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Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

reuters.com

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Re: Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

#91

Post by MissTake »

bdw5204 wrote: post #72
aurareturn wrote: post #25

>Critics have said the bill violates the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment protections for free speech and that parents, not the government, should make decisions about the online presence of their children of all ages. It's extremely difficult for parents to stop their children, especially early teens from using social media. This law should make it easier and it would put the work on Meta, Snap, Tiktok, Pinterest…

So you grew up without AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo accounts, web forums and MySpace? Or for the generation before that, Geocities and Usenet? The current form of interactive online platforms may be flawed but banning teens from using them is not the solution and any effective method of enforcing such a law is likely to run afoul of the 1st Amendment. Besides obviously the Tinker v. Des Moines precedent about how tee…

I grew up in a time when social computing was when we geeks of ages 13-15 brought each others Computers to a house and challenged each other to write games on another device.

Back in the days when I had an Acorn Atom and friends would bring their Spectrum, Oric—1, TRS-80, Commodore 64 etc.

Re: Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

#92

Post by reaperman »

ejb999 wrote: post #31
newhotelowner wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why 18 and not 25?

because under 18 is not an adult legally speaking, and 18+ is?

Again, not the best argument given that the drinking age is 21. Additionally, children can volunteer for the military at the age of 16. So there's clearly a range, "legally speaking".

Leaning on existing laws isn't really the best for these things, because existing laws may be flawed. Would prefer to base it on scientific insights, but we don't have much relevant for this stuff.

So the real answer is "We don't know, and different states will try different ages and see what sticks, what people will accept."

Re: Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

#93

Post by thomastjeffery »

pjc50 wrote: post #67
Cheer2171 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assure you I have an understanding of the law. This is such a a rude and preposterous assertion in bad faith. This is a law mandating ID verification for all children and adults. If you require controls for everyone below a certain age, you de facto require controls for everyone of every age who does not prove they are over the minimum age. In other words, even if you can legally discriminate against children, my r…

Indeed. We've been round this when Facebook etc (most recently Glassdoor) instituted "real name" policies. I'm rather confused about HN's response to this because normally when a media platform voluntarily tries to censor certain kinds of bad behavior there's a massive backlash here, and now there's seemingly overwhelming support for simply removing a whole category of people from being able to speak at all, along wi…

It's still early in the day. I expect this thread to get more diverse attention over time.

Re: Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

#94

Post by ThrowawayTestr »

pjc50 wrote: post #67
Cheer2171 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assure you I have an understanding of the law. This is such a a rude and preposterous assertion in bad faith. This is a law mandating ID verification for all children and adults. If you require controls for everyone below a certain age, you de facto require controls for everyone of every age who does not prove they are over the minimum age. In other words, even if you can legally discriminate against children, my r…

Indeed. We've been round this when Facebook etc (most recently Glassdoor) instituted "real name" policies. I'm rather confused about HN's response to this because normally when a media platform voluntarily tries to censor certain kinds of bad behavior there's a massive backlash here, and now there's seemingly overwhelming support for simply removing a whole category of people from being able to speak at all, along wi…

> a whole category of people from being able to speak at all

Hot take but I can go without the opinions of children.

Re: Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

#95

Post by reaperman »

skhunted wrote: post #38
dotnet00 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setting it to 18 is obviously pretty ridiculous. That's just going to continue the weird trend of infantilizing people by pushing back the age at which they learn to deal with things that require self control. At 16 there are at least 2 years where parents have the ability to actually interfere and help bring any negative effects under control.

Do you know at what age people are able to properly deal with things that require self control? I believe that part of the brain doesn’t mature until early 20s. At 18 a person is legally an adult so 18 seems like a much more reasonable cutoff than 16.

When people say "the brain is still developing until you're 25" it means "your brain is noticeably worse at learning after the age of 25". Noting that, should people learn self-control in the presence of social media before 25, or after 25?

Re: Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

#96

Post by fakecontent000 »

Cheer2171 wrote: post #60
edgyquant wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These critics have no understanding of the law. We’ve been making exceptions for children for decades at least, probably since the beginning of the republic

I assure you I have an understanding of the law. This is such a a rude and preposterous assertion in bad faith. This is a law mandating ID verification for all children and adults. If you require controls for everyone below a certain age, you de facto require controls for everyone of every age who does not prove they are over the minimum age. In other words, even if you can legally discriminate against children, my r…

[dead]

Re: Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

#97

Post by fdsfdsafdsafds »

nekochanwork wrote: post #45

"I don't want my kids using social media without my permission" is a problem that already has a solution: put parental controls on your kids devices. We don't need Daddy Government to make decisions that can and should be made by parents.

Restricting access to devices is the easy part (although keeping ahead of kids breaking in is not). Exposing your kids to enormous peer pressure and social isolation is the hard part.

Re: Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

#98

Post by KaiserPro »

reacharavindh wrote: post #58
aurareturn wrote: post #25

>Critics have said the bill violates the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment protections for free speech and that parents, not the government, should make decisions about the online presence of their children of all ages. It's extremely difficult for parents to stop their children, especially early teens from using social media. This law should make it easier and it would put the work on Meta, Snap, Tiktok, Pinterest…

Not speaking from personal experience. My kid is only 4. Your argument seems like exactly what my parents would have said about me spending so much time on TV, computers and electronics instead of studying, playing outside, sports etc. Almost exactly like your last paragraph.. “I’m personally glad that I grew up without infinite channels on TV, computers and its games, cell phones and your SMSes. I’m worried about yo…

I understand what you are getting at, but to inject some nuance:

TV, print, radio, music and to a lesser extent games are all subject to some level of industry or statutory content regulation.

For example, in America, you're very unlikely to have a kids TV channel suddenly switch to videos of people being killed in industrial accidents. new media, not so much.

Watershed, age constraints and company ending fines existed (and in some cases still do) for violating those rules.

Large new media companies, such as facebook, youtube and tiktok can literally serve porn to kids and not have any legal ramifications. If a cable broadcaster knowingly broadcast frontal nudity before watershed, it would be fined. (yes, cable TV has less restrictions) but thats the point, regulation has not kept up with the pace of change. that has been a deliberate decision.

My kids are >5 The world has changed, and the guard rails that we had as kids have been removed. There is an argument about freedom of expression, I get that. But we need to think about whether its right to allow large corporations to profit from showing horrific content to minors. (adults, I don't give a shit, do what you want) The problem is, I'm not sure of the best mechanism, with the least bad outcome.

Re: Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

#99

Post by evantbyrne »

Pretty wild to watch the basic rights of people in red states backslide in real time. Now there is the (what should be unnecessary) legal question of whether you can even run a social media platform with anonymous users in the state of Florida. Needing de facto governmental verification to communicate with people on the internet is something I had hoped I would never live to see in America. Hopefully it will not be fully enforced to the letter of the law.

Re: Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

#100

Post by lolinder »

nekochanwork wrote: post #45

"I don't want my kids using social media without my permission" is a problem that already has a solution: put parental controls on your kids devices. We don't need Daddy Government to make decisions that can and should be made by parents.

There's a collective action problem here, though. Some parents are willing to do the hard thing and tell their kid no over and over and over. Most aren't. The result is that kids don't hang out in person any more and so the only social outlet left is digital, which makes the decision to ban it at the family level even harder because you may actually do more harm than good by forcing your child to not participate with his friends.

If there's widespread agreement that social media is dangerous and yet widespread difficulty coordinating a response among parents, isn't that exactly what the government is for?

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