this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2024

518 points (99.2% liked)

Technology

59689 readers

3152 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

518

Australia bans social media for under 16s (www.theverge.com)

submitted 17 hours ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

146 comments fedilink hide all child comments

(page 3) 46 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 10 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

Eh, I don't think this is the best solution.

The assumption is as soon as you turn 17 you're smart enough and have the critical thinking skills to navigate social media without it negatively affecting you? Kinda dumb.

There could be an argument that at least try to block it while young peoples brains are still developing, maybe there's benefit in that.

Older people than 16 are still duped by propaganda, and become addicted to social media, and all the negative consequences.

What we need is regulation imo. Good, smart, progressive, altruistic regulation that is for the benefit of all. Ain't gonna happen though, because sOcIaLiSm and "mUh FrEeDoMs".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 hours ago

The older generations always think the younger generations are lazy and lesser. They don't believe they can parent because they know how shit they were at parenting. So they are voting to take away parental rights and give those rights to the government. And then say they are pro small government.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 hours ago

Yeah, there are adults (in both my generation and the previous one) who have fewer critical thinking skills than today's teens and young adults. This feels like a band-aid solution to avoid actually fixing the problems of (1) not teaching critical thinking and logic and (2) the toxic content, misinformation and disinformation on these platforms (I recognise the second one is much harder whilst trying to preserve security and privacy as well).

[–] [email protected] 15 points 16 hours ago (3 children)

Probably going to get downvoted for this, but this just makes kids look for VPN's and other ways to skirt this restriction. It may make VPN's less useful for the rest of us as a result when certain services are forced to comply with the law, breaking those services for those of us using VPN's. It sounds like a great idea but I don't know that the implementation will make a noticeable or effective difference.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 16 hours ago (4 children)

Most kids are not going to pay a subscription for a VPN, I don't think that would be as big of an issue as you think.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Well unless they go for free vpns and get data mined to the moon and back... Which is a far worse outcome imo.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

There are free vpn services? How do they data mine you?

load more comments (2 replies)

load more comments (3 replies)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

Just because it isn't perfect it doesn't mean it's useless.

Just because there is no way to stop 100% of all crime it doesn't mean taking measures to reduce crime is futile.

There is a lot more to this than just blocking the site. It will also change social norms. Right now, if a 14 year old as social media, nobody bats an eye; but with the 16 year requirement, through all the sudden, parents aren't too comfortable with letting their 14 year old have social media. So not only will they need to find some free VPN totally not spyware to use (and even know that that exists and how to use), they will also have to hide it from their parents, as it is no longer socially acceptable for 14 year olds to have social media.

And before you say "Kids can easily get a free VPN and hide it." Never underestimate tech illiteracy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

The thing about kids getting a VPN, free or paid is that it will spread like wild fire. It only takes one kid who knows how to do something. They tried this at my highschool, blocking websites and such. That was more than 20 years ago and we knew how to use VPN's or similar then and once we figured it out it was an open secret.

I'm not saying the law shouldn't exist or that we should do nothing. I'm saying that this isn't going to be effective as it is and could end up leading to worse things.

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 16 hours ago

Us right now are on a service that's totally going to follow this law. /s

[–] [email protected] 11 points 16 hours ago

So what? There will be a "Yes I'm over 16" check box which will be as meaningful as the "Yes I'm over 18" one on porn sites?

Any hope of governments or social media sites enforcing this will come with big ethical and technical compromises and I dont think anyone is actually going to really bother.

We already have limits on what children do with other potentially harmful things like fire, sharp objects, heights and roads and they all come from parents. If this law has any real and positive impact it will be the message that it sends to parents.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 17 hours ago

Not a bad choice.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (1 children)

Then I read that chat apps and YouTube would not be banned, and scoffed

Literally chat apps are social media. You can post stories and pump memes and news. You can even have bots that scrape and post content. YouTube is just a matter of checking a box whether it's "for kids" and they already do that. Basically the whole thing is stupid

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 16 hours ago

Now ban everyone else (except Lemmy of course).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 12 hours ago

So.... they banned social media for a whole 15 seconds?

[+] [email protected] -10 points 17 hours ago (9 children)

Imagine if this was done around the world. And then imagine how empty the Internet would be.

You don't need to ban kids from the Internet. You need to ban pedophiles from it.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

I strongly disagree.

Social media is terrible for mental health especially for the youth. Phones and tablets help in some areas like motor control development but also hurt other places like attention deficiencies and critical thinking, and very rarely does it lead to a kid learning how technology works (that's usually from the computer nerds, aka kids who want a computer, doesn't happen even close to the same rate as smart phones.

Smart phones make people dumb. That's my opinion. But the above are scientifically backed.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

Then parents need to stop using such things as babysitters.

And parents also need to get up in arms about lazy "educators" using tech to make their job easier (instead of making learning more effective, which is the bullshit argument that's always used).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Parenting is harder than ever, so I don't blame parents.

Back in the day you would have the mother home all the time, even more recently there was still a strong community in most places and big families meant lots of babysitters.

Nowadays it's fend for yourself for everybody almost everywhere, so raising a kid properly is almost impossible unless you are rich or have a lot of free time.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 15 hours ago

While I can see your point I would like to point out that that might excuse problems parents have raising their children but not parents making that everyone else's problem by insisting the rest of the world is made child-safe somehow.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 15 hours ago

Most of the technical problems with learning/teaching are actually caused by sticking to outdated 19th century concepts in schools such as having the (by definition average) local teacher explain things instead of someone who actually knows how to explain the subject matter well and pretending that kids need to memorize everything in a modern world instead of incorporating the ability to look up things into the learning process.

Most of the actual major problems with education are caused by funding structures and deliberate sabotage by parts of society who benefit from an uneducated population without critical thinking and research skills.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 14 hours ago

100% agree. These things get talked up as benefits when they are mostly treated as revenue streams by the seller and distractions by the buyer. Kids and adults. We all need to be way more critical of the tech we use.

[–] 0x0 10 points 16 hours ago

You need to raise kids better instead of delegating that job to the internet.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

We can't rely on the assholes running these site to ban pedophiles. They'd endorse a pedophile president if they thought it would give them less taxes/regulations.

This is a prudent move, we've only seen the very beginnings if the sorts of indoctrination and manipulation our kids might be subjected to.

Never thought I'd sound this way, but i can no longer ignore reality.

load more comments (6 replies)

load more comments