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The case for banning children from social media

newyorker.com

131–140 of 593 posts

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#131
post #128

The only technical way you could accomplish such a ban is to introduce mandatory ID on every website. I'm sure some groups are salivating at the mouth for such legislation.

Although the HN crowd hates it, requiring a World ID would be a technical means to limit minors without sacrificing anyone's privacy, since they won't scan anyone under 18.

https://docs.worldcoin.org/id

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#132
post #99

I just don't see any alternatives to banning social media, perhaps even up to the age of 18. The dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs and social media is just as addictive. It's not clear how you could effectively regulate this stuff - especially in our highly polarised political climate. The right will immediately target "wokeness", and the left will immediately target "hate speech". And the kids will be…

> The dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs and social media is just as addictive. I'm sorry, this sentence doesn't explain to me why banning social media is necessary. What are "dopaminergic" effects? Why is it so awful that social media is addictive?

"Please explain everything to me from scratch so I can summarily dismiss anything you say."

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why ban at all? Enforcing it is an issue. Privacy-intrusion is a given for everyone, not just kids. It probably would not work, similarly to any related bans. Again, why ban at all? Let the parents do the parenting... I guess? Or ban having sex without the use of contraceptives if you are so keen on banning.

It's incredibly hard for parents to intervene. Even if you ban your child from using it, since every other kid is using it, the harmful effects are still there. The best you can do is try to explain and contextualise everything your kid might be seeing, which is very hard to do. Also, not all parents are engaged with their kids as well as they should be. Having bad parents doesn't mean you're not worth protecting. >…

Who else would it be if not parents, the Government? How would that really go? Would we really have to provide our ID to Facebook and such? That would suck.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#135
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my experience it took very active moderation to even poorly enforce COPA style rules and that was with a small user base, not the mega-userbases of today's social media. Kids just sign up anyway and then the moderators wait for them to slip up and still are just making an educated guess. The only way to make it more effective I feel is ID verification but then you are looking at collecting IDs from kids and that…

> Kids just sign up anyway and then the moderators wait for them to slip up and still are just making an educated guess. I’m baffled by all of these HN posts from people who seemingly forgot what being a kid is like. Kids are experts at circumventing the rules. All of these suggestions about fining companies any time a kid manages to use the website are DOA. Kids will use the internet and steal their parents accounts…

i mean really.. the site is called "Hacker News" and breaking established rules and restrictions is kind of the point.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do wonder sometimes how much of the supposed ills of social media are just social media making things that were already happening much more visible. I and many others were bullied relentlessly at school through regular non technological means, and I'm sure it had a pretty negative psychological impact. I'm not really convinced it would be any worse if I was more active on Instagram/TikTok/whatever.

The engagement optimizing feeds amplifly some of the ills that are otherwise manageable in "private" groups of friends reading chronological communication. That's what really needs to go.

So, my anecdotal parental evidence suggests otherwise.

My oldest was upset that her friend didn’t acknowledge a message she had sent and apparently changed the topic. Apparently this friend always does that. My daughter was complaining that it is unlikely that this person didn’t see the message that my daughter had sent.

It is a complex world. I just live in it. I will never understand the subtle nuanced rules. I’ve made my peace with it. I just listen.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#137
post #99

I just don't see any alternatives to banning social media, perhaps even up to the age of 18. The dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs and social media is just as addictive. It's not clear how you could effectively regulate this stuff - especially in our highly polarised political climate. The right will immediately target "wokeness", and the left will immediately target "hate speech". And the kids will be…

> The dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs and social media is just as addictive. I'm sorry, this sentence doesn't explain to me why banning social media is necessary. What are "dopaminergic" effects? Why is it so awful that social media is addictive?

Do you think it’s okay to allow children to gamble?

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#138

I just don't see any alternatives to banning social media, perhaps even up to the age of 18. The dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs and social media is just as addictive. It's not clear how you could effectively regulate this stuff - especially in our highly polarised political climate. The right will immediately target "wokeness", and the left will immediately target "hate speech". And the kids will be…

Forcing social media companies to charge for accounts would be my first approach. Either by taxing it so much that they have to, or by explicitly requiring payment. I'm not sure how you'd define "social media" vs say, HN (or is HN social media?). Taxing advertising revenue at a higher rate could also do it (hmm, thinking about this, this might solve a lot more problems too). For countries that don't do credit cards,…

I'd happily pay ~$3 a month for HN or other social media; I already pay way more on average per creator on Patreon and I frequently don't get a monthly benefit from that.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#140

I just don't see any alternatives to banning social media, perhaps even up to the age of 18. The dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs and social media is just as addictive. It's not clear how you could effectively regulate this stuff - especially in our highly polarised political climate. The right will immediately target "wokeness", and the left will immediately target "hate speech". And the kids will be…

> but I do use YouTube I don't have Google auth cookies on my primary browser and every Google property has cookie autodeletion when the last tab is closed. Every time I start YouTube fresh, I get a new profile that I have to mold back to the content I prefer. On a fresh window I'm constantly bombarded with superficial crap I never click on. I'm also perplexed by the amount of T&A clickbait that gets offered in the s…

Whenever I visit YouTube or Reddit on a new browser where I haven't logged in it's like I'm seeing an entirely different site it's so jarring. Instead of seeing a page off mostly educational and technical content they're filled with click bait. I'm embarrassed to even tell others I use them for fear they don't understand the extent to which the experiences can be curated.
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