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Denmark's government aims to ban access to social media for children under 15

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Re: Denmark's government aims to ban access to social media for children under 15

#131

As a parent who gave my oldest child a (very used) smartphone just before she turned 14, I would be in favor of making smartphones illegal under age 15 (or some other number, higher or lower I don't care). I'm pretty sure they're worse than cigarettes for the future of humanity.

Agreed. Teachers are seeing the massive benefits from banning phones entirely during school hours. I think once we get data from bans for certain things like social media for kids, we'll all want to get on the wave.

This has to be done carefully because prohibition breeds desire and adults will absolutely try to force the attitude of 35 year olds onto 15 year olds forgetting a lot of life lessons have to be learned through experience and not just told.

Everybody wants to get on the wave about how children these days are so much worse because of the new thing.

And literally as long as we have recorded human writing we have adults complaining how the children are being ruined by the new culture or new item... and I mean we have these complaints from thousands of years ago.

So be careful, you don't have to be completely wrong to still be overreaching.

Re: Denmark's government aims to ban access to social media for children under 15

#132
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither of those examples result in social ostracism from peers.

I think you are massively overstating how important it is to the kids that they have a social media account. How can it hold that kids would be ignored in real life because they don't interact virtually?

With all due respect, I suspect you don’t have teen kids. Almost their entire social life is organised online.

Re: Denmark's government aims to ban access to social media for children under 15

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Would you want your kid to be ostracised from their community at school? Do you think that would be good for them? IMO it’s much better - for everyone - to ban this stuff at the community level. Then there’s no FOMO.

If social media is as bad for them as you seem to think it is, then why wouldn’t it be best for them?

I’m old enough to remember the same trash arguments over video games, rap music, even (for some unknown reason) the Disney Channel. This is just another moral panic.

Re: Denmark's government aims to ban access to social media for children under 15

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why would you give your id?

You don't need to, that's the thing. The site requests "are you over 18" and you use your ID to prove it without them getting any other information from it. Requires a phone with NFC, but the app is open source

And the reference implementation requires google play integrity attestation so you are forced to use a google approved device with google approved firmware and a google account to download the application in order to participate. Once this becomes implemented, you are no longer a citizen of the EU but a citizen of Google or Apple and a customer of the EU:

Re: Denmark's government aims to ban access to social media for children under 15

#136

As a parent who gave my oldest child a (very used) smartphone just before she turned 14, I would be in favor of making smartphones illegal under age 15 (or some other number, higher or lower I don't care). I'm pretty sure they're worse than cigarettes for the future of humanity.

I'm not sure how I feel about making it illegal, but it does benefit from some sort of collective action. If none of your child's friends and classmates have cell phones yet, I'd strongly encourage establishing a smartphone pact with the other parents. Our community used http://waituntil8th.org pledges but even a shared spreadsheet would work.

One of the things that seems necessary is to make it illegal for a kid to use a phone in class before a certain age.

If you don't have that you get the rules destroyed by demanding parents bullying administrators and school boards.

Re: Denmark's government aims to ban access to social media for children under 15

#138

As a parent who gave my oldest child a (very used) smartphone just before she turned 14, I would be in favor of making smartphones illegal under age 15 (or some other number, higher or lower I don't care). I'm pretty sure they're worse than cigarettes for the future of humanity.

I'm not sure how I feel about making it illegal, but it does benefit from some sort of collective action. If none of your child's friends and classmates have cell phones yet, I'd strongly encourage establishing a smartphone pact with the other parents. Our community used http://waituntil8th.org pledges but even a shared spreadsheet would work.

All that local level stuff doesn’t work. As soon as a couple of kids have a smartphone, the online world becomes vastly more interesting than the day to day.

Re: Denmark's government aims to ban access to social media for children under 15

#139
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Parent of a 21 and 18 year old so I’m somewhat familiar about how to do parenting, thanks. Yes, “no” is a tool that more parents can and should reach for. But if you’ve got any experience at all of kids you’ll know it’s really not as straight forward as this. The more responsibility you can push off to others, such as government or schools, the easier this is. We brought ours up with pretty strong guidelines and lots…

Describe three hypotheticals to me of what you think will happen in the following circumstances:

* Kid who is told "no" by his parents

* Kid who is told "yes" by his parents

* Kid who "can't" sign up for social media because it's illegal to do so at their age, who then signs up for it when it becomes legal.

I would really like to see what you believe the outcomes of these three scenarios would be, because I doubt any of them are truly catastrophic, considering we are, at best, merely delaying the onset of social media use by the kid by just 2-3 years.

Re: Denmark's government aims to ban access to social media for children under 15

#140

As a parent who gave my oldest child a (very used) smartphone just before she turned 14, I would be in favor of making smartphones illegal under age 15 (or some other number, higher or lower I don't care). I'm pretty sure they're worse than cigarettes for the future of humanity.

Crazy to think how less government would need to act like a mom if there were one or two parents out there who were familiar with the word "no."

So... you don't have kids, I take it?
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