I’m mixed. I do kinda get why, and some of the concerns are valid, but: 1) how on earth are they gonna enforce that effectively? 2) as someone who has friends and family far away (including abroad), the idea of not having easy means of contact and keeping up is not exactly one I am keen on. I am not in the would-be affected age group, but I did have those friends and family already back when I was, and I feel bad that something like this might jeopardise it for others. At least there are relatively straightforward ways around the ban
From the stuff I’ve seen in international news coverage, it seems to be another one of those roads to hell that are paved by good intentions.
I would be against.
I don’t see how they will be able to enforce it.
I think it’s more ‘be seen to be doing something’ than a measure which will actually be effective…. teens can easily get around the social media restrictions, and parents themselves are the ones who ‘give’ the phone to their younger children, usually because they are too busy and need to keep their children quiet.
While the sentiment is not entirely wrong, it’s hard to see how to draw the line. If TikTok is banned, should YouTube be as well? What about messaging apps?
Maybe the solution is not a ban, but proper media education. There is good, useful, educational content on each portal (including TikTok) – among the garbage, which the children need to learn to sort out. However, with a full ban, they won’t be able to develop media competences, since they won’t be allowed to use any of it.
An age limit of 10-12 could work, if schools would introduce media education around that age.
As a teacher, working with kids 6-14, I strongly support this, but sadly it’s on their parents more than the government. I have no idea, how this should come to life, except giving parents stimulation for being strict to their kids (aka doing their work).
You can see it on their eyes on a daily basis – kids with no phones/soc networks, are simply turned ‘on’, while the rest are zombiefying slowly, untik they know they hate it, but cannot get out. It’s horrible.
I think that in theory this is a good idea, but hard to put into effect. Kids are smarter than politicians and, if not all of them, most will find a way to circumvent this issue.
16 seems unreasonably high to me. I don’t know how kids are like in Australia, but we were all partying and drinking at 14, makes no sense to not be able to normally use the internet at that age.
I understand the impetus, but I think if one were to do it, 12 would be a better age.
At least in Austria, 16 couldn’t be argued as fitting into the legal system.
People are free to enter into (most) types of contracts and can freely do with their own property as they wish with 14, as that‘s the age of civil responsibility. There’s only a few exceptions to that.
The age of criminal responsibility, and thus of consent, is also 14.
The age of consent to medical procedures without parental interference is assumed at 14, but if the person is mature and understanding of the risks, has no legal limit – but in practice, it‘s mostly from 12 upwards.
Compulsory schooling ends after 9 years with 15.
The age of legally purchasing alcohol is 16.
The voting age is 16.
If someone can basically decide nearly everything on their own with 16 and can participate in normal society, it is contradictory to prohibit them from participating in society online, just because it‘s online.
With all of that, the state really has no valid basis to argue this restriction of someone‘s personal life is justified – much less if it’s just a blanket ban.
UK: it would make more sense to ban old people from social media. It’s not the kids saying immigrants cause cancer and brexit will work real soon now.
Genuinely- given the explosion in mental health among the younger generation. This is a worthwhile effort. The devil is always in the detail but i applaud that anyone is taking the lead and trying something
Edit- *mental health issues (!)
[deleted]
It’s stupid.
Now you’ll have kids STILL going on social medias but if something goes wrong they’ll be even more hesitant to bring it up to their parents or the authorities.
Bans and prohibitions are always innefficient. People need education and knowledge instead of mere instructions about what is ‘good’ or ‘bad.
I am fully against it. I really dislike the “nanny state” – or “daddy state” (“pappa staten”) as we also call it is Sweden. I don’t believe in the state meddling in people’s private lives when it doesn’t need to. Sadly, we have way too much of that in Sweden as well. I feel like in this case, the vast majority parents know better than the state what is best for their own children.
I agree. I think we all need to slow down a little bit. let’s watch movies without looking our socials for a second. Listen to an audiobook without scrolling for hours. Just stare at the wall. It’s ok to feel bored.
I’m all for it, kids don’t need mobiles phones and they sure as hell don’t need the brain rot on social media. The whole premise of social media isn’t being in contact with your friends now it’s about keeping your focus.
There is too much vile crap online and too many people who think it’s ok to expose kids to it. At 16 and under, your brain is far from understanding the bad shit in the world.
Just look at what’s on these platforms which doesn’t get taken down by the platforms. Everything imaginable and you need a pop-up stops a kid from just saying they are 18+?
There is a direct correlation between the release of social media platforms and mental health issues.
I’m all for kids using computers but there is so much more you can use computers for than socials.
Should be done in Europe. When I hear that young teenagers get bullied on social media, and it brings them to attempt suicide, and shit such as TikTok just show them tutorials on how to do it, it is clear that teenagers should not be exposed to this garbage
Great idea. and no, it’s actually easily enforced. see also online gambling: you take out any company that doesn’t toe the line. it works fine. government just has to not cave to the advertising industry and its interest in preying on children.
[deleted]
Social media is cancer. We should all be spending much less time on it. It is extremely harmful for mental health for all ages basically. Trying to make sure that some of the most vulnerable preteens are protected from it is a great idea, but like always, implementation is tricky and banning stuff usually makes it more appealig to a lot of people. It’s a start but like always the actual soluion would be greater systematic regulation of social media platforms down to the algorythms, and extensive education to use it and handle it responsibly.
It’s draconian as fuck. The only way to enforce that would be to somehow close off the vast majority of internet for people unless they have government mandated proof they are over 16. For a supposedly western country Australia really, really likes censorship and stuff like this. I guess they think it’s normal because they are so far from anyone else they don’t have anyone to compare with.
I think that it could be good for teens to not indulge in socil media.
But internet skills are important these days. Which also means social media navigation.
And Australians are concerned for the interned ID thing and this is just first step towards that. So their gov clearly has ulterior motives.
I fully support the idea.
The implementation? Not sure how this will be enforced.
It’s like not having a criteria for a driver’s licence. It’s 16 in some countries. Some countries don’t allow for a teenager to drive a 800 horsepower Ferrari until they’ve gained experience and matured.
In the data economy there’s so much to be exposed on the internet such as your own security, it should require a level of maturity and understanding before having no limits at all (basically, you sre responsible for youself).
if there was a way to ban it for sub room temp IQ people(yes, celsius) that eat up all the russian misinfo i would do that too.
There should be no bans, but the should be regulation in how they operate IMO. Make the algorithms public for example. Don’t know if that would work, but something to that effect
This highly depends on what they see as ”social media”. Whatsapp is a crucial part of family-wide communication here and would be ass to be without.
Also depends on what they’re tryna restrict. ”Harms of social media” means absolutely nothing if you’re also banning all the benefits. This also wont make the lives of the children of bad parents any better as they could still use the devices for games etc. for 8h in a day.
I also think most of these restrictions would be just ignored – parents would just let children use their alternative accounts and such. I doubt that has too many positive sides to it as it’s very hard to monitor
Impressed they had the balls to do it. It’s about time somebody did. It’s clearly toxic af to kids’ mental health.
I think there’s plenty of stuff about social media that is harmful to young people, but I think trying to ban it is a losing fight. It’s here and you’re not gonna unring that bell. Kids have to be equipped to better deal with the negatives of social media and I think there’s also a lot of work to be done to try to make social media platforms less predatory and destructive in terms of the roads they take people down, but trying to ban it is just a bunch of old people trying to avoid doing that work.
It seems like a draconian style response to a problem. And like a lot of things its people making legislation without understanding (or caring) about the impact.
Firstly, from reading over the article it seems they have no way of enforcing it from the child’s side. So any infringement will be blamed on the companies that own the social media platform. Any effort that the companies make to try and enforce restrictions will normally have ways round it, to stop those they will have to add more restrictions that may have impact on everyone. So this will affect the average user if it is to be enforced and will mean that a lot of things that we want will have to be compromised (security, anonymity). Or if its too complex to enforce, those services can be withdrawn from a whole location (bit extreme but not implausible).
Secondly their are a lot of vulnerable children which benefit from social media, essentially this will be withdrawing their ability to maintain contact with people that can help them, I am sure a lot of people will say that they grew up fine without social media, but that is a nonsense argument. It is essentially a Pandora’s box and it completely ignores people who weren’t that lucky and who may not have a voice or even an understanding of how their own life could have been improved.
I am not saying that social media is not sometimes problematic, it absolutely is. Any kind of knee jerk legislation like this is also very problematic and is normally driven by people in power want to demonstrably show that they are doing something, without actually doing anything.
I get the concerns about social media but I don’t think it should be up to the government to decide who gets to use them. I also don’t know how it’s supposed to be enforced (and afaik the Australian government doesn’t either). How will they make sure everyone is actually 16+? Using ID to make a social media account? I wouldn’t want to give the companies that own those sites even more personal data. A government-issued permit with an access code once you turn 16? Won’t kids just be able to use a VPN to get around the restrictions anyway? What exactly counts as social media? There’s a lot of websites (like this one) that probably aren’t social media in the typical sense of the word but people still go there and talk to others. What about instant-messaging platforms like Discord? Social media aren’t the only places on the internet that can cause harm to kids/teens, and they’re not the only means of online communication. If they can’t use TikTok or whatever, won’t they just go somewhere else.
I wonder how the whole thing is gonna be implemented because so far it doesn’t seem very well thought out.
First it’s gonna be impossible to implement in practice because “social media” is too broad, sure Twitter and Instagram are obvious but platforms like YouTube, Discord, and Reddit (forums in general) could also be seen as social media. At that point you would be shutting people away from a huge part of the internet.
Then it’s also never going to be enforceable. People will use VPNs to bypass it, other platforms/websites will switched their formula to try and find loopholes to fill the niche etc.
I don’t think you can take away something from people which has already become a standard part of peoples lives. Trying to educate people on it and encouraging/giving tools to parents to deal with it is more reasonable to me.
I strongly support the idea, and think it should go further.
The health issues induced by those medias are staggering, and it’s only the beginning. I never hear much about the myopia epidemic, but an entire generation thinning their retinas *can’t be good*
I’m pretty sure the UK is planning on doing the same, I’m all for it but it will be difficult to enforce
I’d say that responsibility lies with the parents first and foremost rather than the state or social media companies. So as much as I’d may or may not like to see less kids on social media, it’s a bad decision in my opinion.
Also does that mean that under-16s are also banned from websites like Chegg, YouTube and Khanacademy? Genuinely useful websites that could meet the threshold for being social media (with YouTube officially being a social media platform already).
We need to be actually holding parents to account (something that the UK, can’t speak for France, isn’t doing in my opinion). It starts at home, parents need to make an effort ensure that their children are safe online they need to set barriers in place (very easy to do if the devices are iOS).
Taking responsibility away from parents. The government and tech companies are not responsible for parenting kids.
Is social media for kids good for them? No
But I still don’t support a ban. Because firstly it will probably not be effective, they’ll find a way around and secondly it will force the creation of a big database tying every SM comment to a verified ID.
36 comments
I’m mixed. I do kinda get why, and some of the concerns are valid, but: 1) how on earth are they gonna enforce that effectively? 2) as someone who has friends and family far away (including abroad), the idea of not having easy means of contact and keeping up is not exactly one I am keen on. I am not in the would-be affected age group, but I did have those friends and family already back when I was, and I feel bad that something like this might jeopardise it for others. At least there are relatively straightforward ways around the ban
From the stuff I’ve seen in international news coverage, it seems to be another one of those roads to hell that are paved by good intentions.
I would be against.
I don’t see how they will be able to enforce it.
I think it’s more ‘be seen to be doing something’ than a measure which will actually be effective…. teens can easily get around the social media restrictions, and parents themselves are the ones who ‘give’ the phone to their younger children, usually because they are too busy and need to keep their children quiet.
While the sentiment is not entirely wrong, it’s hard to see how to draw the line. If TikTok is banned, should YouTube be as well? What about messaging apps?
Maybe the solution is not a ban, but proper media education. There is good, useful, educational content on each portal (including TikTok) – among the garbage, which the children need to learn to sort out. However, with a full ban, they won’t be able to develop media competences, since they won’t be allowed to use any of it.
An age limit of 10-12 could work, if schools would introduce media education around that age.
As a teacher, working with kids 6-14, I strongly support this, but sadly it’s on their parents more than the government. I have no idea, how this should come to life, except giving parents stimulation for being strict to their kids (aka doing their work).
You can see it on their eyes on a daily basis – kids with no phones/soc networks, are simply turned ‘on’, while the rest are zombiefying slowly, untik they know they hate it, but cannot get out. It’s horrible.
I think that in theory this is a good idea, but hard to put into effect. Kids are smarter than politicians and, if not all of them, most will find a way to circumvent this issue.
16 seems unreasonably high to me. I don’t know how kids are like in Australia, but we were all partying and drinking at 14, makes no sense to not be able to normally use the internet at that age.
I understand the impetus, but I think if one were to do it, 12 would be a better age.
At least in Austria, 16 couldn’t be argued as fitting into the legal system.
People are free to enter into (most) types of contracts and can freely do with their own property as they wish with 14, as that‘s the age of civil responsibility. There’s only a few exceptions to that.
The age of criminal responsibility, and thus of consent, is also 14.
The age of consent to medical procedures without parental interference is assumed at 14, but if the person is mature and understanding of the risks, has no legal limit – but in practice, it‘s mostly from 12 upwards.
Compulsory schooling ends after 9 years with 15.
The age of legally purchasing alcohol is 16.
The voting age is 16.
If someone can basically decide nearly everything on their own with 16 and can participate in normal society, it is contradictory to prohibit them from participating in society online, just because it‘s online.
With all of that, the state really has no valid basis to argue this restriction of someone‘s personal life is justified – much less if it’s just a blanket ban.
UK: it would make more sense to ban old people from social media. It’s not the kids saying immigrants cause cancer and brexit will work real soon now.
Genuinely- given the explosion in mental health among the younger generation. This is a worthwhile effort. The devil is always in the detail but i applaud that anyone is taking the lead and trying something
Edit- *mental health issues (!)
[deleted]
It’s stupid.
Now you’ll have kids STILL going on social medias but if something goes wrong they’ll be even more hesitant to bring it up to their parents or the authorities.
Bans and prohibitions are always innefficient. People need education and knowledge instead of mere instructions about what is ‘good’ or ‘bad.
I am fully against it. I really dislike the “nanny state” – or “daddy state” (“pappa staten”) as we also call it is Sweden. I don’t believe in the state meddling in people’s private lives when it doesn’t need to. Sadly, we have way too much of that in Sweden as well. I feel like in this case, the vast majority parents know better than the state what is best for their own children.
I agree. I think we all need to slow down a little bit. let’s watch movies without looking our socials for a second. Listen to an audiobook without scrolling for hours. Just stare at the wall. It’s ok to feel bored.
I’m all for it, kids don’t need mobiles phones and they sure as hell don’t need the brain rot on social media. The whole premise of social media isn’t being in contact with your friends now it’s about keeping your focus.
There is too much vile crap online and too many people who think it’s ok to expose kids to it. At 16 and under, your brain is far from understanding the bad shit in the world.
Just look at what’s on these platforms which doesn’t get taken down by the platforms. Everything imaginable and you need a pop-up stops a kid from just saying they are 18+?
There is a direct correlation between the release of social media platforms and mental health issues.
I’m all for kids using computers but there is so much more you can use computers for than socials.
Should be done in Europe. When I hear that young teenagers get bullied on social media, and it brings them to attempt suicide, and shit such as TikTok just show them tutorials on how to do it, it is clear that teenagers should not be exposed to this garbage
Great idea. and no, it’s actually easily enforced. see also online gambling: you take out any company that doesn’t toe the line. it works fine. government just has to not cave to the advertising industry and its interest in preying on children.
[deleted]
Social media is cancer. We should all be spending much less time on it. It is extremely harmful for mental health for all ages basically. Trying to make sure that some of the most vulnerable preteens are protected from it is a great idea, but like always, implementation is tricky and banning stuff usually makes it more appealig to a lot of people. It’s a start but like always the actual soluion would be greater systematic regulation of social media platforms down to the algorythms, and extensive education to use it and handle it responsibly.
It’s draconian as fuck. The only way to enforce that would be to somehow close off the vast majority of internet for people unless they have government mandated proof they are over 16. For a supposedly western country Australia really, really likes censorship and stuff like this. I guess they think it’s normal because they are so far from anyone else they don’t have anyone to compare with.
I think that it could be good for teens to not indulge in socil media.
But internet skills are important these days. Which also means social media navigation.
And Australians are concerned for the interned ID thing and this is just first step towards that. So their gov clearly has ulterior motives.
I fully support the idea.
The implementation? Not sure how this will be enforced.
It’s like not having a criteria for a driver’s licence. It’s 16 in some countries. Some countries don’t allow for a teenager to drive a 800 horsepower Ferrari until they’ve gained experience and matured.
In the data economy there’s so much to be exposed on the internet such as your own security, it should require a level of maturity and understanding before having no limits at all (basically, you sre responsible for youself).
if there was a way to ban it for sub room temp IQ people(yes, celsius) that eat up all the russian misinfo i would do that too.
There should be no bans, but the should be regulation in how they operate IMO. Make the algorithms public for example. Don’t know if that would work, but something to that effect
This highly depends on what they see as ”social media”. Whatsapp is a crucial part of family-wide communication here and would be ass to be without.
Also depends on what they’re tryna restrict. ”Harms of social media” means absolutely nothing if you’re also banning all the benefits. This also wont make the lives of the children of bad parents any better as they could still use the devices for games etc. for 8h in a day.
I also think most of these restrictions would be just ignored – parents would just let children use their alternative accounts and such. I doubt that has too many positive sides to it as it’s very hard to monitor
Impressed they had the balls to do it. It’s about time somebody did. It’s clearly toxic af to kids’ mental health.
I think there’s plenty of stuff about social media that is harmful to young people, but I think trying to ban it is a losing fight. It’s here and you’re not gonna unring that bell. Kids have to be equipped to better deal with the negatives of social media and I think there’s also a lot of work to be done to try to make social media platforms less predatory and destructive in terms of the roads they take people down, but trying to ban it is just a bunch of old people trying to avoid doing that work.
It seems like a draconian style response to a problem. And like a lot of things its people making legislation without understanding (or caring) about the impact.
Firstly, from reading over the article it seems they have no way of enforcing it from the child’s side. So any infringement will be blamed on the companies that own the social media platform. Any effort that the companies make to try and enforce restrictions will normally have ways round it, to stop those they will have to add more restrictions that may have impact on everyone. So this will affect the average user if it is to be enforced and will mean that a lot of things that we want will have to be compromised (security, anonymity). Or if its too complex to enforce, those services can be withdrawn from a whole location (bit extreme but not implausible).
Secondly their are a lot of vulnerable children which benefit from social media, essentially this will be withdrawing their ability to maintain contact with people that can help them, I am sure a lot of people will say that they grew up fine without social media, but that is a nonsense argument. It is essentially a Pandora’s box and it completely ignores people who weren’t that lucky and who may not have a voice or even an understanding of how their own life could have been improved.
I am not saying that social media is not sometimes problematic, it absolutely is. Any kind of knee jerk legislation like this is also very problematic and is normally driven by people in power want to demonstrably show that they are doing something, without actually doing anything.
I get the concerns about social media but I don’t think it should be up to the government to decide who gets to use them. I also don’t know how it’s supposed to be enforced (and afaik the Australian government doesn’t either). How will they make sure everyone is actually 16+? Using ID to make a social media account? I wouldn’t want to give the companies that own those sites even more personal data. A government-issued permit with an access code once you turn 16? Won’t kids just be able to use a VPN to get around the restrictions anyway? What exactly counts as social media? There’s a lot of websites (like this one) that probably aren’t social media in the typical sense of the word but people still go there and talk to others. What about instant-messaging platforms like Discord? Social media aren’t the only places on the internet that can cause harm to kids/teens, and they’re not the only means of online communication. If they can’t use TikTok or whatever, won’t they just go somewhere else.
I wonder how the whole thing is gonna be implemented because so far it doesn’t seem very well thought out.
First it’s gonna be impossible to implement in practice because “social media” is too broad, sure Twitter and Instagram are obvious but platforms like YouTube, Discord, and Reddit (forums in general) could also be seen as social media. At that point you would be shutting people away from a huge part of the internet.
Then it’s also never going to be enforceable. People will use VPNs to bypass it, other platforms/websites will switched their formula to try and find loopholes to fill the niche etc.
I don’t think you can take away something from people which has already become a standard part of peoples lives. Trying to educate people on it and encouraging/giving tools to parents to deal with it is more reasonable to me.
I strongly support the idea, and think it should go further.
The health issues induced by those medias are staggering, and it’s only the beginning. I never hear much about the myopia epidemic, but an entire generation thinning their retinas *can’t be good*
I’m pretty sure the UK is planning on doing the same, I’m all for it but it will be difficult to enforce
I’d say that responsibility lies with the parents first and foremost rather than the state or social media companies. So as much as I’d may or may not like to see less kids on social media, it’s a bad decision in my opinion.
Also does that mean that under-16s are also banned from websites like Chegg, YouTube and Khanacademy? Genuinely useful websites that could meet the threshold for being social media (with YouTube officially being a social media platform already).
We need to be actually holding parents to account (something that the UK, can’t speak for France, isn’t doing in my opinion). It starts at home, parents need to make an effort ensure that their children are safe online they need to set barriers in place (very easy to do if the devices are iOS).
Taking responsibility away from parents. The government and tech companies are not responsible for parenting kids.
Is social media for kids good for them? No
But I still don’t support a ban. Because firstly it will probably not be effective, they’ll find a way around and secondly it will force the creation of a big database tying every SM comment to a verified ID.