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Florida House of Representatives approves bill to ban social media for kids < 16

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Re: Florida House of Representatives approves bill to ban social media for kids < 16

#61

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

brightball wrote: post #58
causal wrote: post #36

I might be the only one here in favor of this, and wanting to see a federal rollout. It is not reasonable to expect parents to spontaneously agree on a strategy for keeping kids off social media- and that kind of coordination is what it would take, because the kids + social media companies have more than enough time to coordinate workarounds. Have the law put the social media companies on the parents side, or these k…

I’m normally anti-regulation as well, but as a parent I’m fully on board with this. The amount of peer pressure to be on social media is insane.

Are you asserting that parents should not have the rights to determine this for their own children?

Re: Florida House of Representatives approves bill to ban social media for kids < 16

#62

Post by jshaqaw »

Does YouTube count? Yes I think TikTok is largely a hellscape for my daughters around this age. But one of them learns all sorts of crafting projects via YouTube and the other has taught herself an incredible amount on how to draw. Would be a shame to throw away access to resources like this with the bath water.

Re: Florida House of Representatives approves bill to ban social media for kids < 16

#63

Post by bonton89 »

goda90 wrote: post #35
Goronmon wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still on the fence about government doing a parent's job here, especially for kids under 13, but I can't stand that no one pushing these bills has come up with an actually reasonable age verification method. How do you anonymously verify someone's age?

Anonymous credentials. A central authority with verified age information of each person grants credentials that verify the age to third parties, but the authentication tokens used with the third party can't be used by the third party nor the central authority to identify anything else about the credential holder.

This is technically possible but politically impossible. Any system you make like this will get special government peaking exceptions added making it non-anonymous and probably rank corruption from industry lobbying will add some sort of user tracking for sale with data that is poorly anonymized. Once the sham system is in place they'll probably expand the requirement to other things.

Re: Florida House of Representatives approves bill to ban social media for kids < 16

#64

Post by soco »

andy99 wrote: post #49
causal wrote: post #36

I might be the only one here in favor of this, and wanting to see a federal rollout. It is not reasonable to expect parents to spontaneously agree on a strategy for keeping kids off social media- and that kind of coordination is what it would take, because the kids + social media companies have more than enough time to coordinate workarounds. Have the law put the social media companies on the parents side, or these k…

I'm in favor of kids not using social media, but not of the government forcing this on people nor spinning up whatever absurd regulatory regime is required. And the chance of actually enforcing it is zero anyway. It's no more realistic to expect this to work than to expect all parents to do it as you say. It's just wasted money plus personal intrusion that won't achieve anything.

Is there an alternative? Self-control - as we have now - brought us here. If the government shouldn't step in then the only other option left (only I can see) is magic. And we have a bad record with magic.

Re: Florida House of Representatives approves bill to ban social media for kids < 16

#65

Post by mbreese »

mccrory wrote: post #29
bhpm wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The social media platforms the bill would target include any site that tracks user activity, allows children to upload content or uses addictive features designed to cause compulsive use.

Then they can say goodbye to most online gaming. I wonder how people will feel about this when they realize their kids can’t play games anymore?

At the time, Fortnite and Minecraft (and more) were my son’s way to socialize with friends. That was how they hung out (pre Covid). I can honestly say it would have been detrimental to him from a mental health perspective if those outlets didn’t exist or if kids were blocked from them.

Drawing the lines between what types of media are and aren’t allowed is a major issue with this type of law, regardless of if you think it’s a good idea or not.

Re: Florida House of Representatives approves bill to ban social media for kids < 16

#66

Post by alistairSH »

oblio wrote: post #26
pfdietz wrote: post #7

I can't see how this could pass 1st amendment scrutiny.

I'm confused, what does this have to do with freedom of speech? Also, do kids even > freedom of speech?

Freedom of speech has ~2 definitions in the US... first, the legal definition (with the Constitution and related case law). A second, the general notion of being literally free to make speech however/whenever one wants without intrusion for anybody at all (government or otherwise).

In this case, we're sort of at the edge of the legal definition. Social media can be viewed as the modern version of the town square (can be, isn't 100% proven out in law yet). If one takes that statement as valid, then the government cannot regulate speech through social media without a very good reason.

But, minors don't have the exact same rights as adults for various reasons (guns, alcohol, privacy at school, etc).

My general impression (IANAL)... the government can likely limit minors' speech on media platforms, however that limit would have to very specific and tightly defined so as not to deny speech to adults. The devil is in the details (implementation)... the legality probably hinges on what method is required to verify age.

Re: Florida House of Representatives approves bill to ban social media for kids < 16

#67

Post by light_hue_1 »

Clubber wrote: post #43
zo1 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While people are on the fence about it, our children are having their youth, innocence and brains destroyed by tiktok et al. Those platforms are cancer to adults even, let alone impressionable kids... yet here we are still debating it and faffing around about "1st amendment yaddi yadda".

>children are having their youth, innocence and brains destroyed by tiktok For one, ease up on the hyperbole if you want to be taken seriously. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt because the news is nothing but hyperbole these days, so it's easy to pick up the habit. Second, most kids aren't having "their youth, innocence and brains destroyed." The news takes the edge cases, amplifies them and presents it as the…

Don't minimize what's going on.

There's a massive rise in depression in young children. The teen suicide rate has almost doubled.

The idea that you know what's going on, on their social media is pretty funny. Certainly what every adult always assumed about me. And now that I have kids, I can see how easily other kids fool their parents all the time.

And what's overly malicious? It may be social media itself without anything bad driving this. Merely seeing a sanitized version of people's lives over and over again, without anyone bullying you, that leads to depression because your life isn't as good.

No. Don't block the news. Because then you miss important things like this. https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/priorities/youth-mental-h...

Re: Florida House of Representatives approves bill to ban social media for kids < 16

#68

Post by JoshTko »

andy99 wrote: post #49
causal wrote: post #36

I might be the only one here in favor of this, and wanting to see a federal rollout. It is not reasonable to expect parents to spontaneously agree on a strategy for keeping kids off social media- and that kind of coordination is what it would take, because the kids + social media companies have more than enough time to coordinate workarounds. Have the law put the social media companies on the parents side, or these k…

I'm in favor of kids not using social media, but not of the government forcing this on people nor spinning up whatever absurd regulatory regime is required. And the chance of actually enforcing it is zero anyway. It's no more realistic to expect this to work than to expect all parents to do it as you say. It's just wasted money plus personal intrusion that won't achieve anything.

I used to want no govt intrusion for this. Then I understood how there are teams of PHDs tweaking feed to maximize addition at each social network. I think there could be even limits, or some sort of tax on gen pop.

Re: Florida House of Representatives approves bill to ban social media for kids < 16

#69

Post by dmm »

stronglikedan wrote: post #17
bedhead wrote: post #14

Not sure how I feel about this, but I don't hate it, theoretically. I'm sure it's hopeless in practice. It might be a worthwhile experiment if nothing else. But a piece of legislation will never be an adequate substitute for good parenting.

I'd like to see more science proving that social media is bad for kids before I see lawmakers enacting laws around the theory. That said, I think 16 is too high an age. Kids go into high school at ~13, so I think that would have been a more reasonable age to consider. The hard truth is that most kids don't seem to have access to "good parenting" by any reasonable standard, and parenting is hard with good parenting be…

> I'd like to see more science proving that social media is bad for kids before I see lawmakers enacting laws around the theory

Is there science proving that porn is harmful for children? If not, do you see that as an argument for legalizing it?[0]

The first restrictions on tobacco purchases for children were in the 1880s, long before the science was settled on the harms tobacco use causes.

Science is slow, contentious, and produces limited results[1]. If we can only ban things that are scientifically proven to be harmful, what is stopping TikTok from slightly modifying their app and rereleasing it?

I can easily buy products that are BPA free but that just means clever chemists have come up with even worse platicizers like BPS to use as substitutes.

And software can be adapted way faster than chemistry.

[0] I don't. [1] It's definitely still worth studying.

Re: Florida House of Representatives approves bill to ban social media for kids < 16

#70

Post by Dalewyn »

mccrory wrote: post #29
bhpm wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The social media platforms the bill would target include any site that tracks user activity, allows children to upload content or uses addictive features designed to cause compulsive use.

Then they can say goodbye to most online gaming. I wonder how people will feel about this when they realize their kids can’t play games anymore?

According to another comment[1], video games are exempted.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39176380

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