in different ways from their healthy peers
> These are not just our data or my opinion. Several meta-analyses and systematic reviews converge on the same message. An analysis done in 72 countries shows no consistent or measurable associations between well-being and the roll-out of social media globally. Moreover, findings from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study, the largest long-term study of adolescent brain development in the United States, has found no evidence of drastic changes associated with digital-technology use. Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University, is a gifted storyteller, but his tale is currently one searching for evidence.
I actually do think that Dr. Haidt is a good source for getting a fair understanding of both sides of the issue. If you've read or listened to him you'll know that it's a huge part of his ethos.
I’m not sure highlighting studies that seem to agree with his thesis is a particularly strong defense against the charge that the totality of the evidence is mixed and inconclusive. He’s a good writer though.
Why did one study in Spain find an association with the rollout of high speed internet, but a much larger international study specifically looking at Facebook usage did not? Seems like that one should even more directly measure what’s alleged to be occurring.
Even the author of your link says "considerable reforms to these platforms are required, given how much time young people spend on them" whilst stopping short of a ban. The problem is these "considerable reforms" will always be half arsed.
There are a lot of problems with the way these platforms treat adults too. I think an age gate is the wrong solution and in many ways it doesn't go far enough.
Evidence is often contradictory, especially in the social sciences--that is not a terribly damning charge in this case. Additionally, there is evidence that relationship between social media use and anxiety/depression is not just an association, see Meta's own internal research from 2019: https://metasinternalresearch.org/#block-2e15def2e67a803a83e....
"Meta’s own researchers found — in an experiment they believed was better designed than any external study done thus far — that reducing time on their platforms improved mental health and well-being, specifically depression, anxiety, loneliness, and social comparison."
> evidence is low-quality and contradictory. For example, high social media use is associated with anxiety and depression, but which direction does that relationship run?
The evidence from device bans is pretty damn compelling.
I am less familiar with the social-media literature. But I believe we have decent efforts at disentangling causation, and to my knowledge all research not coming out of Meta and TikTok points one way.
> kids are just going to find places to hang out online that are less moderated and less regulated and less safe
If they do this isn’t great policy. If they don’t, it is. Let’s let this natural experiment play out.
People likely need a fairly large shared set of beliefs to operate without constant friction. Hence national identities. Either let people freely associate into these communities or force algorithms to be "shared" in a sense between couples or families.
I think couples' X could be interesting. But I'd prefer free association (possibly VR?)
> kids are just going to find places to hang out online that are less moderated and less regulated and less safe. How is that not worse?
Some will. But I bet a lot of kids "have to be" on Instagram/TikTok/etc because everyone else is. I don't think they all gonna flock to 4chan because they got locked out of the big platforms.
I'd argue even the darkest corners of 4chans aren't as bad as the average daily dose of brain rot delivered to hundreds of millions of people through infinite scroll algorithms on TikTok &co. And once you remove the sickening parts of 4chan I'd say it's overall a much more pleasant place than most other social medias, it's one of the last mainstream website that still somewhat feels like the golden age of internet
>I'd argue even the darkest corners of 4chans aren't as bad as the average daily dose of brain rot delivered to hundreds of millions of people through infinite scroll algorithms on TikTok
Then I'd argue you haven't actually been to the darkest corners of 4chan.
It isn't so black and white as people paint it to be. /g/ is probably the best place on the internet today to discuss technology even with occasional dumb jokes. The crassness of the site and reflexive reaction from you and others has turned out to be a great wall to prevent the corporate enshittification that affected the rest of the internet.
>Meanwhile there are documented benefits especially for youth who are members of marginalized groups (e.g. LGBTQ).
This is a thin veiled propaganda that the likes of Zuckerberg quote all the time but is misattributed. Those marginalized group of people had benefits in finding like-minded people online, mostly through forums etc. (side point: same benefit exist for marginalized group such as white supremacist)
But that's social NETWORK, and not social MEDIA. Almost all benefit people that defend social media spout is simply a social NETWORK benefit. The only advantage social MEDIA have is personalized ad, for people that like that. Everything else you get by reimplementing old, boring social network without "the algorithm".
> kids are just going to find places to hang out online that are less moderated and less regulated and less safe. How is that not worse?
I actually disagree with you. This was the internet when I was a kid, and part of the point was you had more agency. This may seem counter-intuitive, but I might prefer my kid hang out on 4chan than tik tok all day long, because at least the former feels like they’re making an intentional choice, and there’s not a multi billion dollar algorithm getting them addicted.
This is part of the point. Kids need more unregulated spaces. Your youthTM brought to you by Mark Zuckerberg is dystopian.
> But OK let's assume social media is always bad for kids and also that someone invents a perfect age gate... kids are just going to find places to hang out online that are less moderated and less regulated and less safe.
Straw man argument, much? Might as well argue "We can't make any changes, ever, just in case something else happens!
We'll address the next issue when/if it happens, same as always.
I’ve seen children be groomed to produce child pornography on Snapchat. The offender wouldn’t have access to these random children if he couldn’t simply look them up. And more importantly, his access is anonymous, so it’s much harder to stop.
> But setting that aside, the practical implications of age gate laws are terrible. The options are basically to have an LLM guess your age based on your face, or uploading sensitive identity documents to multiple sites and hope they are stored and processed securely and not reused for other purposes.
Those aren't the only options. See the comments on almost any of the many other discussions of age verification on HN for details of ways to do it that do not involve giving any sensitive information to sites (other than what you explicitly trying to give to them, like your age being above their threshold) and do not involve guessing your age via LLM or any other means.
They kind of are the only options. All of these issues are sitting on a slippery slope. If you accept a technical solution that works well, then eventually somebody is going to push that further.
If you need to use your ID to log into a website (even if the website doesn't get any of your information) then society is only a step away from the government monitoring everything you do online. And at that point it's up to them to decide whether they want to do it or not, because you're already used to the process. If they decide to violate your privacy there's nothing you can do about it other than vaguely point at privacy laws before promptly getting ignored.
I‘m starting thinking that those alternatives are deliberately ignored by the anti-verification crowd. It’s hard to explain otherwise why the most logical way to solve the problem is not in the spotlight.
No, I just don't want them. I don't want to constantly prove myself online. Screw that. If parents don't want kids to have social media then they have plenty of tools available to do that, including just not giving them a smartphone.
We should fix the actual problem (engagement driven social media) which causes polarization under adults too. This is just window dressing and gives more personal data to governments and advertisers.
It is the problem, if you see platforms that are not driving engagement (like here) they are faring much better.
And no I really don't want it. Give parents the tools to manage better and make sure the worst toxic traits of social media are banned (the EU could do this under the DSA/DMA) and there is no need to ban it for all minors then.
There's a lot of age-restricted content in Internet and plenty of use cases where digital ID is improving security/UX. When you say "I don't want it" instead of talking about your specific concerns and how they could be addressed, that is nonconstructive position I'm talking about.
I think the way this thread went is a perfect illustration of why people just "don't want it" - you started off talking about alternatives that were anonymous, and now you're talking about digital ID for "security" or even UX. Because that's how things have gone in practice.
Privacy-respecting, free, even technically superior options are regularly overlooked in favor of invasive and locked down options. See how often phone 2FA is forced "for security" when generic TOTP authenticators or passkeys could do better. Also see how specifications around passkeys are being set up to eventually squeeze out free implementations in favor of Google and Apple.
There are actual implementations that do not compromise privacy and anonymity. For example the EU is currently doing large scale field tests in several countries of such a system.
It involves your government issuing you a signed digital copy of your ID documents which gets cryptographically bound to the security hardware in your smart phone (support for other hardware security devices is planned for later).
To verify your age to a site your phone and the site use a protocol based on zero-knowledge proofs to demonstrate to the site that your phone has a bound ID document signed by your government that says your age is above the site's threshold, without disclosing anything else from your ID document to the site.
This demonstration requires the use of a key that was generated in the security hardware when the ID was bound, which shows that the site is talking to your phone and that the security hardware is unlocked, which is sufficient evidence that you have authorized this verification to satisfy the law.
Note that your government is not involved beyond the initial installation of the bound ID document on the phone. They get no information on what sites you later age verify for or when you do any age verifications.
Ok, a field test. Vs Australias actual full scale implementation, and the subsequent implementations by social media companies.
You cant honestly expect people to ignore the actual real world implementation right? Its not disingenuous to discuss whats actually been inflicted upon a full populace in favour of a test?
Not to forget that the UK was making lists of those it was providing digital licenses to. And that the UK has a history of leaking data like a sieve. The government making a list of known digital ID users can be coloured the same way.
Not to mention that not everyone will end up with a supported cryptographic device will they? Are we expecting this to run on linux without TPM 2.0? Lots of recent Linux migrants are there to avoid TPM 2.0 requirement. You keep mentioning hardware security, so I suspect its not going to be as easy as loading a certificate. Or even if extra methods for edge cases will be supported at all.
But its all still hypothetical anyway. We have an actual implementation to dissect. One that the Australian government is actively trying to sell to other countries.
What I'd hope people would be doing is that when a country like Australia is working out some system of mandatory age verification is to point to the EU system or something similar and say that if you do go through with this, how about waiting a year until that is released and then require that instead of some system that doesn't preserve privacy and anonymity?
They could point out that the EU system has been in development for years, with numerous expert reviews, all in the open with reference implementations of the protocols and apps for iOS and Android all on Github under open source licenses.
They could also point out it has been tested extensively in a series of field trials involving a large variety of sites and a large number of users, with the last two field trials scheduled to finish this year.
By simply waiting and making that the system they use they get a much more secure and privacy preserving system than what they would get otherwise, with others having already done the hard cryptographic parts and figured out usability issues and developed the apps. That's way better than going with some system that nobody was thinking about until they started working on legislation.
They could also point out that the sites they want to require age verification on will almost certain be supporting the EU system when it comes out. That's because the EU is requiring that member states that implement age verification laws require that sites accept this system. The state can allow or require accepting other system, but this one will be the one that works everywhere.
Countries that wait for the EU system and use it will then have an easier time getting companies to implement age verification in their country since those companies can simply use the same software they will be using in the EU.
As far as having a suitable device goes, in the EU somewhere in the 95-98% range of non-elderly adults have a suitable smart phone. It's higher the younger people are and is going up. Same in the US. In Australia it is around 97% of adults.
The EU is planning on later adding support for stand-alone hardware security devices which should cover those without a smart phone.
As far as government leaking lists of who has a digital ID, that's likely to be a list of most adult phone users. The overall system is not just a privacy and anonymity preserving age verification system. It's a digital wallet for storing a digital version of your physical ID card.
People will likely use it in most places they use their physical ID cards. People tend to love being able to use their phones in place of physical cards (all cards, not just ID cards), and will be getting it even if they never intend to use any sites that require age verification.
A leak that says "tzs has a digital ID on his phone" (if my country were to adopt such a system) would be about as concerning as a leak that says "tzs has his auto insurance card on his phone" or "tzs has a credit card on his phone". (This is also way car companies that let you install a digital key fob on your phone often make that a feature only on higher end trims even though it requires the exact same hardware as the lower trims. Enough people like the idea of not having to carry around the key fob that they will go up a trim level to get it).
If people can't get their government to delay until such a system is available they should be trying to get the law to include a provision that when such a system is available the government will support it and sites will have to accept it. That way they eventually get a privacy preserving option. That's a more likely way to work to get eventual privacy than trying to pass separate legislation later to add it.
I think in the end European digital ID is going to be impressive enough for others to pick up (not as impressive as using biometric data for payments in China - we don't want to go that route, but still). The integration friction will go down, the security will be tested and verification process hardened over time etc. So it doesn't really matter what opposition says at the moment and whether they will be able to tank the legislation in UK, USA or Australia. There will always be the success story in front of them, that will be hard to ignore. And literally any global website is going to support EU technology, making it major vector of innovation.
I like that this article at least links to a document with the features they want under scrutiny, but they do avoid a definition, and nearly all networked systems have at least some of the features in the document[1].
Is google docs social media? It certainly has social features and I've been witness to cyber-bullying via a shared google doc.
What about Spotify? It has social features far beyond just sharing playlists
As you say 'social media' is not a good category, we should specify exactly the things that are concerning. Here are the ones where I'm concerned about their effect on young people:
1. a user is shown new content based on extensive profiling and a secret algorithm that the user does not control
2. a users activity can be discovered and tracked by people that intend to take advantage of the user
3. the operation of the site is optimised for addiction (or more euphemistically "attention")
I absolutely don't think that a book club or a kids own website comments or person to person chat systems should be included in the rules.
Note - I'm not saying these things should be banned, just that I think it's reasonable to restrict their use to adults.
…why do all of those things happen? to sell paid digital advertisement. remove that incentive and I suspect the “social media” problems largely go away
In reality, a large enough group of people on the internet starts to turn sour. Especially with anonymity. Especially without a specific purpose like a book club. Especially without moderation.
Small groups where you know everyone is where it’s at. To avoid internet stalkers and bullies, and for general quality of the community。
Our brains are built for small communities, not billions.
The simple answer is that children should not have access to a cell phone at their leisure, or unmonitored access to a computer or tablet. Access should be limited, purposeful, and monitored when possible.
I agree with you; without the overwhelming majority of society agreeing with you it's not possible though because if one kid has a free access to a cell phone, then every person in their friend-group now has free access to that cell phone.
Discord is 100% social media. Just like WhatsApp. MSN definitely was, remember MSN Groups? MSN Chat (the IRC knock off), and a bunch of other things. As someone who has consumed social media and chat platforms, I will note that most chat platforms are social media in their own regard. Habbo Hotel is another example of social media. :)
Sorry but I don't consider WhatsApp to be in the social media category since it's just a chat app for your contacts, not an A/B algorithmically driven carousel of media to keep you hooked in and for strangers to hit you up (unless they have your phone number). However I do think Meta will try to slowly make it a social media app.
It's not just for your contacts though, in other countries WhatsApp is used like Facebook pages for your local town too. There's all sorts of group chats on WhatsApp.
Kids in 5th grade use WhatsApp for entertainment to send hundreds of messages per day filled with memes and slop. From the perspective of one kid in a class chat, this is indistinguishable from an algorithmically curated feed.
> this is indistinguishable from an algorithmically curated feed
If a classmate is sending you slop memes, then it's human curated content from an acquaintance, and not algorithmically driven, unless you consider your friends bots.
Is it? If kids grab the top result of a massively A/B tested algorithmic feed trying hook people and/or maximize the controversy / engagement, then arbitrage it onto another simpler less gamified platform... is that really human curated? There's some truth to the idea that, as long as there is any social media, everything is social media.
I absolutely agree that gamified, algorithm-driven social media should be banned for those under 16. My issue is how that should be done. I sure as shit don't want to have to present my ID to look at dank memes.
> But the right answer is still to ban advertising.
Banning platform owned advertising on social networks is already impossible. If you have any concept that is broader than that, rest assured trying it will create a dystopia that still has advertising.
I assumed they meant banning most unsolicited advertising completely, even outside of social media. Advertizing is a scourge upon humanity. We know propaganda works and is generally bad, so why should propaganda be allowed to be used for money making purposes? Especially when money itself can and is used to influence politics even more directly?
I don't think it should be banned, but I'm all for encouraging alternatives that use simple reverse-chronological and don't have the same tendency to create FOMO, a desire to check repeatedly, etc.
>I absolutely agree that gamified, algorithm-driven social media should be banned for those under 16.
I agree. It's purposely addictive and harmful to peoples' mental health.
The current situation is akin to having absolutely no regulations on cigarettes.
Personally, I'd take it a step further and ban targeting algorithms for all ages and pair that with strict data privacy laws that make the entire user data industry collapse.
Its not only gamified and algorithm driven. People are also monetarily incentivized for socially harmful behaviors. Irrespective of political affiliation. Political content is highly engaging and also highly toxic.
We recognise that children drinking alcohol is not a good thing. Adults drinking alcohol is also not a good thing, but that's up to them.
But the countries with the best relationship to alcohol are the countries that also have flexible rules about children and alcohol; most of Europe allows children to drink alcohol in a restaurant with their parents from around 12-14, and order it themselves from around 16. Alcohol is widely available, and cheap. Generally these countries don't experience binge drinking or drunken behaviour, and while alcohol consumption is high, it's not so problematic.
The Anglosphere has way more problems with binge drinking and drunken behaviour, and part of the reasons for that is that we enforce strict limits around alcohol consumption. We have strong age limits on alcohol purchases, and strong limits on who can sell alcohol and when they can sell it. There's a very authoritarian attitude to alcohol restrictions. This means that when Anglo kids hit the age limit that they're allowed to buy alcohol, they hit it hard and binge on it, with all the harms that happen because of that.
Enforcing a strong authoritarian limit on social media will have the same effect, I think. Children will have no training on how to deal with social media, no exposure to social media in limited, controlled, circumstances with the support of their parents. They'll hit 16 and be given full access to the entire range of platforms, and they'll overdo it and binge on it, with all the harms that happen because of that.
We need to get better at educating our kids on how to deal with harmful stuff. Banning it until they're "adult" isn't an answer because it doesn't train them on how to have an adult relationship to this stuff.
> They'll hit 16 and be given full access to the entire range of platforms, and they'll overdo it and binge on it, with all the harms that happen because of that.
"Full access" meaning deanonymized, with a hostile government watching over their shoulders to control online sentiment:
First, we are told, the relevant secretary of state (Michelle Donelan) expressed “concern” that the legislation might whack sites such as Amazon instead of Pornhub. In response, officials explained that the regulation in question was “not primarily aimed at … the protection of children”, but was about regulating “services that have a significant influence over public discourse”, a phrase that rather gives away the political thinking behind the act. - https://archive.md/2025.08.13-190800/https://www.thetimes.co...
Or perhaps we should watch what happens in Australia and draw lessons from it? I have a hard time telling a teenager that they cannot socialize with people just because it is via electronic means. I also do not like teenagers identities manipulated for commercial ends. Though we have done this since the 1950s. Also shouldn't we ban MTV and rock and roll music in general? It's destroying the youth!
That's a good point. The problem for me is where the line is drawn. Is a car enthusiast forum social media? How about youtube comments? I think society is generally improved when the teenage generation is at least part of discussions. We need to protect the young people but excluding them and suppressing them leads to unintended consequences. I am not a tiktok apologist. Hey Facebook used to be enemy number 1 and now it's an afterthought for many people.
I would draw a line at user customized wall of content. All content on sites should be organized in a similar way for everybody (by date, by category, etc.). I think this would reduce a lot the problems that we see currently.
If you want to be bold and imaginative, although doubt this would ever pass, any platform that focuses or allows user content, should not be allowed to show advertisements. Then the incentive to have people stay more to watch more ads would disappear.
Infinite scrolling, algorithm based (not timestamp-based), "stories" (short videos), public (non-friend) accounts make up most of the feed, ads selling views and therefore companies trying to capture attention.
A car enthusiast forum is not doing this. phpBB sites get a pass. YouTube is, though. I think YouTube is part of the brain rot, although not the comments section.
"you know it when you see it" is a trap and ripe for abuse in its own right. Your description however is pretty spot on for this moment in internet evolution.
Interesting to me is that I pay for youtube premium so I don't see any ads. They even have the jump ahead feature where you can skip in video project promotions. It's the most ad free experience I have on the internet. The comment sections are about the lowest of the low knuckle draggers and outright dimwits.
I'm also a bit out of touch because I quit all social media. Youtube shorts is about the closest I get and that's a mind sink for sure. [Edit: and hacker news which I consider social media without the ads]
I mostly use YouTube without ads, and with sponsorblock, so a similar experience.
I think YouTube shorts is exactly the experience we're talking about. And the youth watch it by scrolling up, not by selecting shorts that look interesting.
I resisted shorts for a long time, but I watch them now as well. Prefer them, even.
The fact we're not seeing ads, and that the comments are atrocious content, is irrelevant--our attention spans are at stake, not our wallets.
Anything that promotes short-form video should be looked at.
Youtube promoting shorts is bad.
A youtube long-form video about, say, car repair, or quantum physics, or a history of eastern asian languages doesn't contribute to brain rot.
The Chinese, take it for what it's worth, knew how to control TikTok. They simply banned non educational content on the platform. You want to watch a 5 minute video explaining the basics of a math theorem, or explaining a chess opening? Sure, that's cool. Stupid 30 second clips of dances, memes, reactions, etc? Nah, that's dumb.
As we can see anywhere and everywhere, moderation teams have to use their power, even when nothing is in violation of the rules. They'll start policing more content, and pretty soon they'll be arresting people.
No, in China, the people running the platforms know what is acceptable and what's not. So, once the government tells them what's cool and what's not, the companies then police themselves.
Because unlike the US, where there are effectively no real consequences for companies that skirt the law, in China, the companies wouldn't dare try to skirt the law - executives in China know they can't bribe their way out of deliberately pissing off The Party when it comes to education.
Everybody exactly knows where to draw the line... No one gives a shit about car enthusiast forums, everyone is talking about infinite scroll x targeted content x advertising powered by algorithms exclusively designed to extract your time, money and attention.
This is not helpful. "everybody" and "everyone" and "no one" are meaningless catch alls. I understand where you are coming from but this is a very limited world view that does not add anything to the conversation. I am sure that where I draw the line is not where someone else will draw the line. We do not know "exactly" where to draw the line.
Below is how New York's new law requiring social media sites defined the covered sites. It's based on how the site works, specifically if they have an "addictive feed" which is defined in the law. I'd expect most laws concerning social media would be drafted in a generally similar 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.
Can someone link me something that shows that attention spans are decreasing?
I looked into it briefly and the following two is what I found. The rest seemed to just be repeating or debunking these two claims.
1. An infographic that claims we went from 15 second attention spans to 8 seconds attention spans (as opposed to a goldfish having a 9 second attention span (how was this measured?)).
This seems BS.
2. A study that measured how long knowledge workers spent on a single screen. This dropped from 250 seconds in the early 2000s to 72 seconds in 2012 and 47 seconds more recently.
This data shows something, but I think connecting this to attention spans 1:1 doesn't seem quite right. It could just as well be that people work differently now. Eg they're more likely to pull information from another screen or document than they used to be.
they can socialize online perfectly fine. Excluded from the ban in Australia are among others, WhatsApp, Discord, Steam and Facebook Messenger. TikTok, Twitter or Instagram are not and never have been platforms in which people form social communities with their peers.
>Also shouldn't we ban MTV and rock and roll music in general?
No, because there was never any evidence that rock has harmed the youth. Jonathan Haidt, author of this piece, has conducted extensive research to show that social media does.
> Twitter or Instagram are not and never have been platforms in which people form social communities with their peers.
By peers do you mean people they know in person or demographic peers?
I'm not going to anecdata [edit: then I do] but on platforms like Facebook I only have friends that I know personally (or at least when I used to use it). Twitter was the opposite.
Oddly the most online abuse I've had is during in game chats and providing open source software but I digress...
The "rock and roll" thing is because "think of the kids" is a perennial siren call. Only sometimes is it valid. I can't speak for everyone but there seems to be a consensus that "social media" can be deeply harmful for some young people and we should not ignore it. That this one guy made a study and it happened to support his hypothesis isn't enough for this one voter to want to ban online networks of pesky teenagers calling each other names and buying stupid crap.
> I also do not like teenagers identities manipulated for commercial ends.
This. If western “liberal” “democracies” are concerned about children’s privacy then we should push back on surveillance capitalism, not force people to submit government id in order to express their opinion online.
it makes sense in terms of grooming. Most parents want to deny their children agency until they're no longer minors and giving them the internet massively undermines that idea. You're plugging your child into a stream of information that is mostly a sewer of misinformation.
The school system is a sewer of bias with 90%+ of teachers leaning left. Decentralised media is the only chance many kids have of hearing both sides of the story.
Is this a US thing? Maybe it's because your Overton window is flying miles beyond the right-end of the spectrum and you lost touch to what "left" even means?
> The school system is a sewer of bias with 90%+ of teachers leaning left.
Good thing people give a shit about teachers and pay them properly so everyone is eager to become a teacher in order to address that bias. Instead of idk, leaving it entirely as it is and just whining in a partisan fashion about how education has some sort of bias. I mean education has a lot of women who are teachers and the GOP don't appeal to a lot of women because they want to ban abortion and shit like that. So that'd probably explain it simply enough. In terms of priorities what if the massive funding went into teaching instead of recruiting for ICE? Shows to me what's important to people.
Tbh, I don't think minors need to be angry about misinformation about migrants (which is what I got in like 5m last time I created a fresh twitter account), they can wait until they're old enough to vote. They'll still fall for that shit all the same, so there's no need to be upset about it. Might as well ground our kids for their first 16/18 years before unleashing the Nick Fuentes community on them.
That is funny, because the vast majority of leftists, whether it is progressives, social democrats, socialists, or Marxists or what have you would complain that schools mostly ignore leftist ideals in favor of free market capitalism, conservative/traditional US political theory and civics, and propagandized history that always assumes the US was a good guy acting in good faith.
Am I crazy for thinking setting age limits is just a lazy half measure by politicians who don't want to actually draft meaningful legislation for social media?
Like the negatives of social media aren't just isolated to just kids and while shielding them from it is generally a good thing it still seems like putting duct tape over a giant crack in the foundation.
No at all, this is my actual problem with the proposal.
We're 6 months away from the news report about "the new thing kids are using on the Internet" but the open propaganda and AI forgeries on Twitter and Facebook will continue to do their work on everyone else.
doing nothing. Governments typically marginalise techies when it comes to decision making, so the least they can do is make the call of lesser harm.
If kids really want to use social media, they'll find a way. Its more about making it hard/impossible for those who haven't yet grasped their agency. As ever, its about electors and in this case: parents.
- Will the ban in australia catch everyone, No.
- Does this present some privacy issues, Yes.
But the reality is we needed to do something to combat what this is doing to our kids, while it might not be harmful content per-see there are serious effects its having to attention spans, warped perceptions of normality that these algos do to both normal folks, older folks and young children.
What i think the aus legislation does tho is give parents ammunition to enforce good practices on their kids that might have been difficult when "everyone at school uses tiktok etc".
Much the same way drinking laws etc give parents an ability to push back on underage drinking etc. It's illegal is a far easier argument to make to a teenager vs it'll rot your brain.
This is not a black and white issue and those that treat it as such do a dis-service to a serious problem, we need to iterate on smart legislation and controls (zero trust proofs for example) that allow for safe and open internet for everyone.
The impacts of social media on children (and adults for that matter) are becoming more clear by the day but a question, I think, is is it the format/function or is it the algorithm to drive the feed that is the issue? So, for instance, pushing damaging teen influencers at a child's feed or pushing negative/polarizing content, etc etc. Could there be safe social media, that wouldn't need verification, if for instance the algorithm was 'dumb' and just showed friend feeds and feeds specifically selected to follow?
The necessity we have for infinite unsustainable growth will always result in unsafe social media. Safe social media requires altruistic and benevolent intentions.
One study tested whether using TikTok/Reels/Shorts in the typical way, skipping videos any time the user wants has a short-term impact on prospective memory. The result was that there is a significant negative impact immediately after a ten minute session.
That's cause for concern given that people regularly use these apps on short breaks throughout their days, and especially problematic if they're using the apps as their main source of news.
>if for instance the algorithm was 'dumb' and just showed friend feeds and feeds specifically selected to follow?
That is how it used to work on facebook But social media was still toxic to teens even back then from the pressures they'd put on eachother, expectations for posting, etc.
That is making an argument that teens shouldn't interact since that generically describes many teen's lives at school. I don't know that we have good studies on 'dumb' social media vs weaponized social media compared to normal interactions for the target group.
TBH cigarettes were chemically designed to cause addiction, most music stars smoked cigarettes, then kids did follow them and also smoked. Will not even mention alcohol.
I actually am convinced that it does make Satan worshipping more popular or at least normalized. See: Tumblr. You can say whatever about whether it's good or bad or ironic, but it did happen.
I don't want them to do that because it would also mean I would have to prove I'm 16 everywhere that can be considered social media. No thanks. We have enough of that BS already. Even if it can be done in a privacy-conscious way I don't want it. And will avoid it by VPN etc.
Just leave parenting to the parents. And fix toxic social media (the real root cause of the issue) or ban them altogether.
Yeah as an Australian I thought this would be the case and I'd have to stop using Facebook etc (because there's no way I'm uploading ID or whatever to keep using it). Turns out because I created my account over 16 years ago they're happy to assume that I'm at least 16 years old. Which makes sense but I didn't anticipate it going that way.
Also what we see here in EU is that some sites (e.g. porn sites who already have to use age verification) demand it periodically, probably so you don't create one and give the credentials to a minor or something.
In fact it's becoming pretty insane here, even my bank and phone provider want me to come in and show my ID every few years. As if I suddenly became another person?? I kinda snapped at them last time because of these retarded processes and I felt bad then because I know it's not the employee's fault but it's just so ridiculous. I'm getting so sick of this pervasive tracking and monitoring in society with everything we do.
There are two objectives that western regimes have for pushing these draconian measures: the first is to end the historically unprecedented era of free and anonymous political speech by ordinary people. The second is to prevent anti-imperialist arguments and perspectives from reaching the eyes and ears of young western people. Young people will only hear the perspectives taught in government school and on corporate media. No choosing a different perspective early in life.
On the idea that this is needed to “protect children” it is the job of parents not the state to decide what media their children consume. If you want to make that easier for parents then regulate and mandate parental controls and make sure parents always have the choice.
We shouldn't ban social media we should ban algorithmically curated feeds that push any specific type of content. Outrage sells and so platform curated feeds have curated outrage and extreme content.
In practice I haven't seen much useful political discourse by the average person, but as long as we don't selectively amplify voices through machine signals and they NATURALLY accrue followings then whatever I guess.
So you say, but I don't think social media companies are benign or have the best interest of visitors at heart. If anything they make it far easier to identify users who are susceptible to propaganda and feed it to them in bulk.
Too bad, they have too much money to bribe lawmakers with. Zuck is worth a quarter trillion dollars, and he ain't in a rush to give up so much as a penny of that if it doesn't fufill his goals of enriching himself further.
Giving the state the power to regulate social media will just allow the the state to censor and control information again like it does with traditional media.
Exactly. The fact that western governments have held that the corporations themselves have a free speech right to control your feed and speech but you do not have a free speech right to choose what the algorithm feeds you or what you say is absolutely stunning and reveals that capitalism is more powerful than liberalism in the west.
i totally agree, but the solution to corporate manipulation of our feed is to regulate social media so that the first amendment applies to the algorithm so the companies themselves dont have the power to push their own propaganda. People should decide for themselves what perspectives they agree with online.
> i totally agree, but the solution to corporate manipulation of our feed is to regulate social media so that the first amendment applies to the algorithm so the companies themselves dont have the power to push their own propaganda.
What does it mean for the 1st to apply to the algorithm? For example, who would have to do what in order to violate the algorithm's 1st amendment rights?
> the first is to end the historically unprecedented era of free and anonymous political speech by ordinary people. The second is to prevent anti-imperialist arguments and perspectives from reaching the eyes and ears of young western people. Young people will only hear the perspectives taught in government school and on corporate media. No choosing a different perspective early in life.
Yet my motherland, the nation with arguably the most liberal social media in the world and the least functional school system among "western regimes", is the most socially polarized, has voted in an insecure bully on a platform of hate and prejudice, and is about to plunge into imperialistic conquest, possibly against our allies for 70 years. I can't see how age-gating social media can do any more harm.
Well said. The value of free speech is that all perspectives are heard, so that the best hopefully prevails. Social media is not doing that. You only see the shit you already agree with or the most ridiculous and extreme points on the other side.
> The second is to prevent anti-imperialist arguments and perspectives from reaching the eyes and ears of young western people.
Sounds like you're complaining that these measures will make it hard for authoritarian governments to astroturf young western people so that they radicalize and hate each other more.
Because everything my government does is good and everything the other governments do is bad, as that's what the state-sponsored media I consume told me!
There's been some pretty clear information from countries enacting online ID laws that they want it precisely so that they can control discourse, not for any kind of protection. This isn't a hypothetical, it's the actual stated goals.
> The U.K. Online Safety Act was (avowedly, as revealed in a recent High Court case) “not primarily aimed at protecting children” but at regulating “services that have a significant influence over public discourse.”
> There's been some pretty clear information from countries enacting online ID laws that they want it precisely so that they can control discourse, not for any kind of protection.
I'm not seeing how it's an example showing that they're doing it "precisely so that they can control discourse".
You could still argue that ID checks are done to partition content by underage/adult which for many is a reasonable thing to do absent any better solutions.
I don't think that social media has had that effect in practice.
We're all scrolling through algorithmic feeds on walled gardens owned by some of the greatest capitalists in history. Domestic and foreign disinformation campaigns are not uncommon, and have affected election results and fomented atrocities (as in Myanmar). The US, which birthed most of these technologies, has grown more imperialistic and conservative since their adoption.
EDIT: I saw your edit. I agree that enforcing an industry-wide standard for parental controls, preferable one that can be set per-device and must be respected by all social media services, is the right way to do this. Internet ID laws are dystopian insanity.
There are a lot of problems with age verification schemes, but you are doing your position a disservice by suggesting that anybody that doesn't want their kid to be bullied on Snapchat is actually just a puppet of fascist regimes trying to stifle political speech.
You should learn to appreciate the nuance of opinions that differ from your own if you actually want to, you know, convince anyone of anything.
>anybody that doesn't want their kid to be bullied on Snapchat is actually just a puppet of fascist regimes trying to stifle political speech.
They are fascists if they want to prevent everybody else's kids using social media just because they're too shitty parents to teach their own kids that sticks and stones may break my bones but names can never hurt me.
The problems of plastic waste isn’t because the end user didn't recycle; it’s a failure of companies to stop producing garbage in the first place, and they should be accountable for the harm it causes. I know that’s not how it works, but I can dream. Band-aids are easier.
The problems of social media, addictive algorithms and attention theft shouldn’t be blamed on end users. It should be on the companies that design these garbage systems, and they should be held responsible. I know that’s not how it works, but I can dream. Band-aids are easier.
Aren't age limits already in the ToS of most social media platforms? If the parents/children break the ToS their accounts should be deleted and their emails or even IPs banned.
I don't really see why we need more government involvement here. It's just going to be ham-fisted and create unintended consequences like the kids in Australia having to use adult YouTube because they can't have a kids account anymore.
It’s governments with similar cultures and practices, all tackling a relatively new phenomenon.
Coming up with similar laws could just be convergent evolution rather than coordination.
You also can’t discount that once one country has tried it others that we’re considering similar legislation are much more likely to take the plunge if the outcomes in the first country aren’t negative
I continue to be broadly in favour of this idea. I agree that there's some wiggle room around the specific age (15 vs 16), but for a population-level change you just need to pick an arbitrary value, implement, and re-assess later. I also acknowledge that 1) online age-gate mechanisms tend to suck, 2) the evidence of harm is weak, and 3) it really should be up to parents to manage at the individual level. But ultimately, I feel that a restriction like this would be a net positive for the mental health of the vast majority of young teens.
Make the change, assess the effects, adjust/repeal as needed (just like everything else). It seems like the kind of change that's well-suited to undoing later, in case of unintended consequences. It's not like we're going to be permanently stunting the growth of an entire cohort or something.
And what happens when someone under that age needs to anonymously ask for advice on the internet?
Most folks hit puberty at around 13. Imagine your parents have divorced -- your new stepfather is very religious. Your phone and laptop have spyways ("parenting software") on them. You manage to get onto a terminal at the public library. You've missed your period -- you're afraid you're pregnant, and not sure how much time you have to do something about it.
There are so many edge cases where the benefits of access to social media outweigh the harms -- but we've framed this as a discussion about selfies and sharing when it's really about free expression, and there are so many dark turns a young life can take that are made darker if they're left to their family and friends to rely on for help.
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>invocation of free expression as the supreme unbridled right even for teenagers who wouldn’t even understand what you’re talking about
i got into policy partly by reading eff's deeplinks in my very early teens, but hey, go ahead and assume just because you were incapable of nuanced thought when you were violating COPPA to participate in public life everyone is.
Sure there are disadvantages with almost any policy but as a parent of teens I’ll take those any day in exchange for a ban. Even in your scenario it doesn’t prevent them from researching online. And the sad reality is that they’re more likely to ask GPT for advice than on some forum.
why should your opinion matter more because you're a parent? in my experience, folks with the economic comfort to create children by choice tend to be extreme machavellian and justify said machinations by the fact they must provide for the children they have thrust into an overpopulated world. as a nonparent, i'm less biased towards the natalist mindset and thus my opinion should be weighed more, not less than yours.
100% if those are the alternatives, I would never trust the top results for google which we all know are seriously gamed. In a number of states librarians are mandatory reporters, and even in places where they aren't if kids start asking them such questions they are going to call either their school or the kid's parents which could cause a much worse situation considering they were avoiding asking their parents in the first place.
no solution will ever be perfect but social media is infinitely more net-negative for kids, period. just as your example paint a picture of someone in dire need of help outside of friends / family they get easily get wrong help and suffer severe consequences (“drink bleach and you won’t get pregnant”)
How do you do it without harming privacy? How do you do it without nasty attestation that basically bans GNU/Linux? How do you handle children interested in topics (like programming) which only online platforms can sustain well? And allowing logged-out access is just keeping the worst parts, as the algorithms will keep showing the popular stuff, like those TikTok challenges.
I propose, instead, banning recommendation algorithms. This would ensure that only content which genuinely interests people will be shown, not some weird brainrot just because it's popular.
The question is, what falls in the scope of social media?
Would IRC count? And considering it's not entirely difficult to set up an IRCd server (you can literally run it on a spare computer or inside a VM), would the state be branding teenagers as criminals for doing so?
>
Would IRC count? And considering it's not entirely difficult to set up an IRCd server (you can literally run it on a spare computer or inside a VM), would the state be branding teenagers as criminals for doing so?
That's the idea: the government wants to set up laws to punish people who set up communication infrastructures that are not officially approved by the government.
I was thinking as an alternative to this, a question of what education or orientation might be given to teens so that they might avoid some of the problems of social media that have led to people wanting to ban social media
Even though alcohol is provably toxic at any age, and more harmful the younger you are, we cannot agree on the correct drinking age: 21 in the US vs 14 in Germany. Laws aren’t perfect and they have second order effects, which is why it’s important to make such decisions based on individual circumstances. Parents - not almighty bureaucrats and especially not random bloggers on the internet - should decide when you’re ready for your first sip of social media.
In 2050 people will say "Do you remember social media?" and someone will say "Oh yeah, those online systems where everything you said was used to build a marketing profile of you? Where every picture you posted of your girlfriend / wife / sister / daughter / aunt / grandmother or child was taken by some weirdo and turned into porn? Where our kids hung out and were radicalized by fanatics and foreign powers?"
If this were to take effect with the bulk of social life taking place digitally we can expect minimum voting ages to be decreased the same and in the case of the US, the age of consent for sex to be standardized in the same direction too with a deemphasis on 18 as the de facto minimum at the cultural level.
And we can expect 15 year olds to hit the workforce full-time around then too I reckon. Or younger. Imagine 9 year olds stowed away in Waymo taxi trunks with socket wrenches and cyberdecks.
How do you define a social media account? Some laws were including youtube in that list.
I can't see how preventing someone from watching youtube videos would be a net positive, but if you allow youtube whiteout an account then why not reddit, why not snapchat as that's how most kids i know communicate and organize their sporting events, etc.
Am I supposed to use ewww sms again to talk with the kids, because they're not allowed on WhatsApp?
If the post is from an US centric point of view, are the kids going to not communicate at all outside school, because if they play outside someone is going to call child protection?
I am not a fan of governments controlling the internet and of Australia in this regard in particular, but Feature 4 makes it all acceptable to me. We shouldn't ban all of web 2.0, people, including children, have right to talk to each other, but gamified, attention-leeching design is absolutely harmful, and I would be happy to see banned for everyone
If something is unacceptable for a 15 year old, it is unacceptable for the majority of the adult population too. I do not support age restrictions on information in any form. If you don't want your kids to do or view certain things, that is your problem to solve. There are plenty of parental control options and apps already, we have had legislation proposed to label adult content, the reason all this verification crap keeps getting pushed is because corporations want your full identity to sell and fascist supporters want to dox everyone and their ideas and activities for the government to control and punish people for.
I think banning is the wrong method, since it keeps the incentive to target teens: They are a very profitable consumer group.
One could consider taxing the revenue for adds and content show to teens at an absurdly high rate and apply that as a default unless the consumer is prooven to be an adult.
> I think banning is the wrong method, since it keeps the incentive to target teens: They are a very profitable consumer group.
This does not fit my experience:
As a teenager (and as a university student), you barely have any money available. The value in targeting these users rather lies in forming their long-term values and long-time preferences (which rather few companies keep in mind: they are just looking for the next quarter).
On the other hand, grown-up nerds who are intellectually under-stimulated or frustrated in their jobs are quite a profitable consumer group. :-)
Is this ban actually effective and going to be enforced, anyway? My 15-year old niece just returned from Australia where she reports she was definitely still able to access Tik Tok and Instagram while in the country. Her similarly-aged Australian cousins thought it was all a bit of a joke too, apparently.
I agree with the direction but the solution is just wrong. I know back when I was 12-16 my only outlet was online. Whether it was healthy I don't know, but it was better than telling my parents how I felt.
As someone who grew up with the internet, I disagree completely. Sheltering kids doesn’t do anything good, and is equivalent to child abuse in my opinion.
I recall going to a Subway in TX some years ago and making some slightly risque remarks - we are Brits (ooh er missus). We were mildly scolded that "minors are present". The minor in question was 20 years old, we were told.
So today but at least kids get spared? Jokes aside, we do need moderation of digital platforms but it feels like in the US political landscape at least, that would do more harm that good.
Re-posting an older comment of mine on the subject:
Here's a couple of arguments I had to deal with whilst expressing my support for electronics ban at schools including a blanket social media ban:
1) "Since when do we consider it OK for the government to intervene between the parents and their children and telling them whats good and whats not? They know best."
2) "Whoever does not want to use electronics at school grounds are free to do so who are we to constrain them? Also, forbidding things never works let them learn."
3) "I think you are underestimating children; if they see that what they are doing with electronics affects them in any way, they will stop using them. Lets give them some credit and let them make their mistakes."
All of which are anti phone-ban/anti-regulation/pro-liberal/freemarketeering masquerading as a product of independent thought.
Why not just make it 18. Would simplify everything so much. With expectations that everyone is adult. No need to control the content anymore. Porn for example could be freely shared.
Maybe the problem isn't the teens. Bullying is bullying no matter where it happens.
Profiting via dark patterns is despicable, whether it's preying on teens or the elderly. How many elderly people are fed distorted, sensational news and believe it wholesale? At least our teens have learned to be skeptics.
Instead of punishing the innocent to gatekeep a system that is one of the most important innovations in history, maybe we should focus on the root cause: the crappified, ad-based internet that glorifies "clicks" above all else.
We might have to face the fact that "free" accounts have become too expensive. If the cost of a free internet is a business model that monetizes outrage and addiction, it's not working. I don't love the idea of paid-only access or enforced identity, but applying a single standard to everyone might be better than what we have now.
I still believe in the free internet, and I know what I want to do to build it: Make excellent content. Teach good things.
I want to prove the value of an open and positive system.
Restricting speech based on a protected demographic of ageism is wrong and shouldnt happen.
But at the same time, I wonder how much of online political speech is actually poisoned by angsty immature low-info teens.
But I do expect it's less than dishonesty. People who are parodies pushing negative stereotypes or dishonest positions of their political opponents.
What would online political speech look like if everyone genuinely represented their own views as well as they could; including admitting when they simply dont know. Might be an enlightenment event on its own.
Whenever this comes up people point out, 'Come on, let parents decide for their kids!' -- I sympathize with this argument, but let me explain why I don't believe that actually fixes the real problem. For reference, I'm gen-Z, COVID hit while I was in highschool, and I have seen and to this day see Tiktok / Reels / Shorts used every day by my friends (and to some extent me).
I may not be having kids for a while yet, but if I had teenagers today I would absolutely move somewhere where it is not legal for kids to have social media accounts. The underlying problem is that this isn't an individual problem, it's a social one! If a teenager's friends all have social media, he is going to be left out! It is going to severely hurt his life. Even if he never watches short-form video (the main component of social media I think is detrimental), his friends will! When I was in highschool sometimes my friends and I would get together and we would be bored, have no clue what to do. Instead of messing around doing random things, a couple of them would just open up Instagram reels and bam, afternoon wasted. If the half the group isn't trying to do something, you aren't going to do anything. Contrast this with before I was a teenager and before phones, I vividly remember me and my friends just exploring and doing random things. It's just a different experience and I think social media needs to be banned for everyone for it to be effective.
I am surprised to see the positive takes on this sort of thing on HN considering that we all know that is just the first step of many steps that the current governments worldwide are rolling out.
Once we agree to that, then next time, you'll need to upload your ID to do something else and by the way you don't mind proving that you are not a psychopath and/or a sexual predator if you want to keep using WhatsApp/Telegram and other services?
You also don't mind if we scan your private messages now, do you? We just want to make sure that you are are not some sort of extremist/activist or someone who might cause trouble.
The slippery slope is real.
We look down at China, Russia and Iran for silencing the voices of the protesters and dissidents but we are slowly building the infrastructure that will enable future governments to do just that in the future.
Once everything is locked down and tied to your real ID, then it will be extremely easy to suppress view points or things that any government left or right doesnt want to see spread in the wild. What then?
And those who say, well, we should just wait and see what happens in Australia because if it doesn't work out then we can always turn it off or something, my question to you is when have you seen a government go back on something like this?
> Does it worry anyone else that this is all actually a government attack on anonymity? [...] Is this just stealth digital ID cards?
Of course this is the intention, or did anybody seriously believe that politicians deeply care about protecting the children? "But you have to think of the children ..." is just the argument silence the critics of these to-be surveillance laws.
The issue lies not in shielding adolescents from the internet because of their susceptibility to negative influences, but in the very economic logic that governs the internet.
They’ve built a system where everyone—not just kids—is a bargaining chip. Influence is treated as a product and sold by deliberately creating viral trends. It’s no different from advertising, but much more aggressive. By pushing content through entire information streams and dominating attention, it achieves an impact traditional ads never could.
It’s proven to be extremely effective, so people keep paying for it and pushing the system forward, while brushing off criticism with cosmetic fixes—like banning kids from the internet and telling adults to just deal with it.
Terrible policy. It denies freedom of expression to an entire class of citizens and their parents. This should be unconstitutional in most of North America and Western Europe.
I was a kid online with BBS' in the 1980s when I was 10 years old and met many of my best friends that way. I have teens that met their close friends locally online too. This will also just lead to parents creating accounts for the kids. I'd much rather have parental controls to manage my kids account.
And if the issue is bad parents , it isn't the role of the state to be a nanny. Safeguards and laws yes, but this is too far and almost totalitarian. Political parties that adopt this stance should be laughed out of power.
Worse, these authors are not interested in debate, they just delete comments that don't agree with them. Charlatans.
> Every Country Should Set 16 as the Minimum Age for [Manipulation] Media Accounts
FTFY.
That is the real problem, no? The combination of surveillance, analysis of the surveilled data, very active feed manipulation based on that surveillance, and indirect business models that both finance and direct the specific manipulation.
Kids should be social. They should connect.
I think we do a grave disservice to our ability to reason about online safety by letting "social" be applied to what is largely interaction with adversarial/amoral value extracting algorithms, model-in-the-middle intermediating human connections, as if the result was any kind of natural social behavior.
Honestly it should be even older than that. Should be 21. Let's not let easily influenced teenagers on what are effectively mass advertising platforms designed to make the likes of Mark Zuckerberg even more money.
Did they really need to push the evil lever to 100% just for engagement? Or could they have pushed back on shareholders just a teeny bit, in the name of long term legislative freedom?
People under 16 should not be permitted to socialize or express themselves, nor should they be allowed to hear words from adults at all, not just online.
I think this makes total sense, when I was 15 there was no social media and we socialized just fine over beers at an unattended construction site (ok also playing soccer but I do fondly remember opening bottles on rebar). Kids these days! /s
I disagree, many children have a unique view into problems that adults may be unaware of. Since they don't have to make back living expenses, they have a prime opportunity to make a start up.
Most children don’t and most children need to be protected until adulthood when they have a better idea about the consequences of their decisions. Tragedy of the commons again.
I think stuff like this, is trying to recreate a world that doesn't exist anymore. With whom, are you gonna go play in the woods with, that haven't already been bulldozed into housing and strip malls? Do you need to watch YouTube only on a parent's TV that's logged in, even for homework help? Some kids start working at 14 or 15: they can be trusted to work somewhere outside of home, but not online? What about Steam games? What about any games? What about hobby & fan forums, that have nothing to do with "grooming" or grabbing eyeballs? What's next, an Internet license?
The YouTube situation is the biggest self-own in Australia's implementation. Previously kids under 16 could have an account under a parent's Family, and there are full parental controls and monitoring. Now kids can't have these accounts, so they can only access youtube without signing in. Meaning zero parental controls and monitoring. Oh and have you seen what youtube looks like when you're not logged in!?
Give parents control over parenting.
Fully agree. I have no issues with the social media laws as they don't impact my family at all except for YouTube. Accounts under Family Link control should have been allowed as they are overseen by an 18+ parent.
Youtube should have voluntarily removed shorts and the front page or made them available as a parental control to appease the regulator. When I wrote to the minister they used YouTube's addictive algorithms as justification for including them as social media which I do agree with.
We had curated kids logins with age restrictions, subscriptions, and ad free under premium and also youtube music with individual playlists they used for instrument practice etc. We had to shift music platform. I know we can replicate a lot of this with special apps and browser extensions but this was a single cross platform solution that was working for responsible parents. To be fair it is partly YouTube's fault for prioritizing Shorts and watch time over quality.
Fully agree, responsible parents should not allow their kids (including teenagers) to use Shorts or TikTok. It is a shame that YouTube does not support blocking that crap. It is obvious "Don't be evil" is not Google's motto anymore.
For YouTube, in the case of Shorts, parents can now limit or block them altogether.
https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/14/youtube-now-has-a-way-for-...
Can I prevent shorts from showing up for me?
You can create two Google accounts and parental control yourself. You can also use ublock or other browser addons, and of course, NewPipe. Youtube should have more settings for this, it's clearly going down the drain, but it's not like you can do nothing.
Honestly, it's one of the reasons I don't want to pay for Youtube Red, why would I pay for "no ads", when I still feel like I'm the product, because of my complete lack of control over the algorithm and user experience.
> I have no issues with the social media laws as they don't impact my family
This is probably the most common reason for why our society is in the shitters wrt. laws. I find it problematic that people only care after they have been shown they are affected. Look at any anti-privacy laws. No one cares until they get thrown into jail for posting memes online.
Honestly. I am totally unable to understand that mindset, even if I may not actively work against everything because of limitations of time and energy
> Youtube should have voluntarily removed shorts and the front page or made them available as a parental control to appease the regulator.
I honestly don't "get" the hate for YouTube Shorts:
While I clearly do prefer long-form videos on YouTube, in my Shorts feed I see videos that are, well, simply more short-form (admittedly because of the short length they are often more "shallow", but for sure not below some level that I would find annoying or unacceptable (and I think I am fast with such strong judgements)). So, at least judging from my Shorts feed, I can barely see any video that I would consider to be objectionable if I were a parent. It is quite possible that the YouTube algorithm detected very fast that I belong to a demographic that is not interested in particular kinds of videos that are perhaps common on YouTube Shorts and thus simply does not show them to me in my Shorts feed, so I am simply not aware of them.
So, seriously: why the huge hate for YouTube Shorts in particular concerning parenting?
for kids, who are never exposed to youtube. I would assume there is a higher chance of them getting addicted to shorts.
> We had to shift music platform. I know we can replicate a lot of this ...
As far as practical solutions go a cheap VPS and a wireguard connection should let you continue with business as usual. From the perspective of YouTube maybe you moved to NZ or something.
> they used YouTube's addictive algorithms as justification for including them as social media
Did they provide YouTube the option of swapping out those algorithms to be exempted from the new law? It seems like this law was perhaps not a bad idea but the execution poorly thought out.
I won't be chasing an increasingly shitty online experience. I imported chromecasts before they were ever released here and had them connected via vpn to a US vps before services like Netflix went global. The pricing and content were really good value back then. Increasingly the relationship with big companies feels abusive. We are moving more towards self hosting, using physical media and changing lifestyle. Disconnecting isn't so bad.
I agree with you in spirit , however nobody was taught how to raise their kids in an age of incessant hyperstimulation , and people in general don't go out of their way to learn things properly
> Now kids can't have these accounts, so they can only access youtube without signing in. Meaning zero parental controls and monitoring
This sounds like a device-control problem. Banning social media and then regulating devices in school should go a long way towards defusing the challenge.
Even with anonymous log-in, the new status quo is a release from algorithmic targeting. (If YouTube is building shadow profiles and knowingly serving under-16-year olds, that can be fixed with enforcement.) I suspect this group of kids will grow up fitter despite the reduced opportunities for helicopter parenting. There are lots of parents who never try, or try and fail, to control and monitor their kids’ online activities. Way more than those who effectively do so.
> Give parents control over parenting.
The problem isn't lack of control, it's the lazy attitude from parents who're shocked that they have to actually do their own job of raising their progeny.
They'd rather abdicate that responsibility to the government, who in turn love the idea because it means more control.
> 5 years ago one parent's income was enough
> now both parents working
> barely enough to keep up with expenses and chores
> child has no allowance to go out
> very limited spaces to go out for free
> live in a poorer area where safe and nice places that are free require a chaperone
> child's friends in the same socioeconomic group all have similar situation
> computers provide accessible distraction during parents' only few minutes of downtime during the day
> are parents lazy?
People aren't forced to have kids though.. If they don't really want them or can't accomodate them in their lives just don't have any. I've never had any because I don't want to give up my freedom and relaxation either.
And one income hasn't been enough for much longer than 5 years. Especially in housing.
I see a lot of people around me that seem to pretty much hate having kids and they probably did it just because of social/family pressure or something. They always treat them like a nuisance and fob them off with a tablet. Really, just don't have them then. The world is already so overpopulated which is one of the causes of tension (migration, fighting over resources, climate/pollution).
I would argue that evolution’s primary driving force is not something so easily resisted. It is literally a person’s only purpose when you strip everything else away. I would be careful to handwave away another person’s desire to have children.
5 years ago single income households were feasible for a subset of the population. Yes that subset has been decreasing for a while. But the last 5 years or so have eroded it so much more.
And pointing at struggling children/parents as the source of society’s ills is a low blow. When there are individual humans who have accumulated so much resources that they can feed an entire country for a few days at a single thought and _still_ have enough left over to live comfortably. You are looking at the wrong place to blame, in my opinion.
> It is literally a person’s only purpose when you strip everything else away.
And then you strip that away too, leaving us with our true purpose at the core of everything else - to simply exist. To live and then to die. That is our true purpose.
I'm not pointing at them as a source of society's ills. I don't think society (as in socially) is ill at all, except for conservatives that are trying to tell us how to live our lives.
I do think the human population as-is is unsustainably big though but I'm not blaming individuals for it. And luckily enough the population growth seems to be plateauing anyway. I think it would be great if we shrink by half or so, life would be a lot easier. Yes, the wealth distribution is a massive issue too, but decreasing this will actually make things worse. All these ultra-rich are just sitting on their money. They have as much money as say 100.000 normal people but they are not buying 100.000x as many things. In fact I often wonder why they care so much about accumulating ever more wealth if they already have so much more than they could ever spend in a lifetime.
But once all the poor people in China and India will want to have a big house, a car etc like us then we will really have a resource problem.
But for me having kids is not a purpose at all. Perhaps that colours my ease with which I dismiss it. I just know several parents that mainly talk about their kids in a dismissive/nuisance way and I wonder why they ever bothered to have them in the first place.
Having children is one of the most basic human instincts, and honestly it's kind of disgusting how you dismiss many parents as obviously hating their kids. Do we complain sometimes? Yes, parenting is hard.
It's both. Saying "the problem" is the parents, implying there's one problem and that's it, is ridiculous. There's a lot of factors that go into why raising a good, caring, strong, self sufficient child is difficult.
We see this same type of argument from the "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps; if you weren't lazy you'd succeed" crowd. It's a stupid argument there, and it's just as stupid here. The world is complicated, and working to improve things from multiple angles is good, and improves the changes of success; for everyone.
Do you feel the same way about restrictions to gambling and drug access? Why not just let the parents parent.
A stronger solution is a combination of both approaches.
Well put
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For that, we have to give control over clients to consumers. In the model of the past the company provides the client and so the client is accountable to the company not the consumer. Only the web browser has ever come close to changing that, but there's not many of us left still fighting for third party clients, even on the web
Huh? I’ve never understood this, and coincidentally it’s a talking point constantly pushed by Google in Australia.
If they could use YouTube without signing in now, they could do so before.
The whole argument is utterly nonsensical.
When not signed in, you get no videos at all, just a "Sign In To Confirm You're Not A Bot" screen.
In my 40s now, I can recall dozens of "we should..." statements from myself and others. Typically, these statements were driven by some personal mishap, and the statement is basically forgotten (because it was never a big deal to begin with). But occasionally, some well-read/educated (often with a philosophical bias) will allow a small complaint to consume them, forcing them to write extensively about it, while the world continues to change at increasing speed.
But there's a huge market for this kind of writing: it's all the other people that have similar thoughts but not the time to actually write it.
> What about Steam games? What about any games?
I wouldn't mind restricting access for children to certain types of games such as those with gambling (surprise) mechanics. It's a clear example of harmful media that is at least in some cases exclusively engineered and marketed towards children.
> What's next, an Internet license?
That’s exactly my concern here. Trying to solve a problem with good intent by proposing solutions that hurt the overall environment.
The preponderance of evidence, much of it from Meta's own internal communications, indicates that social media harms teens, and especially girls, in ways ranging from sleep deprivation to eating disorders to anxiety to depression to sexual grooming to suicide. Many of us adults see it as a moral duty to try to stop this, though YMMV (your morals may vary). Kids did homework before YouTube; and yes it is reasonable to propose that a teen can babysit outside their home yet not be exposed to hardcore porn on X, etc.
Your argument seems to be a false choice between "either kids play in the woods or they play online in toxic social media hellscapes". Yes it is tragic that some components of a great childhood are impossible now for so many children. But this doesn't imply we must now let them play with guns and matches and razorblades.
I have a friend who works with lots of young people whom she routinely tries to get to come to organized events but they often can't make it because they're attending the funerals of friends who've committed suicide. It's almost unbelievable how bad it is. This genie absolutely must be put back in the bottle by any means possible, and society is trying to figure out how.
[Edit: removed reference to whataboutism]
You say people did homework before YouTube, that is true; however for me I used YouTube to learn a huge amount outside of school, for example programming. I am vastly a better person for having access to YouTube pre-16 due to the amount of educational content, it is the single best way to learn stuff outside of school when you don't have much money due to being young. I genuinely would know a lot less about many, many topics if I didn't have YouTube before I was 16, and realising that has put me off the idea of a social media ban for children entirely. Although in my head YouTube was/is different to social media; I am not using YouTube to be social unlike how e.g. Instagram may be used.
To me YouTube is more comparable to if TV contained anything you were interested in or wanted to learn about, on demand, for free, and accessible to anyone than it is to social media and therefore maybe shouldn't be grouped with them.
Moral "imperatives" and "think of the children" are major red flags. The genie is not going back in the bottle - technology only moves forward. The answer is simply education - both for children and parents. This is a multi-generational effort but humanity will adapt.
Throwing bans at the problem is not the answer. Legislation is almost never the answer. As many have highlighted this will be twisted into even worse control over human thought.
The problem is simply algorithmic feeds. They are just as destructive for adults and society at large. Maybe there can be some general regulation or tooling in this space, however society really needs to arrive at this itself. Governance originates from society not the other way around. If you need governance to enforce your societal "fix" something is wrong with it.
You can not anticipate the next technological impact - and they _are_ coming. Throwing shit at the wall in the form of law is only going to make things worse for that next change. Education and upbringing has to be much more experimental and adaptive.
The answer is get better at parenting - nobody wants to hear that but that really is it. Look how people bemoan the education system these days. If you trust anyone in education it is a total disaster. Everyone wants an easy fix and the economy places no value on time spent in these pursuits. You can't paper over that with naive laws, trying to do so is only going to make things much worse, both because undoing stupid shit is hard and it ignores the real problems.
There is only so much better parenting can do against giant companies with tons of money and teams of psychologists and engineers designing products to maximally exploit "vulnerabilities" in human minds in order to modify their beliefs, emotions, and behaviors.
"Whataboutism" (if it even counts as a fallacy) isn't when somebody refutes an argument you support.
I personally don't believe you have ANY evidence. More plausibly you are acting as a "useful idiot" for traditional media.
Now that Australia has banned social media, are you going to admit you were wrong? Or just double down and ban phones? If something is "unbelievable" then you better have good evidence for believing it, not just narratives.
Meta knows that deactivating Facebook causes "lower feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness and social comparison"[1]
[1] https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...
I'm not sure I follow; are you disputing that social media cause harm to mental health, and particularly in teenagers?
> Some kids start working at 14 or 15: they can be trusted to work somewhere outside of home, but not online?
It’s not just the kids, but stalkers and criminals. There’s a reason full driving and drinking age is 18.
Wait, did I misread and the article is suggesting banning the whole internet for under-16?
It's a great pity all your woods have been bulldozed.
However the world of woods, wide open spaces, kids with power tools, kids walking for hours with friends and dogs circuiting the beach, caves, forrests and fields very much still exists in many places across the globe.
Kids working for themselves down in the shed making things they can sell for money at a swap meet or market happens here all the time and is a controlled risk - they wear PPE, have knowledge of readily apparent risks and aren't being stalked and crept up on by a netwok of bot assisted groomers.
Yeah, suburbia and even the inner-city in the West has parks, trails and rec centres. If anything, the real fantasy is the idea that kids couldn't engage with something outside. Kids are addicted to each other, social media is just a useful vector when helicopter parents don't permit you to leave the property, except for structured organised activity I.e. expensive league sports
... and just where are they going to learn these skills?
Right here.
Got welders, maps, legs (useful for walking), ropes, furnaces, hand tools, old cars, old workstations, soldering irons, a kitchen, gardens, paddocks, saddle making tools, radio towers, .. you know, regular house in the country from the 1930s kind of stuff.
As I mentioned, this world still exists.
I have been building a library for some time as well, and am ready to learn and teach once my child is ready. Frankly, the internet experience when I was young vs now is crazy. For me, it was dial up with some forums and RuneScape open, chatting via texts in game with my buddies who were considered long distance even though we all went to the same church. The pauses in loading gave time to think up good discussion, and playing things took patience. Now everything wants your attention scattered everywhere, and is flashing in your face. I love having ad blockers because of that. Social media has done nothing good for our world I feel like. Yes, connecting is nice but when you are fed things off of not your actual interest or easily searchable same results but instead whatever drives engagement for ads I like to stay well away.
>I think stuff like this, is trying to recreate a world that doesn't exist anymore
And that's fine. We should build the world as we want it to be, not accept whatever shit our era gives us.
This includes changes to some things to how they were in the past (if they were better) and changes to other things to how we envision the future.
I don't think it's about recreating a world that doesn't exist anymore. It's about limiting exposure of stuff to minds that simply aren't ready for it. The implementation falls short in a number of ways but I kinda get it and I think it's something we as a society will have to take seriously in coming years.
For example, Australia blocks Youtube (like you say) but doesn't block Roblox. That's wild.
For Youtube in particular, I think it'd be sufficient to have child accounts under their parents (as they did and still have elsewhere) that limited certain videos but also, disallowing commenting and probably even reading comments.
A big thing we need to do is shut down Internet gambling and, more importantly, the precursors to gambling, which is anything that promotes the same addictive behavior. That includes all those "free" gotcha games that aren't really games. They're daily chores with random rewards and paid boosts to induce addictive behavior.
Apps like Stake need to be completely removed from the App stores.
I also think Fanduel and DraftKings should be illegal. I'm even leery on young people playing fantasy draft games, even for no money, because it's a gambling pipeline.
Oh and putting your children on the Internet as like a Youtube family? That should be illegal.
Algorithmic feeds in general I think are bad but particularly for young people. Because they're designed to induce addiction and "engagement".
I think phones will soon be good enough (if they're not already) to do background age verifications to make sure the user is of appropriate age via the camera and processed locally (to avoid uploading pictures of minors). At some point I think we'll see that integrated into major platforms.
The point of restrictions isn't to be perfect. It's to create a barrier that makes things more difficult. In years past we did this by, say, only showing more adult content on TV after certain times. Could kids stay up late to watch it? Or tape it once VCRs became coomon? Of course. But it helped.
Just like gambling. Requiring someone to physically go to a casino reduced harm compared to just opening their phone wherever they are. It's a bit like having to go to the store to get ice cream or alcohol or whatever your vice vs just having it in your house or even getting it delivered.
I think we as a society need more barriers.
I agree with pretty much everything you said.
> Algorithmic feeds in general I think are bad but particularly for young people.
Just young people? Have you noticed the trend of political discourse more or less globally? Social media certainly assisted in bringing much government abuse and corruption to light over the past couple decades but I feel it has also had severe negative impacts on civil discourse surrounding contentious topics. Not that things were great to begin with of course.
> I think phones will soon be good enough
No! Absolutely not! Please do not provide authoritarian tech companies with legitimate excuses to lock down the computing devices that we supposedly own! Society has already gone in an extremely dangerous direction there and badly needs to course correct.
// A big thing we need to do is shut down...anything that promotes the same addictive behavior.
Oh great, we're back to the 'destroy the pinball machines' faux-moral outrage. If it wasn't gacha-gaming it would be Coin Pusher machines, or Pinball, or Arcade Machines, or POGs, or Pokemon, or cigarette/bubblegum card collecting or...
//I also think Fanduel and DraftKings should be illegal. I'm even leery on young people playing fantasy draft games, even for no money, because it's a gambling pipeline.
Moral hand-wringing masquerading as ethics. As often attributed to Twayne, "Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it"
//Algorithmic feeds in general I think are bad but particularly for young people. Because they're designed to induce addiction and "engagement".
Ones designed to sell toys, services, or adspace (such as it ever was). Whereas for people of the age of majority (and particularly those in retirement) those same algorithms dictate elections and, increasingly, what constitutes political or domestic 'reality'. I know which I'd prioritise addressing.
//I think phones will soon be good enough (if they're not already) to do background age verifications to make sure the user is of appropriate age via the camera and processed locally
They currently can't do this at emigration points - see the amount of asylum seekers claiming to be unaccompanied children with no birth certs whose claimed age can't be disputed:
https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/social-affairs/2024/08/27...
With the best will in the world, and the resources and governance policies of a governmental agency tasked with this specific action, it fails constantly. As such, outsourcing it to the tender mercies of Silicon Valley VCs via some App and SaaS solution is farcical.
https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/nearly-200-asylum-seek...
//I think we as a society need more barriers.
I think those with the least restraint and control are the loudest to request their current privileges to be stripped away at a societal level, lest they indulge to the point of detriment.
That's something I hadn't thought about actually, if YouTube is being included, that was utterly invaluable for me for my school exams (before and after 16). I thought I wouldn't really have been missing anything with a ban on social media under 16 as I never really used it much anyway, but I had always excluded YouTube from "social media" in my head due to the sheer value of it for education.
My life would've been significantly worse and more importantly I would know a lot less about a lot of topics if I didn't have access to YouTube from age 13+.
Yes yes yes yes yes?
It’s weird that something completely normal like 20 years ago is “weird” today.
I might even make it 18 when you’re old enough to sign a EULA. When did something completely normal become weird?
“What’s next, an internet license?”
Oh please god, yes.
You’re own argument about kids not being allowed to play in the woods in the more seems to play into this idea we should just accept a dystopian world.
Surprised to see this seemingly presented positively on HN.
Social media "feels" like it should be uniquely bad for children but the evidence is low-quality and contradictory. For example, high social media use is associated with anxiety and depression, but which direction does that relationship run? Meanwhile there are documented benefits especially for youth who are members of marginalized groups (e.g. LGBTQ). Don't get me wrong, I think there are a lot of problems with the big social media companies. I just think they affect adults too and that we should address them directly.
But setting that aside, the practical implications of age gate laws are terrible. The options are basically to have an LLM guess your age based on your face, or uploading sensitive identity documents to multiple sites and hope they are stored and processed securely and not reused for other purposes.
But OK let's assume social media is always bad for kids and also that someone invents a perfect age gate... kids are just going to find places to hang out online that are less moderated and less regulated and less safe. How is that not worse?
Put it this way: is it good for a child to spend an appreciable fraction of their day browsing social media? Did children previously just have free hours at hand to burn on this? The answer is of course no, there are not more hours in the day after the creation of social media, so its usage comes at the cost of something else in that child's life, usually their precious little downtime where they might plan and think about their own life. Or maybe at the cost of other activities that might be more engaging physically or mentally.
In the 1940s that was pretty much the same argument deployed against the moral panic of that time: comic books.
The difference is children back then actually did see their day expand as they were removed from the workforce, making comic book consumption "free" essentially in terms of what it might have replaced just a generation previous.
That feels like a stretch. In the 1850s it was pulp novels and in the 1990s it was video games.
More so in the cities, not as much in more rural areas where tons of kids were still doing farm work with 10 brothers and sisters along with them in the 40s-60s. After that farms had dropped quite a bit but it was still until the late 70s that farms and farm labor lost enough need for labor that caused most rural kids to completely exist the agricultural sector minus the direct sons and daughters of farmers.
Were they addicting and correlated with a spike in mental illnesses? Genuinely asking.
Because I can hardly imagine 70% of people in a train reading comic books. Guess what 70% are doing in the train in 2026?
I think part of the problem is choice. 36% of teens wish they spent less time in social media. Only 32% say it has a positive effect.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/24/teens-and...
It’s addictive like smoking. Addictive algorithms take away agency. I don’t think there are a lot of kids wishing they read less comic books, or played less DND (there may be some percentage wishing less video games). But it’s not like a classic generational divide where parents don’t understand it and teens are fighting for this stuff, a lot are against it themselves!
And later you had the satanic D&D.
Every generation seems to pick their moral panic and then engages in "unintentional concern trolling" over it. The people mean well, but low quality evidence shouldn't be good enough to condemn things.
Indeed. The question is, how good is the evidence?
Serious question, given it kinda feels like Meta's been acting like cigarette companies back in their heyday, while X is acting like it's the plot device of a James Bond villain.
D&D isn't designed to be addictive, and hasn't been used to psych-profile its users or influence elections.
False dichotomies all the way. I feel like any discussion around meta and social media on this platform brings out the most obnoxious sycophants.
+1
I stopped engaging in such discussions. There are some people who are reasonable and make sense, but the rest are just outright batshit crazy. They want more restraints, more censorship, more anti-privacy crap? Or they equate "good" with addictive? Come on.
It was designed to be boring?
Just because it's good doesn't mean it's addicting.
Are we getting to the point where any enjoyment of anything is viewed as an addiction and a sickness?
Is the concept of a game just being fun that alien?
This line of reasoning has been applied to TV for the last 50 years as well.
Calling it the boob tube was not without merit
Were they wrong?
Every new generation of moral panic assumes that all the children are using their time fantastically if it were not for the latest issue. Except we've gone through this like five times before so if you did the math on that then probably no kids are using their time fantastically, so social media is probably taking away from time-watching TV. Or maybe playing video games. Or, if you're a satan worshipper, Dungeons & Dragons.
Why not ban computer games then?
I'd argue computer games are more mentally engaging than social media. It is also completely different than opening the door to anyone from perverts to ad men to foreign influence agents into your mind.
> uploading sensitive identity documents to multiple sites and hope
Go to local liquor store. Present ID. Purchase $1 anonymous age verification card. Problem solved. (Card implementation left to reader.)
> kids are just going to find places to hang out online that are less moderated and less regulated and less safe. How is that not worse?
We used to have to visit a separate forum per community/topic/whatever. There was no realtime feed shoving posts in your face. No algorithm optimizing for engagement. How was that not better?
This is actually a great idea. It is even compatible with having private companies run the system. The real issue is distribution (online code verification is trivial). Tbf I believe that a fully government-owned anonymous system should be the goal. The government knows you already, so creating a proof of age anonymous token should also be somewhat trivial. Truth is companies don’t want to forgo the potential profit in data mining, and governments don’t like the actual lack of control and full anonymity, otherwise we’d have this already worldwide
In theory I agree. In practice I have severe misgivings about directly incorporating government issued IDs into mundane online transactions.
I don't want "papers please" to be normalized. If the smart ID can do anonymous attestation of age then it can presumably also share various details with a requesting party. Next thing you know Facespace 365 is requiring you to provide your (attested) full legal name in order to register an account. I find that to be a highly objectionable outcome.
If things escalated beyond basic age checks that also adds hardware requirements. Would I find myself needing a smartcard reader to do anything online? The friction of needing to visit a bank in person seems like a feature to me.
What doesn't bother me is age restricted content guarded by a low fence. The bare minimum required to blunt the impact of something that appears to be analogous to an epidemic.
I may not have been following this topic closely, but I do like this suggestion. Truly anonymous age tokens should be a thing.
However, we're not going to get that because politicians would just say it is open to abuse. Anyone can go to a liquor store and supply alcohol to minors. The same would apply to anonymous age tokens. I don't know if it would be a big issue in practice, but it will in the minds of politicians.
Well first of all people shouldn't have to pay an extra tax to go online, no matter how small, because that $1 won't be $1 for more than a year even if it was legislated to start that way.
Also if such identification cards are that easy to get, it is inevitable that the majority of kids are going to get access to them. I or somebody else could go across town to different stores, get 30 different ID cards, and then sell them for $15 a piece. And that is of course assuming foreign states and people don't break or circumvent the situation and sell ID codes online.
I wouldn't be too concerned about the price. Left to private business it should remain cost competitive. Monopolized by the government legislation dictating the price be set at a small percentage plus costs should be sufficient.
Sure, you could enter the black market. Presumably that would carry similar penalties as selling alcohol to minors. People certainly do that but at least my personal experience growing up in the US was that it was substantially easier to come by narcotics in highschool than it was alcohol.
Why would a foreign state bother to interfere with such a system? Violations are even less harmful than underage alcohol consumption. (Which is itself typically fairly benign. I will never understand why people in the US make such a big deal out of it.)
If you worry about every possible thing that can go wrong you will inevitably arrive at a surveillance state. Thus these eventualities need to balance the downsides imposed by any solution with the downsides of circumvention or other abuse. In this case all that's required is a very minor but legally enforced speedbump to force the hand of website operators and nudge cultural norms towards a healthier place.
Why would foreign bodies interfere? Because it is easy money. Unless you limit the number of, and therefore access to, ID verification proofs it will inevitably be sold on the open market to any and all people. And when the problem comes up, will the state admit failure and cancel the program? Unlikely. They will more likely spend far more effort on personally identifying each person online "for the children" which just puts us back at the same problem again, except minus the cost of this whole ID verification scheme that shouldn't exist to start with.
The government issuing everyone a smart ID that lets them attest anonymously to being of legal age would be better.
But there are age gate laws today, and calls to pass more of them. A hypothetical better way in the future shouldn’t excuse legally mandating a poor implementation today.
We could distribute scratch off cards to stores within a few months. It's incredibly low tech. I can't speak to elsewhere in the world but most (possibly all?) US states run lotteries.
If a given government body can't manage to stand up a web API to validate one time use codes within a few months then they clearly don't have the technical knowhow to manage smart IDs in a secure manner.
My point being that this either doesn't qualify as hypothetical, or if it does, then it indicates gross incompetence to an extent that precludes more complex solutions as a matter of course.
A proposed solution that does not actually exist and is not proven to work is necessarily a hypothetical one. I'm not ruling out various state governments also being incompetent though.
Right, only for Andretard and iPhonys, ensuring the monopoly will be there to stay.
Social media being bad for mental health in childhood is one of the most robust theories I've ever seen for these kind of society-wide problems. You can peruse the After Babel Substack for the evidence if you're not convinced, but Jonathan Haidt has consistently done incredible work here.
All due respect, I do not think the substack of one of the world's leading proponents of the theory that screen time is harmful is a good source for evidence that runs contrary to that narrative.
Here's Nature reviewing his book:
> Hundreds of researchers, myself included, have searched for the kind of large effects suggested by Haidt. Our efforts have produced a mix of no, small and mixed associations. Most data are correlative. When associations over time are found, they suggest not that social-media use predicts or causes depression, but that young people who already have mental-health problems use such platforms more often or in different ways from their healthy peers
> These are not just our data or my opinion. Several meta-analyses and systematic reviews converge on the same message. An analysis done in 72 countries shows no consistent or measurable associations between well-being and the roll-out of social media globally. Moreover, findings from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study, the largest long-term study of adolescent brain development in the United States, has found no evidence of drastic changes associated with digital-technology use. Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University, is a gifted storyteller, but his tale is currently one searching for evidence.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00902-2
I actually do think that Dr. Haidt is a good source for getting a fair understanding of both sides of the issue. If you've read or listened to him you'll know that it's a huge part of his ethos.
Here's his rebuttal to that article: https://www.afterbabel.com/p/phone-based-childhood-cause-epi....
I think you'd struggle to find someone more earnestly trying to get an unbiased understanding of the reality of this topic.
And Haidt forcefully refuted this a couple years ago: https://www.afterbabel.com/p/phone-based-childhood-cause-epi...
I’m not sure highlighting studies that seem to agree with his thesis is a particularly strong defense against the charge that the totality of the evidence is mixed and inconclusive. He’s a good writer though.
Why did one study in Spain find an association with the rollout of high speed internet, but a much larger international study specifically looking at Facebook usage did not? Seems like that one should even more directly measure what’s alleged to be occurring.
Even the author of your link says "considerable reforms to these platforms are required, given how much time young people spend on them" whilst stopping short of a ban. The problem is these "considerable reforms" will always be half arsed.
I think considerable reforms are needed too!
There are a lot of problems with the way these platforms treat adults too. I think an age gate is the wrong solution and in many ways it doesn't go far enough.
This is not surprising at all. HN’s perspective seems to generally go further with banning under 18 year olds from having smartphones in general.
Evidence is often contradictory, especially in the social sciences--that is not a terribly damning charge in this case. Additionally, there is evidence that relationship between social media use and anxiety/depression is not just an association, see Meta's own internal research from 2019: https://metasinternalresearch.org/#block-2e15def2e67a803a83e....
"Meta’s own researchers found — in an experiment they believed was better designed than any external study done thus far — that reducing time on their platforms improved mental health and well-being, specifically depression, anxiety, loneliness, and social comparison."
Similarly surprised to see this seemingly presented positively on HN.
This is just a means to force logins and identity verification on every site.
Do you think there is a more compelling explanation for the mental health decline in teenage girls?
Yes, it's the culture going to shit; the same decline hasn't been observed in e.g. Asian countries.
> evidence is low-quality and contradictory. For example, high social media use is associated with anxiety and depression, but which direction does that relationship run?
The evidence from device bans is pretty damn compelling.
I am less familiar with the social-media literature. But I believe we have decent efforts at disentangling causation, and to my knowledge all research not coming out of Meta and TikTok points one way.
> kids are just going to find places to hang out online that are less moderated and less regulated and less safe
If they do this isn’t great policy. If they don’t, it is. Let’s let this natural experiment play out.
People likely need a fairly large shared set of beliefs to operate without constant friction. Hence national identities. Either let people freely associate into these communities or force algorithms to be "shared" in a sense between couples or families.
I think couples' X could be interesting. But I'd prefer free association (possibly VR?)
> kids are just going to find places to hang out online that are less moderated and less regulated and less safe. How is that not worse?
Some will. But I bet a lot of kids "have to be" on Instagram/TikTok/etc because everyone else is. I don't think they all gonna flock to 4chan because they got locked out of the big platforms.
I'd argue even the darkest corners of 4chans aren't as bad as the average daily dose of brain rot delivered to hundreds of millions of people through infinite scroll algorithms on TikTok &co. And once you remove the sickening parts of 4chan I'd say it's overall a much more pleasant place than most other social medias, it's one of the last mainstream website that still somewhat feels like the golden age of internet
>I'd argue even the darkest corners of 4chans aren't as bad as the average daily dose of brain rot delivered to hundreds of millions of people through infinite scroll algorithms on TikTok
Then I'd argue you haven't actually been to the darkest corners of 4chan.
4chan is categorically bad. The combination of humor + racism/misogyny is like crack at brainwashing kids.
It isn't so black and white as people paint it to be. /g/ is probably the best place on the internet today to discuss technology even with occasional dumb jokes. The crassness of the site and reflexive reaction from you and others has turned out to be a great wall to prevent the corporate enshittification that affected the rest of the internet.
I’ll take harmless enshitification over genocidal racism
Harmless? The internet is dead. Genocidal racism? Not what I see on /g/.
The undertones are all over
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>Meanwhile there are documented benefits especially for youth who are members of marginalized groups (e.g. LGBTQ).
This is a thin veiled propaganda that the likes of Zuckerberg quote all the time but is misattributed. Those marginalized group of people had benefits in finding like-minded people online, mostly through forums etc. (side point: same benefit exist for marginalized group such as white supremacist)
But that's social NETWORK, and not social MEDIA. Almost all benefit people that defend social media spout is simply a social NETWORK benefit. The only advantage social MEDIA have is personalized ad, for people that like that. Everything else you get by reimplementing old, boring social network without "the algorithm".
> kids are just going to find places to hang out online that are less moderated and less regulated and less safe. How is that not worse?
I actually disagree with you. This was the internet when I was a kid, and part of the point was you had more agency. This may seem counter-intuitive, but I might prefer my kid hang out on 4chan than tik tok all day long, because at least the former feels like they’re making an intentional choice, and there’s not a multi billion dollar algorithm getting them addicted.
This is part of the point. Kids need more unregulated spaces. Your youthTM brought to you by Mark Zuckerberg is dystopian.
> But OK let's assume social media is always bad for kids and also that someone invents a perfect age gate... kids are just going to find places to hang out online that are less moderated and less regulated and less safe.
Straw man argument, much? Might as well argue "We can't make any changes, ever, just in case something else happens!
We'll address the next issue when/if it happens, same as always.
I’ve seen children be groomed to produce child pornography on Snapchat. The offender wouldn’t have access to these random children if he couldn’t simply look them up. And more importantly, his access is anonymous, so it’s much harder to stop.
> But setting that aside, the practical implications of age gate laws are terrible. The options are basically to have an LLM guess your age based on your face, or uploading sensitive identity documents to multiple sites and hope they are stored and processed securely and not reused for other purposes.
Those aren't the only options. See the comments on almost any of the many other discussions of age verification on HN for details of ways to do it that do not involve giving any sensitive information to sites (other than what you explicitly trying to give to them, like your age being above their threshold) and do not involve guessing your age via LLM or any other means.
They kind of are the only options. All of these issues are sitting on a slippery slope. If you accept a technical solution that works well, then eventually somebody is going to push that further.
If you need to use your ID to log into a website (even if the website doesn't get any of your information) then society is only a step away from the government monitoring everything you do online. And at that point it's up to them to decide whether they want to do it or not, because you're already used to the process. If they decide to violate your privacy there's nothing you can do about it other than vaguely point at privacy laws before promptly getting ignored.
I‘m starting thinking that those alternatives are deliberately ignored by the anti-verification crowd. It’s hard to explain otherwise why the most logical way to solve the problem is not in the spotlight.
No, I just don't want them. I don't want to constantly prove myself online. Screw that. If parents don't want kids to have social media then they have plenty of tools available to do that, including just not giving them a smartphone.
We should fix the actual problem (engagement driven social media) which causes polarization under adults too. This is just window dressing and gives more personal data to governments and advertisers.
The „actual problem“ is not limited to engagement driven social media. Your „I just don’t want it“ proves my point very well.
It is the problem, if you see platforms that are not driving engagement (like here) they are faring much better.
And no I really don't want it. Give parents the tools to manage better and make sure the worst toxic traits of social media are banned (the EU could do this under the DSA/DMA) and there is no need to ban it for all minors then.
There's a lot of age-restricted content in Internet and plenty of use cases where digital ID is improving security/UX. When you say "I don't want it" instead of talking about your specific concerns and how they could be addressed, that is nonconstructive position I'm talking about.
I think the way this thread went is a perfect illustration of why people just "don't want it" - you started off talking about alternatives that were anonymous, and now you're talking about digital ID for "security" or even UX. Because that's how things have gone in practice.
Privacy-respecting, free, even technically superior options are regularly overlooked in favor of invasive and locked down options. See how often phone 2FA is forced "for security" when generic TOTP authenticators or passkeys could do better. Also see how specifications around passkeys are being set up to eventually squeeze out free implementations in favor of Google and Apple.
Yeah it's just a few bridges too far for me. I don't care about improving those things (and UX will only get worse with extra checks)
I'm sure it will come but I will oppose and work around it as much as I can. I don't think age verification should exist at all.
Its crazy that people are discussing the actual implementations instead of a commenters fantasy I dont understand it.
There are actual implementations that do not compromise privacy and anonymity. For example the EU is currently doing large scale field tests in several countries of such a system.
It involves your government issuing you a signed digital copy of your ID documents which gets cryptographically bound to the security hardware in your smart phone (support for other hardware security devices is planned for later).
To verify your age to a site your phone and the site use a protocol based on zero-knowledge proofs to demonstrate to the site that your phone has a bound ID document signed by your government that says your age is above the site's threshold, without disclosing anything else from your ID document to the site.
This demonstration requires the use of a key that was generated in the security hardware when the ID was bound, which shows that the site is talking to your phone and that the security hardware is unlocked, which is sufficient evidence that you have authorized this verification to satisfy the law.
Note that your government is not involved beyond the initial installation of the bound ID document on the phone. They get no information on what sites you later age verify for or when you do any age verifications.
So govt approved hardware and sofware. No custom ROMs or firmware.
Wow, the EU is really going hard on innovation.
I suppose the nice thing is that the dystopia has already been explored by science fiction quite well.
I don’t think custom ROM or firmware are incompatible with digital IDs.
They aren't, but Gugel and Eple want to keep their duopoly. No, I won't support an app blocking other OSes.
Ok, a field test. Vs Australias actual full scale implementation, and the subsequent implementations by social media companies.
You cant honestly expect people to ignore the actual real world implementation right? Its not disingenuous to discuss whats actually been inflicted upon a full populace in favour of a test?
Not to forget that the UK was making lists of those it was providing digital licenses to. And that the UK has a history of leaking data like a sieve. The government making a list of known digital ID users can be coloured the same way.
Not to mention that not everyone will end up with a supported cryptographic device will they? Are we expecting this to run on linux without TPM 2.0? Lots of recent Linux migrants are there to avoid TPM 2.0 requirement. You keep mentioning hardware security, so I suspect its not going to be as easy as loading a certificate. Or even if extra methods for edge cases will be supported at all.
But its all still hypothetical anyway. We have an actual implementation to dissect. One that the Australian government is actively trying to sell to other countries.
What I'd hope people would be doing is that when a country like Australia is working out some system of mandatory age verification is to point to the EU system or something similar and say that if you do go through with this, how about waiting a year until that is released and then require that instead of some system that doesn't preserve privacy and anonymity?
They could point out that the EU system has been in development for years, with numerous expert reviews, all in the open with reference implementations of the protocols and apps for iOS and Android all on Github under open source licenses.
They could also point out it has been tested extensively in a series of field trials involving a large variety of sites and a large number of users, with the last two field trials scheduled to finish this year.
By simply waiting and making that the system they use they get a much more secure and privacy preserving system than what they would get otherwise, with others having already done the hard cryptographic parts and figured out usability issues and developed the apps. That's way better than going with some system that nobody was thinking about until they started working on legislation.
They could also point out that the sites they want to require age verification on will almost certain be supporting the EU system when it comes out. That's because the EU is requiring that member states that implement age verification laws require that sites accept this system. The state can allow or require accepting other system, but this one will be the one that works everywhere.
Countries that wait for the EU system and use it will then have an easier time getting companies to implement age verification in their country since those companies can simply use the same software they will be using in the EU.
As far as having a suitable device goes, in the EU somewhere in the 95-98% range of non-elderly adults have a suitable smart phone. It's higher the younger people are and is going up. Same in the US. In Australia it is around 97% of adults.
The EU is planning on later adding support for stand-alone hardware security devices which should cover those without a smart phone.
As far as government leaking lists of who has a digital ID, that's likely to be a list of most adult phone users. The overall system is not just a privacy and anonymity preserving age verification system. It's a digital wallet for storing a digital version of your physical ID card.
People will likely use it in most places they use their physical ID cards. People tend to love being able to use their phones in place of physical cards (all cards, not just ID cards), and will be getting it even if they never intend to use any sites that require age verification.
A leak that says "tzs has a digital ID on his phone" (if my country were to adopt such a system) would be about as concerning as a leak that says "tzs has his auto insurance card on his phone" or "tzs has a credit card on his phone". (This is also way car companies that let you install a digital key fob on your phone often make that a feature only on higher end trims even though it requires the exact same hardware as the lower trims. Enough people like the idea of not having to carry around the key fob that they will go up a trim level to get it).
If people can't get their government to delay until such a system is available they should be trying to get the law to include a provision that when such a system is available the government will support it and sites will have to accept it. That way they eventually get a privacy preserving option. That's a more likely way to work to get eventual privacy than trying to pass separate legislation later to add it.
I think in the end European digital ID is going to be impressive enough for others to pick up (not as impressive as using biometric data for payments in China - we don't want to go that route, but still). The integration friction will go down, the security will be tested and verification process hardened over time etc. So it doesn't really matter what opposition says at the moment and whether they will be able to tank the legislation in UK, USA or Australia. There will always be the success story in front of them, that will be hard to ignore. And literally any global website is going to support EU technology, making it major vector of innovation.
Asking them to not do it has roughly the same effect. Pointing out the flaws has roughly the same effect.
Not doing it at all, is even better again.
That could certainly address one of my points, once it actually exists and if it’s implemented properly.
I like that this article at least links to a document with the features they want under scrutiny, but they do avoid a definition, and nearly all networked systems have at least some of the features in the document[1].
Is google docs social media? It certainly has social features and I've been witness to cyber-bullying via a shared google doc.
What about Spotify? It has social features far beyond just sharing playlists
WhatsApp? Discord? MMS?
1: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GVO7sNuCNmNwqVK64PHQ...
As you say 'social media' is not a good category, we should specify exactly the things that are concerning. Here are the ones where I'm concerned about their effect on young people:
1. a user is shown new content based on extensive profiling and a secret algorithm that the user does not control
2. a users activity can be discovered and tracked by people that intend to take advantage of the user
3. the operation of the site is optimised for addiction (or more euphemistically "attention")
I absolutely don't think that a book club or a kids own website comments or person to person chat systems should be included in the rules.
Note - I'm not saying these things should be banned, just that I think it's reasonable to restrict their use to adults.
…why do all of those things happen? to sell paid digital advertisement. remove that incentive and I suspect the “social media” problems largely go away
I wish.
In reality, a large enough group of people on the internet starts to turn sour. Especially with anonymity. Especially without a specific purpose like a book club. Especially without moderation.
Small groups where you know everyone is where it’s at. To avoid internet stalkers and bullies, and for general quality of the community。
Our brains are built for small communities, not billions.
The simple answer is that children should not have access to a cell phone at their leisure, or unmonitored access to a computer or tablet. Access should be limited, purposeful, and monitored when possible.
I agree with you; without the overwhelming majority of society agreeing with you it's not possible though because if one kid has a free access to a cell phone, then every person in their friend-group now has free access to that cell phone.
Discord is 100% social media. Just like WhatsApp. MSN definitely was, remember MSN Groups? MSN Chat (the IRC knock off), and a bunch of other things. As someone who has consumed social media and chat platforms, I will note that most chat platforms are social media in their own regard. Habbo Hotel is another example of social media. :)
Is SMS social media?
No, it is a protocol that allows a user to create their own social network within their Messaging app.
Next you will say that somehow iMessage isn't social media, but WhatsApp is.
Wait, how is that different from WhatsApp?
How is that different from Discord?
> Just like WhatsApp.
Sorry but I don't consider WhatsApp to be in the social media category since it's just a chat app for your contacts, not an A/B algorithmically driven carousel of media to keep you hooked in and for strangers to hit you up (unless they have your phone number). However I do think Meta will try to slowly make it a social media app.
It's not just for your contacts though, in other countries WhatsApp is used like Facebook pages for your local town too. There's all sorts of group chats on WhatsApp.
Kids in 5th grade use WhatsApp for entertainment to send hundreds of messages per day filled with memes and slop. From the perspective of one kid in a class chat, this is indistinguishable from an algorithmically curated feed.
> this is indistinguishable from an algorithmically curated feed
If a classmate is sending you slop memes, then it's human curated content from an acquaintance, and not algorithmically driven, unless you consider your friends bots.
Is it? If kids grab the top result of a massively A/B tested algorithmic feed trying hook people and/or maximize the controversy / engagement, then arbitrage it onto another simpler less gamified platform... is that really human curated? There's some truth to the idea that, as long as there is any social media, everything is social media.
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I absolutely agree that gamified, algorithm-driven social media should be banned for those under 16. My issue is how that should be done. I sure as shit don't want to have to present my ID to look at dank memes.
Why for those under 16 in particular? It has no value for anybody at any age, and has apparently driven tons of adults insane.
But the right answer is still to ban advertising. And I don't mean just to those under 16.
> But the right answer is still to ban advertising.
Banning platform owned advertising on social networks is already impossible. If you have any concept that is broader than that, rest assured trying it will create a dystopia that still has advertising.
I assumed they meant banning most unsolicited advertising completely, even outside of social media. Advertizing is a scourge upon humanity. We know propaganda works and is generally bad, so why should propaganda be allowed to be used for money making purposes? Especially when money itself can and is used to influence politics even more directly?
Agree, targeted advertising in particular is a trojan horse for many other internet-fueled social ills.
Why not the same thing for alcohol?
I think its fairly obvious why there are certain age restrictions for younger groups of people as they are more vulnerable.
Because people actually want alcohol, whereas advertising is generally something they're stuck with.
I don't think it should be banned, but I'm all for encouraging alternatives that use simple reverse-chronological and don't have the same tendency to create FOMO, a desire to check repeatedly, etc.
>I absolutely agree that gamified, algorithm-driven social media should be banned for those under 16.
I agree. It's purposely addictive and harmful to peoples' mental health.
The current situation is akin to having absolutely no regulations on cigarettes.
Personally, I'd take it a step further and ban targeting algorithms for all ages and pair that with strict data privacy laws that make the entire user data industry collapse.
Its not only gamified and algorithm driven. People are also monetarily incentivized for socially harmful behaviors. Irrespective of political affiliation. Political content is highly engaging and also highly toxic.
I compare this to the alcohol rules.
We recognise that children drinking alcohol is not a good thing. Adults drinking alcohol is also not a good thing, but that's up to them.
But the countries with the best relationship to alcohol are the countries that also have flexible rules about children and alcohol; most of Europe allows children to drink alcohol in a restaurant with their parents from around 12-14, and order it themselves from around 16. Alcohol is widely available, and cheap. Generally these countries don't experience binge drinking or drunken behaviour, and while alcohol consumption is high, it's not so problematic.
The Anglosphere has way more problems with binge drinking and drunken behaviour, and part of the reasons for that is that we enforce strict limits around alcohol consumption. We have strong age limits on alcohol purchases, and strong limits on who can sell alcohol and when they can sell it. There's a very authoritarian attitude to alcohol restrictions. This means that when Anglo kids hit the age limit that they're allowed to buy alcohol, they hit it hard and binge on it, with all the harms that happen because of that.
Enforcing a strong authoritarian limit on social media will have the same effect, I think. Children will have no training on how to deal with social media, no exposure to social media in limited, controlled, circumstances with the support of their parents. They'll hit 16 and be given full access to the entire range of platforms, and they'll overdo it and binge on it, with all the harms that happen because of that.
We need to get better at educating our kids on how to deal with harmful stuff. Banning it until they're "adult" isn't an answer because it doesn't train them on how to have an adult relationship to this stuff.
> They'll hit 16 and be given full access to the entire range of platforms, and they'll overdo it and binge on it, with all the harms that happen because of that.
"Full access" meaning deanonymized, with a hostile government watching over their shoulders to control online sentiment:
First, we are told, the relevant secretary of state (Michelle Donelan) expressed “concern” that the legislation might whack sites such as Amazon instead of Pornhub. In response, officials explained that the regulation in question was “not primarily aimed at … the protection of children”, but was about regulating “services that have a significant influence over public discourse”, a phrase that rather gives away the political thinking behind the act. - https://archive.md/2025.08.13-190800/https://www.thetimes.co...
so true. This was never about protecting the children, it was always the first step in de-anonymising the internet so they can control speech.
Or perhaps we should watch what happens in Australia and draw lessons from it? I have a hard time telling a teenager that they cannot socialize with people just because it is via electronic means. I also do not like teenagers identities manipulated for commercial ends. Though we have done this since the 1950s. Also shouldn't we ban MTV and rock and roll music in general? It's destroying the youth!
> I have a hard time telling a teenager that they cannot socialize with people just because it is via electronic means
There are still other means to chat with other individuals or groups that don't involve social media.
Not according to many people on here. They consider WhatsApp "social media" for example because of group chat.
True, they're just not social media in the context of this "social media ban".
It's the social media, not the digital communication.
AIM/ICQ didn't rot our brains or attention spans.
That's a good point. The problem for me is where the line is drawn. Is a car enthusiast forum social media? How about youtube comments? I think society is generally improved when the teenage generation is at least part of discussions. We need to protect the young people but excluding them and suppressing them leads to unintended consequences. I am not a tiktok apologist. Hey Facebook used to be enemy number 1 and now it's an afterthought for many people.
I would draw a line at user customized wall of content. All content on sites should be organized in a similar way for everybody (by date, by category, etc.). I think this would reduce a lot the problems that we see currently.
If you want to be bold and imaginative, although doubt this would ever pass, any platform that focuses or allows user content, should not be allowed to show advertisements. Then the incentive to have people stay more to watch more ads would disappear.
I think mostly you know it when you see it.
Infinite scrolling, algorithm based (not timestamp-based), "stories" (short videos), public (non-friend) accounts make up most of the feed, ads selling views and therefore companies trying to capture attention.
A car enthusiast forum is not doing this. phpBB sites get a pass. YouTube is, though. I think YouTube is part of the brain rot, although not the comments section.
FB, Instagram, X, tiktok, YouTube, Snapchat, etc.
"you know it when you see it" is a trap and ripe for abuse in its own right. Your description however is pretty spot on for this moment in internet evolution.
Interesting to me is that I pay for youtube premium so I don't see any ads. They even have the jump ahead feature where you can skip in video project promotions. It's the most ad free experience I have on the internet. The comment sections are about the lowest of the low knuckle draggers and outright dimwits.
I'm also a bit out of touch because I quit all social media. Youtube shorts is about the closest I get and that's a mind sink for sure. [Edit: and hacker news which I consider social media without the ads]
I mostly use YouTube without ads, and with sponsorblock, so a similar experience.
I think YouTube shorts is exactly the experience we're talking about. And the youth watch it by scrolling up, not by selecting shorts that look interesting.
I resisted shorts for a long time, but I watch them now as well. Prefer them, even.
The fact we're not seeing ads, and that the comments are atrocious content, is irrelevant--our attention spans are at stake, not our wallets.
Anything that promotes short-form video should be looked at.
Youtube promoting shorts is bad.
A youtube long-form video about, say, car repair, or quantum physics, or a history of eastern asian languages doesn't contribute to brain rot.
The Chinese, take it for what it's worth, knew how to control TikTok. They simply banned non educational content on the platform. You want to watch a 5 minute video explaining the basics of a math theorem, or explaining a chess opening? Sure, that's cool. Stupid 30 second clips of dances, memes, reactions, etc? Nah, that's dumb.
That's better imo, but creates a new problem.
As we can see anywhere and everywhere, moderation teams have to use their power, even when nothing is in violation of the rules. They'll start policing more content, and pretty soon they'll be arresting people.
Youtube content moderators can arrest people?
We were talking about the state policing content in China. So the "YouTube content moderators" you mention would be government actors.
Like they have in the UK--police arresting people for content. The police don't work for Facebook, I'm sure you realize.
No, in China, the people running the platforms know what is acceptable and what's not. So, once the government tells them what's cool and what's not, the companies then police themselves.
Because unlike the US, where there are effectively no real consequences for companies that skirt the law, in China, the companies wouldn't dare try to skirt the law - executives in China know they can't bribe their way out of deliberately pissing off The Party when it comes to education.
Everybody exactly knows where to draw the line... No one gives a shit about car enthusiast forums, everyone is talking about infinite scroll x targeted content x advertising powered by algorithms exclusively designed to extract your time, money and attention.
This is not helpful. "everybody" and "everyone" and "no one" are meaningless catch alls. I understand where you are coming from but this is a very limited world view that does not add anything to the conversation. I am sure that where I draw the line is not where someone else will draw the line. We do not know "exactly" where to draw the line.
Below is how New York's new law requiring social media sites defined the covered sites. It's based on how the site works, specifically if they have an "addictive feed" which is defined in the law. I'd expect most laws concerning social media would be drafted in a generally similar 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.
Can someone link me something that shows that attention spans are decreasing?
I looked into it briefly and the following two is what I found. The rest seemed to just be repeating or debunking these two claims.
1. An infographic that claims we went from 15 second attention spans to 8 seconds attention spans (as opposed to a goldfish having a 9 second attention span (how was this measured?)).
This seems BS.
2. A study that measured how long knowledge workers spent on a single screen. This dropped from 250 seconds in the early 2000s to 72 seconds in 2012 and 47 seconds more recently.
This data shows something, but I think connecting this to attention spans 1:1 doesn't seem quite right. It could just as well be that people work differently now. Eg they're more likely to pull information from another screen or document than they used to be.
> I looked into it briefly
Your attention span is quite short.
>they cannot socialize with people
they can socialize online perfectly fine. Excluded from the ban in Australia are among others, WhatsApp, Discord, Steam and Facebook Messenger. TikTok, Twitter or Instagram are not and never have been platforms in which people form social communities with their peers.
>Also shouldn't we ban MTV and rock and roll music in general?
No, because there was never any evidence that rock has harmed the youth. Jonathan Haidt, author of this piece, has conducted extensive research to show that social media does.
> Twitter or Instagram are not and never have been platforms in which people form social communities with their peers.
By peers do you mean people they know in person or demographic peers?
I'm not going to anecdata [edit: then I do] but on platforms like Facebook I only have friends that I know personally (or at least when I used to use it). Twitter was the opposite.
Oddly the most online abuse I've had is during in game chats and providing open source software but I digress...
The "rock and roll" thing is because "think of the kids" is a perennial siren call. Only sometimes is it valid. I can't speak for everyone but there seems to be a consensus that "social media" can be deeply harmful for some young people and we should not ignore it. That this one guy made a study and it happened to support his hypothesis isn't enough for this one voter to want to ban online networks of pesky teenagers calling each other names and buying stupid crap.
> I also do not like teenagers identities manipulated for commercial ends.
This. If western “liberal” “democracies” are concerned about children’s privacy then we should push back on surveillance capitalism, not force people to submit government id in order to express their opinion online.
Ah yes, the limitless benefits of anonymous posting.
it makes sense in terms of grooming. Most parents want to deny their children agency until they're no longer minors and giving them the internet massively undermines that idea. You're plugging your child into a stream of information that is mostly a sewer of misinformation.
The school system is a sewer of bias with 90%+ of teachers leaning left. Decentralised media is the only chance many kids have of hearing both sides of the story.
> 90%+ of teachers leaning left
Is this a US thing? Maybe it's because your Overton window is flying miles beyond the right-end of the spectrum and you lost touch to what "left" even means?
It's so stupid. These days, making a statement like "we shouldn't teach Genesis as fact in public school" means that you "lean left".
> The school system is a sewer of bias with 90%+ of teachers leaning left.
Good thing people give a shit about teachers and pay them properly so everyone is eager to become a teacher in order to address that bias. Instead of idk, leaving it entirely as it is and just whining in a partisan fashion about how education has some sort of bias. I mean education has a lot of women who are teachers and the GOP don't appeal to a lot of women because they want to ban abortion and shit like that. So that'd probably explain it simply enough. In terms of priorities what if the massive funding went into teaching instead of recruiting for ICE? Shows to me what's important to people.
Tbh, I don't think minors need to be angry about misinformation about migrants (which is what I got in like 5m last time I created a fresh twitter account), they can wait until they're old enough to vote. They'll still fall for that shit all the same, so there's no need to be upset about it. Might as well ground our kids for their first 16/18 years before unleashing the Nick Fuentes community on them.
That is funny, because the vast majority of leftists, whether it is progressives, social democrats, socialists, or Marxists or what have you would complain that schools mostly ignore leftist ideals in favor of free market capitalism, conservative/traditional US political theory and civics, and propagandized history that always assumes the US was a good guy acting in good faith.
Am I crazy for thinking setting age limits is just a lazy half measure by politicians who don't want to actually draft meaningful legislation for social media?
Like the negatives of social media aren't just isolated to just kids and while shielding them from it is generally a good thing it still seems like putting duct tape over a giant crack in the foundation.
No at all, this is my actual problem with the proposal.
We're 6 months away from the news report about "the new thing kids are using on the Internet" but the open propaganda and AI forgeries on Twitter and Facebook will continue to do their work on everyone else.
its better than the alternative. I think generally in terms of grooming the internet is an insane thing to give to minors.
Which alternative are we talking here? Doing nothing? Or the alternative I mentioned where governments actually do something for a change?
doing nothing. Governments typically marginalise techies when it comes to decision making, so the least they can do is make the call of lesser harm.
If kids really want to use social media, they'll find a way. Its more about making it hard/impossible for those who haven't yet grasped their agency. As ever, its about electors and in this case: parents.
- Will the ban in australia catch everyone, No. - Does this present some privacy issues, Yes.
But the reality is we needed to do something to combat what this is doing to our kids, while it might not be harmful content per-see there are serious effects its having to attention spans, warped perceptions of normality that these algos do to both normal folks, older folks and young children.
What i think the aus legislation does tho is give parents ammunition to enforce good practices on their kids that might have been difficult when "everyone at school uses tiktok etc".
Much the same way drinking laws etc give parents an ability to push back on underage drinking etc. It's illegal is a far easier argument to make to a teenager vs it'll rot your brain.
This is not a black and white issue and those that treat it as such do a dis-service to a serious problem, we need to iterate on smart legislation and controls (zero trust proofs for example) that allow for safe and open internet for everyone.
The impacts of social media on children (and adults for that matter) are becoming more clear by the day but a question, I think, is is it the format/function or is it the algorithm to drive the feed that is the issue? So, for instance, pushing damaging teen influencers at a child's feed or pushing negative/polarizing content, etc etc. Could there be safe social media, that wouldn't need verification, if for instance the algorithm was 'dumb' and just showed friend feeds and feeds specifically selected to follow?
The necessity we have for infinite unsustainable growth will always result in unsafe social media. Safe social media requires altruistic and benevolent intentions.
One study tested whether using TikTok/Reels/Shorts in the typical way, skipping videos any time the user wants has a short-term impact on prospective memory. The result was that there is a significant negative impact immediately after a ten minute session.
That's cause for concern given that people regularly use these apps on short breaks throughout their days, and especially problematic if they're using the apps as their main source of news.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/09658211.2025.252107...
>if for instance the algorithm was 'dumb' and just showed friend feeds and feeds specifically selected to follow?
That is how it used to work on facebook But social media was still toxic to teens even back then from the pressures they'd put on eachother, expectations for posting, etc.
That is making an argument that teens shouldn't interact since that generically describes many teen's lives at school. I don't know that we have good studies on 'dumb' social media vs weaponized social media compared to normal interactions for the target group.
Is anyone else old enough to remember when D&D and rock music was supposedly ruining the lives of young people and causing them to worship Satan?
TBH cigarettes were chemically designed to cause addiction, most music stars smoked cigarettes, then kids did follow them and also smoked. Will not even mention alcohol.
> when D&D and rock music was supposedly ruining the lives of young people and causing them to worship Satan?
And then the evidence didn’t pan out. Social media and device use looks like cigarettes the more we study them.
Neither were algorithmically designed to cause addiction.
Then why are "earworm" songs so hard to get out of my brain? Listening to Kpop demon hunters sure does feel like an addiction.
I actually am convinced that it does make Satan worshipping more popular or at least normalized. See: Tumblr. You can say whatever about whether it's good or bad or ironic, but it did happen.
I don't want them to do that because it would also mean I would have to prove I'm 16 everywhere that can be considered social media. No thanks. We have enough of that BS already. Even if it can be done in a privacy-conscious way I don't want it. And will avoid it by VPN etc.
Just leave parenting to the parents. And fix toxic social media (the real root cause of the issue) or ban them altogether.
Yeah as an Australian I thought this would be the case and I'd have to stop using Facebook etc (because there's no way I'm uploading ID or whatever to keep using it). Turns out because I created my account over 16 years ago they're happy to assume that I'm at least 16 years old. Which makes sense but I didn't anticipate it going that way.
Hmm yeah but that's a pretty long time.
Also what we see here in EU is that some sites (e.g. porn sites who already have to use age verification) demand it periodically, probably so you don't create one and give the credentials to a minor or something.
In fact it's becoming pretty insane here, even my bank and phone provider want me to come in and show my ID every few years. As if I suddenly became another person?? I kinda snapped at them last time because of these retarded processes and I felt bad then because I know it's not the employee's fault but it's just so ridiculous. I'm getting so sick of this pervasive tracking and monitoring in society with everything we do.
There are two objectives that western regimes have for pushing these draconian measures: the first is to end the historically unprecedented era of free and anonymous political speech by ordinary people. The second is to prevent anti-imperialist arguments and perspectives from reaching the eyes and ears of young western people. Young people will only hear the perspectives taught in government school and on corporate media. No choosing a different perspective early in life.
On the idea that this is needed to “protect children” it is the job of parents not the state to decide what media their children consume. If you want to make that easier for parents then regulate and mandate parental controls and make sure parents always have the choice.
We shouldn't ban social media we should ban algorithmically curated feeds that push any specific type of content. Outrage sells and so platform curated feeds have curated outrage and extreme content.
In practice I haven't seen much useful political discourse by the average person, but as long as we don't selectively amplify voices through machine signals and they NATURALLY accrue followings then whatever I guess.
Ban targeted ads while you're at it and throw around the most savage fines for companies who don't comply.
The world will be better for it.
I'd go even further and say ban ads and the selling and collecting of personal data in general.
Maybe someone can help me there, but I fail to see neither the inherent public good of it nor the one of any service that requires it to function.
So you say, but I don't think social media companies are benign or have the best interest of visitors at heart. If anything they make it far easier to identify users who are susceptible to propaganda and feed it to them in bulk.
Then the social media companies need regulation.
Too bad, they have too much money to bribe lawmakers with. Zuck is worth a quarter trillion dollars, and he ain't in a rush to give up so much as a penny of that if it doesn't fufill his goals of enriching himself further.
Giving the state the power to regulate social media will just allow the the state to censor and control information again like it does with traditional media.
Exactly. The fact that western governments have held that the corporations themselves have a free speech right to control your feed and speech but you do not have a free speech right to choose what the algorithm feeds you or what you say is absolutely stunning and reveals that capitalism is more powerful than liberalism in the west.
i totally agree, but the solution to corporate manipulation of our feed is to regulate social media so that the first amendment applies to the algorithm so the companies themselves dont have the power to push their own propaganda. People should decide for themselves what perspectives they agree with online.
> i totally agree, but the solution to corporate manipulation of our feed is to regulate social media so that the first amendment applies to the algorithm so the companies themselves dont have the power to push their own propaganda.
What does it mean for the 1st to apply to the algorithm? For example, who would have to do what in order to violate the algorithm's 1st amendment rights?
> the first is to end the historically unprecedented era of free and anonymous political speech by ordinary people. The second is to prevent anti-imperialist arguments and perspectives from reaching the eyes and ears of young western people. Young people will only hear the perspectives taught in government school and on corporate media. No choosing a different perspective early in life.
Yet my motherland, the nation with arguably the most liberal social media in the world and the least functional school system among "western regimes", is the most socially polarized, has voted in an insecure bully on a platform of hate and prejudice, and is about to plunge into imperialistic conquest, possibly against our allies for 70 years. I can't see how age-gating social media can do any more harm.
Well said. The value of free speech is that all perspectives are heard, so that the best hopefully prevails. Social media is not doing that. You only see the shit you already agree with or the most ridiculous and extreme points on the other side.
>least functional school system among "western regimes"
Its the least functional because its the most dedicated to erasing history and promoting pro state propaganda.
> The second is to prevent anti-imperialist arguments and perspectives from reaching the eyes and ears of young western people.
Sounds like you're complaining that these measures will make it hard for authoritarian governments to astroturf young western people so that they radicalize and hate each other more.
I think fighting authoritarianism with authoritarian measures is counter-productive.
Because everything my government does is good and everything the other governments do is bad, as that's what the state-sponsored media I consume told me!
Or, you know, they actually want to protect the mental health of people.
You may argue that the approach is bad (I would agree) but it's not because of some evil mastermind plot.
There's been some pretty clear information from countries enacting online ID laws that they want it precisely so that they can control discourse, not for any kind of protection. This isn't a hypothetical, it's the actual stated goals.
https://bsky.app/profile/tupped.bsky.social/post/3lwgcmswmy2...
> The U.K. Online Safety Act was (avowedly, as revealed in a recent High Court case) “not primarily aimed at protecting children” but at regulating “services that have a significant influence over public discourse.”
> There's been some pretty clear information from countries enacting online ID laws that they want it precisely so that they can control discourse, not for any kind of protection.
Please do share that information.
Free speech violations in UK and the country pushing for more ID checks is a simple example.
I'm not seeing how it's an example showing that they're doing it "precisely so that they can control discourse".
You could still argue that ID checks are done to partition content by underage/adult which for many is a reasonable thing to do absent any better solutions.
Edited the comment to include an example.
I don't think that social media has had that effect in practice.
We're all scrolling through algorithmic feeds on walled gardens owned by some of the greatest capitalists in history. Domestic and foreign disinformation campaigns are not uncommon, and have affected election results and fomented atrocities (as in Myanmar). The US, which birthed most of these technologies, has grown more imperialistic and conservative since their adoption.
EDIT: I saw your edit. I agree that enforcing an industry-wide standard for parental controls, preferable one that can be set per-device and must be respected by all social media services, is the right way to do this. Internet ID laws are dystopian insanity.
There are a lot of problems with age verification schemes, but you are doing your position a disservice by suggesting that anybody that doesn't want their kid to be bullied on Snapchat is actually just a puppet of fascist regimes trying to stifle political speech.
You should learn to appreciate the nuance of opinions that differ from your own if you actually want to, you know, convince anyone of anything.
>anybody that doesn't want their kid to be bullied on Snapchat is actually just a puppet of fascist regimes trying to stifle political speech.
They are fascists if they want to prevent everybody else's kids using social media just because they're too shitty parents to teach their own kids that sticks and stones may break my bones but names can never hurt me.
The problems of plastic waste isn’t because the end user didn't recycle; it’s a failure of companies to stop producing garbage in the first place, and they should be accountable for the harm it causes. I know that’s not how it works, but I can dream. Band-aids are easier.
The problems of social media, addictive algorithms and attention theft shouldn’t be blamed on end users. It should be on the companies that design these garbage systems, and they should be held responsible. I know that’s not how it works, but I can dream. Band-aids are easier.
Aren't age limits already in the ToS of most social media platforms? If the parents/children break the ToS their accounts should be deleted and their emails or even IPs banned.
I don't really see why we need more government involvement here. It's just going to be ham-fisted and create unintended consequences like the kids in Australia having to use adult YouTube because they can't have a kids account anymore.
I don't really like how western governments are coordinating all these massive law changes together. Something distinctly sinister about it.
Amen to that.
I don't think Europe and the US share enough values to do it on a lot of fronts, so perhaps that will shield me as an American.
But it seems like a lot of that coming down the hatch for most of Europe.
It’s governments with similar cultures and practices, all tackling a relatively new phenomenon.
Coming up with similar laws could just be convergent evolution rather than coordination.
You also can’t discount that once one country has tried it others that we’re considering similar legislation are much more likely to take the plunge if the outcomes in the first country aren’t negative
You notice that now? Remember 2020-2022?
something sinister in the masses of misinformation, especially political/social that takes place in those spaces too.
Sounds like you'll have problems sourcing NATO national IDs in St. Petersburg to create fake accounts.
I continue to be broadly in favour of this idea. I agree that there's some wiggle room around the specific age (15 vs 16), but for a population-level change you just need to pick an arbitrary value, implement, and re-assess later. I also acknowledge that 1) online age-gate mechanisms tend to suck, 2) the evidence of harm is weak, and 3) it really should be up to parents to manage at the individual level. But ultimately, I feel that a restriction like this would be a net positive for the mental health of the vast majority of young teens.
Make the change, assess the effects, adjust/repeal as needed (just like everything else). It seems like the kind of change that's well-suited to undoing later, in case of unintended consequences. It's not like we're going to be permanently stunting the growth of an entire cohort or something.
I'd go for 80 as the minimum. As if adults are immune to the depressing doomscrolling and skewed algorithms on social media
And what happens when someone under that age needs to anonymously ask for advice on the internet?
Most folks hit puberty at around 13. Imagine your parents have divorced -- your new stepfather is very religious. Your phone and laptop have spyways ("parenting software") on them. You manage to get onto a terminal at the public library. You've missed your period -- you're afraid you're pregnant, and not sure how much time you have to do something about it.
There are so many edge cases where the benefits of access to social media outweigh the harms -- but we've framed this as a discussion about selfies and sharing when it's really about free expression, and there are so many dark turns a young life can take that are made darker if they're left to their family and friends to rely on for help.
What makes you think this anonymous 13 year old is going to get good advice from anonymous strangers on the internet?
Because the advice from anonymous strangers in many online corners tends to be better than the advice from many countries and US states.
>What makes you think this anonymous 13 year old is going to get good advice from anonymous strangers on the internet?
There's a whole section here called "Ask HN".
What makes you think a 30 something venture capitalist is going to get good advice from anonymous strangers on the internet?
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- invocation of free expression as the supreme unbridled right even for teenagers who wouldn’t even understand what you’re talking about
- disregard for the societal institutions and support systems that, besides the family, are currently still available for the average teenager
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>invocation of free expression as the supreme unbridled right even for teenagers who wouldn’t even understand what you’re talking about
i got into policy partly by reading eff's deeplinks in my very early teens, but hey, go ahead and assume just because you were incapable of nuanced thought when you were violating COPPA to participate in public life everyone is.
Sure there are disadvantages with almost any policy but as a parent of teens I’ll take those any day in exchange for a ban. Even in your scenario it doesn’t prevent them from researching online. And the sad reality is that they’re more likely to ask GPT for advice than on some forum.
why should your opinion matter more because you're a parent? in my experience, folks with the economic comfort to create children by choice tend to be extreme machavellian and justify said machinations by the fact they must provide for the children they have thrust into an overpopulated world. as a nonparent, i'm less biased towards the natalist mindset and thus my opinion should be weighed more, not less than yours.
And your suggestion is that they go to 4chan or reddit, over, say Googling for advice? Or even talking to the librarian?
100% if those are the alternatives, I would never trust the top results for google which we all know are seriously gamed. In a number of states librarians are mandatory reporters, and even in places where they aren't if kids start asking them such questions they are going to call either their school or the kid's parents which could cause a much worse situation considering they were avoiding asking their parents in the first place.
no solution will ever be perfect but social media is infinitely more net-negative for kids, period. just as your example paint a picture of someone in dire need of help outside of friends / family they get easily get wrong help and suffer severe consequences (“drink bleach and you won’t get pregnant”)
How do you do it without harming privacy? How do you do it without nasty attestation that basically bans GNU/Linux? How do you handle children interested in topics (like programming) which only online platforms can sustain well? And allowing logged-out access is just keeping the worst parts, as the algorithms will keep showing the popular stuff, like those TikTok challenges.
I propose, instead, banning recommendation algorithms. This would ensure that only content which genuinely interests people will be shown, not some weird brainrot just because it's popular.
The question is, what falls in the scope of social media?
Would IRC count? And considering it's not entirely difficult to set up an IRCd server (you can literally run it on a spare computer or inside a VM), would the state be branding teenagers as criminals for doing so?
> Would IRC count? And considering it's not entirely difficult to set up an IRCd server (you can literally run it on a spare computer or inside a VM), would the state be branding teenagers as criminals for doing so?
That's the idea: the government wants to set up laws to punish people who set up communication infrastructures that are not officially approved by the government.
I was thinking as an alternative to this, a question of what education or orientation might be given to teens so that they might avoid some of the problems of social media that have led to people wanting to ban social media
Even though alcohol is provably toxic at any age, and more harmful the younger you are, we cannot agree on the correct drinking age: 21 in the US vs 14 in Germany. Laws aren’t perfect and they have second order effects, which is why it’s important to make such decisions based on individual circumstances. Parents - not almighty bureaucrats and especially not random bloggers on the internet - should decide when you’re ready for your first sip of social media.
This too shall pass.
In 2050 people will say "Do you remember social media?" and someone will say "Oh yeah, those online systems where everything you said was used to build a marketing profile of you? Where every picture you posted of your girlfriend / wife / sister / daughter / aunt / grandmother or child was taken by some weirdo and turned into porn? Where our kids hung out and were radicalized by fanatics and foreign powers?"
"Oh yeah, whatever happened to them?"
If this were to take effect with the bulk of social life taking place digitally we can expect minimum voting ages to be decreased the same and in the case of the US, the age of consent for sex to be standardized in the same direction too with a deemphasis on 18 as the de facto minimum at the cultural level.
And we can expect 15 year olds to hit the workforce full-time around then too I reckon. Or younger. Imagine 9 year olds stowed away in Waymo taxi trunks with socket wrenches and cyberdecks.
Or we could stagger the introduction to adult society, like we do today.
Drinking beer at 16, drinking liquor at 18 for example.
In some circles I believe that’s referred to as ‘grooming’?
The circles I am referring to are the UK and EU. Are those the same circles you were thinking of?
What counts as social media? Is discord social media? What about Roblox? What about youtube?
Many sites don't need accounts to access, is the account the issue or the access?
Maybe most of these regulations already come with these restrictions, but in my view social media apps that cater to under-16 can operate if:
- they dont offer an "algorithmic" feed - underage can only see content from who they follow and, most importantly
- photographs NOT allowed.
I bet 90% of social issues with "social media" disappears if these tools go back to 1990s style internet
Lots of photos on 1990s internet. Everything has a camera these days.
How do you define a social media account? Some laws were including youtube in that list.
I can't see how preventing someone from watching youtube videos would be a net positive, but if you allow youtube whiteout an account then why not reddit, why not snapchat as that's how most kids i know communicate and organize their sporting events, etc.
Main problem is: What's social media?
Am I supposed to use ewww sms again to talk with the kids, because they're not allowed on WhatsApp?
If the post is from an US centric point of view, are the kids going to not communicate at all outside school, because if they play outside someone is going to call child protection?
I am not a fan of governments controlling the internet and of Australia in this regard in particular, but Feature 4 makes it all acceptable to me. We shouldn't ban all of web 2.0, people, including children, have right to talk to each other, but gamified, attention-leeching design is absolutely harmful, and I would be happy to see banned for everyone
If something is unacceptable for a 15 year old, it is unacceptable for the majority of the adult population too. I do not support age restrictions on information in any form. If you don't want your kids to do or view certain things, that is your problem to solve. There are plenty of parental control options and apps already, we have had legislation proposed to label adult content, the reason all this verification crap keeps getting pushed is because corporations want your full identity to sell and fascist supporters want to dox everyone and their ideas and activities for the government to control and punish people for.
I think banning is the wrong method, since it keeps the incentive to target teens: They are a very profitable consumer group.
One could consider taxing the revenue for adds and content show to teens at an absurdly high rate and apply that as a default unless the consumer is prooven to be an adult.
> I think banning is the wrong method, since it keeps the incentive to target teens: They are a very profitable consumer group.
This does not fit my experience:
As a teenager (and as a university student), you barely have any money available. The value in targeting these users rather lies in forming their long-term values and long-time preferences (which rather few companies keep in mind: they are just looking for the next quarter).
On the other hand, grown-up nerds who are intellectually under-stimulated or frustrated in their jobs are quite a profitable consumer group. :-)
Is this ban actually effective and going to be enforced, anyway? My 15-year old niece just returned from Australia where she reports she was definitely still able to access Tik Tok and Instagram while in the country. Her similarly-aged Australian cousins thought it was all a bit of a joke too, apparently.
I agree with the direction but the solution is just wrong. I know back when I was 12-16 my only outlet was online. Whether it was healthy I don't know, but it was better than telling my parents how I felt.
As someone who grew up with the internet, I disagree completely. Sheltering kids doesn’t do anything good, and is equivalent to child abuse in my opinion.
So that bright tweens can get a practical introduction to hacking.
This post appears directly above "So, you’ve hit an age gate. What now?". The irony
I think it would be much easier to pressure the ~ten companies or whatever to implement policies.
Great way to absolve social media platforms of any responsibility to moderate content.
"What do you mean we need to moderate our content? There's no kids on our platform, so moderation means limiting adults' free speech"
16 does not define "kids".
I recall going to a Subway in TX some years ago and making some slightly risque remarks - we are Brits (ooh er missus). We were mildly scolded that "minors are present". The minor in question was 20 years old, we were told.
So today but at least kids get spared? Jokes aside, we do need moderation of digital platforms but it feels like in the US political landscape at least, that would do more harm that good.
Re-posting an older comment of mine on the subject:
Here's a couple of arguments I had to deal with whilst expressing my support for electronics ban at schools including a blanket social media ban:
1) "Since when do we consider it OK for the government to intervene between the parents and their children and telling them whats good and whats not? They know best."
2) "Whoever does not want to use electronics at school grounds are free to do so who are we to constrain them? Also, forbidding things never works let them learn."
3) "I think you are underestimating children; if they see that what they are doing with electronics affects them in any way, they will stop using them. Lets give them some credit and let them make their mistakes."
All of which are anti phone-ban/anti-regulation/pro-liberal/freemarketeering masquerading as a product of independent thought.
>All of which are anti phone-ban/anti-regulation/pro-liberal/freemarketeering masquerading as a product of independent thought.
I have categorised my opponents, defeating them forever.
No wait hang on.
Why not just make it 18. Would simplify everything so much. With expectations that everyone is adult. No need to control the content anymore. Porn for example could be freely shared.
Maybe the problem isn't the teens. Bullying is bullying no matter where it happens.
Profiting via dark patterns is despicable, whether it's preying on teens or the elderly. How many elderly people are fed distorted, sensational news and believe it wholesale? At least our teens have learned to be skeptics.
Instead of punishing the innocent to gatekeep a system that is one of the most important innovations in history, maybe we should focus on the root cause: the crappified, ad-based internet that glorifies "clicks" above all else.
We might have to face the fact that "free" accounts have become too expensive. If the cost of a free internet is a business model that monetizes outrage and addiction, it's not working. I don't love the idea of paid-only access or enforced identity, but applying a single standard to everyone might be better than what we have now.
I still believe in the free internet, and I know what I want to do to build it: Make excellent content. Teach good things.
I want to prove the value of an open and positive system.
Forcing people into a social underclass via digital exile is a grotesque abuse of power and makes a mockery of the ‘values’ you claim to uphold.
Glazing it all with ‘for the children’ makes it acutely Less sincere, given the convenience with which that phrase gets trotted out. Zero points.
The only consolation in this spectacle is that such abuses always bring unexpected consequences as harsh as the fools were misguided.
Restricting speech based on a protected demographic of ageism is wrong and shouldnt happen.
But at the same time, I wonder how much of online political speech is actually poisoned by angsty immature low-info teens.
But I do expect it's less than dishonesty. People who are parodies pushing negative stereotypes or dishonest positions of their political opponents.
What would online political speech look like if everyone genuinely represented their own views as well as they could; including admitting when they simply dont know. Might be an enlightenment event on its own.
Whenever this comes up people point out, 'Come on, let parents decide for their kids!' -- I sympathize with this argument, but let me explain why I don't believe that actually fixes the real problem. For reference, I'm gen-Z, COVID hit while I was in highschool, and I have seen and to this day see Tiktok / Reels / Shorts used every day by my friends (and to some extent me).
I may not be having kids for a while yet, but if I had teenagers today I would absolutely move somewhere where it is not legal for kids to have social media accounts. The underlying problem is that this isn't an individual problem, it's a social one! If a teenager's friends all have social media, he is going to be left out! It is going to severely hurt his life. Even if he never watches short-form video (the main component of social media I think is detrimental), his friends will! When I was in highschool sometimes my friends and I would get together and we would be bored, have no clue what to do. Instead of messing around doing random things, a couple of them would just open up Instagram reels and bam, afternoon wasted. If the half the group isn't trying to do something, you aren't going to do anything. Contrast this with before I was a teenager and before phones, I vividly remember me and my friends just exploring and doing random things. It's just a different experience and I think social media needs to be banned for everyone for it to be effective.
> If a teenager's friends all have social media, he is going to be left out!
The problem rather is that children with parents of very different value systems are forcibly put together in a daily jail (compulsory schooling).
I am surprised to see the positive takes on this sort of thing on HN considering that we all know that is just the first step of many steps that the current governments worldwide are rolling out.
Once we agree to that, then next time, you'll need to upload your ID to do something else and by the way you don't mind proving that you are not a psychopath and/or a sexual predator if you want to keep using WhatsApp/Telegram and other services?
You also don't mind if we scan your private messages now, do you? We just want to make sure that you are are not some sort of extremist/activist or someone who might cause trouble.
The slippery slope is real.
We look down at China, Russia and Iran for silencing the voices of the protesters and dissidents but we are slowly building the infrastructure that will enable future governments to do just that in the future.
Once everything is locked down and tied to your real ID, then it will be extremely easy to suppress view points or things that any government left or right doesnt want to see spread in the wild. What then?
And those who say, well, we should just wait and see what happens in Australia because if it doesn't work out then we can always turn it off or something, my question to you is when have you seen a government go back on something like this?
Good luck trying to enforce this!
Does it worry anyone else that this is all actually a government attack on anonymity?
I have 2 kids and I agree under 16s shouldn’t be on social media.
But everyone then has to prove they’re 16+
Is this just stealth digital ID cards?
Or am I conspiracy theorist?
> Does it worry anyone else that this is all actually a government attack on anonymity? [...] Is this just stealth digital ID cards?
Of course this is the intention, or did anybody seriously believe that politicians deeply care about protecting the children? "But you have to think of the children ..." is just the argument silence the critics of these to-be surveillance laws.
Hardly anyone seems to be talking about this though. “Won’t somebody think of the children” is still far too effective.
The issue lies not in shielding adolescents from the internet because of their susceptibility to negative influences, but in the very economic logic that governs the internet.
They’ve built a system where everyone—not just kids—is a bargaining chip. Influence is treated as a product and sold by deliberately creating viral trends. It’s no different from advertising, but much more aggressive. By pushing content through entire information streams and dominating attention, it achieves an impact traditional ads never could.
It’s proven to be extremely effective, so people keep paying for it and pushing the system forward, while brushing off criticism with cosmetic fixes—like banning kids from the internet and telling adults to just deal with it.
Terrible policy. It denies freedom of expression to an entire class of citizens and their parents. This should be unconstitutional in most of North America and Western Europe.
I was a kid online with BBS' in the 1980s when I was 10 years old and met many of my best friends that way. I have teens that met their close friends locally online too. This will also just lead to parents creating accounts for the kids. I'd much rather have parental controls to manage my kids account.
And if the issue is bad parents , it isn't the role of the state to be a nanny. Safeguards and laws yes, but this is too far and almost totalitarian. Political parties that adopt this stance should be laughed out of power.
Worse, these authors are not interested in debate, they just delete comments that don't agree with them. Charlatans.
> Every Country Should Set 16 as the Minimum Age for [Manipulation] Media Accounts
FTFY.
That is the real problem, no? The combination of surveillance, analysis of the surveilled data, very active feed manipulation based on that surveillance, and indirect business models that both finance and direct the specific manipulation.
Kids should be social. They should connect.
I think we do a grave disservice to our ability to reason about online safety by letting "social" be applied to what is largely interaction with adversarial/amoral value extracting algorithms, model-in-the-middle intermediating human connections, as if the result was any kind of natural social behavior.
Honestly it should be even older than that. Should be 21. Let's not let easily influenced teenagers on what are effectively mass advertising platforms designed to make the likes of Mark Zuckerberg even more money.
Just ban social media entirely. You would find a lot benefits to society for doing exactly that.
No, ban the ad-based monetization model.
That's the most important perverse incentive. Others can be dealt with later.
Is HN social media?
Assuming someone won't harm themselves or accept sacrifice for a cause is a poor argument.
If burning HN to the ground deleted Facebook and Tiktok out of existence, then let it burn.
I'm certainly visiting HN somewhat compulsively.
It’s hard not to blame Meta for this.
Did they really need to push the evil lever to 100% just for engagement? Or could they have pushed back on shareholders just a teeny bit, in the name of long term legislative freedom?
Blaming a company that allowed bots to hold "sensual" conversations with children? An outrage!
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/aug/15/meta-ai-c...
"Every web service that allows for communication should require personal identification to register"
No, social media companies need to fucking moderate.
That’s not going to happen
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People under 16 should not be permitted to socialize or express themselves, nor should they be allowed to hear words from adults at all, not just online.
/s
I think this makes total sense, when I was 15 there was no social media and we socialized just fine over beers at an unattended construction site (ok also playing soccer but I do fondly remember opening bottles on rebar). Kids these days! /s
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It’s better to just ban social media all together. It clearly doesn’t provide enough good value to society, regardless of age.
You just expressed that opinion on social media. There's no reasonable definition of social media that wouldn't include Hacker News.
This would disadvantage young business owners, cutting them off from a crucial marketing channel for businesses in the modern age.
Children shouldn't be business owners.
I disagree, many children have a unique view into problems that adults may be unaware of. Since they don't have to make back living expenses, they have a prime opportunity to make a start up.
Most children don’t and most children need to be protected until adulthood when they have a better idea about the consequences of their decisions. Tragedy of the commons again.
We shouldn't let the majority hold back the high performers.
According to who?
Laws in most countries require the age of 18 for signing contracts or anything legally binding.