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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

#181
post #43
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…

> For one, ease up on the hyperbole if you want to be taken seriously.

That is the kind of swipe the HN guidelines ask people to edit out of their comments (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: "Edit out swipes."), so please don't post like this.

Your comment would be fine without that sentence and the one after it.

(I'm not saying the GP comment is particularly good—it was pretty fulminatey—but it wasn't quite over the line, whereas yours was, primarily because yours got personal.)

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

#182
post #60
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…

Answering a problem with unenforceable garbage like this doesn't seem like a very sound strategy.

Enforceability is a foregone conclusion, and when it comes to things like this it's somewhat expected. The same can be said for pornography, drugs and alcohol and tobacco (remember Joe Camel?), and anything else that would fall under blue-laws.

The goal of this is to bring attention to the fact that it's a problem and should be seen as undesirable, like pornography or Joe Camel. The cancellation of Joe didn't prevent kids from getting cigarettes but it did draw attention to the situation and there has been a marked decline in youth smoking since the late 90s when the mascot was removed. It's correlative, for sure, but the outcomes are undeniable. The same happened with the DARE program and class 1 drugs (except for marijuana iirc).

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

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulation worked remarkably well on smoking.

How so?

It's more influence than actual regulation enforcement. Smokers these days are seen as social pariahs in some circles.

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

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can be in favor but in the US it is unconstitutional for a gov to broadly restrict speech. It's why each of these age verification + social media laws eventually get tossed. Legislators know this (or are too dumb to) but it's not their own dollars that are getting burned during this vote-baiting performance.

The FCC seems to get around that pretty easily not allowing nipples on Tv.

Only on broadcast TV, and the decision is fundamentally reliant on the nature that RF spectrum is a finite resource to be able to justify the restriction.

SCOTUS has routinely struck down prohibitions against the same things in other media, including explicitly the internet.

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

#185
post #49
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.

It seems like you are in favor of something that requires coordination, but don't believe in coordination. Is there a different way you think this could be achieved?

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

#186
post #49
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.

We have a ban on gambling for minors, so if you see social media as more harmful than gambling (personally, I do) it probably makes sense.

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

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because regulation worked so well in eliminating peer pressure for drinking, smoking, and drugs.

It absolutely did for smoking and drunk driving.

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

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you not seen people vaping at a young age now?

Vaping isn't the same thing as smoking.

They are consuming nicotine, and tobacco companies are invested in / are the companies producing products in that space. It seems functionally to be the same.

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

#189
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 find myself agreeing with this. Me 15 years ago would have raged at this. I have kids now and they are pressured to join all sorts of social media platforms. I still don't allow them to have it but I know they take a slight social hit for it.

There is zero positive to giving kids the ability to access social media sites designed to be addictive when they don't have the mental facilities to determine real from not real. Many adults seem to suffer from this as well. Plus kids don't understand that the internet is forever, really no need for an adult looking for a job or running for office to be crippled by a questionable post they made as an edgy teen.

I'm against a lot of government regulation but in this case I am even more against feeding developing kids to an algorithm

Just remove the temptation and pressure all together.

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

#190
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We have a ban on gambling for minors, so if you see social media as more harmful than gambling (personally, I do) it probably makes sense.

Gambling is outright banned for a majority of regions in the US, not just kids. I don't think they are equally bad, just different bad. Gambling is addictive, and it destroys people. Social media is addictive and socially toxic, on the whole it erodes the very fabric of a society.
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