Aus PM wants to ban social media for 16 and under

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?

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.

Pretty much sums up what I was going to say.

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.

This, definitely, in fact I think some schools are already doing it. A place I worked at for a few years strictly enforced a no phones rule in certain areas, phones had to be put in a locker, along with bags, and overcoats and heavy jackets were required to be hung outside as well.
Not too bad for those who worked in that area all day, but I had access to pretty much the whole building, with the server room the only exception, which was no bother to me anyway. It meant I had to retrieve my phone and a jacket if I was working downstairs, but as there were cameras everywhere in the upstairs room I worked in, compliance was very much recommended! Reprisals were swift, and could be severe.

A genuine question.

Is social media actually a problem in the under 16s?

The yoot of today seem alot more switched on than us. They drink less, the don’t smoke, they go to the gym etc.

Kids getting pied by their parents who are nose deep in their phone in the playpark is surely a more worrying trend?

Perhaps give parents the choice/option to easily block it in stages.

Trouble with this is parents get pressured due to all or most of their kids’ friends having it. If you say no you’re putting your child at a social disadvantage and they will blame you for it. That’s what I heard from parents about various other technology and internet things anyway.

I spent some of my childhood (about 8-9 years old?) thinking we would all be nuked,

Quite. I was at high school in the 1980s, this isn’t new. The leader of the free world was in his 70s just like Trump, meanwhile in the Red Corner was the Butcher Of Budapest. We all thought that AIDS would do for us if we didn’t get blown to bits first.

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.

We already have those alternatives. There’s no bugger there.

For the purposes of the conversation it’s quite obvious nobody is talking about forums in the form you see here. By some definition, yes, this is social media but only in the broadest of terms.

The difference between here and the likes of Facebook, Reddit etc. is that nothing is “curating” your feed and steering you towards that next little dopamine hit. There’s no infinite scrolling so you can’t just think “well that’s enough of that” when you hit the bottom of page 1 instead of doom-scrolling for hours on end. There are no “rewards” for posting or sharing every day.

I’d say forcing them to get rid of the doom scrolling and rewards would go some way to reducing the damage.

I suspect however the damage is more than done and some are a lost cause. I barely have any friends appear on my Facebook feed, I basically don’t get to see anyone because it’s full of curated shite I’m not actually interested in.

@joshvegas

Is social media actually a problem in the under 16s?

Yes, massively. If you take out the negatives, such as false information and bullying, and just look at time wasted then a huge proportion spend a worrying amount of time just flicking through stuff. It’s a bit like the old subliminal messaging concerns but they are at it for hours. There is a fair amount of evidence linking this to ADHD type issues. Which in turn is seen in schools. Add into this this inability to actually focus, something that takes practice, and attention spans fall massively.
I’ve just done DNA and reproduction and have pupils telling me there’s a guy on tiktok who has clones people so cloning is possible.
We were trying to get kids to describe things “in their own words” so went with film plots. Out of 40 kids 3 had actually watched a film all the way through. In a few years time they will have driving licences and the most important thing is keeping their streak going.

I’m not saying none of this is valid – it’s all messed up facets of life today. But there’s little of it that can be pinned to social media specifically:

False information and bullying; time wasted; inability to focus and attention spans. All of these are growing problems, but tabloid newspapers, right wing news channels, Piers Morgan, the internet more broadly have been doing it for years.

There are many things to be pinned on social media; and frankly Elon Musk should be in prison; but it’s not a cause of these symptoms, and removing it won’t fix them. The internet will still exist; the Daily Hate Mail and Nigel Farage will still be making things up and claiming it’s “true”; attention spans will still decline. If we’re serious

We already have those alternatives. There’s no bugger there.

Where’s that, the Twitter alternative that I forget the name of? (not Threads, don’t use that anyway and it’s not due to 80s nuke associations). A non-Zuk Instagram would be good.

Bluesky, Mastodon. Probably others.

I barely have any friends appear on my Facebook feed, I basically don’t get to see anyone because it’s full of curated shite I’m not actually interested in.

Whereas I have the opposite experience.

Uninstall the app, bookmark https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr in the browser and you’ll get a chronological feed. I get the occasional sponsored ad but not very often, and if I were bothered about that I’d install FB Purity.

Doesn’t work for me, feed is all over the place (3h, 23h, 4h, 6d, 6h etc.) and still showing a load of bollocks.

FB purity is, of course, the answer but for some reason they won’t develop a mobile version and it still doesn’t fix the fact that without it Facebook is fundamentally broken.

When I was still teaching, a stupid amount of time was wasted daily dealing with the fallout of various F’book spats between kids, That was over 10 yrs ago and doubt it has improved just on different platforms. Society IMHO will look back on this time with Horror… WTF were they thinking..we have known the issues for ages now in a similay way we knew about smoking, asbestos, CO2 etc etc but by and large ignored it all.  Sadly the genie is out of the bottle

We already have those alternatives. There’s no bugger there.
Where’s that, the Twitter alternative that I forget the name of? (not Threads, don’t use that anyway and it’s not due to 80s nuke associations). A non-Zuk Instagram would be good.

Bluesky is adding tens of thousands of new users practically every day, a great many Xitter users are also on Bluesky, basically so they can direct people there, and away from Xitter.
I only use Xitter to troll the repulsive ultra-Right assholes on there. I never bother to check back to see what responses I get, I can’t be arsed.

Tens of thousands of new users daily? Actual human ones, or Russian bot-farms? Who’s signing up for Bluesky?

Funnily enough, had an email from my kids teacher to say he’s “gaming in class” instead of using the comps for “work”. I asked it IT could block some of the commonly used sites? Apparently, teacher says no, IT can’t do that. “I’ve worked at many schools and nowhere has been able to do that”.

Err….k

Maybe instead of banning the media we should license and  age limit smartphones and other devices .

The yoot of today seem alot more switched on than us. They drink less, the don’t smoke, they go to the gym etc.

Or…They take more drugs than drink. They vape more than smoke. They have gym memberships because they aren’t active enough in normal life.

Interestingly Chris Wetherall, the developer who invented the retweet button now says that he regrets it. Many have called it the function that ruined the internet, Wetherall himself said “It was like handing a 4 year old a loaded gun”

Or…They take more drugs than drink. They vape more than smoke. They have gym memberships because they aren’t active enough in normal life.

FS, kids can’t do right for doing wrong in some folks eyes.

Or…They take more drugs than drink. They vape more than smoke. They have gym memberships because they aren’t active enough in normal life.
FS, kids can’t do right for doing wrong in some folks eyes.

Just pointing out that they aren’t the paragons of virtue that some believe. They’re just kids, like kids have been forever.

Many have called it the function that ruined the internet

Quite possibility, but I suspect it is so obvious a function as to be inevitable.

Just pointing out that they aren’t the paragons of virtue that some believe.

Nobody said they were. Except that one guy in a thread who literally said his son was perfect ?

Probably just as many of my generation were doing drugs and I did all that after the 90s, your rebuttal was typical of lazy boomer stereotyping and tbh unnecessary.

Awaits another admonishment from Bruce ?

I don’t have kids

My suspicion is that social media is a great boon to the majority of kids and a great harm to the minority.  Not just a bit of harm but a lot.

How to solve this without throwing the baby out with the bathwater?  I have no idea