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The case for banning children from social media

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Re: The case for banning children from social media

#261

Post by geysersam »

hunter-gatherer wrote: post #103
amatecha wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, honestly, just go all the way and ban advertising altogether (I would be so happy if this happened, even though it obviously never will). Pretty willing to tank my karma to say this, I don't care, I think advertising is one of the biggest psychological pollutants in modern society and any possible benefit (??) is vastly outweighed by the cognitive waste incurred by all who are subjected to it.

I ran a similar thought experiment with a collegue the other day. We talked about how the world might change if internet ads were made illegal overnight. A lot of tech companies would lose value and I suspect a significant portion of the economy would become less productive, but I don't think it wouod be catastrophic for society. In fact, I think we'd maybe all slow down, not purchase as much andaybe even desire less…

Many industries would become more productive.

Consider this: useful websited that don't cover half your phone screen with ads. Productive!

We'd most likely have to pay for it some other way. But I think it'd be worth it.

We're stuck in a local minimum of ad-financing.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#262

Post by MandieD »

jen20 wrote: post #211
MandieD wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only is it the most effective thing that doesn't require an invasion of privacy, it would increase privacy and user autonomy. But how on earth do we start a political movement around it? Difficulty: needs a 10-second blurb that does not rely on the word "algorithm". "See what you want to see, not what's being pushed at you" is the best I can come up with.

I doubt there is a unified campaign that can attract both poles of US society, they’d need to be targeted at each individually.

Addressing center-left, middle-class women (like myself): "Worried about your son being sucked into the incel movement because he watched some video game playthroughs? Concerned that your daughter's depression is being driven by the unrealistic standards of femininity that influencers are pushing into her Instagram feed? Is your kid a zombie after spending more than a few minutes on TikTok? Did your mother become irrationally scared of trans people after she started spending too much time on Facebook? Is your husband getting into stupid arguments with people he doesn't know and doesn't follow on Twitter? Did you miss your kid's school snow-day announcement because you were trying to scroll past all the crazy right-wing conspiracy garbage that keeps coming up on Facebook?"

"Our attention should belong to us, not to advertisers and influencers."

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#263

Post by deafpolygon »

jen20 wrote: post #211
MandieD wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only is it the most effective thing that doesn't require an invasion of privacy, it would increase privacy and user autonomy. But how on earth do we start a political movement around it? Difficulty: needs a 10-second blurb that does not rely on the word "algorithm". "See what you want to see, not what's being pushed at you" is the best I can come up with.

I doubt there is a unified campaign that can attract both poles of US society, they’d need to be targeted at each individually.

If we managed to do it with cigarettes, we can do it with this. I will defer to the experts, though.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#264

Post by goatlover »

snvzz wrote: post #81

I'd ban children from the Internet and from the phone network. Computers are fine, as long as they're offline. Countless generations of kids have grown up fine in these conditions. We already know being online is bad for them. What are we waiting for?

How do you possibly enforce something like that for only kids without invading everyone's privacy? What makes you think kids won't find a hundred ways around it?

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#265

Post by sw104 »

whatever1 wrote: post #232
tastysandwich wrote: post #46

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…

Computer games are also addictive. Back in my days soccer and basketball were addictive as well. I vividly remember my grandpa despising my uncle for having obsession with playing soccer and not spending more time on his homework. It seems like a pattern, grown ups just don’t like the way youngsters are spending their time. Maybe it’s totally normal in your teens to just spend aimlessly time in seemingly useless thin…

Being addicted to playing computer games and using social media are not the same as being obsessed with playing sports and exercising.

One has tangible benefits to your health, social life, boosts your confidence, gets you out in the fresh air and sun, and forms healthy lifestyle habits.

The other has you sitting staring at a screen for (sometimes as many as 10) hours per day, pretending to be an Italian plumber, or giving themselves depression from looking at fake lives on Instagram.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#266

Post by [deleted] »

baq wrote: post #183
hackernewds wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if the dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs, and evidently just as bad, why not ban them for adults as well?

I’d ban photos, pictures, video and sound. Leave text only. Greatly reduces deepfake potential, manipulation options by state actors, dopamine hits from looking at pretty cat pictures too. I don’t want to say IRC was fine but it was better than Instagram.

[deleted]

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#267

Post by Tade0 »

jmathai wrote: post #247
Tade0 wrote: post #243

Why go with the nuclear option when the crux of the issue lies not in social media itself, but the type of experience it provides? Just make the experience better for children - chiefly by removing the dark patterns that cause the problem in the first place. Sure, companies will complain, but they're not entitled to ruining teenage mental health like that.

I think the problem lies in social media itself. Unless you mean, social media for kids should be sms.

Then how do you explain the fact that the mental health effect appeared years after the introduction of social media?

We had a whole platform(MySpace) come and go without such issues.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#268

Post by ehnto »

baq wrote: post #190
ehnto wrote: 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…

The government or a bank or some other private or public trustworthy institution could be a limited identity provider which could authenticate that this guy is not really a kid. The trustworthy part is going to be difficult though. It works in Europe for adults, but US folks seem to be allergic to the idea.

You would need an ID intermediate I agree, but there is not a single institution I trust to keep children's data safe. It is just better for it not to exist at all.

I am aware of government records of birth and medical records etc, but they exist as a tradeoff of necessity over security. Gaining access to a social network doesn't warrant the same tradeoff in my opinion, and it introduces much extra risk during the handoff and third party processing and storage. We could bikeshed technical solutions, but history tells us tech is fallible, and I think it's just not a road worth going down.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#269

Post by Dave3of5 »

geysersam wrote: post #259
Dave3of5 wrote: post #256

I think rather than banning it which won't work if you made the SM companies financially responsible for any damages they cause the children. The government would make it easier to seek damages from SM companies that cause harm to children. For example if you required the SM companies to provide proof they actively tried to help or stop in cases of bullying and if they don't the pay a large fine. That would make it m…

But is SM really responsible for bullying? Bullying happens irl as well. The playground builders are usually not considered responsible when bullying happens at a playground.

> But is SM really responsible for bullying?

Yes they are. They are not 100% responsible no but it's the main party as it provides the platform and encourages the behaviour. If their platform has become unsafe and causes harm that's the bit that they are responsible for. It's the same thing as suing a car manufacturer if the car was designed / built with a safety flaw.

> The playground builders are usually not considered responsible when bullying happens at a playground.

That's a great point thanks for making it. By "playground builder" I assume you are meaning the company/org that built the playground and actually they are responsible for the safety of the equipment and if a child gets hurt because of their negligence they will be sued. In my estate we have to pay for insurance for this express purpose.

In terms of bullying though you don't use playground equipment to bully someone. Bullying on the school grounds is the schools responsibility and they have a duty of care to the child to help. So just because the builders built the school doesn't mean they are responsible for all actions that occur only on defects on their work that cause harm.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#270

Post by regulate_this12 »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #254

Maybe we could do something radical and empower parents to handle this more effectively by creating more family-friendly policies so parents have the time, energy and mental focus to handle it themselves. Maybe we could start by finding some effective means for addressing our affordable housing issues. Last I checked, the US was also the only developed country that lacked a national maternity leave policy. I'm not su…

As a parent, I say that no amount of parental empowerment can compensate for a culture that seems broadly unaware that there is even a problem.

Sure, better age / times restriction tools (especially ones that unify over all device types) would help. But in the end the kids can just get their own devices and a mobile plan with data and that ends your empowerment unless you want to turn your house into North Korea.

No amount of empowerment will help me as a parent when:

* their friends house has open wifi or even free devices where the parents let them watch/play/consume whatever they want

* when there is free wifi everywhere

* they need WhatsApp or similar to participate in school, clubs and friends groups

* "everyone has it" and not giving them it will make them social pariahs

There used to be strong cultural norms around keeping potentially harmful stuff away from kids going so far that people would not swear around the little ones. Today we have the internet that exposes ALL of that stuff to kids, even including drug analogs like tik tok.

Imagine we are in the 80ies and a coffee shop showed hardcore pornography and gave cocaine to kids on demand. Absurd. They'd been closed down and arrested within the hour.

But today it's supposedly okay but all that has really changed is that they bring their own little screens.

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