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The UK's Teen Social Media Ban Is Political Theater, Not Child Safety Policy

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Re: The UK's Teen Social Media Ban Is Political Theater, Not Child Safety Policy

#151

Post by Hizonner »

basisword wrote: post #13

The tone gave it away before he finally disclosed but - shocker - the author is on the board of a social media company. Social media has been a pretty clear net-negative for society. The opinions of a guy in away connected with the industry are irrelevant. As usual when tech people are asked to do something to control the harms of their products the excuse is "you don't understand, it's not possible". The author thin…

> the author is on the board of a social media company.

Yeah. Bluesky.

Pretty clear you have no clue and shouldn't be listened to.

Re: The UK's Teen Social Media Ban Is Political Theater, Not Child Safety Policy

#152

Post by dd8601fn »

applicative wrote: post #109
throwaway85825 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't remember which state it was but they spent 2/3+ of the entire states education budget on one underperming school district. In the end they ended up with new buildings but the scores went down because school spending isn't actually correlated with student success.

The postwar American glory period depended on the fact that half the brain power of society couldn’t get a job except in teaching. Now the sort of women who taught me in high school are federal judges and captains of industry. Teacher salaries would need to be two or three times as high to get the quality of the period of American greatness.

Smart money says it’s more to do with kids being more uncontrollable, prone to violent outbursts, and completely disinterested in anything that isn’t smashing their dopamine buttons every three seconds.

The teachers didn’t start being bad at teaching. The parents got bad at parenting in an environment where everything is working against them.

Re: The UK's Teen Social Media Ban Is Political Theater, Not Child Safety Policy

#154

Post by stephen_g »

Reason077 wrote: post #9

My 15-year old niece who recently visited her cousins in Australia assured me that the recently enacted Aussie law did not affect her ability to access socials while in Australia, nor has it affected her U16 cousins, who still have their accounts. Apparently the age checking there only applies to newly created accounts.

It depended on how long the account had been active - one or two of my cousin's kids were pretty sad they lost access to some of their accounts but had new ones the same day with an older sibling or friend's face scan to bypass the age check.

Reportedly more than 3/4 of under-16s who were using social media before the ban still are.

Re: The UK's Teen Social Media Ban Is Political Theater, Not Child Safety Policy

#155

Post by AngryData »

dyauspitr wrote: post #127
AngryData wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because politicians and rich assholes can get legislation pushed and passed that doesn't mean the people actually want it. Claiming people want what they currently deal withs just because they have "democracy" is a cop-out that has repeatedly been shown to be false across nearly every democracy in existence.

It has 90% public support and rightfully so. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/15/world/europe/uk-social-me...

And you don't think there is any problem with that poll, especially when it is in support of the government when ran by the government and had an inherently biased selection of participants from the start? Im sure if I polled people that looked up accounting services if wealthy people should be taxed less I could get 90% approval, but that doesn't mean the overall population supports it.

Re: The UK's Teen Social Media Ban Is Political Theater, Not Child Safety Policy

#156

Post by Eridrus »

api wrote: post #140
Eridrus wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of tech controls that exist for children's personal technological devices that do not require the state to intervene.

They cost money or take many hours of time. Many families have neither. For the record I’m not a fan of the way this stuff is being pushed. At the same time, I feel like a lot of people are totally out of touch on a lot of the reasons why some people support this.

https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/sometimes-you-have-to-hurt-...
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