I'll vouch and reply because I feel your comment may be in earnest.
Historically, in the US, there have been strict limits on what ads are allowed around children's TV. There has to be a distinction between the TV show and the ads. For example kids TV shows in the US used to (not sure about now) have a very distinct break saying that the show was going to be back soon, indicating that what followed wasn't part of the show.
There is also a difference in that 20 years ago, if a kid wanted to buy a toy, they had to see an ad on TV that happened to be for a toy they wanted and then convince their parent to go to the store and buy that toy.
Now with targeted ads and IAP, kids are being targeted directly to buy shiny goods for games that they play. Cosmetic upgrades in the more "honest" games that bestow social status between peers, or gacha tokens in pay to win games to get needed items/characters to progress. (And some games combine the worst of both!)
Targeting a child with an ad for a game they play gets insidious very quickly. "Hey Timmy, did you know all your friends are laughing behind your back because you don't have the latest and greatest armor upgrade? Better buy it now!"
> Targeting a child with an ad for a game they play gets insidious very quickly. "Hey Timmy, did you know all your friends are laughing behind your back because you don't have the latest and greatest armor upgrade? Better buy it now!"
One nit, I think you mistyped about 'cosmetic upgrades' in pay to win games. Like you probably know, the games become impossibly difficult at a certain point, unless you start paying for tokens or whatever.
And every little Timmy wants the nice shiny cloak and character profile for their Honkai Star Rail account. Cosmetics and pay-to-win offerings both print money.
Those ads cannot cater their content and their timing towards your vulnerabilities based on behavior analytics, such as metadata indicating that you might be depressed, going through a breakup, etc. An app can shoot varied content at you and determine that if you view happy cat content, then enraging political discourse, then sexual stimulating content, and then and ad, you're more likely to click on the ad, or stare at it for longer, etc.
Social media ads are essentially interactive, but their mechanics are hidden and there's no winning state for the player.
And just to play with dark ideas: what exactly (besides technological limitations) would stop any of the big companies from basically running a long social experiment to determine whether, over years, you can shape a kid to become an adult that's a big consumer?
An ad on TV has no information on who you are when you view it. An ad on SM has detailed information of who you were years ago, who you are now, and there's no reason why it can't make predictions about who you'll be based on the growing data. Nor is there a reason not to try to shape that to their benefit.
> An app can shoot varied content at you and determine that if you view happy cat content, then enraging political discourse, then sexual stimulating content, and then and ad, you're more likely to click on the ad, or stare at it for longer, etc.
Yeah, no. Facebook ads are mostly pay per impression, not click, so there’s no reason to even do this. Ad targeting is controlled by advertisers for the most part, not algorithms - they want to target specific demographics, not some random cross-section of humanity. It’s very different from the kind of algorithms that power your news feed.
Huh? A demographic is a random cross-section of humanity. The only thing that matters is if the way you're determining the group yields more sales.
The final goal is obviously a sale, but the real commodity is attention.
I'm not saying "this is how it is", I'm saying "show my a reason why this is not the case now or where we're heading.
Like, if FB could do this, and it yielded more money for them, what would stop them? You sound very convinced, so I'd be glad if you can go into detail as to what that conviction is founded on. Have you worked on these algorithms?
Like a lot of things, I expect the only difference is time and space. There are adult generations where large swaths don’t remember Saturday morning cartoons now. If you’re a millennial with tech savvy parents you may have grown up with streaming entertainment only. Though today ads can show up there as well, so maybe this will be another way where children and grandparents bond over things the parents don’t understand.
Minors probably respond best to ads since they’re not familiar with the deceiving paterns of advertising. However, im not sure how they make money as minors usually don’t have their own money, they’ll have to aks their parents. As a parent I am terrified of my children falling prey to all this kind of crap as I’ll have to pay in the end. For now Im shielding my children from advertising as much as I can and attempt to instill some common sense in them. This will not fully work at first as they’ll most likely cave in with their peer group but hopefully they’ll remember it later.
If I'm reading this correctly, they made this revenue by displaying ads to minor audiences. Not by directly collecting money from minors. Which makes this statistic interesting and worth attention and discussion... yet also no different than any other marketing that kids see.
An ad on TV or on the highway does not have the capability of taking into account the network of people you follow and whether you have a habit of being awake at 3AM browsing posts about break ups.
There's a constant, gradual pervasive shift towards having ads in more private and intimate spaces.
Fair point - I was saying that making revenue from minors is in no way unique to social media, but you are 100% correct that the depth of the placement points to different incentives to the marketing teams who create that revenue.
Turning 18 doesn't magically make those concerns go away, either. If anything, my takeaway is that as parents, we need to teach our children to critically think about the marketing they see while they are still minors, to avoid raising adults who blindly accept anything put in front of them.
I'd be quite willing to take this wager - it might not be something they readily offer but I'm pretty certain if someone asked their data scientists to pull together such a demographic they could manage it with ease.
People were targeting scam medical treatments and useless kitchen appliances to this demographic on television in my childhood, so I would almost guarantee that they do.
When I was a minor in the 80s and 90s, I had unskippable 30-60 second ads called commercials that targeted me during my cartoons (breakfast cereal and toys I could pester my parents to buy me) and, when I got older, MTV and magazines. Part of it was self selection (I started reading gaming magazines, so saw full page gaming ads). These publishers knew who I was through my subscription.
Sure, the segments were broader, but culture was homogenous by necessity. You didn’t see the cultural divergence of today that the internet (and targeting) have enabled.
I think the mechanics of targeting have changed, but we’re fooling ourselves if we think we haven’t had “targeted” ads for a long while before the internet took over.
I really don't think the commenter you're replying to was implying we haven't had targeted advertising for a while, but rather that the issue is how targeted it's getting.
It's kind of like comparing a random person throwing a rock trying to hit you, vs a professional sniper with the most advanced scope and powerful rifle.
That's "casting a net" style targeted advertising vs "we specifically want 15-18yo gamers in southwest Texas who primarily play these games at this time and might be going through a tough time based on their liked posts on Instagram"
IMO this is great for companies, but potentially very bad for consumers (I.e. engaging customers when they're most vulnerable)
Maybe not in those terms, but I don't see why the algorithm can't do internal work to basically take that into account, whether it's made explicit or not.
You don't see anything wrong with using vulnerable states of mind or poor mental health as parameters to target sales?
What do you think happens when it is determined that poor mental health increases ad revenue?
Do you think social apps would refrain from manipulating their content in order to keep you in the sweet spot of poor mental health to increase ad revenue? Out of compassion? Or?
It can be something the algorithms slowly crawl towards, and someone working in them might notice.
On the other hand, it's been well known for a while the effect of outrage in online engagement. Trolling and fake news became political weapons to recruit people, making them emotional, invested, it has shaped belief and behavior. There's people who get paid to spread this kind of content with this goal, for more sinister purposes than ad revenue.
The negative emotion of anger is exploited to get people to stay engaged online.
So this is not new, at all. Why would it be limited to anger? For what reason would FB/Google refrain from doing it? This is what I'm curious about, do you honestly think it's not possible to use the algorithms and AI for such a task? If not, surely you admit it would be possible soon? And if so, would they abstain for moral reasons?
Of course it's possibly vle. Anything is possible.
But you are just proposing a lot of scary sounding "what-ifs" without evidence.
What if the tech companies use their influence to summon the Devil? What if they secretly are controlling all of the politicians? What if they are forcing pineapple on pizza? Why aren't they secretly running the world?
Sure, lots of things will be possible soon. That doesn't mean it has to be happening.
I'm exploring what would be the safeguards against this. I'm not trying to convince you, rather I'm seeking out other people to convince me of why this wouldn't be the case.
Pineapple on pizza wouldn't profit them, so it's easy to see why they wouldn't go that route. What's more, it wouldn't affect me personally.
Now if we consider that 1) they are capable, and they have done similar things in the past 2) there is a mental health epidemic 3) this could affect you and me personally, then isn't it reasonable to spread awareness about this, rather than sweep it under the table until some big revelation comes as evidence?
For example, if there was a constant healthy discussion about how online rage was not only a problem on a personal level, but could be leveraged to sway an entire country's political compass before it happened, would it perhaps not have had a positive change?
This is the mindset I'm coming from, not fear mongering.
Is that really something that needs to be clarified? People in general know that social media companies make money through advertising, not by directly charging their users.
> wouldn't the ad itself have to be harmful to mental health?
No, the mere presence of the advertisement is sufficient harm to a
person without capacity to understand the difference between what they
need, what they want, and what other people want of them.
I'm certainly against ads, but I'm not convinced that an ad is inherently damaging to mental health.
seeing an ad for 5 gum probably won't harm a developing teen. seeing a celebrity live a lifestyle you will never have and look 'better' than you ever will might.
though using revanced and the IG equivalent certainly is a QoL improvement, but I don't think my doctor will prescribe pihole to improve my mental health
At this point I'm pretty convinced that ads are damaging to mental health (at least the ones we see today). Modern advertising normalizes consumerism, drives down our attention span, and overloads us with blinking lights and exciting sounds causing us to, IMO, existing in a much higher general state of stress than previous generations.
I'm no mental health professional but I suspect this period of advertising will be looked back on in a similar way to leeching and leaded gasoline.
the potential is there but everything said could also be said about a generic post on IG or a sponsored post which is a different type of ad not tracked here. IG is a cesspool but not because of the ads. look at a generic reels post and view the comments
To me that just condemns a lot of social media stuff too, instead of absolving ads. By now people are so used to it being done to them, they do it to each other. Where "it" is being bombarded with sophistry and stuff that sounds/feels good, but means nothing or is flat out wrong if you take a second to actually parse it. That is the saddest part for me, that people become their own abusers and celebrate it, like drug addicts, hissing at anyone who would dream of spoiling the party. To steal from George Carlin, if a modicum of thought were introduced into all that parroting and back patting, it would completely collapse.
Sure, if you equate an ad for a new Mario game for Nintendo Switch with deceptive mobile game ads featuring pregnant Spiderman and Elsa in sexually charged poses, I can see that.
I'm shocked this number isn't higher. Are you telling me that only fraction (because not all of that 11B was made on facebook property) of facebook's 116.6 yearly income is from one of the most avid groups of social media users?
Social media companies don't make much profit on selling stuff to users. They make profit on advertisements. If what you're saying is that younger folks see less advertisements because they buy less things, I can assure you that is not the case.
Anecdotal, but my Gen Z and his friends abhor and avoid FB/IG like the plague. From my perspective, FB is rapidly losing the interests of the younger generations and increasingly looking like a right-wing retirement community.
Do we have a reliable source of user data that shows the breakdown of each social media platform by age group?
I agree FB is unused among GenZ, but in my anecdotal experience Instagram (and to a lesser extent, threads) continues to be relevant, alongside Snap and TikTok.
Heck, let's run with TikTok for a second, ByteDance made 110 billion[0] this year. Does anybody use TikTok more than GenZ?
Edit: Also, IG seems more popular among girls, which could explain the opinion of your kid. I found an article from pew to corroborate this that also shows that IG is very much still relevant:
I tried multiple ways (brave browser,paid youtube account,paid games etc.,) to prevent kids from ads online but it is hard. There are ads embedded in videos and links that take them to ad sites.
I am now training them on how to recognize ads and scams faster. It is fun watch a 6 year old say all free Robux offers are ads and don't click on the link.
All energy drinks are sugar water
Caffeine is bad for health
People who drink those are addicts
If online exposure is hard from 5 years or above, there should be some level of ads education from 5 years itself.
Between uBlock in the browser, ReVanced apps[1] (YouTube, Twitter/X, TikTok), DNS ad filtering[2], and Spotify Premium, I don't see ads. It takes some effort but isn't that hard for an HN poster.
Also, I'm quite skeptical of caffeine and aspartame being bad for health (in adults at least).
not op - but I have been doing YT premium for about a month now, and find the music thing lacking immensely.
If I wasn't doing 30 hours of training / learning each week with YT I would not pay for premium. Yet I have paid for premium https://DI.fm for years and everyone tells me that spotify is really good at curation / playlists / discovering new stuff..
I could see if just using YT for random entertainment stuff not seeing real value in it overall - it could easily be replaced with videos hosted on FB or Insta or anywhere else basically for a lot of people.
I have problems with my partner. She keeps falling for these scams and it is so tedious explaining to her why I think something is a scam (usually various coach programmes, how to get wealthy and so on) and often times scammers use quite clever manipulation techniques, so that she believes them more than myself. She gets upset and say "everything is a scam to you!" and I say "no, it happens that you are being attracted to these kind of offers and so the Facebook / whatever algorithms keep pushing more of these at you". She goes "you just don't want me to succeed in life!" and so on.
She even got to some (probably a cult) meeting telling her how she could invest her money without paying tax. When I told her that these things are illegal and not going to work, she says that I am just stupid and everyone does it.
Then I showed her analysis of one of such schemes done by a reputable accountant, she says that it's just a smear campaign.
It's so so exhausting.
I wish advertising was more regulated.
I am probably going to install some sort of ad blocking on the network level.
Does anyone know about good PiHole tutorial? How can I hook it up to the router?
I also been thinking about contacting Trading Standards, but I have a feeling they are not doing anything about it. Technically those scams are not illegal in the UK. Anyone can pretend to be an adviser and they can sell any sort of pie in the sky schemes without bearing any liability.
I do not have kids but the education first approach always sounds like the best one
That being said NextDNS is pretty awesome and will get a ton of it (plus has other features great for kids) and can be installed on any iOS device using a Profile (no local VPN needed). On Android you can simply use the built in OS DNS feature. And of course it's easy on Windows and MacOS as well.
That combined with either Orion browser (either using the built in blocking or installing Firefox Ublock in Orion) is pretty damn good on iOS. On Android or Windows then Firefox plus Ublock Origin is also an awesome combo.
This won't block the inline YouTube ads but you could of course pay for YT premium or find other ways around it. And Spotify family at 15$ is not a bad deal to get 5 people no add full premium for music.
+1 to using NextDNS. I'm using it on my home network and it has worked quite well. I also use it as my DNS on my Android devices and covers mobile networks too, which is why I switched from a PiHole.
It does struggle at times where something is blocked and needs to be on the allowlist for a website to work, but I blame this more on the website rather than NextDNS (mostly affiliate links).
Teaching kids that "everyone who drinks Caffeine/Energy drinks is an addict" is whack, it's an absolutely massive generalization that others a huge swath of society. We should teach kids compassion, not animosity.
Addiction isn't binary, and either some people don't get addicted as easily, and/or different people perceive addiction differently. All I know is that some people can pick up and drop substances and be unfazed, and other people can't stop even as it kills them. I have a bunch of friends who can only drink coffee for a few days before it makes them too anxious. They definitely aren't addicts, but they will buy and drink an energy drink if they need the boost badly enough.
I have no doubt that Caffeine saves lives every year by keeping people alert in dangerous jobs.
I just think it’s crazy a six year old is even on a device instead of being a six year old playing and what not. I was writing code at 11 but the only screens I was on until double digits was playing video games a few hours a week under parental supervision. Even that didn’t start until I was 7
all you can do really is to teach to beware. reckon doing so won't just help with ads, but the internet in general. that "cute gal" messaging you may just be looking to butcher a pig.
It's less "People who drink those are addicts" and more "we've designed this product to make it more addicting to a certain subset of people who are statistically likely to become addicted to products like these"
This is sadly not too surprising; a quick glance at what does well on YouTube, Reddit, Twitter, etc will show that a high percentage of the userbase are probably under 13, and that percentage probably jumps even more when counting minors in general.
Given that:
1. Many parents see giving their kids an iPad and access to a social media service as a way to keep them quiet
2. And pretty much every kid on the planet will lie about their age in order to sign up for whatever site or service they want
I'm not sure there's a whole lot these services could do about it, and any attempt to fix this would probably make them even more privacy invasive and obnoxious than they already are.
My dad simply said "no" to all the stuff I wanted to buy as a kid. But I could buy it if I earned the money first. (No allowance) I'd have to wait for Christmas or birthday to get new toys.
I suppose these days that would be considered child abuse :-/
> I suppose these days that would be considered child abuse :-/
I suppose you could find someone who believes this, but it sounds more like sour grapes and doesn’t add anything to the comment except an eye roll at an entire generation. We can all do better than throwaway comments like this one.
Sour grapes? My point was he was right. Having to work for the things I wanted was good for me. For example, to get a car I had to work to buy it, and all I could pay for was a clunker. Hence I learned a great deal about auto mechanics, which has paid off handsomely.
For example, just today I drove my car after it returned from the shop after some major maintenance. I noticed it was spitting antifreeze out the bottom. Oh crud, the shop must have screwed up the hoses. Looking under the car, the outflow was coming from the radiator overflow hose. This is a normal thing if the radiator overflow tank was filled a bit too much - nothing to worry about.
If I didn't know anything about cars, I would have wasted an afternoon taking it back to the shop.
Reading the methodology of the underlying paper makes this estimate seem quite dubious. Quoting from the paper [1]:
> Due to lack of data, we assumed that revenue per minute of platform use was constant by age.
Surely ad rates targeting minors without disposable income are much lower than for age demographics with higher spending power.
I'm happy to have an excuse to discuss our opinions on the ethics of social media use by minors, but I'd appreciate if the "science" was a little more forthright about what we know and don't know.
In this case the paper seems to make a reasonable estimate of the fraction of total social media usage time spent by minors. But it's sloppy bordering on dishonest to extrapolate that to revenue numbers without looking at any data on ad pricing.
I'm curious to see how much ad revenue is gained from impressions to those scam farms that plague what remains of Facebook's actual users. Typically preying on the elderly.
95 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 200 ms ] threadHistorically, in the US, there have been strict limits on what ads are allowed around children's TV. There has to be a distinction between the TV show and the ads. For example kids TV shows in the US used to (not sure about now) have a very distinct break saying that the show was going to be back soon, indicating that what followed wasn't part of the show.
There is also a difference in that 20 years ago, if a kid wanted to buy a toy, they had to see an ad on TV that happened to be for a toy they wanted and then convince their parent to go to the store and buy that toy.
Now with targeted ads and IAP, kids are being targeted directly to buy shiny goods for games that they play. Cosmetic upgrades in the more "honest" games that bestow social status between peers, or gacha tokens in pay to win games to get needed items/characters to progress. (And some games combine the worst of both!)
Targeting a child with an ad for a game they play gets insidious very quickly. "Hey Timmy, did you know all your friends are laughing behind your back because you don't have the latest and greatest armor upgrade? Better buy it now!"
Chime Chime Level up! Good job!
Makes In-app-purchase
Chime Chime Purchase completed
Though gacha mechanics have managed to combine the worst of both worlds. :(
Social media ads are essentially interactive, but their mechanics are hidden and there's no winning state for the player.
And just to play with dark ideas: what exactly (besides technological limitations) would stop any of the big companies from basically running a long social experiment to determine whether, over years, you can shape a kid to become an adult that's a big consumer?
An ad on TV has no information on who you are when you view it. An ad on SM has detailed information of who you were years ago, who you are now, and there's no reason why it can't make predictions about who you'll be based on the growing data. Nor is there a reason not to try to shape that to their benefit.
Yeah, no. Facebook ads are mostly pay per impression, not click, so there’s no reason to even do this. Ad targeting is controlled by advertisers for the most part, not algorithms - they want to target specific demographics, not some random cross-section of humanity. It’s very different from the kind of algorithms that power your news feed.
The final goal is obviously a sale, but the real commodity is attention.
I'm not saying "this is how it is", I'm saying "show my a reason why this is not the case now or where we're heading.
Like, if FB could do this, and it yielded more money for them, what would stop them? You sound very convinced, so I'd be glad if you can go into detail as to what that conviction is founded on. Have you worked on these algorithms?
I agree, though the youngest millennials were already 11 when Netflix launched its streaming service. And that was just movies.
When I was a kid, Super Soakers printed money. Every kid wanted one, and the bigger the super soaker the cooler the kid.
Does no one remember Tickle Me Elmo? Or Furby?
Now days it may be roboblox gift cards, but the cash is still flowing.
An ad on TV or on the highway does not have the capability of taking into account the network of people you follow and whether you have a habit of being awake at 3AM browsing posts about break ups.
There's a constant, gradual pervasive shift towards having ads in more private and intimate spaces.
Turning 18 doesn't magically make those concerns go away, either. If anything, my takeaway is that as parents, we need to teach our children to critically think about the marketing they see while they are still minors, to avoid raising adults who blindly accept anything put in front of them.
You couldn't, say, target those users at 12PM noon as they are waking up.
What you are suggesting is "people who are currently up at 3am" which is different.
Why not? Because it's not feasible technologically, not worth to provide such granular detail, or not collected in the first place?
Asking out of legit curiosity.
Sure, the segments were broader, but culture was homogenous by necessity. You didn’t see the cultural divergence of today that the internet (and targeting) have enabled.
I think the mechanics of targeting have changed, but we’re fooling ourselves if we think we haven’t had “targeted” ads for a long while before the internet took over.
IMO this is great for companies, but potentially very bad for consumers (I.e. engaging customers when they're most vulnerable)
Besides that I see nothing wrong with the audience you've defined.
You don't see anything wrong with using vulnerable states of mind or poor mental health as parameters to target sales?
What do you think happens when it is determined that poor mental health increases ad revenue?
Do you think social apps would refrain from manipulating their content in order to keep you in the sweet spot of poor mental health to increase ad revenue? Out of compassion? Or?
I do find it wrong and didn't say otherwise.
Just where is this possible? How does a person or company target people with vulnerable states of mind or poor mental health?
Do you mean in general, as in FB/Google are doing this to every person, all the time?
I just don't believe this is a product or service you can purchase from any ad network right now.
Its like asking: Don't you think its wrong for companies to use mind-reading technology to target sales?
It can be something the algorithms slowly crawl towards, and someone working in them might notice.
On the other hand, it's been well known for a while the effect of outrage in online engagement. Trolling and fake news became political weapons to recruit people, making them emotional, invested, it has shaped belief and behavior. There's people who get paid to spread this kind of content with this goal, for more sinister purposes than ad revenue.
The negative emotion of anger is exploited to get people to stay engaged online.
So this is not new, at all. Why would it be limited to anger? For what reason would FB/Google refrain from doing it? This is what I'm curious about, do you honestly think it's not possible to use the algorithms and AI for such a task? If not, surely you admit it would be possible soon? And if so, would they abstain for moral reasons?
But you are just proposing a lot of scary sounding "what-ifs" without evidence.
What if the tech companies use their influence to summon the Devil? What if they secretly are controlling all of the politicians? What if they are forcing pineapple on pizza? Why aren't they secretly running the world?
Sure, lots of things will be possible soon. That doesn't mean it has to be happening.
Pineapple on pizza wouldn't profit them, so it's easy to see why they wouldn't go that route. What's more, it wouldn't affect me personally.
Now if we consider that 1) they are capable, and they have done similar things in the past 2) there is a mental health epidemic 3) this could affect you and me personally, then isn't it reasonable to spread awareness about this, rather than sweep it under the table until some big revelation comes as evidence?
For example, if there was a constant healthy discussion about how online rage was not only a problem on a personal level, but could be leveraged to sway an entire country's political compass before it happened, would it perhaps not have had a positive change?
This is the mindset I'm coming from, not fear mongering.
maybe if it was for plastic surgery. or if Kim K did a sponsored post for diet tea
No, the mere presence of the advertisement is sufficient harm to a person without capacity to understand the difference between what they need, what they want, and what other people want of them.
seeing an ad for 5 gum probably won't harm a developing teen. seeing a celebrity live a lifestyle you will never have and look 'better' than you ever will might.
though using revanced and the IG equivalent certainly is a QoL improvement, but I don't think my doctor will prescribe pihole to improve my mental health
I'm no mental health professional but I suspect this period of advertising will be looked back on in a similar way to leeching and leaded gasoline.
This isn’t a new idea, and there is some evidence to back it up.
https://hbr.org/2020/01/advertising-makes-us-unhappy
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/002224298605000...
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4189139
https://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...
Lots of people have also come up with long lists of ways that ads that seem innocuous for children still do damage over time.
https://www.momjunction.com/articles/negative-side-effects-o...
https://www.healthychildren.org/English/family-life/Media/Pa...
That seems unlikely. I'm not going to get into if it would be higher or lower, but both of those seem way more likely than equivalency.
I will take the over on that number.
I will also suggest that the number is even larger for a similarly-sized cohort of working adults (especially younger working adults).
This is just BS PR from probably the least reliable kind of researcher, the social science crowd.
Are they spending much?
Do we have a reliable source of user data that shows the breakdown of each social media platform by age group?
Heck, let's run with TikTok for a second, ByteDance made 110 billion[0] this year. Does anybody use TikTok more than GenZ?
[0]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-20/tiktok-ow...
Edit: Also, IG seems more popular among girls, which could explain the opinion of your kid. I found an article from pew to corroborate this that also shows that IG is very much still relevant:
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/24/teens-and...
I am now training them on how to recognize ads and scams faster. It is fun watch a 6 year old say all free Robux offers are ads and don't click on the link.
All energy drinks are sugar water Caffeine is bad for health People who drink those are addicts
If online exposure is hard from 5 years or above, there should be some level of ads education from 5 years itself.
Also, I'm quite skeptical of caffeine and aspartame being bad for health (in adults at least).
[1] https://revanced.app/
[2] https://mullvad.net/pl/help/dns-over-https-and-dns-over-tls#...
If I wasn't doing 30 hours of training / learning each week with YT I would not pay for premium. Yet I have paid for premium https://DI.fm for years and everyone tells me that spotify is really good at curation / playlists / discovering new stuff..
I could see if just using YT for random entertainment stuff not seeing real value in it overall - it could easily be replaced with videos hosted on FB or Insta or anywhere else basically for a lot of people.
Would you pirate all your music if it was easier?
I also been thinking about contacting Trading Standards, but I have a feeling they are not doing anything about it. Technically those scams are not illegal in the UK. Anyone can pretend to be an adviser and they can sell any sort of pie in the sky schemes without bearing any liability.
If the poster upthread is telling the truth (and I believe he is because I have a 4 year old), your partner reasoning at the level of a 5 year old.
You're in for a world of hurt if you stay with her.
That being said NextDNS is pretty awesome and will get a ton of it (plus has other features great for kids) and can be installed on any iOS device using a Profile (no local VPN needed). On Android you can simply use the built in OS DNS feature. And of course it's easy on Windows and MacOS as well.
That combined with either Orion browser (either using the built in blocking or installing Firefox Ublock in Orion) is pretty damn good on iOS. On Android or Windows then Firefox plus Ublock Origin is also an awesome combo.
This won't block the inline YouTube ads but you could of course pay for YT premium or find other ways around it. And Spotify family at 15$ is not a bad deal to get 5 people no add full premium for music.
It does struggle at times where something is blocked and needs to be on the allowlist for a website to work, but I blame this more on the website rather than NextDNS (mostly affiliate links).
Imagine teaching your kids intolerance based on pseudo-science.
Addiction isn't binary, and either some people don't get addicted as easily, and/or different people perceive addiction differently. All I know is that some people can pick up and drop substances and be unfazed, and other people can't stop even as it kills them. I have a bunch of friends who can only drink coffee for a few days before it makes them too anxious. They definitely aren't addicts, but they will buy and drink an energy drink if they need the boost badly enough.
I have no doubt that Caffeine saves lives every year by keeping people alert in dangerous jobs.
wtf? how is this even related?
> If online exposure is hard from 5 years or above, there should be some level of ads education from 5 years itself
maybe we shouldnt advertise to children? my kid shouldnt need "ad literacy" while theyre learning their "abc's"
Kids are not small adults. They need time to fully develop before they are ready to comprehend and understand "stuff".
Given that:
1. Many parents see giving their kids an iPad and access to a social media service as a way to keep them quiet 2. And pretty much every kid on the planet will lie about their age in order to sign up for whatever site or service they want
I'm not sure there's a whole lot these services could do about it, and any attempt to fix this would probably make them even more privacy invasive and obnoxious than they already are.
I suppose these days that would be considered child abuse :-/
I suppose you could find someone who believes this, but it sounds more like sour grapes and doesn’t add anything to the comment except an eye roll at an entire generation. We can all do better than throwaway comments like this one.
For example, just today I drove my car after it returned from the shop after some major maintenance. I noticed it was spitting antifreeze out the bottom. Oh crud, the shop must have screwed up the hoses. Looking under the car, the outflow was coming from the radiator overflow hose. This is a normal thing if the radiator overflow tank was filled a bit too much - nothing to worry about.
If I didn't know anything about cars, I would have wasted an afternoon taking it back to the shop.
> Due to lack of data, we assumed that revenue per minute of platform use was constant by age.
Surely ad rates targeting minors without disposable income are much lower than for age demographics with higher spending power.
I'm happy to have an excuse to discuss our opinions on the ethics of social media use by minors, but I'd appreciate if the "science" was a little more forthright about what we know and don't know.
In this case the paper seems to make a reasonable estimate of the fraction of total social media usage time spent by minors. But it's sloppy bordering on dishonest to extrapolate that to revenue numbers without looking at any data on ad pricing.
[1]: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0295337