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The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

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Re: The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

#391

Post by betadeltic »

jschveibinz wrote: post #182

I just listened to a radio program on my local NPR station about the topic of kids and social media. From what was presented, the research shows (longitudinal study) that there is very little evidence of social media impacting mental health--which is shocking because a majority of adults think there is a connection and the politicians are pushing that narrative. I have not personally vetted the research. Has anyone e…

A bit of an off-topic, as age checks are not solution to this, it's just the usual "think of the children" narrative.

However, there are publicists like Jonathan Haidt who have observed the link between kids mental health and use of social media. (among other things) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anxious_Generation

Re: The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

#392

Post by p0w3n3d »

jschveibinz wrote: post #182

I just listened to a radio program on my local NPR station about the topic of kids and social media. From what was presented, the research shows (longitudinal study) that there is very little evidence of social media impacting mental health--which is shocking because a majority of adults think there is a connection and the politicians are pushing that narrative. I have not personally vetted the research. Has anyone e…

Tbh I must admit that while I observe my children, any message on social media (especially Whatsapp) attracts so much attention, they are unable to continue with their normal chores. On the other hand I remember myself procrastinating while watching the TV in their age, which no longer happens as we have no TV. The difference is that anything watched on TV was public, you would need to eject your parents from home somehow, now you can just take your private tv to the other room, and watch horrible things.

This procrastination is why my children have 30mins + 1h bonus, if they do their chores, of the phone limit every day. This is done via family link. There is an exemption to music on Spotify, however recently I noticed they are watching (not listening) to podcasts on Spotify too.

But still this is managed by me on our local ecosystem. It's not government thing. That's super creepy when government says (read in your mind or aloud with a sleazy guy's whisper)

  "hey, your kids are unsafe, better allow me read all their and yours communication. Ah and please give me your id so I can protect your children more"

Re: The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

#393

Post by TurdF3rguson »

AlienRobot wrote: post #289
pdonis wrote: post #246

Would this website (HN) be a "covered platform" according to the bill? As far as I can tell, the answer is no, because it doesn't do what's described in Section 201 (E): "Uses the personal information of the user to advertise, market, or make content recommendations." Neither does, for example, my bank's website, or someone's personal blog, or many other discussion sites like this one. So from what I can see, while t…

You need to be more realist. "Uses the personal information of the user to advertise" Is 99.9% of all websites. So long as websites don't sell things, they will be having ads. This includes Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Imgur, TikTok, Twitch, Youtube, etc. I think even Steam and other game platforms would fall into this category despite the fact they make money selling products. Naturally s…

You're way underestimating how many boring websites there are. County records websites, tax filing websites, dmv portals, shipping trackers...

Re: The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

#394

Post by bcjdjsndon »

p0w3n3d wrote: post #392
jschveibinz wrote: post #182

I just listened to a radio program on my local NPR station about the topic of kids and social media. From what was presented, the research shows (longitudinal study) that there is very little evidence of social media impacting mental health--which is shocking because a majority of adults think there is a connection and the politicians are pushing that narrative. I have not personally vetted the research. Has anyone e…

Tbh I must admit that while I observe my children, any message on social media (especially Whatsapp) attracts so much attention, they are unable to continue with their normal chores. On the other hand I remember myself procrastinating while watching the TV in their age, which no longer happens as we have no TV. The difference is that anything watched on TV was public, you would need to eject your parents from home so…

> now you can just take your private tv to the other room, and watch horrible things.

.... Is this trolling? Banning social media won't stop them accessing "horrible things", you'd need to disconnect the internet entirely from them, have you done that?

Why do you think social media is bad but somehow regular websites aren't horrible?

Re: The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

#395

Post by Amezarak »

ars wrote: post #281
bArray wrote: post #225

Anybody else think it is weird that suddenly all Western countries suddenly want to lockdown the internet to "protect the children"? There is surely an international special interest group lobbying for this?

Why is it weird? Social media has existed for around the same amount of time for all western countries, and people have noticed the harm at around the same time everywhere. Why do you require some special interest? Ordinary people are seeing the harm and demanding help. Tech companies did themselves no favors by locking down phones and accounts to the point that it's impossible for parents to police and/or check thei…

I've yet to meet an ordinary person who supports any of this, though they might agree if vaguely prompted about it without detail. They certainly aren't lobbying their politicians about it. This is top down, not bottom up.

> So now that parents have been blocked from parenting, who else is going to do it?

I'm a parent. Nobody has been blocked from parenting by tech companies.

Re: The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

#396

Post by kelnos »

djaro wrote: post #367
wcarss wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Attestation of age should suffice; no one in a building somewhere needs to verify my age. If I tell you to treat me like a minor, you do it. Operating systems and browsers can work together to send this as a header. If you're a concerned parent: set your children's ages in their device accounts. Done. This alternative solves the whole problem and it's been brought up a million times, but it doesn't matter, because th…

The problem is that not all parents are "concerned parents" and children dont deserve to be taken advantage of by trillion dollar corporations for the crime of having bad parents.

That's the classic question of when the state should step in to correct bad parenting, and when it should leave well enough alone. I'm sympathetic to the idea that this is one of the "step in" times, but I think the negatives for doing so seem far too costly.

At any rate, with age verification, un-concerned parent will likely just want their kid to shut up, and will verify using their own details to give the kid the (adult) access they want. So I don't think that changes much here.

Re: The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

#397

Post by bcjdjsndon »

alt227 wrote: post #370
bcjdjsndon wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> almost every kid who commits suicide will have recently used social media. Sound reasoning lol some really hysterical folk on here. if you actually believed it were that dangerous you wouldn't be literally on social media posting about this would you?

Are you inferring that HN is social media?

By the legal definition it is. You might mean just Facebook, or just twitter, but it's pretty much any website or application that has a messaging capability, excluding games. You can see the issue with such a wide and vague definition.

Some people are scared of paedos talking to the kids, other people are scared the kids will watch bad videos, or read bad things. They are two distinct issues lumped in under the "social media" banner, and it can be hard to guess which issue a hysterical parent is referring too.

Hn is social media and even has a doomacrollint algorithm but because it's not classically considered to be akin to twitter, tiktok or Facebook it gets away with it

Re: The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

#398

Post by kelnos »

HEmanZ wrote: post #307
askvictor wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But most parents have the sense their teens spend too much time on their phones I've been pondering recently how much time parents are spending on phones, that, 20 years ago they might have otherwise spent engaging with their kids.

Statistically parents spend more time with their kids now than in the 1900s, and the trend seems towards more and more time, especially among fathers. There’s some “well we have no idea how much is quality time” argument, but just looking across my own families over time the reality is more like modern parents being way more present than their parents. The issue lies elsewhere. It’s almost a zeitgeist, the direction…

> Statistically parents spend more time with their kids now than in the 1900s

Is that true? In more "traditional" times, the husband went out to work while the wife stayed home and managed the household and raised the children.

Today more and more families need dual incomes in order to make ends meet.

Either way, I don't think "the 1900s" is a good comparison. Perhaps 1970-2000 or so is reasonable.

Anyway, to counter your anecdote with another: when I was growing up, my mom was a stay-at-home mom, and she spent a ton of time (very much of it quality) with me. I saw my dad less, of course, but he was reasonably present when he wasn't at work, and I have lots of fond memories of quality time with him.

Nearly all of my friends today who have kids are dual-income. They send their kids to daycare as soon as they're old enough, and then pre-school. The kids do get a lot of socialization with other kids (maybe more than I did in my first few years), but I'm certain they get less time (and probably less quality time) with their parents than I did.

Re: The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

#399

Post by Amezarak »

ethbr1 wrote: post #143
iamnothere wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At global conferences like Davos, where national leaders and policy makers go to schmooze and exchange ideas, this idea has been discussed for years. I’m sure there has been some subsequent cross-border coordination and discussion. For instance: https://idtechwire.com/spains-pm-proposes-mandatory-digital-... https://www.weforum.org/publications/reimagining-digital-id/ https://www.weforum.org/stories/2021/01/davos-age…

> [World leaders] see cyberspace as a threat to top-down technocratic control and view Internet-enabled populism (aka democracy) as something to be quashed. This has been true ever since the creation of the internet and web. It's what the original 90s crypto wars were about: the right of individuals to access strong encryption to preserve the privacy of their communications from the government. Absent that, pandora's…

> This has been true ever since the creation of the internet and web.

It's true that some have always seen it this way, but it's become much more salient in the current political context. The average politician 30 years ago was barely aware of what the Internet was - it wasn't a major concern. For a brief period, the prevailing (but not only, as you mention with encryption) attitude was that the information superhighway would make everyone was educated and wise as the managerial class elites. Social media muddled the picture for a while, but the Arab Spring was considered to be an amazing example of this - look, people around the world are going to be Just Like Us!

What really kicked off the current level of enmity politicians have for the Internet was the rise of right-wing populism, especially Trump. This really deeply upset a lot of people, and the only conceivable explanation is that bad actors caused it using the Internet, because good and wise people would only come to the same conclusions as themselves, and democracy is only fit for people who come to those same conclusions. It is certainly not because their policy outcomes caused discontent. Since then they've been throwing everything at the wall to stop free Internet discourse in the belief it will make the bad people go away and restore Public Order.

Re: The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

#400

Post by protocolture »

protocolture wrote: post #338
bArray wrote: post #225

Anybody else think it is weird that suddenly all Western countries suddenly want to lockdown the internet to "protect the children"? There is surely an international special interest group lobbying for this?

Its Australia. No joke our politicians subject us to something stupid, and then travel around telling their foreign peers how amazing and genius they are for doing so. They help write the legislation for other countries. Of course they later return and have to deal with the results of their stupidity, but its already been sold.

Just to piss off the downvoters more, here is a link

https://www.afr.com/technology/australia-takes-social-media-...

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