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Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

reuters.com

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Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#631

Post by enaaem »

delbronski wrote: post #487
roenxi wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yes but the other problem is this is putting authoritarians in charge of more stuff. I had a comment comparing this to allowing people to eat too much food and that is literally where the logical outcome of this sort of thinking goes - it happens in practice, that isn't some sort of theoretical risk. The more the government decides what people can and can't want to do the worse the potential gets when they make…

Come on dude, you are on HN. You probably know that social media is no longer about free speech. It’s a targeted advertising machine that is extremely effective on kids and teenagers. It preys on them so, so efficiently. It’s a technical work of art. A young mind is extremely susceptible to the algorithms on those platforms. Much more than adults are, and adults are already really susceptible. This is what this ban i…

Biggest problem of social media is the addictive effects. It’s a dopamine creation machine. Hopefully people will see it like alcohol and cigarettes in the future.

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#632

Post by nomel »

kubb wrote: post #619
roenxi wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yes but the other problem is this is putting authoritarians in charge of more stuff. I had a comment comparing this to allowing people to eat too much food and that is literally where the logical outcome of this sort of thinking goes - it happens in practice, that isn't some sort of theoretical risk. The more the government decides what people can and can't want to do the worse the potential gets when they make…

Authoritarians use social networks to undermine democratic principles so not exposing kids to that takes power away from them. Or did I misunderstand something?

Authoritarians also use state influenced media to undermine democratic principles.

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#633

Post by giobox »

didibus wrote: post #134

To be honest, I wouldn't mind they'd ban it for adults too, would help me from wasting time on them. In all seriousness though, I'm curious what counts as social media, can they not play MMORPGs anymore for example? Are niche forums included ? What about chat apps like Whatsapp? Phone texting? Email? I'm also curious if say TikTok and YouTubed simply deactivated their social features? No comments, DMs, and so on for…

> I'm also curious if say TikTok and YouTubed simply deactivated their social features? No comments, DMs, and so on for example? Would they be allowed again?

The YouTube Kids apps and services are not included in the ban for this very reason, only the "adult" YouTube app and service. I imagine Google absolutely could create a YouTube "aussie edition" that could avoid the ban for the main service.

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#634

Post by lbrito »

zmmmmm wrote: post #405

A lot of the criticism is based on the concept that it won't be technically watertight. But the key is that it doesn't have to be watertight to work. Social media is all about network effects. Once most kids are on there, everyone has to be on there. If you knock the percentage down far enough, you break the network effect to the point where those who don't want to don't feel pressured to. If that is all it does, it'…

(b) a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly.

This already happens, and I don't see how a law like this would significantly change the volume of edgelords and incels funneling into imageboards

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#635

Post by heavyset_go »

phantasmish wrote: post #472
indymike wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure why a person would want to let their kids hang out any place where that stuff you report is common, A great percentage of serious crimes (from rape to fraud) are committed by family and friends of the victims. Should we not leave our children with our family alone? The best move is to teach your children how to not be victimized. It is part of "being responsible for yourself". My parents taught me how…

> A great percentage of serious crimes (from rape to fraud) are committed by family and friends of the victims. Should we not leave our children with our family alone? But I'm pretty sure that like 50+% of interactions with family aren't crime. > Why not teach your kids how to navigate the internet safely. No reason to involve any serious amount of time browsing feeds of shit in that. I don't make them roll around in…

90% of all childhood sexual assaults are perpetrated by close family and friends[1].

If stranger danger is a motivating factor here, statistically, you should side-eye your close friends and family much, much more often and never leave them alone with your kids.

> But I'm pretty sure that like 50+% of interactions with family aren't crime.

You can say the same thing about social media interactions.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/child-abuse-neglect/about/about-child-se...

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#636

Post by kybernetikos »

I think a better approach might be to require that any algorithm used to suggest content to users must be made open source so that people whose world views are being shaped by the content you're feeding them can analyse how you're deciding what to show them.

I feel like there's definitely a problem here with social media and its effect on society, but our first approach should be to increase transparency and accountability, rather than to start banning things by force of law.

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#637

Post by nxor »

pryce wrote: post #499
bigfudge wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The attempt is to remove the market do exploiting the attention of children for profit. This doesn’t have to be perfect to be worth it. What’s more, the idea that this puts children at the mercy of authoritarians is laughable. The US tech industry has shown us beyond doubt that they are perfectly ok with genuine authoritarians in charge, provided the dollars keep rolling. Fuck them, and good on ya Australia.

It is not that simple: Authoritarians that want to "protect" their gender-questioning or orientation-questioning children from having online access to trans and gay spaces online are not only enthusiastically backing Australia's social media ban, they are involved in the very creation of this legislation, and are delighted in its negative affects on LGBTQ teens. There is considerable overlap between those who subscri…

[flagged]

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#638

Post by akersten »

ropable wrote: post #594

I fully support this legislation, and government regulation around this topic. Given the current (2025) state of the social media landscape, I believe that the positives of restricting access to them for teenagers well outweighs any potential harms. As the parent of a teenager affected by this ban (plus one who has aged past it): I wish that it had been in place 8-10 years ago, before either of my kids got smartphone…

So, you haven't identified any actual problems with them being on social media though. For example, were this lament that parenting is hard written 50 years ago:

> As the parent of a teenager affected by this ban (plus one who has aged past it): I wish that it had been in place 8-10 years ago, before either of my kids got introduced to Rock n' Roll. We tried to be reasonably conservative in their introduction to music and lyrics, on the rationale that it would do them no harm to delay using those for a couple of years through their early brain development. The real difficulty turned out to be the network effect of their peers having access to Rock n' Roll, which increased the social pressure (and corresponding social exclusion) to be dealing with vinyl. Not having access to The Stones, AC/DC, etc. at that point meant that they were effectively out-group, which is a Big Deal for a teenager.

> We ended up allowing them a radio earlier than we'd have liked but imposed other controls (time and space restrictions, an expectation of parental audits, etc.) These controls were imperfect, and the usual issues occurred. My assessment is that it was a net negative for the mental health of one child and neutral for the other.

I'm being a bit facetious here but my point is that everyone who is in support of this kind of Parenting-as-a-Service is not identifying any real issue the government should concern itself with. Just that kids are doing something new and sometimes scary and gosh it's just hard being a parent when they don't listen.

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#639

Post by presentation »

Bad_Initialism wrote: post #628

To all the parents defending this: you are responsible for your children and what they do. Passing laws that affect all of us because you are too lazy and ineffectual to raise your children properly is unacceptable.

I disagree. It’s easy to say this from your armchair, but when your kid is the one kid not on social media because you’re such an righteous parent, and that kid is getting bullied by all the other kids for not knowing what’s going on in TikTok or Insta, you start seeing this as a problem that requires the coordination of large numbers of people who you may or may not know, many of whom are kids who lack executive function.

If you just disdain children in general, you can go ahead and say that instead.

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