Minnesota Wants to Ban Under-18s from User-Generated Content Services • Hacker News Board

Re: Minnesota Wants to Ban Under-18s from User-Generated Content Services

#151

Post by encoderer » Thu, May 12, 2022, 4:22 AM UTC

helloworld11 wrote: post #148

encoderer wrote: post #33

Two things are true: 1. this bill is trash, it couldn’t be enforced, it’s pandering. 2. Social media as it has existed for the last 5-10 years is harmful for teenagers. Instagram is making teens depressed and suicidal. TikTok videos have people celebrating mental illness like Tourette’s and has brainwashed impressionable kids into believing they too have tics or multiple personalities or Tourette’s. Something needs t…

Oh please, social media may make teens depressed and suicidal, but so too has life in general for decades or longer. If anything, teens can more easily access social support from certain peers within the framework of social media when they do get into a bad spot. Teenage life has never been easy, but it has also never been easier than it is today. Your notion of social media causing some sort of enormously unique and…

I’ll just say, you are acknowledging that social media does make teens suicidal but you are comparing it to the “many other things” in their lives that make them suicidal.

Like what? Pressure to achieve? Being popular? Hormones?

Social media is a product like cigarettes it can and probably should be regulated. You can’t mandate everybody to have friends but you can regulate Facebook and TikTok.

Re: Minnesota Wants to Ban Under-18s from User-Generated Content Services

#152

Post by Robotbeat » Thu, May 12, 2022, 4:40 AM UTC

ipnon wrote: post #27

Robotbeat wrote: post #15

This would effectively ban minors from the Internet. And many walled gardens. EDIT: There’s a case to be made for it! The Internet, especially social media, is as powerful as illicit drugs and probably impacts development. But IMHO, this should be up to parents to decide, and I think the lawmakers probably have no clue the extent of this kind of rule would be.

It's a little ironic to argue the utility of banning something by comparing it to another thing which is already entirely prohibited but completely widespread throughout all of society anyway.

I don’t agree with the idea of banning kids from the internet. But I understand and even empathize with those who are tempted by the idea. Like going to live with the Amish.

Re: Minnesota Wants to Ban Under-18s from User-Generated Content Services

#153

Post by travv0 » Thu, May 12, 2022, 5:10 AM UTC

Terry_Roll wrote: post #122

dolni wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, "only" a 33% increase from 2012 to 2020.

Parents have a lot to answer for. The fact most kids dont have a relationship with their parents or guardians where they can talk to them about anything is highlighted with metadata like you have highlighted. The sophistication of manipulation and control is highly granular in todays world, even a keyboard typing pattern can give away emotion which some can exploit.

> The fact most kids dont have a relationship with their parents or guardians where they can talk to them about anything is highlighted with metadata like you have highlighted.

You have a source for that? The statistics you're referring certainly don't say anything at all to back your claim.

Re: Minnesota Wants to Ban Under-18s from User-Generated Content Services

#154

Post by oneoff786 » Thu, May 12, 2022, 5:21 AM UTC

aasasd wrote: post #133

oneoff786 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m baffled that you see a simple easy to understand rule and think we should spice it up with a logarithmic curve. The goal is simply to say that big social media companies must comply and small niche ones are ok. It is arbitrary. It’s also probably fine. Note it’s not 1M people in Minnesota. It’s 1M users anywhere.

I see that political scientists have entered the thread. Never will the nation have sensible and stable laws if a major consideration in their making is the continued employment of politicians and political scientists, so they can keep adjusting the figures in each law every year.

That’s a wildly specific and passionate guess

Re: Minnesota Wants to Ban Under-18s from User-Generated Content Services

#155

Post by orwin » Thu, May 12, 2022, 7:36 AM UTC

encoderer wrote: post #151

helloworld11 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh please, social media may make teens depressed and suicidal, but so too has life in general for decades or longer. If anything, teens can more easily access social support from certain peers within the framework of social media when they do get into a bad spot. Teenage life has never been easy, but it has also never been easier than it is today. Your notion of social media causing some sort of enormously unique and…

I’ll just say, you are acknowledging that social media does make teens suicidal but you are comparing it to the “many other things” in their lives that make them suicidal. Like what? Pressure to achieve? Being popular? Hormones? Social media is a product like cigarettes it can and probably should be regulated. You can’t mandate everybody to have friends but you can regulate Facebook and TikTok.

Multiple things: identity crisis, fear of the future way higher than what was, even for millenials who ranked high on this scale 15 years ago.

(edit: i agree with you by the way, it is to respond to your question)

Re: Minnesota Wants to Ban Under-18s from User-Generated Content Services

#156

Post by GekkePrutser » Thu, May 12, 2022, 7:39 AM UTC

naniwaduni wrote: post #141

encoderer wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids will lie about their age. They already do. You aren't supposed to sign up until you are 13. There are lots of pre-teens on Social Media. Stopping that would mean a KYC process for every social media signup. I don't think that works either.

The easiest way to not show non-chronological results to kids lying about their age isn't KYC, it's showing chronological results to everyone . (or, well, not showing results to anyone) I'm much less concerned about the issue of identifying kids (if they can't identify kids, all the better, adults get to benefit too) than that they're probably accidentally banning whole categories of useful things like rolling your o…

Yeah wow I would love this. It would finally make social media useful again.

I actually enjoyed seeing what my friends were up to on Facebook until they moved to this algorithmic timeline and it started showing only what they think I'd want to see.

Unfortunately it invariably thinks I want more of the same and that's exactly not what I want.

But I've closed all my accounts and don't think I'll ever go back anyway.

Re: Minnesota Wants to Ban Under-18s from User-Generated Content Services

#157

Post by smokey_circles » Thu, May 12, 2022, 9:00 AM UTC

encoderer wrote: post #33

Two things are true: 1. this bill is trash, it couldn’t be enforced, it’s pandering. 2. Social media as it has existed for the last 5-10 years is harmful for teenagers. Instagram is making teens depressed and suicidal. TikTok videos have people celebrating mental illness like Tourette’s and has brainwashed impressionable kids into believing they too have tics or multiple personalities or Tourette’s. Something needs t…

Oh yeah. It's Facebook that causes kids to become depressed or attempt suicide.

Nevermind the student loan debt crisis, the floundering economy or the authoritarianism sneaking in.

Definitely social media.

Spoken like the disconnected politicians creating these laws. Hilariously off the mark.

Social media is as dangerous for kids as video games. There's an argument to be made for advertising but I sense that is far beyond the perception of the people blaming social media for the state of the democratic society they've participated in for the past few decades...

Re: Minnesota Wants to Ban Under-18s from User-Generated Content Services

#158

Post by dustincoates » Thu, May 12, 2022, 9:39 AM UTC

encoderer wrote: post #33

Two things are true: 1. this bill is trash, it couldn’t be enforced, it’s pandering. 2. Social media as it has existed for the last 5-10 years is harmful for teenagers. Instagram is making teens depressed and suicidal. TikTok videos have people celebrating mental illness like Tourette’s and has brainwashed impressionable kids into believing they too have tics or multiple personalities or Tourette’s. Something needs t…

> TikTok videos have people celebrating mental illness like Tourette’s

https://tourette.org/debunking-myths-misconceptions/

> Although often treated by psychiatrists, Tourette is not a mental or psychiatric illness. Rather, it is a movement disorder that often occurs along with other psychiatric conditions such as obsessive compulsive disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety, etc.

Re: Minnesota Wants to Ban Under-18s from User-Generated Content Services

#159

Post by helloworld11 » Thu, May 12, 2022, 10:13 AM UTC

encoderer wrote: post #151

helloworld11 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh please, social media may make teens depressed and suicidal, but so too has life in general for decades or longer. If anything, teens can more easily access social support from certain peers within the framework of social media when they do get into a bad spot. Teenage life has never been easy, but it has also never been easier than it is today. Your notion of social media causing some sort of enormously unique and…

I’ll just say, you are acknowledging that social media does make teens suicidal but you are comparing it to the “many other things” in their lives that make them suicidal. Like what? Pressure to achieve? Being popular? Hormones? Social media is a product like cigarettes it can and probably should be regulated. You can’t mandate everybody to have friends but you can regulate Facebook and TikTok.

Yes, I'm saying that social media can make teens act and feel all sorts of things, and that in doing this, it's sometimes harmful in certain very specific contexts that can't simply be made to disappear through ham-fisted regulations, just like many other things throughout modern history that have been pegged to hysterias about "the children". It can be both dangerous in some contexts, beneficial in others and again, something that doesn't deserve exceptional mania about its dangers.

I'd love to see how you propose regulating it for teenagers and young people. I do hope it's at least something less foolish than the previous hysterical media/public fits about also "controlling" teens access to...... certain books, certain magazines, comics, TV, porno, "dangerous school games" and of course, video gaming!!! (which barely a couple decades ago supposedly made them prone to murder at an unusual rate). Remember all of these other media-inspired catastrophes for teen development? Do school library bans on books like "Catcher in the Rye" also ring a bell?

I repeat, qualification of claims: In other words, really show that some new tech or media terror actually does do inordinate, demonstrably above-normal harm to a large percentage of the bags of volatile hormones that teenagers have always been, with all sorts of mental issues that they largely end up handling reasonably well. They can grow further without being treated as if they were absurdly fragile and in need of protection from the wider world that they will anyhow have to face just a few years later, whatever its tendencies.

It gets tiresome to see some new supposed danger get trotted out after every couple of teenage generations as something that supposedly needs heavy intervention, mitigation and usually ridiculous regulations. Give teenagers just a bit more credit for mental toughness.

Re: Minnesota Wants to Ban Under-18s from User-Generated Content Services

#160

Post by freemint » Thu, May 12, 2022, 11:33 AM UTC

RobertRoberts wrote: post #145

freemint wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well i could wish for correct ideals to be taught which happen to be overwhelmingly not the republican ones.

Why not just teach math, reading and science and other non-political skills?

Because then you end up with a society with extreme STEM brain. You will not raise citizens but a politically uneducated servant class in a society vulnerable to extreme fracturing as common frameworks to think about politics were not established.

Poltical education has been part of the education for the rulers since forever and since the enlightenment it has been more and more become part of education of everybody. By not teaching politics to a class of people you make them unable to work as lawyers, judges or (suprise) politicians taking away their control and feedback into how society develops. Those positions will be taken up instead by a different class of people by the accident of whom they have been birth been found deserving to get such an education. I hope do not elaborate why that is bad.

You could argue that people could get the same education from the internet. However as long as the internet is not censored people will spread versions of political education that are not aligned along country borders and not constrained by being a reproductive, self sustaining system of thought. This leaves the political order highly vulnerable.

We teach politics so that nations do not fall apart into local fiefdoms ruled by an elite class tied to who the parents are. By proposing to axe political education you are proposing to get onto a path to pre-enlightment political structures. This is not hyperbole. Political education goes beyond "how do i vote and how does my government work", it includes all of history, large parts of art, literature and so on. Political education like that is an pre-requisite to be able to find your own individual political opinion and it is a prerequisite for contributing to shape society. If you take away that power (in particular along a public/private education line) you kneecap one side of the politics of power and possibly irreversibly trigger a run-away feedback leading to a categorical change/tipping point how society works.

I hope i could persuade you that this is an extremely bad idea.