Summary
A YouGov poll revealed that 77% of Germans support banning social media for those under 16, similar to a new Australian law.
The survey found that 82% believe social media harms young people, citing harmful content and addiction.
In Australia, the law fines platforms up to AUD 49.5 million (€30.5M) for allowing under-16s to create accounts, with enforcement trials set before implementation next year. Critics
This sounds good on paper until you realize that what is considered “social media” is up to whoever happens to hold that position. Even ignoring the fact that it’s unenforceable anyway, unless you require a real ID, wish is just straight up worse for all sorts of reasons.
The idea is nice, but actually putting it into law without opening the door to censorship and other side effects is just not plausible.
Edit: also, Everytime you read about a poll like this, ask yourself: what was the question they asked? Did it provide any context? Did it require any understanding of the actual underlying issues and laws? Or was it some variation of “think of the children”?
I think the question was; “how can we protect the kids when obviously their parents have failed?”
It’s not censorship. Social media isn’t the street. It’s mostly private companies and when you post something it’s like saying something inside the building of a private company and not on the street.
The law is about regulating the companies and who can access these spaces.
Lots of countries have a similar law for work. You have age restriction and speech limits by law.
And yes, you can ask for a physical ID and even mandate an in person account opening. Or, you built a national account and social media must use it to allow access.
Most of the people where I live are in favor of this and even until majority including smartphones.
Even ignoring the fact that it’s unenforceable anyway, unless you require a real ID, wish is just straight up worse for all sorts of reasons.
It is possible to verify age using a real ID without sharing other details from that ID with a social media company with apps like https://www.yivi.app/en/
The politicians in charge of making the laws often lack the understanding needed to make privacy respecting laws. So it’s possible, it’s just not happening. They also listen to actual experts ready to little, but do listen to lobbyists.
This also doesn’t address the censorship side of the problems.
Just for a random example, literally the first thing I thought of: let’s say there’s a youth movement to affect climate change, or some other issue. They organize general protests, boycotts on “bad companies” and are starting to get somewhere (politically and affecting the bottom lines of these companies). This is coordinated using some online communication platform, think Reddit, lemmy or whatever (Facebook, whatever). Those that want it to “go away” can just include that in the list of sites that fall under thes “youth protection” laws.
Then there’s laws like that being extended it abused to do things that weren’t originally intended, which is also hard to safeguard against. Future legislation might extend the age range from 16 to 18, then to 21. With the list of blocked sites also growing conveniently alongside, and boom you got a nice censorship platform. Not saying that will happen, but making sure it can’t is what’s hard.
Of course you can. All you need is a trusted 3rd party (the organization who issued your ID, probably your government) to verify your identity and sign a statement that you are over 16 years old. Then you present that statement to the social media company and you’ve done it.
From what I understand of the Australian law, companies are prohibited from requiring a government-issued ID. In practical terms, how can this law be implemented, then? Bypassing a prompt that asks for a birthday is as easy as just lying. Other than requiring an ID, I honestly can’t fathom a way this would actually work. I suppose you could require a active credit card number, but that would exclude adults and kids over 16.
It’s Facebook, kids will post pictures of themselves.
now Facebook has to close the accounts that are reported.
Not that hard. When you allow reporting and then removal of their accounts. They may get through but their accounts are removed rapidly.
Lets do it in the US too.
It’s not like those republicans in government are gonna use this “kids addicted to social media” as an excuse to enforce ID verifications to go online, right? Think about the children!
As an Australian social media isn’t the problem, like the internet isnt the problem, its commersialisation thats the problem. The need to grow the custoner base sees outrageous behaviours from corporations like Meta, Google, Apple etal but that’s what they’re incentivised to do, so that’s what happens.
This legilisation won’t solve shit. The government and the polotical class forcing citizens to use Facebook or Twitter to get information, they could start there.
Absolutely social media is the problem.
The echo chambers, the propagation of facist ideology, the state sponsored misinformation campaigns, the anti-intellectualism, all made possible by social media. No where else could these banes on modern democracy and society have been so easily bred but on social media.
The networks that do the most damage were specifically engineered that way due to the profit motive rewarding engagement of all sorts above positive connection. Social media is the problem, but it’s only that way because of the economic and commercial factors involved. Individuals can always be assholes, but nobody has miserable memories of myspace and MSN online as genocide-facilitating false news propagators, because they weren’t specifically designed to make people angry and breathlessly message everyone they know about a perceived problem.
Social media has the capacity to connect disparate groups of people, become a forum for interests, and open the world up to new perspectives and information - the intentional monopolisation of that promise by frankly, evil, multinationals is the root cause of the issue - not the technology itself.
Australia’s new law will do fucking nothing, and as many experts have suggested, will probably make the issues worse. Bullying isn’t limited to social media, so a child that previously found refuge by connecting with like-minded friends elsewhere or staying in touch when living remote, now gets to be ‘saved’ by being kicked off the platform and left with only the real-life bullying they endure at school. Counterproductive.
Additionally, if the platforms are such violent cesspools for children, why is it then acceptable for them to continue with their perverse rage-bait designs, so long as the user is over 16? The government should instead be regulating the mechanics and algorithms of the sites to make them safer, more reasonable and positive entities - rather than just giving up on any meaningful regulation and saying that meta is fine, because a 17 year old can get bullied in person instead of a 35 year old having revenge porn posted of them, or a 72 year old falling down a facebook conspiracy rabbit hole is a-ok.
This legislation was half-baked, forced through with little-to-no debate, stands to worsen the stranglehold of monopolised tech. It places the responsibility of parenting onto facebook, twitter, etc. which are the last entities in the damn world that should get to define ‘safety’ or police responsible usage. It does absolutely nothing to address the serious fundamental problems that pervade our modern, highly concentrated technology ecosystems, and actually gives them a free pass to allow the sites to fester even more (bringing in more profit as people doom-scroll longer, viewing more ads, when their specific fears and annoyances are deliberately tabulated and curated to make them as angry, paranoid, isolated, unhappy, and antagonistic as possible) by saying that it’s a foregone conclusion that social media is evil, and we can’t fix that, so why even try? /s
If they actually wanted to fix this problem, investing in education and help resources, probing into the design and function of these sites would be the way to do it. We’ve just scored a massive own goal at Zuckerberg, et. al’s benefit, by asking them to police themselves and sacrificing everyone over the age of 16 to the hellscape of media as it is, instead of as it could be.
Lots of people believe things not supported by science.
News at 11.
I mean science does show this generation has very high incidence of anxiety, depression, suicide etc. Not saying social media is all of it, but it’s probably a very big cause.
“Probably”
This is your definition of scientific?
Thanks for proving my point.
great account to follow regarding the science on the subject: https://ohai.social/@Garwboy/113554246823274751
Let’s remember the ban in Australia concerns platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit and X. Exemptions will apply to services such as YouTube, messenger kids, whatsapp, kids helpline and google classroom.
The account you provided starts by stating that “the most rigorous analysis” found little/no significant evidence , but fails to link to them. He immediately lumps together smartphone and social media, then goes on justifying the importance of both with arguments that clearly concern almost exclusively smartphones.
This ban is about social media, not smartphones altogether.
Garwboy’s arguments:
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they let kids stay connected with friends, foster a community, allow coordination of activities: he’s talking about smartphones.
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they allow access to school work, references, important resources: again, smartphones/the internet
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they allow access to support, help and guidance from experienced and informed individuals and groups: this point I’ll give to him; as for years, Reddit has served that very purpose for me. Who knows what that site has become though.
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he compares them to roads (roads kill children every year, but they save many lives, make the world go round,…): again this whole comparison is only valid for smartphones.
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they are a refuge for children who experience abuse at home: this is probably true, but it is not an argument about how social media helps in these situations. I could say the same about drugs .
Which brings us to my point of view: social media are, for many, a drug. A bit of it can be good, fun and even sometimes make your like better, but we have to acknowledge the negative side, which in my opinion can have devastating effects in a person’s mental, especially when the mental is still in its forming stage.
And even worse: bad polling amplifies the interpretation the pollsters want to see.
In this case, there’s no link to or mention of the actual question. Just the in favor/not in favor distribution.
Did they ask “the government should implement laws to ban children” or did it say “rules to prevent children from signing up”?
Did they mention the age limit? Asking any children and teenagers might lead to very different results.
And so on. If you can’t find the exact question, polls like this are useless.
