151–160 of 783 posts
This is the equivalent of paper bags for beer cans - it will do nothing to fix the problem, but it will make children slightly more secretive about their internet usage, which will make some situations (grooming, bullying) even worse.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You say there is no question, but it is already being raised by social media companies as an issue with the law. Anonymous age _verification_ is not something that exists. This requires government documentation, which means any solution that involves storing identity verification information would de facto allow the government to unmask users. This raises serious free speech concerns for everyone that uses these webs…
1) 3rd party service (Verifier) receives government documentation proving that the owner of {{account ID}} is over the age of 21. 2) Verifier records the fact that the owner of {{account ID}} has proven they are of the age of majority. They throw away all other identifying information, including their exact age. 3) The individual logs in to Verifier from Social Media. Verifier certifies to Social Media that the indiv…
Right, Florida teenagers are totally not going to use social media after this law. It's like everyone commenting on this thread was born yesterday. This is a form of government control on your devices and eyeballs, nothing else. And considering it is effectively impossible to enforce, the state is soon going to start suing all the tech companies they don't like and push further restrictions/censorship.
I mean they banned drugs and that totally worked, right?
/s
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're 15, you're not allowed in a bar, and you're not allowed on a porn site, and you're not allowed to buy cigarettes. The list goes on and on. I fail to see how not being allowed on Facebook is different.
I think the argument is that there are no constitutional rights to bars, cigarettes, and porn. Social media is being held up as an example of "speech" here, which all US citizens are entitled to (at least in theory).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 exist…
25 years ago us kids were watching viral content on the internet that wasn’t even acceptable to go on youtube then or now. Still today, we are now your young doctors and lawyers and young business executives, despite all the quite disturbing viral content that characterized the early 2000s internet. I think we did fine and I think the kids will be alright too.
The main problem is that most of the "appropriate" content is soul-sucking, biased, addictive and empty of substance.
Social media in its current form is designed to be as addictive as possible as a method of revenue generation. That's it. The more time we spend on these apps, the more money they make. Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are designed from the ground-up to take as much time and attention as possible by using the same tricks that slot machines use. This is well-known and well-documented amongst _people like us_ who work in tech. It's less well-known outside our bubble.
Plenty of adults are unable to break the curse of the endless scroll, so what chance do children have?
It is, in my opinion, as dangerous as cigarettes, and we don't allow 11-year-olds to buy those. I don't know if a ban is the way to go, but something's gotta change.
The biggest problem I see is that we’re now essentially requiring ID to use substantial parts of the internet. So many business only have a Facebook page, Google maps has social features. I already didn’t want a Facebook account just to see a businesses specials, now I’ll need to present ID too? Certainly interested to see how all this plays out.
I’ve gotten by for the last several years without Facebook or Google (I do use a YT account, but not for anything meaningful). It’s annoying, but doable.
I think the point is that the internet and particularly social media is now the de-facto town square. States are basically requiring identification to speak or criticize government in the town square. If you take a step back and look at it that way, it's grossly anti-American.
Imagine back in the day, if you had any type of meeting/gathering to discuss anything that might be related to politics, and the police were there to collect everyone's Id. AA meetings, computer meetups, hobby gathering, HOA meetings, etc. This is essentially that, except on a computer. Just think of the children!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
People don't just start being able to deal with things that require self control at a specific age. It has to be taught. Even sex ed recognizes that, where it's far more effective to teach kids how to be safe during it rather than to teach them that they can do what they want after 18. If you push off the learning to when the person can legally just do whatever they want, all you're doing is abdicating parental respo…
Yes people should be taught skills to deal with making good choices and learning self control. But we don’t give kids heroin as part of the lesson in learning self control. The biological imperative for sex is overwhelming and there’s not much we can do to stop it. There is a way to stop companies from enticing kids with social media addiction though.
"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…