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Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

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Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#441

It absolutely boggles my mind how this website can purport to be about hacker ethos, and yet every time a thread like this comes up you get tons of commenters talking about how they are going to tightly control which games and websites there kids have access to, what kind of devices they have access to, when they have access to them, etc. Myself, I think like a lot of people on this website, grew up with basically un…

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Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#442

I feel like this is a response to the exponential popularity of sites like r/exmormon among younger generations. For example, look at these exceptions. It seems like organic, unapproved discussion between users is what the bill is trying to stifle: > (D) news, sports, entertainment, or other content that is preselected by the provider and not user generated, ... (Q) to permit comments on a digital news website, if th…

I'd like to add that this may have outsized unintended effects like COPPA did - COPPA being the law that established that accounts online required you to be 13. I was 12 when COPPA went into effect. What a lot of people don't know about COPPA is that there is a provision to allow for children under 13 to have accounts with proven parental permission. My parents would have allowed me - I'd been online for 8 years at that point and they were both techy types who could supervise me. However, it wasn't worth the extra logistics for companies, so they just outright banned anyone under 13.

Likewise, if this is enacted in enough states or the logistics of figuring out which people to track becomes too burdensome, I'd expect to see sites not letting anyone under 18 use them and to start collecting everyone's information.

Which would have some really bad second-order impacts. In addition to the impacts others have mentioned on minority populations, I have two main concerns:

- Cutting off the parental rights of those who want to be permissive with their kids. My parents didn't believe in content restrictions; the one ideological idea they agree on is free access to knowledge. I was given an adult library card at 5-6 and full Internet access at around the same age and discussions on how to interpret what we saw in the news/in media/etc. was a common discussion point. My mother is from a media studies family and my father's family are tech tinkerers. Families like mine will be functionally unable to raise their children as they would prefer.

- More relevant to society as a whole, sure, let's ban their access until they're 18. Then when kids move out/leave at 18, not only do they have to navigate the world, they have to be introduced to social media with absolutely no oversight. And 18 year olds are legally "adults", so companies will have a group of completely defenseless people to take advantage of who can be held to their bad decisions. (Think like credit card companies who hang out at freshmen college/uni events). It's similar to raising the driving age: While raising the driving age does prevent accidents, the highest rate of bad driving comes from new drivers. If the driving age is lower, those new drivers are more likely to have people to call if they do get into trouble and make their mistakes when they're less likely to ruin their lives. Likewise, the worst effects of social media will be felt by those who are new users.

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#443
post #365

I feel like this is a response to the exponential popularity of sites like r/exmormon among younger generations. For example, look at these exceptions. It seems like organic, unapproved discussion between users is what the bill is trying to stifle: > (D) news, sports, entertainment, or other content that is preselected by the provider and not user generated, ... (Q) to permit comments on a digital news website, if th…

Gay guy here. I have always said that these sort of laws designed to protect children will do precisely the opposite. An LGBTQ child is effectively forcibly outed by this law, potentially before they've come to terms with their sexuality / gender themselves. Whilst I don't doubt social media causes a lot of harm on children growing up, giving parents full access to your messages is not the solution. In my opinion, ba…

Yes. This should be seen in the context of the huge set of anti-trans laws and the Florida book banning. There is going to be another attempt at making it illegal for kids to hear about non-straight people at all. And outing kids to their parents, even at risk of violence, is a part of that.

The "land of free speech" always has a big "not you" exemption that can be wielded against people who aren't WASPy enough.

Edit: see the absolutely huge number of people on HN downthread cheering this on because they hate Facebook. Strange world.

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There’s exceptions for email, Netflix, Amazon, news, traditional media kinds of sites. The fact that there are 20 categories of services exempted shows that this is a terrible bill that is based on punishing specific actors and not regulating data privacy or child wellbeing in a meaningful way. for reference, line 165 to 224 of that link are the exceptions: "Social media platform" does not include an online service…

This seems like a reasonable list. I’m not opposed to the idea of whitelisting healthy online activities and limiting anything else. They could go further and whitelist sites like HN, arch forums etc where it’s educational Sibling comment mentioned how group chats aren’t exempted. I’ve seen group chats get very unhealthy before. 2 is low, maybe 5 or 8 participants max would be ok.

I mean when teens/children congregate in large numbers anywhere they get unhealthy. Like it or not, the digital realm is part of life and they have to learn to handle disagreements, toxic people, etc. at some point. If their adults won't supervise them/help them, that's on the adults. If they can't, then our society needs to start educating adults on how to parent in the digital age. But that would be slow and cost $$$ and possibly empower the populace, so we won't do it.

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#445
Social Media use is probably worse than smoking for kids. Smoking gives you a 15% chance to get cancer in 50 years but instagram gives you a 66% chance of depression today.

It’s incredibly, empirically unhealthy and it should be banned for children.

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#446
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely zero chance, SO was the only resource on the internet that had simple enough explanations for me when I started out programming at 11. I was making PRs to oss projects on Github and churning through Project Euler by 15. I literally owe my entire career to SO which is weird to say typing it out now.

Reading these comments about people relying on SO - a site founded in 2008 - at age 11, doesn't make me feel any younger, and I'm not even that old (inching closer and closer to my mid-30s). I got into Linux and bash/Python scripting by following tutorials on random shady sites and reading official documentation and manpages. Let's just say it wasn't as seamless as Googling an issue and having a SO thread directly an…

Right? I learned through reading browser documentation in elementary school when CSS and JavaScript were implemented and then running to my dad or internet forums/chat rooms when I ran into topics or problems I didn't understand. None of us knew what we were doing. It was great.

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#447

Social Media use is probably worse than smoking for kids. Smoking gives you a 15% chance to get cancer in 50 years but instagram gives you a 66% chance of depression today. It’s incredibly, empirically unhealthy and it should be banned for children.

Why let 18 year olds+ use it then? If it's that bad, it sounds more like crack, which we ban for everybody.

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want full corporate control and mandatory remote attestation on your devices to comply with these laws?

There are benefits to reducing anonymity: accountability, trust, relationships, etc. It's why humans evolved to recognize faces so well. We decide who to trust based on experience. It doesn't matter who controls the identification process, so long as its done fairly. And if corporations or government misuse identification for self-serving purposes, we should certainly push back.

> And if corporations or government misuse identification for self-serving purposes, we should certainly push back.

The time to push back is now, before we give them this power.

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#449

I feel like this is a response to the exponential popularity of sites like r/exmormon among younger generations. For example, look at these exceptions. It seems like organic, unapproved discussion between users is what the bill is trying to stifle: > (D) news, sports, entertainment, or other content that is preselected by the provider and not user generated, ... (Q) to permit comments on a digital news website, if th…

> (D) news, sports, entertainment, or other content that is preselected by the provider and not user generated, ... (Q) to permit comments on a digital news website, if the news content is posted only by the provider of the digital news website

Sounds more like they are protecting against children consuming toxic or mind numbing content.

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#450
post #365

I feel like this is a response to the exponential popularity of sites like r/exmormon among younger generations. For example, look at these exceptions. It seems like organic, unapproved discussion between users is what the bill is trying to stifle: > (D) news, sports, entertainment, or other content that is preselected by the provider and not user generated, ... (Q) to permit comments on a digital news website, if th…

Gay guy here. I have always said that these sort of laws designed to protect children will do precisely the opposite. An LGBTQ child is effectively forcibly outed by this law, potentially before they've come to terms with their sexuality / gender themselves. Whilst I don't doubt social media causes a lot of harm on children growing up, giving parents full access to your messages is not the solution. In my opinion, ba…

> An LGBTQ child is effectively forcibly outed by this law, potentially before they've come to terms with their sexuality / gender themselves.

How?

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