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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

#401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parents don’t have the right to get their kids a tattoo, vote or buy alcohol before a regulated age. Is this different?

Missouri law allows minors to consume alcohol if purchased by a parent or legal guardian and consumed on their private property. edit: Apparently Missouri is not the only state. I had trouble finding a definitive list though. There are also other exceptions such as wine during religious service.

While there are exceptions, and in general exceptions seem pretty common, they still require businesses to officially get approval and it gives power to parents to enforce rules that would otherwise be hard to do so. Even with the exceptions for children to legally be allowed to drink, I would be surprised if that led to more kids drinking than alcohol obtained illegally, which means the question should be back on how well does the law work (obviously not perfectly, but there is a large gap between perfect and so poorly that it is useless purely from an efficiency perspective).

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

#402
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 am an adult and I wish someone would take social media away from me. Honestly, I think social media has done more harm than good and I wish it would just cease to exist.

However, especially in Florida, social media may be the only way for some teens to escape political and religious lunacy and I fear for them. I think it's not wise to applaud them taking away means of communication to the "outside", in the context of legislation trends and events there.

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

#403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minors dont get full constitutional protections. I think they should have more rights than they do, but the first amendment is already more limited for minors than for adults. Tinker v. Des Moines has repeatedly been chipped away (e.g. Bethel School District v. Frasier). Minors cant produce pornography. Minors have their freedom of association and expression limited by employment laws. Minors speech is not free at ho…

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do you _want_ 3 year olds voting?

All that would do is give people with children multiple votes.

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

#404
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the only way to do this is to require ID checks, effectively regulating and destroying the anonymous nature of the internet (and probably unconstitutional under the First Amendment, to boot.) It's the same problem with requiring age verification for porn. It's not that anyone wants kids to have easy access to this stuff, but that any of these laws will either be (a) unenforceable and useless, or (b) draconian and…

Lately I'm repeatedly reminded of how in Ecuador citizens, when interviewed during a protest, see it as a normal thing to tell their name as well as their personal ID number into the camera when also speaking about their position in regards of the protest. They stand to what they are saying without hiding. Since about half a year I've noticed the German Twitter section getting sunk in hate posts, people disrespecting…

The algorithm powering the trending section, which rewards angry replies and accusatory quote-tweets is at least a good a candidate as a source of harm to political discourse than anonymity.

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

#405

16 seems ridiculously old for such a ban. Especially if sites like YouTube count as social media (and I can't imagine how it wouldn't, given most of the content is identical between the short video platforms).

Why does 16 seem ridiculously old?

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

#406
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 can't agree. This teaches kids that the government is the answer to everything. this should 100% be the responsibility and decision of parents. Kids are different, and these one-size-fits-all authoritarian tactics that have become a signature of the current GOP Floridian government are just the beginning of the totalitarian christofascist laws that they want to implement. Before you ask, I am a parent, and my kid's devices all have this crap blocked and likely will remain that way until he's at least 15, give or take a year depending on what I determine when he gets to that age. He knows that there are severe ramifications if he tries to work around my decision, and will lose many, many privileges if such a thing happens.

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

#407
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the only way to do this is to require ID checks, effectively regulating and destroying the anonymous nature of the internet (and probably unconstitutional under the First Amendment, to boot.) It's the same problem with requiring age verification for porn. It's not that anyone wants kids to have easy access to this stuff, but that any of these laws will either be (a) unenforceable and useless, or (b) draconian and…

Yes, this isn't the right solution. The power needs to be given to the users. A better solution is more robust device management, with control given to the device owner (read: the parent). The missing legislative piece is mandating that social media companies need to respond differently when the user agent tells them what to send. I should be able to take my daughter's phone (which I own), set an option somewhere tha…

then propose the RFC.

I haven't read the legislation myself but I don't see why this couldn't still be done, I doubt the legislation specified _how_ to do it.

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

#408
My impression of these bills was that none of them had survived contact with SCOTUS. What is going to make this bill any different?

And why aren't we just passing a proper damned privacy law already? All of the addictive features of social media are specifically enabled by their ability to collect unlimited amounts of data. Yes, I know, the NSA really likes that data thank-you-very-much, but SCOTUS isn't going to be OK with "censor children" to protect that data flow.

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

#409

I support this. Normally, I think government intervention is bad and parents should be in control. But, as a parent myself, it was hard not to allow my child to have a phone when she kept saying, "Everyone has one. I'll be the only one without a phone". No one wants their child left out or left behind. This will remove that rationale.

Just to be clear, because parenting is hard you want to legislate how other parents are able to raise their children so that it's easier for you to get the behavior you want? I think all parents should take this approach. * Having trouble getting your children to go to church because their friends don't? Let's just legislate mandatory church attendance so that will remove the rationale for kids whose friends don't at…

It's not my deficiencies as a parent that make me support this law. It's the need for a reverse network effect. That's how social media works. If everyone else has it, your kid wants it. If no one else has it, your kid doesn't want it. Social media has been found harmful to children, like smoking or alcohol. For many reasons, it should be limited for children.

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

#410
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…

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