Discussion What do you think about Australia's ban of social media for children under 16?

[Forever Sleep]

I'm old so- social media wasn't really much of a thing when I was a child. I didn't really use the internet much till my late teens/ twenties. I'm actually glad I didn't grow up with it. I imagine the bullying would have extended on to it. I also had little else to do but art so- my focus was on my dream career from very early on. I suppose video games were a distraction though.

How do you suppose it will affect youngsters these days though? I imagine it will be harder for those who have started to use it who will now find their accounts closed.

What do you think though? Will the positives outweigh the negatives? I guess they will be able to still visit things like YouTube. Just not interact.

 

[martyrdom]

Great idea, wish all countries did it

 

[Forever Sleep]

Great idea, wish all countries did it

I think it will end up being a social experiment of sorts. How will this new generation turn out, compared to the current ones? Will they be more or less advanced than their peers? I imagine it will depend on what they want to work in really. I wonder how it will impact mental health.

 

[U. A.]

Okay idea (they should just torch the companies wholesale), sounds like shit implementation.

As usual, the question to be asked is: "how will this actually play out?"; and as our beloved BBC writes, it's the tech corps who will be on the hook, and:

these companies must take "reasonable steps" to keep kids off their platforms, and use age assurance technologies - without specifying which ones.

Several possibilities have been raised, including the use of government IDs, face or voice recognition and age inference. The latter of these uses online information other than a date of birth - such as online behaviour or interactions - to estimate a person's age.

so yeah, data collection and/or surveillance. Of children. Great.
BUT DON'T WORRY, CAUSE

the government says the legislation incorporates "strong protections" for personal information. These protections stipulate that such information may not be used for anything other than age verification and must be destroyed once that has been done, with "serious penalties" for breaches.

It also says platforms must offer an alternative to the use of governments IDs for age assurance.

as if these asshole techbro institutions can be trusted to follow rules (see: Cambridge Analytica).

What's more is the "penalty" amounts to a slap on the wrist for most of them; while a company will "face fines of up to $49.5m (US$32m, £25m) for serious or repeated breaches",

former Facebook executive Stephen Scheeler told AAP: "It takes Meta about an hour and 52 minutes to make $50 million in revenue".

And then of course is the reality from the other side:

Teens interviewed by the BBC said they were opening new accounts with fake ages ahead of the ban ... Commentators are also predicting a surge in the use of VPNs - which hide the country a person is accessing the internet from - as happened in the UK after the implementation of age control rules.

This is probably just a look-good move from government, same as the Ofcom nonsense. As stated earlier, social media corporations should be thoroughly annihilated. They spent years refining their products to be addictive as fuck, and specifically targeted teenagers no less. I don't think people understand just how massive and evil they are.

 

[Pluto]

 

[Ramire_Artes]

I think Australia is a bit over the top with its bans.

 

[Dejected 55]

How reliably will they be able to enforce it? People drink underage, people drive underage, people work underage, almost anything you can think of that has an age limit (except maybe for voting) is circumvented by those who want to do it pretty easily apparently.

And I honestly think it is parents' responsibility to teach and raise their kids properly. Not sheltering them or trying to hide everything from them as if these things aren't a part of reality... Like, forbidding your kid from using a knife until they are 18, then suddenly turning them loose in the world and gifting them a box of knives. Bad things will happen... but restrict access at an early age while you are teaching them proper use of a knife and the dangers of using it improperly or carelessly more likely will yield an adult who has no problem using knives correctly.

Too many people letting "wild west" rules "teach" kids things they don't want to be bothered with talking to their children about... and inevitably kids learn the worst ways to do those things because no one is there to properly guide and encourage them... so no wonder it becomes a problem.

Also, turning them loose on the internet suddenly when they come of age is not going to go well either... if you somehow restrict them from using it and circumventing the ban until they are of age, then still don't bother teaching or guiding them in its use... they will just go nuts in short order and you'll only have shifted whatever problem you tried to stop by a few years.

 

[Lost.Empyrean]

it sounds like a good idea at first until you realize they only banned social media, and not devices in general. Meaning they can still access youtube shorts and play games, they just can't talk to people online, so the brainrot will continue and their cognitive abilities will still decline.

chances are, this law won't actually do much because parents nowadays don't seem to want to do their jobs. I'm assuming there will still be some making accounts for their kids and others not paying enough attention to know whether or not their kids are doing stuff online that they shouldn't be.


also I have privacy concerns considering age verification for the adults

 

[Captive_Mind515]

Just a pointless attempt to close the gate after the horse has bolted. Technology is transformative, in good and bad ways. There's no going back to the days when kids and young teens were innocent and largely protected from the world at large. I don't say that with any glee, but those days are now gone forever.

 

[Hvergelmir]

...but those days are now gone forever.

That's not an absolute truth. Societies can revert changes, and sometime does.

That said, I'm in favor of free speech and an unrestricted Internet. I think resources are better spent teaching privacy and online safety, early.

 

[Captive_Mind515]

That's not an absolute truth. Societies can revert changes, and sometime does.

That said, I'm in favor of free speech and an unrestricted Internet. I think resources are better spent teaching privacy and online safety, early.

I never presented it as an absolute truth. It's an opinion. I could be wrong, but I very much doubt it.

At best, bans like this might have a small effect with regards to online bully and such. But overall, I can't see it having a dramatic effect on the prevailing dynamic. Like you said, we strive for a free and open internet. There are costs and negatives to having such an open environment. Not all of them can be negated.

 

[Dejected 55]

They don't ban scissors... they teach at a very early age not to run with them. Some people still hurt themselves by accident, but it must be a very low number because you don't hear much about it being a national problem.

Sometimes the simplest solutions are best... parents need to set better examples of acceptable behavior and need to talk to their kids and need to make their kids feel comfortable coming to them with questions. Those simple things would improve society immensely.