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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

#151

Post by cycomanic »

colechristensen wrote: post #131
willio58 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

The interesting tidbit in the case of social media and smart phones is that they are at least partially pushed by the parents (I've seen plenty of examples of parents demand that their children have smartphones at school).

> 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.

I think there is a difference though. There is the "off my lawn" crowd of "children today are so bad because..." sure, but I think they are not the ones demanding social media bans. The bans are being motivated largely by health professionals ringing all sort of alarm bells because mental health indicators paint a pretty dire picture. These are based on actual statistics and have been confirmed many times.

> 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

#153

Post by eikenberry »

trey-jones wrote: post #53

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 did close to the same with my kids.. their PCs were in a common room, they got their first phone at 14 and it stayed at the downstairs charging station at night until 17. IMO it worked great and both our kids have a healthy relationship with their phones and tech in general.

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

#155

Post by angiolillo »

colechristensen wrote: post #136
angiolillo wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> the rules destroyed by demanding parents bullying administrators and school boards

True, but that's why you don't do it alone. You need to talk with other parents and encourage them to talk to others until the majority of parents understand the risks and let the administration, school board, and teachers know that they have your support.

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

#156

Post by jmye »

josephg wrote: post #95
SunshineTheCat wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

If all the other kids are on social media all the time, it makes it much harder to keep your kids off it. Would you want to be the one kid in school who’s not online? Would you want that for your kids? Bans like this make much more sense at a community level. Not an individual level.

> Would you want to be the one kid in school who’s not online?

I mean, who cares what the kid wants? It's your job as a parent to be a parent. Sometimes that means telling your kid no, even if that means they're not your best friend for a day or two.

> Would you want that for your kids?

Unequivocally, yes. Social media is cancer. I'd prefer my daughter not be pathologically depressed and my son not turn into a little hateball because of Meta's shitty algorithms. I have no idea why this is even a question, aside from the pure cowardice of Millennial parents.

None of this to comment on GP's suggestion that we don't need laws, or the idea that we shouldn't do this societally anyways.

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

#157

Post by DocTomoe »

zurfer wrote: post #126
poly2it wrote: post #31

A reason to be cautious about propositions like these isn't just the inherent belittling of children's right to information, which can be argued for or against in certain cases, but the aspect of giving any proceeding government the ability to ban a form of media from children due to their perception of toxicity, derangement, danger, et cetera.

I don't buy it. The most relevant critique is see is that it's hard to control the age of your users without removing anonymous accounts thus limiting privacy. Well, it's a hard problem but it doesn't feel impossible to solve. To me there is no question that children should grow up protected from harmful substances. You don't want kids to smoke, scrolling algo feeds is not better. There is enough interesting internet…

> You don't want kids to smoke, scrolling algo feeds is not better.

That's a dogmatic axiom until you can show how TikTok causes lung cancer.

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

#158

Post by mrweasel »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #142
mrweasel wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's probably the solution: You can run a social media, but you have to do it ad free. Charge people if you need to, but you cannot run ads. What fucks up social media is the constant need to "engagement".

this is a familiar discourse. Ads are more than a thing you "run," they're an idea. You can't destroy the idea of ads. "Ad free" isn't possible to guarantee. Does this make sense?

First part makes sense, ad free seems very possible to me, especially if backed by legislation.

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

#159

Post by cycomanic »

arcfour wrote: post #59
trey-jones wrote: post #53

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.

As a parent, you should be able to parent your child, rather than having the government arbitrarily and capriciously do so on your behalf, and for everyone else's kids, too. As someone who got my first BlackBerry at 11, which really spurred a lot of my later interests which are now part of my career or led to it indirectly, I am opposed to paternalistic authoritarian governments making choices for everyone. (Funny an…

As someone who sold their first joint at 11, which really spurred a lot of my later interests which are now part of my career or let to it indirectly, I am opposed to paternalistic authoritarian governments making choices for everyone.

/s

Absolute statements like yours rarely work, because the discussion is hardly ever about absolutes and more about where to draw the line.

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

#160

Post by Semaphor »

IlikeKitties wrote: post #135
Semaphor wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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:

Quick google (on my phone, so not certain) says it works with microg as of August
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