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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

#151

Post by falaki »

AngryData wrote: post #20
falaki wrote: post #17

I really hope other nations, including the United States, copy this. Australia proved that it is possible. I think the results will be so overwhelmingly positive that others will take notice. Good job Australia! Reading "Anxious Generation" is a must for all parents in this day and age.

Isn't it a little early to declare success? I think the bigger worry with the US though is not whether it is technically possible, but whether anyone in power cares to actually help kids versus using this it as an excuse to implement Orwellian surveillance upon citizens.

Alcohol, tobacco and many other products have age restrictions, so do cars and many other products of the modern society. Social media can and should have age restrictions.

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

#152

Post by nephihaha »

TimByte wrote: post #113
nephihaha wrote: post #56

There is a pattern of government using moral panics to exert greater control. Australia and New Zealand seem to be used as a testbed for projects which are introduced elsewhere. The UK government wishes to police social media more heavily, and has been using internet porn and illegal immigration (two unrelated issues) to push through digital ID. The exact same mentality - controversy, panic, dubious solution... In th…

The offline-socializing point is good, but it's also a cultural shift that won't magically happen because a law is passed. If anything, the hard part is rebuilding the offline spaces and social norms that used to make that easy.

I agree. I had to coax people out after lockdown and it took years.

We do need offline spaces. I've been out for a Christmas lunch today. Much more meaningful than meeting on Zoom or whatever. I don't hate technology but I think we have to use it widely.

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

#153

Post by amarant »

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!

I'm not sure social media was ever sane. I distinctly remember thinking it wasn't back in my highschool days, so around 2007-2009, which was pretty much when Facebook completely took over the market in Sweden where I lived.

Before then I used to use lunarstorm. Was that the sane period of social media? Maybe, my memory is fuzzy: it's been a while.

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

#154

Post by hephaes7us »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #107
N_Lens wrote: post #8

Quite a decisive move by the Australian government. I don't know if it's a move in the right direction or not but the research clearly shows that around the time social media became mainstream, teens' and preteens' mental health took a nosedive (Especially girls).

At the very least, I appreciate that this test should help us determine the causal impact of social media. I don't know if rolling out to the whole country is justified just for the test data, but I feel it will give a pretty conclusive result one way or the other.

Teens will learn to bypass all this within the week. Then, whatever the new way of doing social media will be, it could easily reach consensus within the year.

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

#155

Post by pessimizer »

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

Everybody seems to have missed the memo that all power was concentrated in the Executive branch since the Bush Doctrine, and that since 2016 people have started insisting that the Executive doesn't even have any obligation to the President, the only important vote left (although limited to choosing between two private clubs funded by the same donors.).

If Congress steps away from doing anything but serving donors (helped by the filibuster), and the captured regulators don't have to obey the President, there's actually no democracy left. We're in the impossible situation where Trump not being in control is scarier than Trump being in control.

Even scarier is that the people saying that we're on the way to becoming an authoritarian state are saying that because they think that the voters get too much say. Authoritarianism is when we don't beatify Dr. Fauci, or agree that it's fine for pregnant women to take Tylenol. The upper middle class, in its complete narcissism and fall into self-indulgent fantasy, is entirely focused on aesthetics.

edit: when replies that say that there's already a problem, but seem to be heretical about the covid response get flagkilled, there's a blessed opinion. I have no idea how elite echochambers are supposed to avoid an authoritarian state. Your bosses are kissing Trump's ass, and you're working hard doing things that advance their agenda. They couldn't do it without you.

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

#156

Post by whimsicalism »

Frankly, I would have been pissed if this were the case when I was a teen and I got a lot of healthy & useful value out of social media.

That said, some of the subcommunities I've seen created, particularly among young women, seem obviously unhealthy/toxic and regulation is probably needed there. I'm thinking of things like '#edtwt'.

But I also think we need to avoid ruining things for smart, responsible kids by focusing on the worst.

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

#157

Post by ethin »

naravara wrote: post #121
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!

I think 70-80% of it is the business model, but the other 20-30% might just be baked into how it is. Jonathan Haidt talks about how once social media usage became ubiquitous among teenagers around 2015 mental health problems began to skyrocket. And a big part of this was the algorithm serving up content designed to make people feel bad, but another part around feelings of being bullied turned out to largely be kids s…

Jonathan Haidt is someone who nobody should take seriously. Pretty much all of the data he cites is cherry-picked and the vast majority of people in trust and safety and similar will tell you that he is probably one of the least reliable authorities on this subject. He's aiming to sell fear, not to actually solve the problem.

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

#158

Post by kentm »

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?

I would argue that it did, we just did a poor job of measuring it.

Anecdotally, during my childhood I moved from a place that had very little TV advertising to a place with a normal amount and it had a noticeable impact.

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

#159

Post by baby »

killingtime74 wrote: post #80
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!

Socialising != Social media. Teens can still use messenger, WhatsApp, phonecalls, text or even....face to face!

That's true. I'll say this though: my social life skyrocketed thanks to Facebook when I was ~18. Not sure what kind of impact it would have had earlier, I was def. more of a kid and social medias were not a thing anyway. Makes sense to me to have an age limit considering cyber bullying and teen suicides and all.

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

#160

Post by whimsicalism »

lm28469 wrote: post #146
JSR_FDED wrote: post #2

I’m not against teens communicating with each other online, but I’m very much against the algorithm-driven dopamine addiction factories that are social media today. Imagine a whole generation of teens with attention spans longer than 15 seconds…they might actually realize their incredible potential!

If you ever worked with people who fully grew up with modern social media and just entered the workforce you know we're already doomed, there is no recovery from this, that's why governments are starting to act

alarmist nonsense
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