The actual law doesn't fully rule it out (there was an amendment to kind-of add that but it's fuzzy so ID could still be part of it).
But it's basically unenforcable without doing ID, it's going to fall in a heap eventually. The Australian Governement talks big game in tech regulation but almost every single thing they do (like the 'eSafety Comissioner' with their truly extradorinary powers) fails because they are very, very incompetent when it comes to technology.
I think former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull accidentally summed it up (talking about encryption) when he literally claimed that "The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia".
Which will probably work as well as most apps implemented by the Australian Govt; myNDIS, myGov, myMedicare etc etc etc. They are all trash. We do not have a good track record in this area.
* It is illegal for a platform to provide children with a social media account, not for the child to create an account. Circumvention of this by the child is not illegal.
* No grandfathering - all accounts under 16 once this takes effect (which won't be until this time next year at earliest) must be deactivated.
* Maximum fine (per instance?) is 50 million AUD (about 32 million USD)
* The legislation is vague on the technical details, although it does specifically mandate that platforms cannot use government-issued ID of any kind (including digital ID).
Less good, more fun. To 'prove' that you were over 18 you had answer a series of multiple choice questions [1] about pop culture that most kids almost certainly wouldn't know. Pre internet, finding the answer was surprisingly hard without asking an adult. The main result was that 10 year old me knew a surprisingly large number of obscure facts of about US culture, like who Spiro Agnew was and that Ronald Reagan once starred in a movie with a monkey.
Eventually we found out that you could press some magic key combination to skip the question all together.
I don't have a horse in this race but in my opinion a more graceful way to deal with this is to freeze the account until the under-16 is over-16 so they don't lose their friend connections, history, etc... The under 16 should have time to add a comment saying how to contact them otherwise. Discord group, etc... There must be a reason to remove the account that I can not see.
Could a possible solution there be to use the same language detection platforms used for detecting terrorist activity to also flag possible grooming for human moderator review? Or might that be too subjective for current language models leading to many false positives?
This is far too pat a dismissal of something which happens regularly. You can argue that it’s not frequent enough to justify this action or would happen anyway through other means but it’s a real problem which isn’t so freakishly rare that we can dismiss it.
I am not sure I meant to reply to you, to be honest. It is an issue but so far the solutions are terrible. Outsourcing parenting to the Government or companies is also meh. I am sure there are parents who know of ways to reduce screen time for their children, it ranges from installing a program that does not let you on a website or start another program until and unless this and that, or take the phone from the kid's hand and go for a walk or study, whatever.
> The legislation is vague on the technical details, although it does specifically mandate that platforms cannot use government-issued ID of any kind (including digital ID).
That's unexpectedly sane from a law like this. Hopefully they can figure out some zero-knowledge proof of age. (But then there's nothing stopping adults from creating and selling proof values to kids.)
That wasn't in the original bill and it was only amended to add that yesterday, because it wouldn't get past the Conservative (Liberal/National Party) whose votes they needed to ram it through Parliament with almost no scrutiny otherwise (the hastily drafted bill only having been introduced the Friday before the final sitting week of the year).
That's more of the sort of behavior one expects from legislators making broad surveillance apparatuses under guise of protecting children on the internet.
Yes, because kids love when parents are all up in their social media accounts watching their interactions. What about parents who just buy their kids booze?
In the spirit of "Falsehoods programmers believe in"[1] for human ages:
* Not all people know their age.[2]
* Even if people do know their age they may not have any means to prove their age.[2]
* Even if people know their age, they may know their age only in a calendar system which is ambiguous or with a margin of error.[3]
* Even if people have documentation proving their age, the documentation may provide an approximate age or use a calendar system which is ambiguous or with a margin of error.[3]
* Even if people have documentation proving their age, they may know it to be incorrect.
* People may have multiple documents each nominating a different age.
* People may be reissued with new documents changing their recognised age.
* Even if the government tries to guess someone's unknown age, it's an inexact science and could be revised later.
Does that matter though? At some point someone's assigning them a legal age so you can decide if they're over 16 or under 18, or over 21 etc. Your real age doesn't matter. And why would it not be able to be corrected later? Another advantage of a digital ID
This was rushed through with a public comment period of 24 hours.
It's going to be a mess, while the spirit is well intentioned it has edge cases up the wazoo, foot guns galore, and stinks of back door government ID for adults.
Pretty much the only media outlet in Australia that stood up with questions and non fawning commentary was Crikey:
This was deeply rooted in traditional media ( Murdoch News et al ) in AU putting pressure on the Government in AU to take action against Facebook & Co. after the ceasation of payments for linking to news media.
for-profit media unapologetically uses what little influence they have left to smear their competitors, hence all the drivel: "think of the children / fear the evil russians!" about social media and "think of the copyright holders / fear the evil terminators!" about AI.
God wills it, ten years from now they will all be out of job. The publications will still be there, of course, but the shilling will be delegated to LLMs prompted by Bangladeshi youths for $5 a day, with a few meatsack editors to set the tone.
It's vibes based - the definitions could cover almost any online service, but the Minister of Communications gets to decide who will be targeted.
They have zero detail on how to verify anybody's age. But massive fines if the tech companies fail. Basically the only reliable way to do it would be to ID everyone, but then they had to sort of mostly rule that out in a rushed amendment yesterday to get it past the Conservatives (Liberal/National Party) because they neeed their votes in the Senate.
So basically they're asking tech companies to come up with magical technology to perfectly know how old someone is without any identification.
"He can’t even advise if some video game developers he represents’ multiplayer games are exempt from the ban"
There are a lot of issues with this legislation, but I'm not sure this is one of them. Games like Roblox are so exploitative, they're probably worse for children than most social media.
The OP article didn't link to the law text and the above poster didn't hint at what's ambiguous, so it's not clear that that's bad. It's also possible that the game companies are doing something wrong and engaging in wishful thinking/trying to find a technicality through which they can argue the law doesn't apply to them. c.f. premium loot boxes i.e. gambling.
I have to strongly agree here. Video games are not free from the social media problems that we are trying to free ourselves from. We also have parents and close family that have been caught in outrage nets, and who knows when, if they will ever be free? We know the pipeline for right-wing grifters.
Who doesn't have any taters in the family these days? A literal human trafficker and pimp who has been in prison is giving advice to our youth in droves. More than you will ever know. My family members stopped talking about it, and started complaining about how we can't talk about things anymore once they discovered that outside of their bubble people know what these monsters/grifters actually do.
This website has long ago lost whatever “techno libretarianism” it ever had. It’s so full of bootlickers. I have no idea why HNs userbase is mostly excited about this.
I think it grew up and had kids. The angsty-teen “I won’t do what you tell me” mentality starts to seem pretty counterproductive after a certain level of maturity is reached.
I picked street fighter because you don't interact with your opponent other than fight him (I haven't played the last game though, maybe that's changed).
Roblox already filters out a lot of words, including links (to social media and whatnot especially). They filter so many words they may just shut down the chats entirely.
This is a trend in lawmaking in Australia, and it's seriously damaging. It's basically written so the Government's Minister of Communications gets to decide who to directly target (or not target) with the law.
Basically allows them to arbitarily apply the law to some parties and not others, with no right of appeal. That does lead to potential constitutionality concerns, but it would take years for it to be struck down if so, if a service is affected and eventually gets it before the High Court.
By electing personable but mediocore, sometimes even incompetent, MPs over the intelligent but aloof candidates.
Someone or some committee, somewhere, still has to actually work out all the details, and if it’s not done in Parliament, because the average MP literally can’t grasp even half the agenda items, it has to be done elsewhere.
Edit: And even that is probably being too optimistic, I’ve heard of MPs who can’t even remember the key facts and figures from the last 100 executive summaries they’ve read. Let alone any detail within the reports whatsoever.
I started losing faith in democracy since Brexit. It is still better than other forms of governance, that seems like a low bar.
People making “protest” votes without bothering to understand the consequences, single issue voters, young people who don’t even bother to vote, dumb/racist/misogynist voters…
Democracy only works if voters take it seriously, only if media is at least reasonably honest/competent etc. Across the world, this is not the case today. Britain, U.S, India, Australia …
> Democracy only works if voters take it seriously
Do you mean democracy only works when all people vote for options that you think are sensible?
Im afraid you seem to have the wrong end of the stick when it comes to democracy. The whole point of it is that everyone, including people you disagree with, get to have a say. Calling people names like dumb and racist is just a crass result of disagreeing with somebody, and then extrapolating their entire personality based on an opinion.
Democracy works when everyone has the choice to vote, and excercises that choice. If 70% of the population suddenly voted to extradite all people with dark skin to Africa, under the rules of democracy you would need to accept that choice as correct and support it. If you decided to say the result was racist and that it shouldnt be carried out, then you are diagreeing with democracy full stop. In that situation you may as well just have a dictatorship, as what it boils down to is one person thinks everyone else should do what that person thinks is right.
If you feel that people should support and agree with what you think is right you need to do the same to everyone else in the world, including people whose opinion is drastically different from your own. Even if you feel it is wrong.
Calling people names and belittling their peronal opinions and judgements is only further sowing seeds of division and hate.
I was working in Mississippi during 2016 election. I met many people who point blank told me they will not vote for Clinton, just because she is a woman (there are a million reasons not to vote for Clinton, her gender is not one of them). What should we call such people?
Do you mean democracy only works when all people vote for options that you think are sensible?
How did you deduce that from my comment? Just one day after Brexit, tons of people regretted voting to leave - lots of them admitted they didn't take the vote seriously, they thought others would vote to stay, so their vote wouldn't matter. A serious voter would have voted on the merits of staying or leaving the EU, not because they were angry at some politician or some other policy <-- This is what I meant when I said "Democracy only works if voters take it seriously", I don't know how you deduced that I want everyone to vote the way I want them to.
Representatives democracy also only works if representatives take it seriously too. Much (if not most) elected ones serves their personal agenda before the voters interests, let alone those of who can’t/don’t vote.
There’s also no universal _Truth_ that someone can grab entirely and as you noted information is essential but humans can’t be omniscient and you always miss something.
- "If others players cheat, I would loose by following the rules"
- "all i know is I know nothing".
Those two reasons explain why abstention or white/protest/defence votes can be fact based with a logical reasoning IMO.
> It is still better than other forms of governance, that seems like a low bar.
It's definitely a problem when you have a huge segment of the population that is ignorant and easily misled. Just look at the last US election.
There are definitely better systems, but people are far too attached to the status quo and find it far easier to dismiss proposed solutions rather than work to improve them.
> He says the legislation is just an under defined word salad
This might be on purpose. I've heard many say online that this law is sold as "save the children" but is designed to be used to get everyone to provide ID when they go/public/message online.
> He can’t even advise if some video game developers he represents’ multiplayer games are exempt from the ban
Bad for video game dev's business, and great for lawyers! The interpretation of the law will get clarified by many lawsuits (costing businesses a lot).
>I've heard many say online that this law is sold as "save the children" but is designed to be used to get everyone to provide ID when they go/public/message online.
Because this was attempted already, for example with the UK "porn ban" law. And Australia is one of the few countries that are even more batshit insane when it comes to policing and controlling its own population, and possibly the only country where such a law could pass now.
I haven't read it, but if it follows their previous efforts it will say what they want to happen (which is: get kids off social media), without saying how it will be done. Until the discussion this bill generated the "get kids off social media" meme had fairly broad support. In the currency of the pollies, this translates to "vote winner". Australia has already banned mobile phones at schools, and that looks to be a achieved roughly what everyone though it would. Maybe they expected this to go the same way.
It hasn't. Now the idea has been floated (and the bill passed!) discussion has inevitably turned to "how do we do this". It was the mental heath professionals (of all people) that first voiced objections. Apparently, social media is the main way kids connect with them. Which is kinda obvious if you think about it, because either the family or school seeks help on their behalf, or it's the family / school that's the problem in which case they need to seek help without them knowing.
Next, when it became obvious they were going ahead, where the discussions on how it would be implemented. To give you an idea of how that's panning out, the minister has said kids won't be prosecuted for using social media and just recently said the federal government ID schemes won't be used. Instead the minister said "the platforms will use their existing mechanisms".
If that happens it could end up being a nothing burger. The big platforms already have checkboxes asking "are you over 16" or whatever.
Regardless, they have passed the legalisation now, and the election is coming up soon. It's effects, if any, won't become evident for a year or two. That means they will be able proudly point to it during the election and say "look what we have done for the kids". As one prime minister explained show particularly bad decisions he made at the time "it was just retail politics".
What if the platform is not registered as a business in Australia? You can't fine it if it's not a legal entity there. Simply setup a php Facebook clone and host it in another country.
Just by blocking the network traffic. Plenty of countries do this with sites they don’t like for various reasons.
Yes VPNs blah blah. But it will be pretty hard to operate some rogue social site when you can’t sell any respectable ads besides maybe porn sites and malware, and are only accessible via VPN. Pretty high barrier to adoption for a brand new site.
By freezing bank transfers/disallowing any Australian companies (read: advertisers) from doing business with them? Depending on treaties, possibly by seizing assets in the company's home country?
I can’t get behind a ban because we’re fighting an unstoppable force: the connected future. This is the world we live in and kids will have to “evolve” to their new environment.
I think parents and schools need to change the role they play.
Or marijuana or cocaine. It’s super easy for the government to deny access to things people want by fiat, as evidenced by the fact that nobody does cocaine anymore.
Kids are looking for community. Connections with other people who they share experiences with (and can make more experiences together). They're looking for others who see the world the way they do.
The solution is more face to face time with other families on a regular basis. Replace Facebook with actual faces.
This is not true. We have a technological tool to block all of that connected future if we want to. It's called "government" and it can even choose to destroy all landlines, jam all satellite signals en fire Rockets at satellites that want to fly over their land while connecting to people on the ground. This IS an option. Maybe not the best or simplest...
> I think parents and schools need to change the role they play.
It's not that I directly disagree, but honestly I don't think parents and schools have much of a fighting chance against companies like TikTok, SnapChat YouTube or Facebook. We need to create rules that prevent companies from employing addictive algorithms which locks users in cycles of endless mind numbing doom scrolling. Once the social media companies have changed their "algorithms" and recommendation engines or removed them entirely, then we can start talking about what parents and schools can do.
Don't worry, this is performative law making. There's going ot be an election in March, probably called in January. So the government will probably return, then fix and alter this when they work out just how impossible it will be to enforce.
OR, everyone in Australia is going to have to prove their age to use social media, and TBH, social media ain't that great. It just may be the cold shower we all need.
I was wondering how "social media" was defined. Anyone got a link to the actual bill?
From the article:
> "Messaging apps," "online gaming services" and "services with the primary purpose of supporting the health and education of end-users" will not fall under the ban, as well as sites like YouTube that do not require users to log in to access the platform.
Almost every "social" apps are basically messaging apps these days. What's the differentiating factor between banned and not banned? Having an algorithmic feed? So YouTube is not banned because its doesn't require users to log in to access the plaform? Can Instagram enable browsing without logging in (and disable some features except DM) to avoid the ban then?
Also, now kids can create YouTube accounts to use shorts as Instagram reels, community posts as Instagram Posts and subscribe to each other. But hey, that's not a "Social media" right?
(i) the sole purpose, or a significant purpose, of the service is to enable online social interaction between 2 or more end-users;
(ii) the service allows end-users to link to, or interact with, some or all of the other end-users;
(iii) the service allows end-users to post material on the service;
And that is the entire point. You will only use the X state-mandated websites. You will only express positive opinions on there. You will not criticize the government under any circumstances. Glory to Arstozka.
I've recently been teaching kids to code (in Aus) - 7 year olds already know about VPNs, and use them to circumvent various roadblocks to playing roblox!
You don't need any of those things to figure out how to install a VPN. My son had installed a VPN before he knew those concepts because a VPN mattered to him to circumvent region locks while knowing what folders are didn't.
Yes, this is flawed legislation, and yes kids will find ways to bypass these protections.
But I think this is a step in the right direction. There is clear evidence of the harms caused by social media, especially for adolescents. We have to start trying things - albeit imperfectly - to get to a better place. We can learn a lot from the outcomes of this experiment.
The key feedback that was unaniamous from all the experts that managed to reply to the Government's 24-hour consultation period was that they all agreed a blanket ban is the worst way to approach the platform (they were all ignored by all but a few Senators).
An interesting part of the ban is that kids will be banned from Instagram, but sites like 4chan (and ovbiously anything on the dark web, which teens might now be more motivated to access) will be out of the reach of it...
World is divided by people who grew up with social media and people who didn't. I'd imagine there's already ample longitudinal metrics to extrapolate differences and draw conclusions between the two groups. The experiment's not really whether social media is bad for adolescents, but whether one can successfully legislate to reduce social media use among them. Not holding my breath.
We have taken such steps in many areas now, and it simply does not work. We can keep trying this old, tired method, but it does not work. I do not want ID verification for the Internet either, to be honest.
Make absolutely no mistake. The real reason why politicians push through these anti-social media laws is to prevent children from networking and discussing and sharing revolutionary ideas.
These laws are designed to prevent generations from establishing a baseline sociopolitical coherency and unity.
I was subject to a home firewall and computer use surveillance as a child for the exact same reason, because my cult guardians did not want me encountering unapproved ideas or networking with like-minded individuals who might weaken their ability to control and brainwash me.
I was treated as a criminal, and so my response was to educate myself deeply in how to succeed as a criminal. I learned to hack my imposed surveillance systems, and then hack websites on the web. I learned how to lie and manipulate authority in order to survive without compromising my internal compass. I collectivized with other hackers.
Is that the path we want every child subject to these bans to take? I fortunately have a moral and ethical foundation which led to me using my skills for good, but I am certainly capable of quite a lot of things that wouldn't be a net good for society, and I know how to get away with it. Perhaps we shouldn't teach a generation of repressed children these skills, and institutionalize them from a young age in opposition to society.
This is the exact same mechanism used to criminalize cannabis smokers. Smoking cannabis in my late teens and early twenties in a state where it was illegal led me to learning quite a lot about how to navigate the criminal underbelly of the world. The "gateway drug" rhetoric becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, enacted by the very people who lie through their teeth about their intentions.
Oppose these laws. Violently, if necessary. If you are a child, learn how to protect yourself online, familiarize yourself with security culture, and continue to safely and covertly network with other children online.
Form strong bonds. Collectivize. Create art, study politics and science. Make lasting, useful connections. Broadcast and distribute your opinions and demands of your governing bodies.
This is what being a child growing up on the internet is about. I owe everything in my life to my formative years on the internet. It was an escape hatch from my abusive home. I learned a lot, and formed precious memories joining and starting forums and chat rooms in my youth. I would probably be dead today without the web.
Attack the real problem. The techniques which certain social media sites use to manipulate and hook children and others are well-documented. Ban them. Make an example of their practitioners. The web that I grew up on did not have these problems.
Fuck Australia, and fuck every other person who dares to suggest that children should not be allowed to congregate safely online and be allowed to navigate society and culture according to their own compass.
I personally lived in a very backwater state, surrounded by racist conservatives, and was raised hardcore Catholic by extremely abusive guardians. I owe every single ounce of my rationality to the web and the ideas and people I encountered there.
Facebook, etc are definitely terrible for kids. But the wording of these laws is intentionally vague, in order for these kinds of laws to be used according to the whim of the incumbent, as a tool of oppression.
The entire point is that I got to grow up with a wide variety of opinions and ideas from people across the world.
I have good friends all over the world today thanks to the web. We have influenced and helped each other over the years. We depend on each other. That's not a corner case.
> I got to grow up with a wide variety of opinions and ideas from people across the world.
You got to grow up with the vocal minority on the internet, in otherwords the 4% of the worlds population which is most extreme in their views and most arrogant in how they express them.
That is entirely an assumption on your part, one which reveals your inherent biases. My experience was not at all as you describe.
You have no idea how I spent my time on the web overall just because I gave you a glimpse into a single aspect of my intersectional experience on the web.
> You got to grow up with the vocal minority on the internet, in otherwords the 4% of the worlds population which is most extreme in their views and most arrogant in how they express them.
This is a de facto assumption. You assumed a situation which was not reality.
> 4% of the worlds population are vocal on the internet.
Conjecture, unsubstantiated percentage. Rooted in your own biased and demonstrably incomplete understanding of the internet.
> Anyone thinking they are being exposed to a wide range of people and personalities on the internet is very mistaken
I don't think you understand just how many people are on the internet. I get exposed to a wealth of different cultures and ideas, even moreso today.
Also, please refrain from devolving into insults and accusations of narcissism. Not only is that a textbook identity fallacy, but there is nothing narcissistic about simply pushing back against biased judgement.
> This is a de facto assumption. You assumed a situation which was not reality.
Nope, no assumptions there.
> Conjecture, unsubstantiated percentage. Rooted in your own biased and demonstrably incomplete understanding of the internet.
I'll give you this one, my percentage was out of date. The current percentage is estimated to be 10%.
> I don't think you understand just how many people are on the internet.
I dont think you understand how little are. 67.5% of the world currently have access to the internet, and the majority of that is intermittant and shareddevices in Africa and Asia. Thats many billions of people that do not even own a device with a web browser, let alone indulge in conversations with strangers on social media and forums.
> Also, please refrain from devolving into insults and accusations of narcissism.
There were no insults or accusations. I said your reply was Narcissistic, I did not say you were.
You keep reading what you want to in my posts to support your extremism and outrage. Please dont, nobody is accusing you of anything. You can calm down now!
> There were no insults or accusations. I said your reply was Narcissistic, I did not say you were.
Now you're just hiding behind pedantry.
> You can calm down now!
And now you're trying to act like I'm being emotional.
You're arguing disingenuously, more interested in trolling and escalating the negativity than finding common ground. When pressed to articulate your position, you turn to insults and deflection.
There is absolutely no reason to continue engaging with you.
Indeed, the US legal system has many assumptions that may not be applicable to other countries. Violating the US First Amendment right to access information is unconstitutional even if the only people having their rights violated are in the corner cases.
>The real reason why politicians push through these anti-social media laws is to prevent children from networking and discussing and sharing revolutionary ideas.
Thats a pretty extreme view to any normal person who didnt grow up on the internet.
EDIT: please stop editing your posts after posting, it makes them most difficult to respond to properly.
You're doing a lot of projection, engaging in such negativity after willingly replying to one of my comments, and then acting like I'm the one trolling you.
I think there was a ton of bullying depending on what part of the internet you spent your time in, but importantly it was very easy to find inclusive, safe spaces.
Today, it is not as easy. This is probably part of why so many have moved to group chats and direct messages for online interaction in recent years.
I think it's safe to say that, in under-16s, cyberbullying and susceptibility to intentionally addictive social media algorithms are a bit more of a common problem than revolutionary activities. Any would-be Che Guevaras can put in the time arousing the working class in person until such time as they can grow facial hair.
Then we attack the systemic issues, instead of pushing through intentionally vague legislation. Some of the similar legislation being explored by multiple US states is frightening.
Opposing a social media law “violently” is not an appropriate call to action. That said, the web of yesteryear and the way kids use social media today could not be any more different. Kids mindlessly scrolling through oceans of vanity, teen girls with more and more suicidal, being stuck in the high-school bullying social environment 24/7. The laws are a response to a real issue — especially as parents themselves get addicted / stuck in the same ways. They have kids and are rightfully fearful. I grew up in the same awesome web, but it sucks now, commercialized and tapped for every last cent it can produce.
> Opposing a social media law “violently” is not an appropriate call to action.
Every single ounce of freedom you enjoy today was won with bloodshed. There is nothing extreme about reminding your local legalized mafia who is actually in charge: the People. Your compromised governments work hard to condition you to think otherwise.
Direct political violence should always an absolute last resort, when every other realistic option has been exhausted. However, every freedom is ultimately backed by threat of violence, even when it isn't said aloud.
> The laws are a response to a real issue
They use a real issue as a vehicle for tightening the authoritarian ratchet. All good antidemocratic legislation is wrapped in legitimate issues. But what authoritarian governments such as Australia fear is the power of unification which the internet offers new generations.
Rising up violently to protect my child's right to scroll mindless on TikTok for hours? No. Social media today is unrecognisable to the internet that you, or I grew up with.
Children will always network, and share ideas and form community. They don't need to do it on a platform designed to exploit as much of their attention as possible as a way to sell advertisements.
I think children should be able to congregate safely online. If you think a meta-owned platform is a good place to do that, I've got bad news for you.
I think a lot of my generation owes a lot to the internet during our formative years too, but the idea that Meta offers anything other than a curated stream of addictive ragebait nowadays is for the birds. Maybe this ban will encourage teenagers to hang out in less corporately owned spaces online. I can hope.
An outright ban probably won't work, but it sends a signal that perhaps society needs to use the internet better to be a benefit.
The problem is that the wording of these laws carry a common thread of intentional vagueness, such that the laws can be abused for ideological persecution and maintaining the status quo.
I'm all for directly banning certain practices Meta and others engage in, within scope. I'm completely opposed to ideological oppression.
Questions about how this is going to be implemented and enforced from a technical and legal perspective are missing the point/benefit: this is about empowering parents and collectively changing behaviours.
"It's against the law so no you can't" isn't going to work with EVERY 14 year old. But it will work for many and hopefully that's enough.
I actually see this as potentially damaging to society. "It's against the law for you to use any website that lets you look at cat pictures and make any contact with anybody else" is so silly that kids are going to see right through that, and rightly not care about following it. So they're going to have less respect for the rule of law generally...
I'm very big on compentent laws, but also on just not having silly laws. It devalues the whole system...
(I would also wonder how many 14-year olds you know if you think this would work for many, but also I suppose that could be a cultural difference)
Here in Austria in fourth grade kids take a little test for their bicycling skill. Not that it matters much in a car-centric country, but people forget that cycling, even in company with a parent, give kids the chance to learn the necessary traffic rules. Why not have something similar for social media or as the problem seems to be general conduct in social media, educate the kids and give them better ways to raise the alarm when things to bad. Just banning kids won't help them much.
We socialize here, just last month I read someone's comment about life in the Canadian country-side and realized he's the brother of a Youtuber I'm watching for years. The same happens on any other social platform be it in the internet or real life.
The problem I see, are networks that are financed mainly by ads - so they have the incentive to keep engagement artifically high and spy as much as possible.
But "banning social media" does not ask that question.
You're being facetious but I genuinely think it's a good idea to normalise drugs. I believe that part of the problem with drugs is that they're considered forbidden, so if you share my viewpoint then it's not too dissimilar to the problems with social media or other addictive-but-bad-for-you products.
> as the problem seems to be general conduct in social media
is that the problem? I'd have thought the problem is more about the ill effects of social media on children, not the children's behavior on said social media.
Hen or egg? To make it worse, for some it's simple in their nature to show some degree of anti-social behaviour. We all have to learn how to interact with others in a social manner, be it on the playground, school or internet.
Here in Australia we teach kids real bicycling skills like how to socially share bets with their friends on the Sportsbet app for Tour de France 2025.[1][2] Thankfully this bill doesn't restrict Australian kids from learning these important life lessons every few minutes within a 10 hour long loop of Baby Shark.
It's a bit difficult to tell from your comment what you meant by "Not that it matters much in a car-centric country". Do you mean that Austria is "car-centric"? Or that it isn't?
I grew up in America, Colorado to be more specific, and rode a bicycle all over my neighborhood (where there wasn't that much traffic) as a 7-12 year-old. Later, I biked to work in Chia-yi, Taiwan, where there was a bit more car traffic and then still later I did so from Mountain View to Palo Alto, when there was still more. In all cases, I found it very useful to be familiar with traffic rules!
Experience deprivation is a very real thing. I grew up in a desolate rural area, circa the 1980s and 1990s. The Internet - WebChatBroadcasting, ICQ, IRC, etc - was like a gift from the gods in the early 1990s.
Cutting off young teens from access to the world via 'social media,' is a human rights violation.
The internet today is a very different place from the 90's. I really hope your children don't have access to the sickest, shallowest, most addictive and most dangerous place on the net.
The idea that social media is like a Meta commercial, all making new friends and video calls to smiling Grandparents, etc. is a fabrication, presumably one that a lot of HN folks have a vested interest in maintaining. Kids are lonelier now than they have ever been.
This has been one of the hard things to deal with working in tech. Tech has advanced so much but am I happier or more connected to people than my parents were at my age? Not really. I've had an existential crisis recently about what all this work I've been doing is for. Outside of work I've been using less and less tech and I think I've been happier (like today I have a physical cookbook and a couple handwritten recipes instead of using recipes on my phone).
> Cutting off young teens from access to the world via 'social media,' is a human rights violation.
Is that more or less of a human rights violation than preventing children from buying alcohol, preventing them from buying cigarettes, preventing them from buying pornography, preventing them from voting, preventing them from working full time, preventing them from entering into contracts, or preventing them from driving an automobile?
I'd say human rights violation is a bit of a stretch - the negative impact of social media use on an adolescent's psychological well-being is well documented - so possibly even the exact opposite.
> The Internet - WebChatBroadcasting, ICQ, IRC, etc - was like a gift from the gods in the early 1990s.
I grew up in a wealthy very tech-savvy area, and most kids except the really geeky like me didn't get internet until the mid or late 1990s, so you weren't as "backwards" as you think. You would have still been on the bleeding edge to have internet in the early 1990s.
My guess is that BSDobelix was downvoted and flagged for implying that people supportive of LGBTQ rights are (in comparison to the rest of the population) significantly more likely to be pedophiles.
> implying that people supportive of LGBTQ rights are (in comparison to the rest of the population) significantly more likely to be pedophiles.
Please don't put words in my mouth, but I'm sorry if anyone "accidentally" misunderstood. What I meant was that 99.9% of teenagers have had one or more contacts with a paedophile via "established" social networks.
I apologize for making multiple incorrect assumptions and for falsely accusing you of saying things you didn't say.
I misinterpreted your original message as <queer kids will be cut off from non-queer kids> and <non-queer kids will encounter fewer groomers/MAPs>. Now I understand that your message was <almost all kids will benefit from being cut off from strangers on social media> in reply to <queer kids will benefit less or be harmed>.
> My thoughts immediately go to all the queer kids in rural areas who stand to be cut off from the only support networks they have
I shared those concerns at first - as that was similar to my situation (though less lgbt+ but more just on-the-spectrum stuff), but if the article is correct then I find myself strongly in support (so-far...): my impression is that this is targeting the kinds of vacuous mass-market "engagement"-driven social-media services that us HN denizens aren't exactly fans of: Facebook, Instagram, the like. The article says that sites like YouTube and IM services are exempt.
> Messaging apps, "online gaming services" and "services with the primary purpose of supporting the health and education of end-users" will not fall under the ban, as well as sites like YouTube that do not require users to log in to access the platform.
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For an anecdote: when I was middle-school-aged and unsupervised on the net, the "mainstream" platforms of the day (AOL Groups, I guess?) were just as unappealing then as Facebook is today (fortunately I wasn't on AOL anyway) - instead I found my home in places you get to via IRC - or extremely niche phpNuke-then-phpBB sites: these places aren't run by companies, just basement-dwelling sysadmins so they'd be exempt I imagine, so it doesn't look like any harm will come to those kinds of places.
For those youngsters-that-dont-fit-in starting their journey of self-discovery, I think getting banned from Facebook is a good start. Who wants their parents (and let's be honest: it's only our parents on Facebook now anyway) to get notified about your joining a cybergoth meetup group.
...now if only we could ban everyone else off Facebook too.
> I shared those concerns at first - as that was similar to my situation (though less lgbt+ but more just on-the-spectrum stuff)
The catch is, unfortunately, that our social media data trails make it all to feasible to detect which of us is on the spectrum using machine learning.
And which if our kids have what is vulgarly called "daddy issues."
And which of us are beginning to succumb to schizophrenia.
We've only begun to see the creepy dystopian consequences of centrally archived social media.
>immediately concerned with the leftist recruiting ring that social media had become, being compromised.
I've already trawled your internet presence enough to know you're an activist. you're revolting.
Reminder that, often, that which is intended to be passed as a measure to enforce moral rules or increase security is actually a way to deprive you of your privacy.
(1) For the purposes of this Act, social media service means:
(a) an electronic service that satisfies the following conditions:
(i) the sole or primary purpose of the service is to enable online social interaction between 2 or more end‑users;
(ii) the service allows end‑users to link to, or interact with, some or all of the other end‑users;
(iii) the service allows end‑users to post material on the service;
(iv) such other conditions (if any) as are set out in the legislative rules; or
(b) an electronic service specified in the legislative rules;
but does not include an exempt service (as defined by subsection (4)).
Note: Online social interaction does not include (for example) online business interaction.
Since "business interaction" is mentioned as an example of something that is not "social interaction" one might plausibly claim that "social interaction" should be interpreted quite narrowly, and then one could claim both that the primary purpose of HN is not interaction at all (it's a new aggregator) and that any interaction that does happen to take place in the comments is not "social" interaction but some other kind of interaction.
(It really does say "2 or more" rather than "two or more".)
If you’re tempted to think “this isn’t worth it, too hard to enforce without affecting something else”… read “The Anxious Generation” by Jonathan Haidt. There is very real, irreparable harm being done to young people, and it merits trying to make it right, not just surrendering to it.
Surely the problem of verifying a property of someone (the Boolean of “is over X age”) without sharing further details, is a surmountable problem given all the cryptographic technologies at our disposal. If a government wants to make this possible, given they know everyone’s birthdate, they could.
The information theory problem is how to do so without creating a government ledger of every platform that every person uses, and a government kill switch to disable any platform the government doesn’t like.
> Surely the problem of verifying a property of someone (the Boolean of “is over X age”) without sharing further details, is a surmountable problem given all the cryptographic technologies at our disposal.
Only if preserving privacy is the goal and I'm sure we both know it isn't.
I guess it will become self-fulfilling if everyone denies that there are privacy friendly options. Legislatures globally are starting to take this seriously so chances are it's happening one way or another.
Indeed, the challenge is already resolved in Europe by eID/EIDAS in a privacy respecting way, so the technology exists and it's already proven on a large scale.
My issue with this idealistic and understandable perspective is that it completely ignores all historical precedent in the modern age. That is to say: if you think the government is going to use this as anything other than an opportunity to turn all those little dots on the GPS tracker into fully-authenticated names and profiles they can keep tabs on 24/7, I have a bridge to sell you.
And if you think the third parties they contract out the tracking to won’t sell that info/access for profit, I have some magic beans as well.
I support keeping kids protected. I’m just not naive enough to think the current governments of the world have any interest in achieving that goal while maintaining any semblance of privacy for their citizens.
Frankly I want Australia to go ahead with this law so the rest of us can have a test case for it. If it works well we can copy it with tweaks. If not, then we know to seek other options.
During COVID times the Australian government pressured all local media to censor criticism of the government's COVID measures. Regardless of how valid or invalid you consider the dissent, it was still dissent being suppressed.
What do you even mean by "work". You live in a fantasy land if you think the government will say we expect outcomes A, B and C from this law and will repeal or adjust it if all outcomes aren't met in 3 years. It's either a power grab or lobbying as others have suggested.
SERIOUSLY! Is anyone claiming that childhood depression and suicide will go down to some range after this law is put in effect? Of course not. Will grades go up? "Government says I can't use social media, guess I'll study, go to sleep on time, and become a productive worker." - Average Australian kid? Will the number of sextortion caused suicides (in the <16 bracket) go back to 0 from 1 to the glory days of 2021 when social media didn't exist (nope, because he was 17 when he died and that was last year). Will the number of girls being sextorted for cash decrease? (reading this [1] you can just ask and they'll tell you, that's great, also it's the general sentiment between students that social media should be banned, another big win! Isn't it convenient when reality bends to ideology.) How exactly can you measure this? Is there a counter of the number of <16s who have seen porn/gore on social media and became too misogynistic or too autistic (or too much of a gay, trans, pedophile, brainrotted, degenerate, debauched, profligate, libertine, licentious, effeminate, wanton, vicious, perverse, recreant, lascivious, unrīht sodomite) for the government's taste? Anything more than a vague sense that cyberbulling will go down and irlbullying will go up a bit? probably Who knows, who cares! We allegedly have vague public sentiment! So grab away!
It's blindingly obvious that this ban can't and won't change <16s habits past switching from their favorite app to whatever their friends are using now.
On the surface it seems very similar to a book he previously worked on, The Coddling of the American Mind, which is also full of poorly researched pop science that confirms biases people already had.
Yes! That blend of information and humour is the only podcast format worth my time, to be honest.
There's another podcast with Michael Hobbes called Maintenance Phase that I also enjoy when I have time to listen to it. Fen-phen in particular was something I hadn't really heard of before and reading about it after their episode on it was just fascinating.
I have tried to find good scientific evidence that shows that social media is a net negative for kids and or adults. I have been unable to do so.
Reports that I read on conventional media sites often summarize government reports, but they do so incorrectly. And when I go and read the government reports, they present a much more balanced picture than the summaries would suggest. In particular, for marginalized teens, social media represents a unique avenue to connect with teens in similar situations, which provides a significant support network.
I know it's popular now to say that social media is the root of all evil, but I would be very curious to see a scientific justification for banning it for kids under 16. Just a few years ago, this was a concern presented as 'screen time', but I had similar problems there. There's no real evidence to suggest that looking at a screen is the problem...the much more difficult and interesting problem is what you're doing when you're looking at the screen. There's a similar dynamic in play with social media, I think.
For example, Hacker News is the only social media that I use, and I feel that I use it very differently than folks that use Instagram, for example. Can they be effectively conflated?
> I have tried to find good scientific evidence that shows that social media is a net negative for kids and or adults. I have been unable to do so.
> For example, Hacker News is the only social media that I use
Try spending an hour a day on tiktok (average tiktok user screen time) and 30 min a day on instagram (average ig user screen time) for a year and report back. This shit is crack cocaine for kids
I'm getting a 502 error trying to access the original content. It doesn't appear to be a scientific study, but rather a testimony from a Facebook executive talking about how they disregarded user safety in the development of algorithms that increased engagement. That's not quite what I'm looking for, though. I'd like to see something examining the effects of those behaviors on the population.
I will say that the lengths the executive goes to to compare social media with tobacco degrade the quality of the argument in my opinion; science tends to ask the question and then seek the answer. Arguments like this seem to start with the answer (it's like Big Tobacco) and then construct the argument accordingly.
> I'd like to see something examining the effects of those behaviors on the population.
In the testimony, they explain it:
We took a page from Big Tobacco’s playbook, working to make our offering addictive at the outset.
Allowing for misinformation, conspiracy theories, and fake news to flourish were like Big Tobacco’s bronchodilators, which allowed the cigarette smoke to cover more surface area of the lungs.
> I have tried to find good scientific evidence that shows that social media is a net negative for kids and or adults. I have been unable to do so.
The author mentioned by GP is currently working on a similar questions collecting, reviewing and categorizing known literature in these open access documents [1][2]. I suggest you take a look if you are interested in the topic.
> For example, Hacker News is the only social media that I use, and I feel that I use it very differently than folks that use Instagram, for example. Can they be effectively conflated?
Well, I would say no. But to have a meaningful discussion we need to first agree on what is meant here with "social media". Clearly, this law has been passed with the intent to affect Meta / ByteDance / Reddit and similar companies with a business model that hinges on capturing as much attention of their users as possible, which is very different from HackerNews. Most accusations to social media begin bad are towards of the former type.
> but I would be very curious to see a scientific justification for banning it for kids under 16.
From [1], it seems to me that there is a non-negligible amount of literature that has been accumulating, that could be used to justify the ban. Though, Australia is not a technocracy (I hope), so I would say that there is also a certain degree of "purely social" reasons why they might want to curb the access of social media companies to their youth.
> In particular, for marginalized teens, social media represents a unique avenue to connect with teens in similar situations, which provides a significant support network.
Thank you for bringing this up. I was one of those 'marginalised' kids who didn't relate to my real life surroundings so much. The internet was like an escape for me, where I was able to meet many close friends with similar interests on social medias like Twitter and Discord. Not to mention, free internet access in general taught so much about the world, developed my passions and helped determine what I'm now studying and planning to pursue as a career.
If social media was banned when I was younger, it would have made me worse off for sure. And if there were internet/device restrictions more broadly, like I'm often seeing suggested, it would have been absolutely devastating for me. My life would have turned out completely different, in a bad way.
On a site like HN, I would have expected there to be much more people who also had the same experience as younger me with the internet and social media. But for some reason, most of the dominant sentiment here seems to consider social media as a cancer, with no nuance. I'm not sure why they do, but I wish that these people would consider the experiences of people like me.
>On a site like HN, I would have expected there to be much more people who also had the same experience as younger me with the internet and social media.
The majority of people who actively engage in discussions here are from generations older than ours (I assume we are similar in age) and hence are mostly unable to relate to our experiences.
It seems plausible that social media is part-cause, part-symptom of a larger shift away from "real" socialisation. I don't have any scientific evidence for it, so feel free to debate. In general in doesn't seem like a controversial opinion to notice that how we are, socially, has changed over time, probably not for the better. It might be that it's hard to pin down one major cause, because the whole system is moving in tandem.
Parents should be more responsible. That's it. This measure is, potentially, deeply ingraining the (terrible) idea that the State is responsible instead, so when all these young kids have children, they, just as their parents, will lack the ability to take responsibility and make their children more responsible by proxy, and so on, and so forth. It's a never ending cycle that is perpetuated by not tackling the problem at its real source. And let's not forget how measures taken in the name of security are oftentimes actually made to deprive us of our privacy.
The difficulty is co-ordination. My job as a "responsible parent" is much more difficult if I have to fight prevailing social norms and my kids perceive they are being excluded from conversations and arbitrarily cut off from their peers.
The social media ban is similar to the logic behind gaming limits in China. The idea is that while the controls themselves are easily circumvented, it gives everyone an excuse to do the right thing.
Parents don't have infinite "control tokens". I only have time & energy to put my foot down about a limited number of things. It is much easier to establish conventions around responsible behaviour if the whole community is behind it.
I am OK with this ban for the same reason I'm OK with tobacco sellers being not allowed to sell to under 18s.
This, I would go so far as keeping kids from social media is in conflict with (arguably) one of the most important jobs parents have which is getting kids into social interactions.
(E.g. by teaching them good manners so others will play with them)
>I am OK with this ban for the same reason I'm OK with tobacco sellers being not allowed to sell to under 18s.
And yet almost anywhere in Europe this ban is completely ineffective as the kids who start smoking get their hands on the cigarettes regardless. It only is a VERY minor inconvenience until they grow 18.
In Australia it's very hard to get hold of cigarettes under 18. Determined kids will find a way, of course. But vaping is more prevalent currently, and is held in higher regard by teens here.
I haven't lived in Europe some years, but I was amazed at how smoking was perceived as more acceptable there.
How does a parent compete with trillion dollar corporations that hire psychologist, cognitive scientists, and neuroscientists to make their apps highly addictive?
Being honest here because just telling parents to deal with a societal ill seems very shortsighted and comes from an immense place of priviledge.
I’m sure the same argument was made about tobacco? If you want your children to not smoke tobacco, just be a better parent. How dare the state prevent children from purchasing tobacco? The state is not your parent!
For network effect products (social media, drugs, and alcohol), the easiest solution is in fact to use the government to ban the sale of said products to minors. It’s a coordination problem that’s bigger than the family unit.
"Ban social media for everyone because it might be bad for some kids" is as fragile as an argument as "ban guns for everyone because some bad guy might get his hands on one."
Well, "ban guns for everyone because some bad guy might get his hands on one" has always been the law in my country, and it has worked out extremely well. There has never been a mass shooting here, ever.
> is a surmountable problem given all the cryptographic technologies at our disposal
I'm genuinely curious, is it? I don't know enough to be sure one way or the other, how you'd do it with some kind of private/public key thing or whatever. Can anyone here provide a quick example?
And I'm assuming it would involve some kind of code generated on the spot just for you, so somebody couldn't just post a code on the internet for all teens to use.
Yeah I don't understand the particular revulsion to showing ID here. The concept of showing your ID to get access to something is very well embedded across alcohol, driving, cigarettes, your myGov account, Medicare, air travel, all sorts.
I know this is targeting social media but just pointing out that there is no evidence screen time is affecting kids development and pretty solid evidence that it doesn't have much effect at all.
"One also suggested we take a look at social media on its own because it’s a source of worry for many and we did not find anything special about this form of online engagement.”
It's a subset of what they studied. Surely a lot of screen time is spent on social media. They did not observe anything special about time spent on social media. A more in-depth study may yield more insight but there is no thread to pull on from this study. Only parents' misgivings.
With every passing year I can’t help but think Jonathan Haidt was right all along. I think this will be a very successful law in terms of positive societal impact. But I do worry about the negative repercussions of being able to ban means of practicing free speech. Australia already has a bad track record for that.
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[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 327 ms ] threadThe gov gets at least full legal check of any SNS account.
> Social media companies also won't be able to force users to provide government identification, including the Digital ID, to assess their age.
But it's basically unenforcable without doing ID, it's going to fall in a heap eventually. The Australian Governement talks big game in tech regulation but almost every single thing they do (like the 'eSafety Comissioner' with their truly extradorinary powers) fails because they are very, very incompetent when it comes to technology.
I think former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull accidentally summed it up (talking about encryption) when he literally claimed that "The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia".
https://www.esafety.gov.au/newsroom/media-releases/statement...
* It is illegal for a platform to provide children with a social media account, not for the child to create an account. Circumvention of this by the child is not illegal.
* No grandfathering - all accounts under 16 once this takes effect (which won't be until this time next year at earliest) must be deactivated.
* Maximum fine (per instance?) is 50 million AUD (about 32 million USD)
* The legislation is vague on the technical details, although it does specifically mandate that platforms cannot use government-issued ID of any kind (including digital ID).
https://allowe.com/games/larry/tips-manuals/lsl1-age-quiz.ht...
Edit: Added link
Less good, more fun. To 'prove' that you were over 18 you had answer a series of multiple choice questions [1] about pop culture that most kids almost certainly wouldn't know. Pre internet, finding the answer was surprisingly hard without asking an adult. The main result was that 10 year old me knew a surprisingly large number of obscure facts of about US culture, like who Spiro Agnew was and that Ronald Reagan once starred in a movie with a monkey.
Eventually we found out that you could press some magic key combination to skip the question all together.
[1] https://allowe.com/games/larry/tips-manuals/lsl1-age-quiz.ht...
Where is the problem with this?
The problem rather is that the user did not create a private backup of the data that he wants to keep.
Once the child is over 16, they can add all their real-world friends again.
(Disclaimer: I'm so old that at 16 I didn't ever had email. Please don't delete all my old stuff.)
That's unexpectedly sane from a law like this. Hopefully they can figure out some zero-knowledge proof of age. (But then there's nothing stopping adults from creating and selling proof values to kids.)
That's also true for alcohol and tobacco.
Judging from the info in the article:
- kids will have one year to see which platforms are not categorized as SNS, yet can be used as such.
- kids stuck with brainwashing parents, especially in remote rural areas, will have it a bit more tougher I guess.
And the amendment to the first reading which was agreed to today which has the bits about ID verification being disallowed: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/am... (supplementary explanatory memorandum here: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/em...)
Question is why hasn't Australia created a Digital ID system that can prove you're >= 16 years old without giving away other info?
* Not all people know their age.[2]
* Even if people do know their age they may not have any means to prove their age.[2]
* Even if people know their age, they may know their age only in a calendar system which is ambiguous or with a margin of error.[3]
* Even if people have documentation proving their age, the documentation may provide an approximate age or use a calendar system which is ambiguous or with a margin of error.[3]
* Even if people have documentation proving their age, they may know it to be incorrect.
* People may have multiple documents each nominating a different age.
* People may be reissued with new documents changing their recognised age.
* Even if the government tries to guess someone's unknown age, it's an inexact science and could be revised later.
[1] https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood
[2] https://www.racgp.org.au/getattachment/fe71891a-aafe-453f-a3...
[3] Example calendar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igbo_calendar
It's going to be a mess, while the spirit is well intentioned it has edge cases up the wazoo, foot guns galore, and stinks of back door government ID for adults.
Pretty much the only media outlet in Australia that stood up with questions and non fawning commentary was Crikey:
eg: https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/11/26/teen-social-media-ban-s...
and: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Acrikey.com.au+social+...
This was deeply rooted in traditional media ( Murdoch News et al ) in AU putting pressure on the Government in AU to take action against Facebook & Co. after the ceasation of payments for linking to news media.
God wills it, ten years from now they will all be out of job. The publications will still be there, of course, but the shilling will be delegated to LLMs prompted by Bangladeshi youths for $5 a day, with a few meatsack editors to set the tone.
They have zero detail on how to verify anybody's age. But massive fines if the tech companies fail. Basically the only reliable way to do it would be to ID everyone, but then they had to sort of mostly rule that out in a rushed amendment yesterday to get it past the Conservatives (Liberal/National Party) because they neeed their votes in the Senate.
So basically they're asking tech companies to come up with magical technology to perfectly know how old someone is without any identification.
He can’t even advise if some video game developers he represents’ multiplayer games are exempt from the ban
He says the legislation is just an under defined word salad
Note this was several days ago and it may have been amended in the mean time
There are a lot of issues with this legislation, but I'm not sure this is one of them. Games like Roblox are so exploitative, they're probably worse for children than most social media.
See, for example: https://www.eurogamer.net/roblox-exploiting-young-game-devel...
Who doesn't have any taters in the family these days? A literal human trafficker and pimp who has been in prison is giving advice to our youth in droves. More than you will ever know. My family members stopped talking about it, and started complaining about how we can't talk about things anymore once they discovered that outside of their bubble people know what these monsters/grifters actually do.
The problem with a badly written law is how can you decide which is which?
Which one do you want banned?
Basically allows them to arbitarily apply the law to some parties and not others, with no right of appeal. That does lead to potential constitutionality concerns, but it would take years for it to be struck down if so, if a service is affected and eventually gets it before the High Court.
By electing personable but mediocore, sometimes even incompetent, MPs over the intelligent but aloof candidates.
Someone or some committee, somewhere, still has to actually work out all the details, and if it’s not done in Parliament, because the average MP literally can’t grasp even half the agenda items, it has to be done elsewhere.
Edit: And even that is probably being too optimistic, I’ve heard of MPs who can’t even remember the key facts and figures from the last 100 executive summaries they’ve read. Let alone any detail within the reports whatsoever.
People making “protest” votes without bothering to understand the consequences, single issue voters, young people who don’t even bother to vote, dumb/racist/misogynist voters…
Democracy only works if voters take it seriously, only if media is at least reasonably honest/competent etc. Across the world, this is not the case today. Britain, U.S, India, Australia …
> Democracy only works if voters take it seriously
Do you mean democracy only works when all people vote for options that you think are sensible?
Im afraid you seem to have the wrong end of the stick when it comes to democracy. The whole point of it is that everyone, including people you disagree with, get to have a say. Calling people names like dumb and racist is just a crass result of disagreeing with somebody, and then extrapolating their entire personality based on an opinion.
Democracy works when everyone has the choice to vote, and excercises that choice. If 70% of the population suddenly voted to extradite all people with dark skin to Africa, under the rules of democracy you would need to accept that choice as correct and support it. If you decided to say the result was racist and that it shouldnt be carried out, then you are diagreeing with democracy full stop. In that situation you may as well just have a dictatorship, as what it boils down to is one person thinks everyone else should do what that person thinks is right.
If you feel that people should support and agree with what you think is right you need to do the same to everyone else in the world, including people whose opinion is drastically different from your own. Even if you feel it is wrong.
Calling people names and belittling their peronal opinions and judgements is only further sowing seeds of division and hate.
Do you mean democracy only works when all people vote for options that you think are sensible?
How did you deduce that from my comment? Just one day after Brexit, tons of people regretted voting to leave - lots of them admitted they didn't take the vote seriously, they thought others would vote to stay, so their vote wouldn't matter. A serious voter would have voted on the merits of staying or leaving the EU, not because they were angry at some politician or some other policy <-- This is what I meant when I said "Democracy only works if voters take it seriously", I don't know how you deduced that I want everyone to vote the way I want them to.
You said yourself, many people did have this reason to not vote for her. It is as alt227 said, you just don't like it.
There’s also no universal _Truth_ that someone can grab entirely and as you noted information is essential but humans can’t be omniscient and you always miss something.
- "If others players cheat, I would loose by following the rules"
- "all i know is I know nothing".
Those two reasons explain why abstention or white/protest/defence votes can be fact based with a logical reasoning IMO.
It's definitely a problem when you have a huge segment of the population that is ignorant and easily misled. Just look at the last US election.
There are definitely better systems, but people are far too attached to the status quo and find it far easier to dismiss proposed solutions rather than work to improve them.
This might be on purpose. I've heard many say online that this law is sold as "save the children" but is designed to be used to get everyone to provide ID when they go/public/message online.
> He can’t even advise if some video game developers he represents’ multiplayer games are exempt from the ban
Bad for video game dev's business, and great for lawyers! The interpretation of the law will get clarified by many lawsuits (costing businesses a lot).
Because this was attempted already, for example with the UK "porn ban" law. And Australia is one of the few countries that are even more batshit insane when it comes to policing and controlling its own population, and possibly the only country where such a law could pass now.
It hasn't. Now the idea has been floated (and the bill passed!) discussion has inevitably turned to "how do we do this". It was the mental heath professionals (of all people) that first voiced objections. Apparently, social media is the main way kids connect with them. Which is kinda obvious if you think about it, because either the family or school seeks help on their behalf, or it's the family / school that's the problem in which case they need to seek help without them knowing.
Next, when it became obvious they were going ahead, where the discussions on how it would be implemented. To give you an idea of how that's panning out, the minister has said kids won't be prosecuted for using social media and just recently said the federal government ID schemes won't be used. Instead the minister said "the platforms will use their existing mechanisms".
If that happens it could end up being a nothing burger. The big platforms already have checkboxes asking "are you over 16" or whatever.
Regardless, they have passed the legalisation now, and the election is coming up soon. It's effects, if any, won't become evident for a year or two. That means they will be able proudly point to it during the election and say "look what we have done for the kids". As one prime minister explained show particularly bad decisions he made at the time "it was just retail politics".
Yes VPNs blah blah. But it will be pretty hard to operate some rogue social site when you can’t sell any respectable ads besides maybe porn sites and malware, and are only accessible via VPN. Pretty high barrier to adoption for a brand new site.
I think parents and schools need to change the role they play.
The solution is more face to face time with other families on a regular basis. Replace Facebook with actual faces.
It's not that I directly disagree, but honestly I don't think parents and schools have much of a fighting chance against companies like TikTok, SnapChat YouTube or Facebook. We need to create rules that prevent companies from employing addictive algorithms which locks users in cycles of endless mind numbing doom scrolling. Once the social media companies have changed their "algorithms" and recommendation engines or removed them entirely, then we can start talking about what parents and schools can do.
OR, everyone in Australia is going to have to prove their age to use social media, and TBH, social media ain't that great. It just may be the cold shower we all need.
From the article:
> "Messaging apps," "online gaming services" and "services with the primary purpose of supporting the health and education of end-users" will not fall under the ban, as well as sites like YouTube that do not require users to log in to access the platform.
Almost every "social" apps are basically messaging apps these days. What's the differentiating factor between banned and not banned? Having an algorithmic feed? So YouTube is not banned because its doesn't require users to log in to access the plaform? Can Instagram enable browsing without logging in (and disable some features except DM) to avoid the ban then?
Also, now kids can create YouTube accounts to use shorts as Instagram reels, community posts as Instagram Posts and subscribe to each other. But hey, that's not a "Social media" right?
But I think this is a step in the right direction. There is clear evidence of the harms caused by social media, especially for adolescents. We have to start trying things - albeit imperfectly - to get to a better place. We can learn a lot from the outcomes of this experiment.
An interesting part of the ban is that kids will be banned from Instagram, but sites like 4chan (and ovbiously anything on the dark web, which teens might now be more motivated to access) will be out of the reach of it...
But this is a change in law. Yes kids will easily be able to access social media if they want to, but it will be illegal and punishable.
These laws are designed to prevent generations from establishing a baseline sociopolitical coherency and unity.
I was subject to a home firewall and computer use surveillance as a child for the exact same reason, because my cult guardians did not want me encountering unapproved ideas or networking with like-minded individuals who might weaken their ability to control and brainwash me.
I was treated as a criminal, and so my response was to educate myself deeply in how to succeed as a criminal. I learned to hack my imposed surveillance systems, and then hack websites on the web. I learned how to lie and manipulate authority in order to survive without compromising my internal compass. I collectivized with other hackers.
Is that the path we want every child subject to these bans to take? I fortunately have a moral and ethical foundation which led to me using my skills for good, but I am certainly capable of quite a lot of things that wouldn't be a net good for society, and I know how to get away with it. Perhaps we shouldn't teach a generation of repressed children these skills, and institutionalize them from a young age in opposition to society.
This is the exact same mechanism used to criminalize cannabis smokers. Smoking cannabis in my late teens and early twenties in a state where it was illegal led me to learning quite a lot about how to navigate the criminal underbelly of the world. The "gateway drug" rhetoric becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, enacted by the very people who lie through their teeth about their intentions.
Oppose these laws. Violently, if necessary. If you are a child, learn how to protect yourself online, familiarize yourself with security culture, and continue to safely and covertly network with other children online.
Form strong bonds. Collectivize. Create art, study politics and science. Make lasting, useful connections. Broadcast and distribute your opinions and demands of your governing bodies.
This is what being a child growing up on the internet is about. I owe everything in my life to my formative years on the internet. It was an escape hatch from my abusive home. I learned a lot, and formed precious memories joining and starting forums and chat rooms in my youth. I would probably be dead today without the web.
Attack the real problem. The techniques which certain social media sites use to manipulate and hook children and others are well-documented. Ban them. Make an example of their practitioners. The web that I grew up on did not have these problems.
Fuck Australia, and fuck every other person who dares to suggest that children should not be allowed to congregate safely online and be allowed to navigate society and culture according to their own compass.
Are you saying that all the people who were 16 and grew up without social media had no social connections? Didn’t form strong bonds with their peers?
Social media is absolutely terrible for kids. Social media absolutely destroyed social skills in teens.
Facebook, etc are definitely terrible for kids. But the wording of these laws is intentionally vague, in order for these kinds of laws to be used according to the whim of the incumbent, as a tool of oppression.
Regardless. We should optimize the outcomes for the collective good, and not for the corner cases. Of course it has its cost.
The entire point is that I got to grow up with a wide variety of opinions and ideas from people across the world.
I have good friends all over the world today thanks to the web. We have influenced and helped each other over the years. We depend on each other. That's not a corner case.
You got to grow up with the vocal minority on the internet, in otherwords the 4% of the worlds population which is most extreme in their views and most arrogant in how they express them.
You have no idea how I spent my time on the web overall just because I gave you a glimpse into a single aspect of my intersectional experience on the web.
This is a de facto assumption. You assumed a situation which was not reality.
> 4% of the worlds population are vocal on the internet.
Conjecture, unsubstantiated percentage. Rooted in your own biased and demonstrably incomplete understanding of the internet.
> Anyone thinking they are being exposed to a wide range of people and personalities on the internet is very mistaken
I don't think you understand just how many people are on the internet. I get exposed to a wealth of different cultures and ideas, even moreso today.
Also, please refrain from devolving into insults and accusations of narcissism. Not only is that a textbook identity fallacy, but there is nothing narcissistic about simply pushing back against biased judgement.
Nope, no assumptions there.
> Conjecture, unsubstantiated percentage. Rooted in your own biased and demonstrably incomplete understanding of the internet.
I'll give you this one, my percentage was out of date. The current percentage is estimated to be 10%.
> I don't think you understand just how many people are on the internet.
I dont think you understand how little are. 67.5% of the world currently have access to the internet, and the majority of that is intermittant and shareddevices in Africa and Asia. Thats many billions of people that do not even own a device with a web browser, let alone indulge in conversations with strangers on social media and forums.
> Also, please refrain from devolving into insults and accusations of narcissism.
There were no insults or accusations. I said your reply was Narcissistic, I did not say you were.
You keep reading what you want to in my posts to support your extremism and outrage. Please dont, nobody is accusing you of anything. You can calm down now!
> There were no insults or accusations. I said your reply was Narcissistic, I did not say you were.
Now you're just hiding behind pedantry.
> You can calm down now!
And now you're trying to act like I'm being emotional.
You're arguing disingenuously, more interested in trolling and escalating the negativity than finding common ground. When pressed to articulate your position, you turn to insults and deflection.
There is absolutely no reason to continue engaging with you.
Thats a pretty extreme view to any normal person who didnt grow up on the internet.
EDIT: please stop editing your posts after posting, it makes them most difficult to respond to properly.
Today, it is not as easy. This is probably part of why so many have moved to group chats and direct messages for online interaction in recent years.
Every single ounce of freedom you enjoy today was won with bloodshed. There is nothing extreme about reminding your local legalized mafia who is actually in charge: the People. Your compromised governments work hard to condition you to think otherwise.
Direct political violence should always an absolute last resort, when every other realistic option has been exhausted. However, every freedom is ultimately backed by threat of violence, even when it isn't said aloud.
> The laws are a response to a real issue
They use a real issue as a vehicle for tightening the authoritarian ratchet. All good antidemocratic legislation is wrapped in legitimate issues. But what authoritarian governments such as Australia fear is the power of unification which the internet offers new generations.
Violence is literally always a last resort. It is the last possible thing you can do to affect change.
People who would nitpick on the mode of protest always conveniently dismiss the thinking and talking that came before.
Children will always network, and share ideas and form community. They don't need to do it on a platform designed to exploit as much of their attention as possible as a way to sell advertisements.
I think children should be able to congregate safely online. If you think a meta-owned platform is a good place to do that, I've got bad news for you.
I think a lot of my generation owes a lot to the internet during our formative years too, but the idea that Meta offers anything other than a curated stream of addictive ragebait nowadays is for the birds. Maybe this ban will encourage teenagers to hang out in less corporately owned spaces online. I can hope.
An outright ban probably won't work, but it sends a signal that perhaps society needs to use the internet better to be a benefit.
I'm all for directly banning certain practices Meta and others engage in, within scope. I'm completely opposed to ideological oppression.
"It's against the law so no you can't" isn't going to work with EVERY 14 year old. But it will work for many and hopefully that's enough.
I'm very big on compentent laws, but also on just not having silly laws. It devalues the whole system...
(I would also wonder how many 14-year olds you know if you think this would work for many, but also I suppose that could be a cultural difference)
Irony aside, these platforms are addictive and polarizing by design. I doubt a little test will change anything.
The problem I see, are networks that are financed mainly by ads - so they have the incentive to keep engagement artifically high and spy as much as possible.
But "banning social media" does not ask that question.
is that the problem? I'd have thought the problem is more about the ill effects of social media on children, not the children's behavior on said social media.
if we made some basic modules we could improve as time goes on and more research and data comes out.
Early sex education surely wasn't perfect and the science understood when they started teaching it in our schools.
[1] https://www.sportsbet.com.au/betting/cycling/tour-de-france/...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrTFl1gKEuk
I grew up in America, Colorado to be more specific, and rode a bicycle all over my neighborhood (where there wasn't that much traffic) as a 7-12 year-old. Later, I biked to work in Chia-yi, Taiwan, where there was a bit more car traffic and then still later I did so from Mountain View to Palo Alto, when there was still more. In all cases, I found it very useful to be familiar with traffic rules!
Experience deprivation is a very real thing. I grew up in a desolate rural area, circa the 1980s and 1990s. The Internet - WebChatBroadcasting, ICQ, IRC, etc - was like a gift from the gods in the early 1990s.
Cutting off young teens from access to the world via 'social media,' is a human rights violation.
Is that more or less of a human rights violation than preventing children from buying alcohol, preventing them from buying cigarettes, preventing them from buying pornography, preventing them from voting, preventing them from working full time, preventing them from entering into contracts, or preventing them from driving an automobile?
I grew up in a wealthy very tech-savvy area, and most kids except the really geeky like me didn't get internet until the mid or late 1990s, so you weren't as "backwards" as you think. You would have still been on the bleeding edge to have internet in the early 1990s.
Please don't put words in my mouth, but I'm sorry if anyone "accidentally" misunderstood. What I meant was that 99.9% of teenagers have had one or more contacts with a paedophile via "established" social networks.
I misinterpreted your original message as <queer kids will be cut off from non-queer kids> and <non-queer kids will encounter fewer groomers/MAPs>. Now I understand that your message was <almost all kids will benefit from being cut off from strangers on social media> in reply to <queer kids will benefit less or be harmed>.
I shared those concerns at first - as that was similar to my situation (though less lgbt+ but more just on-the-spectrum stuff), but if the article is correct then I find myself strongly in support (so-far...): my impression is that this is targeting the kinds of vacuous mass-market "engagement"-driven social-media services that us HN denizens aren't exactly fans of: Facebook, Instagram, the like. The article says that sites like YouTube and IM services are exempt.
> Messaging apps, "online gaming services" and "services with the primary purpose of supporting the health and education of end-users" will not fall under the ban, as well as sites like YouTube that do not require users to log in to access the platform.
-----
For an anecdote: when I was middle-school-aged and unsupervised on the net, the "mainstream" platforms of the day (AOL Groups, I guess?) were just as unappealing then as Facebook is today (fortunately I wasn't on AOL anyway) - instead I found my home in places you get to via IRC - or extremely niche phpNuke-then-phpBB sites: these places aren't run by companies, just basement-dwelling sysadmins so they'd be exempt I imagine, so it doesn't look like any harm will come to those kinds of places.
For those youngsters-that-dont-fit-in starting their journey of self-discovery, I think getting banned from Facebook is a good start. Who wants their parents (and let's be honest: it's only our parents on Facebook now anyway) to get notified about your joining a cybergoth meetup group.
...now if only we could ban everyone else off Facebook too.
The catch is, unfortunately, that our social media data trails make it all to feasible to detect which of us is on the spectrum using machine learning.
And which if our kids have what is vulgarly called "daddy issues."
And which of us are beginning to succumb to schizophrenia.
We've only begun to see the creepy dystopian consequences of centrally archived social media.
(1) For the purposes of this Act, social media service means: (a) an electronic service that satisfies the following conditions: (i) the sole or primary purpose of the service is to enable online social interaction between 2 or more end‑users; (ii) the service allows end‑users to link to, or interact with, some or all of the other end‑users; (iii) the service allows end‑users to post material on the service; (iv) such other conditions (if any) as are set out in the legislative rules; or (b) an electronic service specified in the legislative rules; but does not include an exempt service (as defined by subsection (4)). Note: Online social interaction does not include (for example) online business interaction.
Since "business interaction" is mentioned as an example of something that is not "social interaction" one might plausibly claim that "social interaction" should be interpreted quite narrowly, and then one could claim both that the primary purpose of HN is not interaction at all (it's a new aggregator) and that any interaction that does happen to take place in the comments is not "social" interaction but some other kind of interaction.
(It really does say "2 or more" rather than "two or more".)
Surely the problem of verifying a property of someone (the Boolean of “is over X age”) without sharing further details, is a surmountable problem given all the cryptographic technologies at our disposal. If a government wants to make this possible, given they know everyone’s birthdate, they could.
Only if preserving privacy is the goal and I'm sure we both know it isn't.
And if you think the third parties they contract out the tracking to won’t sell that info/access for profit, I have some magic beans as well.
I support keeping kids protected. I’m just not naive enough to think the current governments of the world have any interest in achieving that goal while maintaining any semblance of privacy for their citizens.
SERIOUSLY! Is anyone claiming that childhood depression and suicide will go down to some range after this law is put in effect? Of course not. Will grades go up? "Government says I can't use social media, guess I'll study, go to sleep on time, and become a productive worker." - Average Australian kid? Will the number of sextortion caused suicides (in the <16 bracket) go back to 0 from 1 to the glory days of 2021 when social media didn't exist (nope, because he was 17 when he died and that was last year). Will the number of girls being sextorted for cash decrease? (reading this [1] you can just ask and they'll tell you, that's great, also it's the general sentiment between students that social media should be banned, another big win! Isn't it convenient when reality bends to ideology.) How exactly can you measure this? Is there a counter of the number of <16s who have seen porn/gore on social media and became too misogynistic or too autistic (or too much of a gay, trans, pedophile, brainrotted, degenerate, debauched, profligate, libertine, licentious, effeminate, wanton, vicious, perverse, recreant, lascivious, unrīht sodomite) for the government's taste? Anything more than a vague sense that cyberbulling will go down and irlbullying will go up a bit? probably Who knows, who cares! We allegedly have vague public sentiment! So grab away!
It's blindingly obvious that this ban can't and won't change <16s habits past switching from their favorite app to whatever their friends are using now.
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/australian-father-of-te...
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00902-2
Kind of an "airport book"
It's unfortunate that truth is so hard to come by these days.
There's another podcast with Michael Hobbes called Maintenance Phase that I also enjoy when I have time to listen to it. Fen-phen in particular was something I hadn't really heard of before and reading about it after their episode on it was just fascinating.
Reports that I read on conventional media sites often summarize government reports, but they do so incorrectly. And when I go and read the government reports, they present a much more balanced picture than the summaries would suggest. In particular, for marginalized teens, social media represents a unique avenue to connect with teens in similar situations, which provides a significant support network.
I know it's popular now to say that social media is the root of all evil, but I would be very curious to see a scientific justification for banning it for kids under 16. Just a few years ago, this was a concern presented as 'screen time', but I had similar problems there. There's no real evidence to suggest that looking at a screen is the problem...the much more difficult and interesting problem is what you're doing when you're looking at the screen. There's a similar dynamic in play with social media, I think.
For example, Hacker News is the only social media that I use, and I feel that I use it very differently than folks that use Instagram, for example. Can they be effectively conflated?
> For example, Hacker News is the only social media that I use
Try spending an hour a day on tiktok (average tiktok user screen time) and 30 min a day on instagram (average ig user screen time) for a year and report back. This shit is crack cocaine for kids
Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company documents show (wsj.com)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28523688
Facebook proven to negatively impact mental health (tau.ac.il)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32938622
Testimony to House committee by former Facebook executive Tim Kendall (house.gov)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24579498
Just read the comments in your second link tearing apart the study.
Given the replication crisis in psychology, the authors make bad choices in the experiment design that are not justifiable in 2022.
I will say that the lengths the executive goes to to compare social media with tobacco degrade the quality of the argument in my opinion; science tends to ask the question and then seek the answer. Arguments like this seem to start with the answer (it's like Big Tobacco) and then construct the argument accordingly.
In the testimony, they explain it:
We took a page from Big Tobacco’s playbook, working to make our offering addictive at the outset.
Allowing for misinformation, conspiracy theories, and fake news to flourish were like Big Tobacco’s bronchodilators, which allowed the cigarette smoke to cover more surface area of the lungs.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210318063530/https://energycom...
If exec's views are science/truth. Then I bet you would have found execs in tobacco companies who thought they were doing good.
I don't understand why people are so against this? Isn't it possible that people do research to determine the validity of what they read online?
The author mentioned by GP is currently working on a similar questions collecting, reviewing and categorizing known literature in these open access documents [1][2]. I suggest you take a look if you are interested in the topic.
> For example, Hacker News is the only social media that I use, and I feel that I use it very differently than folks that use Instagram, for example. Can they be effectively conflated?
Well, I would say no. But to have a meaningful discussion we need to first agree on what is meant here with "social media". Clearly, this law has been passed with the intent to affect Meta / ByteDance / Reddit and similar companies with a business model that hinges on capturing as much attention of their users as possible, which is very different from HackerNews. Most accusations to social media begin bad are towards of the former type.
> but I would be very curious to see a scientific justification for banning it for kids under 16.
From [1], it seems to me that there is a non-negligible amount of literature that has been accumulating, that could be used to justify the ban. Though, Australia is not a technocracy (I hope), so I would say that there is also a certain degree of "purely social" reasons why they might want to curb the access of social media companies to their youth.
[1]: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w-HOfseF2wF9YIpXwUUtP65-...
[2] : https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vVAtMCQnz8WVxtSNQev_e1cG...
Thank you for bringing this up. I was one of those 'marginalised' kids who didn't relate to my real life surroundings so much. The internet was like an escape for me, where I was able to meet many close friends with similar interests on social medias like Twitter and Discord. Not to mention, free internet access in general taught so much about the world, developed my passions and helped determine what I'm now studying and planning to pursue as a career.
If social media was banned when I was younger, it would have made me worse off for sure. And if there were internet/device restrictions more broadly, like I'm often seeing suggested, it would have been absolutely devastating for me. My life would have turned out completely different, in a bad way.
On a site like HN, I would have expected there to be much more people who also had the same experience as younger me with the internet and social media. But for some reason, most of the dominant sentiment here seems to consider social media as a cancer, with no nuance. I'm not sure why they do, but I wish that these people would consider the experiences of people like me.
The majority of people who actively engage in discussions here are from generations older than ours (I assume we are similar in age) and hence are mostly unable to relate to our experiences.
The social media ban is similar to the logic behind gaming limits in China. The idea is that while the controls themselves are easily circumvented, it gives everyone an excuse to do the right thing.
Parents don't have infinite "control tokens". I only have time & energy to put my foot down about a limited number of things. It is much easier to establish conventions around responsible behaviour if the whole community is behind it.
I am OK with this ban for the same reason I'm OK with tobacco sellers being not allowed to sell to under 18s.
And yet almost anywhere in Europe this ban is completely ineffective as the kids who start smoking get their hands on the cigarettes regardless. It only is a VERY minor inconvenience until they grow 18.
I haven't lived in Europe some years, but I was amazed at how smoking was perceived as more acceptable there.
Being honest here because just telling parents to deal with a societal ill seems very shortsighted and comes from an immense place of priviledge.
For network effect products (social media, drugs, and alcohol), the easiest solution is in fact to use the government to ban the sale of said products to minors. It’s a coordination problem that’s bigger than the family unit.
When I say “ban”, I mean “heavily restrict and track”, which is how I gather we are using the term “ban” in this context as well.
I'm genuinely curious, is it? I don't know enough to be sure one way or the other, how you'd do it with some kind of private/public key thing or whatever. Can anyone here provide a quick example?
And I'm assuming it would involve some kind of code generated on the spot just for you, so somebody couldn't just post a code on the internet for all teens to use.
https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/news-events/no-evidence-screen-time...
"One also suggested we take a look at social media on its own because it’s a source of worry for many and we did not find anything special about this form of online engagement.”
It's a subset of what they studied. Surely a lot of screen time is spent on social media. They did not observe anything special about time spent on social media. A more in-depth study may yield more insight but there is no thread to pull on from this study. Only parents' misgivings.