The case for banning children from social media • Hacker News Board

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#501

Post by mock-possum » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 2:57 PM UTC

jutrewag wrote: post #331

walrus01 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thankfully, America is not yet operating in the political reality of The Handmaid's Tale, much as you might wish it to be so.

I feel like that’s a hyperbolic take. Outside forces injecting chaos into the internal workings of a family are about as bad as things can get for a growing child. What’s the problem with deferring sexual issues to adulthood when you’re more mature?

The problem is that those sexual issues arise for the individual almost as soon as they begin to experience puberty. You can’t make teens to ignore their sexuality for 6+ years. It simply will not work, it never has, it never will.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#502

Post by uhtred » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 2:57 PM UTC

Can't we just ban social media? It's literally ruined society.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#503

Post by naasking » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 2:58 PM UTC

josho wrote: post #448

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent my youth with my nose buried in books, and for a couple years it had become a problem. My parents would force me to stop reading books and spend some time talking to them, looking outside, doing anything as a kid. I would read a book at any chance I could get, I'd even sneak them into bed and use a dim flashlight to read, anything to get me out of where I was at that time. At the time I hated my parents and e…

Social media is correlated with many negative issues. Like depression, suicide, etc. meanwhile playing sports is correlated with many positive outcomes. It’ll take some time to prove causation. But I think we have enough evidence to know that curtailing social media will improve lives.

Cue the usual correlation and causation caveat. Also, playing sports is not all sunshine and roses. If you're an overweight kid, which is even more common these days, it's hard and can cause feelings of shame and inadequacy.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#504

Post by randomdata » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 2:58 PM UTC

dustedcodes wrote: post #489

randomdata wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, social interaction is, generally, addictive. But if you ban the kids from HN they aren't apt to give up social interaction cold turkey, they'll go interact with the neighbours instead to get their fix. Is that actually a win? Emotionally, I can see why some hang onto the idea of talking face to face just like in the good old days, but at the same time you are trading for greatly reduced access to the world's…

I don't think HN falls into the category of social media in the sense that it is debated by lawmakers at the moment. Not every online community is social media just like not every shopping site that has girls posing in tight bikinis (Victoria Secret, Nike, etc.) is an adult site.

If HN isn't social media, I'm not sure what is. Perhaps you are referring to plain old media where there is no meaningful social interaction, rather one-way consumption of produced content?

Indeed, lawmakers do seem concerned about new entrants to the media space, like producers on TikTok, no doubt because they struggle to exert the same kind of control over the content like they used to be able to when there were only a small handful of regulated media companies. That's well beyond the topic of social media taking place here, though.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#505

Post by jcarrano » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 2:59 PM UTC

Sadly parents have become so inept, lazy or uninterested that they need the state to step up and raise their children into good and healthy habits. Pretty sad and it's not even parenting that they will receive from the state but a mediocre nanny whose only interest is that they don't get into too much trouble.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#506

Post by ojosilva » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 2:59 PM UTC

Mezzie wrote: post #418

ojosilva wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like the popular saying, "it's the economy, stupid!", when it comes to kids and social media we might as well say "it's the parents, stupid!" > Like so many parents these days, my wife and I have ceded So the parents are to blame here. "Ceded" to what exactly? To your kids unsupervised wishes? Most of the inadequate and harmful use of these addictive social networks is done at home, so, it's your jurisdiction, n…

I agree, but I also wonder how feasible that is for a lot of parents. The older I get, the more astounded I am at the fact that nobody in my family has social media brain rot. Or political brainworms. My grandparent's generation is mostly dead, sadly, but there are 3 living generations ranging in age from 0 to 78 and dozens of people and we're all fine. This is regardless of educational level (ranging from HS dropout…

My idealistic, engineer self tells me that the State should reward parents that go through parenting training, workshops and "performance" reviews.

This is something that is normally done for social-serviced families already, but too late, when they are deep in the road to failure and despair. Such wide-spread public parenting-aid would be expensive, have flaws, generate political push-backs and there are not enough studies on effectiveness yet. OTOH, social/public financial support for families, including money stipends, tax breaks and plenty of paid vacation days help reduce parenting stress, which in turn tend to have a positive effect with kids at home -- something some countries are significantly better at than others.

The importance of parenting is underestimated in society.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#507

Post by afunctionof » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 3:00 PM UTC

eimrine wrote: post #496

DoreenMichele wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That solution fails to sidestep the not minor issue of how do we determine it's a child online brought up by the article.

> how do we determine it's a child online Why not use passport verification for any enough big social network? Anyway there is almost impossible to use them anonymously.

Not only can you tie all of your speech to a government-issued ID, you can do it for the low price of $160 and a piece of ID that forty-percent of Americans will have no other use for!

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#508

Post by diffeomorphism » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 3:02 PM UTC

vincnetas wrote: post #300

Animats wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not clear how you could effectively regulate this stuff It's not hard. It just upsets vested interests. Make it illegal to show ads to kids. You don't have to make "kid" identification airtight, because few people of any age want to opt into ads. The ad industry was very upset when the American Psychological Association proposed this back in 2004.[1] This doesn't raise constitutional issues because ads are con…

Another problem is the definition of "ad". Is kid playing with fancy toys is an ad? Is product placement in movie an ad? How and who will determine if this is and ad or not?

Not a problem. This question has already been asked and is settled.

Programmers tend get caught up with definitions and "loopholes". Laws don't care.

https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1494:_Insurance

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#509

Post by bumby » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 3:02 PM UTC

gspencley wrote: post #494

> How you feel about all this will likely come down to whether you believe that social-media platforms are addictive products—like cigarettes—marketed to kids or that they are vital and intractable parts of the national conversation. No that doesn't affect how I feel it about it at all. I raised two daughters whose lives overlapped with the existence of social media, but who were well into their teens before everyone…

Just for clarity, do you extend this to the government's ban on cigarettes being sold to minors? I.e., if a parent thought cigarette smoking was an acceptable risk for their children, should those children should be allowed to smoke? Or are some risks unacceptable irrespective of the parents assessment?

If you do think some things are off the table regardless of the parent's opinion, where is that line drawn? (again, I'm not judging, just trying to understand your point better)

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#510

Post by xyzzy3000 » Wed, Apr 05, 2023, 3:07 PM UTC

rysertio wrote: post #121

whats_a_quasar wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't dismiss concerns about freedom of speech. I explicitly acknowledged them in paragraph 4. My point is that there is a tradeoff here, and reasonable people can disagree. That's reasonable a reasonable complaint about how I talked about moral panics. Updated the wording to not say that's the reason for HN's strong reaction. Though I really do think that cultural history is a major factor. > Also I think I'd obj…

There's one single problem. The addictive thing here is a dual use good. Most kids also use social media for keeping up with their classes and stuff. At this point you can miss an exam if you don't check your social media regularly. I don't know how do you go back from this point where social media is an integral part of our lives.

Many schools in the UK have specialist apps for this, tied in to the school's data management infrastructure. It definitely is not the case that people require social media accounts to keep up with class timetables, homework schedules or school notices.