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Good? Bad? Impossible?
Thoughts?
Good
Whether possible is another matter.
Excellent idea, whether it's enforceable is another matter.
Brilliant idea. My 14yr old agrees too.
Im not sure how it could be done though. It would mean every mobile phone in essence having to be licensed, even those being used by over 16s
Unsure how they’ve defined social media. Does that extend to Reddit? STW forums? Stackexchange? …
I see NZ wants to follow https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/media-technology/533208/nz-should-follow-australian-ban-on-social-media-for-children-under-16-expert
it’ll be interesting to see how they plan to start this and enforce it. While I used to maintain that e.g. MySpace, ISPs, and the like who published your web pages were not publishers and therefore were not liable for your content in the same way the TelCo isn’t, things are different with the walled gardens of Facebook, insta, TikTok and the others. They actively manage what folks see. Relevant here because the liability for breaking the age controls could reasonably be laid on the ‘publisher’.
Not sure it’s a good or bad thing. Ignoring the potential slippery slope, perhaps on balance it is a good thing if the platforms are defined in a way that does not eliminate young voices from the Internet. Maybe extend the restriction to 21? Perhaps ban men as they seem to cause quite some trouble on social media?
Bad and impossible. How is stw going to know if a user is Australian and under 16? Why should a 15 year old not be allowed to chat about their interests with like minded people? Loads of reasonable sites (including stw, YouTube, most news sites) will have to disable non-logged-in browsing, making it way harder for the rest of us to find community-sourced answers to problems we have.
Agree it's an impossible genie to put back in the bottle, we are 20 years too late. No idea how you enforce it.
With hindsight, yes, would have been a great idea.
Edit
things are different with the walled gardens of Facebook, insta, TikTok and the others
I think that's the key area. STW doesn't push content to your feed. You choose what you see and engage with. And we all know no one gets their mind changed on here.
Snapchat is the devils work and needs banning asap
a platform that gives you a high score for sending more messages per day, and the number of continual days you have sent messages is just dangerous for kids
I find myself agreeing that there is an issue that should be managed when a business is managing what you see, and as a consequence "think". I've no issue with the basic concept of social media, but when a platform goes full tilt into just showing you whatever keeps you engaged, regardless of the consequences, then it's a problem.
It's sort of ironic that the defense of "freedom of speech" has been used (not here so far) as what's happening to some is their speech is being controlled by hemming them into echo chambers.
Too late but as with all things it's been corrupted by people and now can be horribly toxic.
We've just had a tragic case of a young person driven to the extreme partly due to SM. There are lots of kids with exaggerated (as in increased) mental health issues be it due to bullying, conforming to a "norm", like chasing, doom scrolling. Every so often I do a screen time experiment with a class. It's horrifying. I had a pupils at 11am who had already clocked 3hrs of screen time on social media, given they had been in classes that morning, but from waking to that time they averaged opening tiktok once every two minutes.
Another pupils in the October break (1week) was over 100hrs of screen time.
From the world journal of
Psychiatry
"Neurobiology and genetics research on Internet-addictive behavior conducted over the last 10–15 years has allowed accumulating the necessary amount of knowledge to make certain intermediate conclusions, summarized recently in a significant number of meta-analyses and reviews. A large number of neuroimaging and neurophysiological studies have shown that Internet addiction is characterized by certain structural and functional features of the brain, accompanied by a significant violation of inhibitory control (increased impulsivity as a common factor in various forms of addictive behavior), stop-signal task, decision-making, and working memory. It has been discovered that, like other types of chemical and behavioral addictions, Internet addiction is characterized by an impairment of the metabolism of dopamine, serotonin, opioids, and some other neurotransmitters, which affects reward processing, executive functioning, salience attribution, and habit formation."
How are they going to identify the users? This would seem to mark the end of anonymous use of social media by adults, too.
Not workable, I bet there's shit loads of parents that set their kids phones up with false DOB's just so they don't have to piss around with setting all the time.
Government's need to stop pussy footing around social media sites and sort them out once and for all. They all need controlling for all of us, not just kids.
surely legitimate social media is based upon following real people or brands, therefore the first step is in proof of identity
shouldn't be possible to follow fake accounts, with no accountability, and if this is implemented thoroughly, then age access controls would also be enforceable.
It's so easily to manipulate the thinking of a person through these platforms it's dangerous, i can name a few examples of people i know, that certainly wouldn't be in their current situation without the influence (i do not believe, personal opinion)
1: guy my age, believe's the earth is flat and everything is faked to manipulate us
2: young lad, took his own life due to pressure trying to fit in
3: ex work colleague, always been geeky and socially awkward, now convinced that gender reassignment is correct for him
I personally don't even allow myself on certain platforms (looking at you TikTok) in case i get manipulated.
Hell even dating apps know how to get under your skin.
I feel a little more confident as i grew up and was an early adopter of the internet, pre social media, so i guess i treat it as a tool first and foremost.
I don't want kids stuck to their phones... my lad is on his a lot, but that's mostly whatsapp chat as he is gaming, I'd prefer him to be playing games than browsing and swiping endlessly.
Let alone the predatory nature of kids being "reachable" on the internet, a kid should chat to their school mates, family, and friends in their local area...We were brought up, don't talk to strangers, and now we give our kids the most powerful tool to talk to literally anyone, and its mostly out of our sight
Even if platform owners don’t, adtech companies know exactly who the users are: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/10/the-global-surveillance-free-for-all-in-mobile-ad-data/
Unsure how they’ve defined social media. Does that extend to Reddit? STW forums? Stackexchange? …
Those sites are all regulated under the definition in the UK Online Safety Act. Having read the duties that are imposed on operators, I would not be surprised if the majority of online forums, certainly those run by volunteers, will close down once the Act starts to bite. Ironically, that will force their content onto the big platforms like FB where it will be polluted.
IHNFull Member
Unsure how they’ve defined social media
I’d start with anything that algorithmically pushes content to users.
Daily Mail then? It pumps out hate speech, misogynistic content, and bases it on "since you read this, you might like this". The fact that it used to be a newspaper is neither here nor there
Better idea is to ban it for anyone of voting age. At least as long as it’s dominated by Musk and Zuckerberg.
That’ll also include the majority of shopping & news sites…
News is news, not sure why a site should tailor which news you see.
Shopping sites shouldn't be profiting off persuading people to buy things they don't need or can't afford.
Edit : rereading that, I've been a bit overly simplistic due to being in a rush
surely legitimate social media is based upon following real people or brands, therefore the first step is in proof of identity
Yeah, that's fine when you're a middle-class white heterosexual male living in a stable democracy. If you're a gay teen living in Bogansville, Queensland you might have a different idea about it, though.
China has proposed screen time limits for under 18s.
I read this a year or so back. Not sure if it's gone ahead though:
https://geographical.co.uk/culture/china-proposes-stricter-national-screen-time-limits-on-under-18s
In theory I think good but in practice impossible.
Even China with its level of authoritarian control struggles to completely control peoples use of the internet.
DracFull Member
Futile attempt by the government to say they tried to do something.
Spot on; coupled with the Australian government (even by national government standards) being pretty clueless about the internet and how it works. Although being Australia they will still actually be able to ram through some sort of restriction - see the Murdoch bill that forced Facebook to pay Murdoch's media companies to link to them. Media owners now regret it, and other countries have tried and generally failed to make it work, but didn't stop Australia
A large number of neuroimaging and neurophysiological studies have shown that Internet addiction is characterized by certain structural and functional features of the brain, accompanied by a significant violation of inhibitory control (increased impulsivity as a common factor in various forms of addictive behavior), stop-signal task, decision-making, and working memory. It has been discovered that, like other types of chemical and behavioral addictions, Internet addiction is characterized by an impairment of the metabolism of dopamine, serotonin, opioids, and some other neurotransmitters, which affects reward processing, executive functioning, salience attribution, and habit formation.
I have ADHD. Those characterisations of symptoms read like internet addiction is giving people an ADHD-like condition. Something similar is presented in a book I read recently, ADHD 2.0 https://www.waterstones.com/book/adhd-2-0/edward-m-hallowell/john-j-ratey/9781399813280. They call it VAST (Variable Attention Stimulus Trait)
I'm a firm believer social media is one of the great ills of the world. I appreciate the irony of posting that on here, but stw is as close to 'social media' as I get. Ita truly a toxic place (social media, not stw!) that will do irreversible harm to future generations
If I had the choice I'd not even use a smart phone, but unfortunately it appears virtually impossible to be without one in this day and age.
As we all know, banning something is always effective and no-one here ever did anything whilst underage. I certainly never bought a large bottle of sweet cider for 97p from the corner shop to take to the park with my mates when I was 15, didn't fake a student ID to say I was 18 when I was only 17 so I could get into Peppermint Place nightclub, or watch 18-cert horror films on VHS round at Tom's house after school.
Oh, wait.
Actually, you know what, it might actually a good idea. It is of course utterly impossible to implement unless we/they take the approach of somewhere like China and that really should be filed under "be careful what you wish for," comrade. But teenagers are going to rebel, forbidden fruit is part of the appeal. I did, and I was by any metric a swotty nerd. So, that being the case, we're into the realms of Least Harm. If I had a 12-year old I'd rather their act of rebellion was a Facebook account rather than a Pornhub account. Though Gen Alpha kids probably don't care about Facebook because that's what their dad uses.
Agree fully with the aims in principle.
Agree with those above saying it will be technically difficult/impossible to impose
So the solution needs to be a societal one. Build a critical mass of kids who shun social media (or whose parents prevent/limit access).
Start by smoking-style enforced adverts like "social media use is the largest cited contributor to teen depression" plastered over app stores.
Require all apps that consume more than 2 hours of screen time per day to flag the dangers of over use (like gambling sites link to gambleaware.org).
Banning won't work, but nudges might.
And ban all smartphones at school during the school day. Phones go in a special locker at the start of the day and stay there. Proper rigid enforcement by schools.
It may have already been said, but the solution isn’t banning under 16-year-olds from using social media, it’s about holding the companies to account to ensure account usage is properly moderated for all users, regardless of age.
I'd disagree. The solution is to educate young people. A technological solution is doomed to failure because a) the Internet is global and good luck imposing English / Australian laws on a server in Nigeria and b) your kids know more about technology than you do.
Just wondering if many on here have come across the smartphone free childhood movement?
Synopsis - get a critical mass of parents to agree not to give their kids a smartphone until 14+ such that your child isn't the only one who is out of the communication loop
https://smartphonefreechildhood.co.uk/
I’m a firm believer social media is one of the great ills of the world
I'm with you there
If I had a 12-year old I’d rather their act of rebellion was a Facebook account rather than a Pornhub account.
Pornhub et al. aren't the problem in this instance (granted they are a problem for other reasons, ie young adults' attitude to sex and relationships), and neither is Facebook really as most kids don't use it. The problem is the often toxic content and bullying on social apps such as What's App, KiK, Telegram etc, along with the content they can find on the likes of X and Threads.
I have two 15 yr olds and they *generally* have a reasonable relationship with access, and there are some positives such as them both finding ideas for cooking food, baking cakes etc (usually from TikToc) which is good. However I sometimes see the other side of it – they are both worrying about WW3 starting because they have read things online saying Trump getting into power will lead to it happening. They also both sometimes get into arguments with friends online (when it is harder to 'read' intent from the other person/s) and one of them gets particularly anxious if they message someone and they don't immediately respond even if they can see they are online – just worrying why they aren't responding, have they fallen out with them etc. And they are both almost permanently glued to their devices although we have managed to continue to enforce a 'no devices in bedrooms after bedtime' which is good.
Just wondering if many on here have come across the smartphone free childhood movement?
Yes, several variations of it. As it relies on parents, I feel there will be a minority for it and a majority ambivalent/not bothered so it ultimately won't go anywhere.
The solution is to educate young people.
Agree. We have two boys aged 14 and 15, they are both active on social media. We prefer to try and educate them, trust them, and hope that by encouraging them to talk to us and share experiences we can try to guide them. Prohibiting access to things has never worked, and invariably it's those who can manage restraint and control who go without because those who can't will find a way around any restrictions.
I do think that social media is incredibly damaging to society as a whole, there are swathes of people over the age of 16 who don't appear to be able to control themselves or behave rationally online (or in real life!).
Also agree with others that it would be almost impossible to effectively ban these platforms, any attempt to do so would probably end with some unintended consequences which might end up putting the more vulnerable in an even worse place.
As social media is now, maybe not a bad thing. But also short-sighted and addressing the negative effect not the cause imo, and potentially limiting the potential of young people at their most inspiring and creative ages.
To be honest, banning social media entirely would be of universal benefit
No offence to you IHN I know what you're getting at but this is a view that could be twisted - China / CCP doesn't like a lot of social media either.
Social media as decentralised news and communication is a good thing, it allows (for example) small but valid voices to be heard by a wide audience. More related to banning it for under 16s, it allows people to build brands from nothing but merit, or get support for charities at low cost - viral growth can be a very good thing.
Social media is a marvel of communication but it does get misused for greed/profit. The algorithms are to blame rather than the media itself, I think. And we're to 'blame' (blame is the wrong word) too, we get pushed what we're vulnerable to, we get exploited.
I think teaching young people about how this works is key rather than banning it. A 15 year old who understands social media well may never need to work for a crappy company in their life... We should be educating and enabling young people because social media is one of the most meritocratic things I can think of. Easy to start, no limit on momentum it can build. Got a spark and you can be a success - the discussion should be about what the spark is and the thinking behind it all, basic marketing and sociology.
Plus the more people understand it and use it well the less we get manipulated. Imagine a time when we all saw right through Zuckerberg's methods, turned away from negative algorithm media and went for a new, less divisive and addictive and more creative and collaborative alternative.
However I sometimes see the other side of it – they are both worrying about WW3 starting because they have read things online saying Trump getting into power will lead to it happening.
Let's face it, it may do.
I spent some of my childhood (about 8-9 years old?) thinking we would all be nuked, no smartphone needed to get that idea. Anxiety isn't good but kids being politically aware is no bad thing. What's important is their ability to rationalise and validate what they're exposed to?