Summary
A YouGov poll revealed that 77% of Germans support banning social media for those under 16, similar to a new Australian law.
The survey found that 82% believe social media harms young people, citing harmful content and addiction.
In Australia, the law fines platforms up to AUD 49.5 million (€30.5M) for allowing under-16s to create accounts, with enforcement trials set before implementation next year. Critics
Whatever it takes to make the kids support genocide.
An even higher percentage — 82% — were “absolutely certain” or “somewhat certain” that social media use is in some way bad for children and teenagers.
What’s the percentage of those who are “absolutely certain” or “somewhat certain” that authoritarian adults wanting to control teenagers’ lives out of a belief that the former know what’s actually best for the latter is “in some way bad” for children and teenagers?
Whatever it is, it certainly includes me.
It seems that most in Germany do not understand they’ll give even more of their online freedom away for no net gain.
Let’s mandate state-sanctioned age verification. Some service may accept this, other won’t. First loss. Then, some kids will get around that with complacent parents. Other will be pressured into it. In the end, it won’t work as a full ban. So, either turn a blind eye to the whole situation (then why bother in the first place), or make it worse: only one account per ID maybe. Big second loss there. And even if it works, it’s ignoring that some sites that would qualify as “social media” are the only communication outlet some people have. Third huge loss.
This will only be a terrible annoyance to everyone, prevent some services from growing or even exist, to the benefit of kids using their parents accounts anyway or VPNing around it. They learned how to do that very quickly for other online content.
Laws and rules that are unenforceable at scale are only useful to pin more faults on people when needed, not to help them.
So sad that this will cause social media services to decline
Ffs. Don’t copy us germany. The social media ban is not a good policy.
Queer kids and kids in abusive households can just die, apparently.
What are you on
Some vulnerable people (yes, that include kids) are manipulated and cut from external contacts, and sometimes online services are their only way to communicate. A lot of such services could fall under the “social media” category indiscriminately, making it harder to use, and cutting their only source of communications.
Think like countries banning TOR and the like to root out journalist, but on a smaller scale.
Is empathy a drug now?
It’s good that you feel empathic with the vulnerable, and I truly mean that, but I fail to recognize the connection to the actual news
This sounds good on paper until you realize that what is considered “social media” is up to whoever happens to hold that position. Even ignoring the fact that it’s unenforceable anyway, unless you require a real ID, wish is just straight up worse for all sorts of reasons.
The idea is nice, but actually putting it into law without opening the door to censorship and other side effects is just not plausible.
Edit: also, Everytime you read about a poll like this, ask yourself: what was the question they asked? Did it provide any context? Did it require any understanding of the actual underlying issues and laws? Or was it some variation of “think of the children”?
I think the question was; “how can we protect the kids when obviously their parents have failed?”
Parent here. Having an extra reason to explain why my son won’t be doing something that some of his friends are is helpful.
Even ignoring the fact that it’s unenforceable anyway, unless you require a real ID, wish is just straight up worse for all sorts of reasons.
It is possible to verify age using a real ID without sharing other details from that ID with a social media company with apps like https://www.yivi.app/en/
No it’s not. It’s literally impossible, that’s the issue.
The politicians in charge of making the laws often lack the understanding needed to make privacy respecting laws. So it’s possible, it’s just not happening. They also listen to actual experts ready to little, but do listen to lobbyists.
This also doesn’t address the censorship side of the problems.
Just for a random example, literally the first thing I thought of: let’s say there’s a youth movement to affect climate change, or some other issue. They organize general protests, boycotts on “bad companies” and are starting to get somewhere (politically and affecting the bottom lines of these companies). This is coordinated using some online communication platform, think Reddit, lemmy or whatever (Facebook, whatever). Those that want it to “go away” can just include that in the list of sites that fall under thes “youth protection” laws.
Then there’s laws like that being extended it abused to do things that weren’t originally intended, which is also hard to safeguard against. Future legislation might extend the age range from 16 to 18, then to 21. With the list of blocked sites also growing conveniently alongside, and boom you got a nice censorship platform. Not saying that will happen, but making sure it can’t is what’s hard.
You’re right. I’m not arguing that this whole thing is a good idea. I just pointed out that it would be possible to implement without sharing real IDs with the social media platforms. It would not be unenforceable as the top comment said.
yeah no way I’m trusting a corpo like that with my data thanks
Which corporation are you talking about? The app i linked is open source and originally developed by SIDN. You can verify what details it shares. In a case like this that should only be “the person logging in 16 year or older”
From what I understand of the Australian law, companies are prohibited from requiring a government-issued ID. In practical terms, how can this law be implemented, then? Bypassing a prompt that asks for a birthday is as easy as just lying. Other than requiring an ID, I honestly can’t fathom a way this would actually work. I suppose you could require a active credit card number, but that would exclude adults and kids over 16.
It’s Facebook, kids will post pictures of themselves.
now Facebook has to close the accounts that are reported.
then it only effects the stupider children, not all children.
Not that hard. When you allow reporting and then removal of their accounts. They may get through but their accounts are removed rapidly.
So you want people to report others accounts as being under age? There’s absolutely zero way that could go wrong or has ever gone wrong in history.
Lets do it in the US too.
It’s not like those republicans in government are gonna use this “kids addicted to social media” as an excuse to enforce ID verifications to go online, right? Think about the children!
Lots of people believe things not supported by science.
News at 11.
I mean science does show this generation has very high incidence of anxiety, depression, suicide etc. Not saying social media is all of it, but it’s probably a very big cause.
“Probably”
This is your definition of scientific?
Thanks for proving my point.
great account to follow regarding the science on the subject: https://ohai.social/@Garwboy/113554246823274751
Yeah the level of scientific illiteracy in favor of self-righteous yammering was actually surprising for me to find on Lemmy. Who all upvoted that “probably” comment? smh.
Let’s remember the ban in Australia concerns platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit and X. Exemptions will apply to services such as YouTube, messenger kids, whatsapp, kids helpline and google classroom.
The account you provided starts by stating that “the most rigorous analysis” found little/no significant evidence , but fails to link to them. He immediately lumps together smartphone and social media, then goes on justifying the importance of both with arguments that clearly concern almost exclusively smartphones.
This ban is about social media, not smartphones altogether.
Garwboy’s arguments:
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they let kids stay connected with friends, foster a community, allow coordination of activities: he’s talking about smartphones.
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they allow access to school work, references, important resources: again, smartphones/the internet
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they allow access to support, help and guidance from experienced and informed individuals and groups: this point I’ll give to him; as for years, Reddit has served that very purpose for me. Who knows what that site has become though.
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he compares them to roads (roads kill children every year, but they save many lives, make the world go round,…): again this whole comparison is only valid for smartphones.
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they are a refuge for children who experience abuse at home: this is probably true, but it is not an argument about how social media helps in these situations. I could say the same about drugs .
Which brings us to my point of view: social media are, for many, a drug. A bit of it can be good, fun and even sometimes make your like better, but we have to acknowledge the negative side, which in my opinion can have devastating effects in a person’s mental, especially when the mental is still in its forming stage.
but we have to acknowledge the negative side, which in my opinion […]
I don’t do opinions. Burnett (a neuroscientist) has linked many sources - maybe you just need to read a bit more.
Additionally, your claims about what’s “smartphones” and what’s “social media” are strange - my kids use Snapchat to communicate. Do you think they use SMS?? How old are your kids?
Look it’s my opinion from personal experience, just disregard it if it bothers you.
I read the whole series of posts but didn’t see them, I guess I needed to search some more - my bad.
I’m not saying social media doesn’t let you do all those things, I’m saying you don’t need it to do them.
I don’t have kids and never used Snapchat, but what does Snapchat provide that helps them communicate better than let’s say WhatsApp?
Edit: I went to dig on Burnett’s page for the links you tell me about. All I found was a radio interview of a doctor on radio Boston, an article from the Sunday times about Burnett’s book and an article on Wales online, also about the book.
Could you link me to the relevant articles I must have missed?
Edit 2: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7364393/ Found this article that combines different studies made on the subject. Around halfway through the page you will find the results of some of these studies and you will see the answer isn’t clear.
I don’t have kids
Yeah I think you should abstain from having opinions on what their generation is doing then. In the whole of human history no older generation has ever been correct regarding what the upcoming generation should or shouldn’t do.
The study you link says the exact same thing as Burnett does. It doesn’t support “social media is bad for kids”.
edit:
In all, the available meta-analytic evidence suggests that SNS use is weakly associated with higher levels of ill-being [14,17, 18, 19, 20] but also with higher levels of well-being [17,19], a result that suggests that ill-being is not simply the flip-side of well-being and vice versa, and that both outcomes should be investigated in their own right [11,39]. Finally, all meta-analyses reported considerable variability in the reported associations. For example, in the meta-analysis by Ivie et al. [14], the reported associations of SMU with depressive symptoms ranged from r = −.10 to r = +.33.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X21001500
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And even worse: bad polling amplifies the interpretation the pollsters want to see.
In this case, there’s no link to or mention of the actual question. Just the in favor/not in favor distribution.
Did they ask “the government should implement laws to ban children” or did it say “rules to prevent children from signing up”?
Did they mention the age limit? Asking any children and teenagers might lead to very different results.
And so on. If you can’t find the exact question, polls like this are useless.
Important thing about these laws is that they are for everybody. I would find it interesting if they asked, “Would you be willing to show your ID to go online?”. “Would you be okay with the government requiring you to show your ID to go on reddit?”
In a country were people believe that practice of safe sex can be taught by 14, I can’t fathom why they think responsible Internet practice can’t be taught earlier than 16.
EDIT: Noticed a typo. They always seem to be in bad places… Changed to why they think responsible Internet practice CAN’T be taught until 16, that there are commonly considered more serious things set at a you get age.
You know that 14 is the Age of Consent to have sex with other 14 year olds?
We learn about Sex in the 3./4. Grade, (8-10 years old) and more in the 5. Grade, and even more in terms of genetics in later Grades.
So maybe check your facts before you post missinformation.
how do these relate?
I’m pointing to the fickle nature on how we determine what age people should be allowed to do different things, which is particularly ironic in Germany.
I also agree that social media have a lot of risks, but 16 for social media seems very old compared to what we should do about it.
