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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

#131

Post by ch2026 »

barbazoo wrote: post #81
rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #72

Why ban social media when ad-supported media is the culprit? Remove the incentive (to get users to doom scroll, to polarize, to impulse buy…) and you change the behavior. I remember when social media was sane 15+ years ago. The problem is the business model, not socializing. It's crazy to ban it when being a teen is the beginning of socializing!

How come ad supported TV existed for decades without destroying children's mental health? The algorithms create the engagement, the engagement lures in the ads, not the other way around, at least that's what I think right now.

We had the same fear mongering in the 80’s and early 90’s about TV. And in the 20’s and 30’s about radio programs.

Same shit, new generation.

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

#132

Post by everyday7732 »

rainonmoon wrote: post #32
hallole wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hugely decisive! Feels more like a policy for idyllic hypotheticals. "Suppose we could ban social media..." well, hey, they actually did it. I'm very interested to see how their socializing evolves in response to such a shock. Do the social behaviors of pre-internet times re-emerge? "Third spaces" reappear overnight? We shall see!

Given that “social media” is in fact not banned and all this does is impact a select (and frankly logically inconsistent) list of services, this seems very unlikely. Children are still free to be groomed and gamble on Roblox and join servers belonging to The Com on Discord. To be clear I don’t think those services should be regulated by this obscene law either but this isn’t going to bring back any kind of halcyon er…

It will also massively expand the surveillance of adults: if a platform introduces face scanning or checking government IDs for "age verification", then they don't just scan the underage users.

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

#133

Post by ipaddr »

estimator7292 wrote: post #116
chistev wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Break up the federal government?

We're already on the fast track to becoming an authoritarian state. It's not too much of a stretch to imagine the next step is dissolving congress and installing a new constitution. Or just throwing it out entirely and defining the law of the land on the whims of a senile man

[flagged]

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

#134

Post by didibus »

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 example? Would they be allowed again?

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

#135

Post by paxys »

estimator7292 wrote: post #116
chistev wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Break up the federal government?

We're already on the fast track to becoming an authoritarian state. It's not too much of a stretch to imagine the next step is dissolving congress and installing a new constitution. Or just throwing it out entirely and defining the law of the land on the whims of a senile man

There's no need to dissolve congress. You instead make sure that (1) a single party stays in power (through gerrymandering, voter suppression and more), (2) the courts are stacked with loyalists and (3) the legislature and courts rubber stamp all decisions of the executive regardless of legality or anything else.

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

#136

Post by burningChrome »

winddude wrote: post #104

I kind of get it, except youtube... which has much more educational, news, and long form content. Also also forcing face/age verification sounds ripe with issues.

FYI the article is from back in December of this year and there's already been articles about teen circumventing the process of verification:

https://www.wionews.com/trending/australian-teens-defy-under...

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

#137

Post by lm28469 »

winddude wrote: post #104

I kind of get it, except youtube... which has much more educational, news, and long form content. Also also forcing face/age verification sounds ripe with issues.

It has some educational content, most of it is brain rot like everywhere else though. Open a brand new youtube account and check out what's being pushed by default, you either get room temperature IQ political analysts or "shorts" with softcore porn thumbnails to bait people for a click

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

#138

Post by heathrow83829 »

adamesque wrote: post #127
heathrow83829 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe it's a step in the right direction but you can't regulate away ALL parenting. I know kids in the 5th grade getting brand new Iphone 17s! i've even seen one kid at the age of 7, getting their own Ipad. some parents even force their kids to use play on their iphone, just so they don't have to keep an eye on their kid anymore. My jaw really dropped to the floor on that one. at some point, you just have to say that…

i'm geniunely curious about how you made the jump from "here's a single regulation" all the way down the slippery slope to "can't regulate away ALL parenting". does this one regulation cross that threshold? how'd you get there? in an ideal world, parents would also prevent their kids from smoking, but the fact that in many places minors aren't allowed to purchase tobacco sends a social signal and actually does seem t…

it does help. i think this is a good step in the right direction.

but there's still a lot of stuff that only parents can do. for example, screentime in the home. you can't really create a law that says no screens for anyone under the age of X because there will exceptions (movie night, homework, etc).

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

#139

Post by jfindper »

barbazoo wrote: post #81
rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #72

Why ban social media when ad-supported media is the culprit? Remove the incentive (to get users to doom scroll, to polarize, to impulse buy…) and you change the behavior. I remember when social media was sane 15+ years ago. The problem is the business model, not socializing. It's crazy to ban it when being a teen is the beginning of socializing!

How come ad supported TV existed for decades without destroying children's mental health? The algorithms create the engagement, the engagement lures in the ads, not the other way around, at least that's what I think right now.

>How come ad supported TV existed for decades without destroying children's mental health?

Well, there's at least a few reasons this is different than the current situation.

1) It's expensive to make a TV show, it's free to do a fortnite dance or eat a tide pod and post it to several websites. The amount of low-effort, low-quality, probably-harmful content on TikTok or whatever is exponentially more than low-effort, low-quality, probably-harmful TV shows/ads.

2) The availability is on completely different scales. TVs are (basically) fixed in a specific place. Phones are, for most people, within arms reach 24/7.

3) What can be shown on TV is significantly more regulated in most parts of the world, and control mechanisms by governments are more robust (pull a broadcast license, etc.). It's harder to take a website (or TikTok, whatever) offline than it is to pull a harmful show/advert off of HGTV or whatever your favorite channel is.

4) TV is not specifically tailored to the viewer to produce the most amount of happy chemical.

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

#140

Post by testing22321 »

barbazoo wrote: post #81
rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #72

Why ban social media when ad-supported media is the culprit? Remove the incentive (to get users to doom scroll, to polarize, to impulse buy…) and you change the behavior. I remember when social media was sane 15+ years ago. The problem is the business model, not socializing. It's crazy to ban it when being a teen is the beginning of socializing!

How come ad supported TV existed for decades without destroying children's mental health? The algorithms create the engagement, the engagement lures in the ads, not the other way around, at least that's what I think right now.

In Australia TV is very commonly referred to as “the idiot box”.

Australians are very aware that it destroys people’s brains.

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