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The case for banning children from social media

newyorker.com

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Re: The case for banning children from social media

#161

Post by deafpolygon »

tastysandwich wrote: post #46

I just don't see any alternatives to banning social media, perhaps even up to the age of 18. The dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs and social media is just as addictive. It's not clear how you could effectively regulate this stuff - especially in our highly polarised political climate. The right will immediately target "wokeness", and the left will immediately target "hate speech". And the kids will be…

What I propose is the banning of algorithms-powered social media. There's a huge difference between a moderated age-appropriate forum and TikTok.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#162

Post by deafpolygon »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #122
tastysandwich wrote: post #46

I just don't see any alternatives to banning social media, perhaps even up to the age of 18. The dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs and social media is just as addictive. It's not clear how you could effectively regulate this stuff - especially in our highly polarised political climate. The right will immediately target "wokeness", and the left will immediately target "hate speech". And the kids will be…

Forcing social media companies to charge for accounts would be my first approach. Either by taxing it so much that they have to, or by explicitly requiring payment. I'm not sure how you'd define "social media" vs say, HN (or is HN social media?). Taxing advertising revenue at a higher rate could also do it (hmm, thinking about this, this might solve a lot more problems too). For countries that don't do credit cards,…

> Forcing social media companies to charge for accounts would be my first approach.

It may work at first, but it will devolve into a stratified system of people who can afford it, and those who can't.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#163

Post by uptownfunk »

medion wrote: post #40

Have young kids, they won’t get a phone, tablet or whatever till well into their teens. Tablets are the new pacifier and it’s hard sometimes not to give in for a break.. we allow some limited tv sometimes but only select classic cartoons or documentaries. I cannot see any value at all in social media for kids and I personally cannot believe parents let their kids on TikTok or whatever. It’s wild.

Yes agree 100% on tablets are the new pacifier. Have you noticed how hyper stimulated kids who don’t normally have a lot of screen time get when they do get their “fix” it’s eerie

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#165

Post by erfgh »

amatecha wrote: post #34
C50VGicCxmHC wrote: post #3

> These bills will likely face considerable constitutional challenges. Previous attempts to block minors from accessing Web sites via broad legislation, including the Child Online Protection Act, from 1998, have been struck down on First Amendment grounds. You might get farther instead of banning children from social media, ban all ads to children on social media. Every single ad impression shown to a child is a $1,0…

Eh, honestly, just go all the way and ban advertising altogether (I would be so happy if this happened, even though it obviously never will). Pretty willing to tank my karma to say this, I don't care, I think advertising is one of the biggest psychological pollutants in modern society and any possible benefit (??) is vastly outweighed by the cognitive waste incurred by all who are subjected to it.

How would you define advertising? If there were no advertisements how would people know about products? They would have to read discussions and recommendations but how would those discussions and recommendations not be considered advertisements?

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#166

Post by noisy_boy »

No need to ban anything. Just disable auto-populate on scrolling and rate limit all social media pages to one page per minute where the definition of "page" is what fits on a 6" display. In this day and age of anemic attention span, kids will throw their hands in the air and walk away in 5 mins.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#168

Post by FractalHQ »

hackernewds wrote: post #156
tastysandwich wrote: post #46

I just don't see any alternatives to banning social media, perhaps even up to the age of 18. The dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs and social media is just as addictive. It's not clear how you could effectively regulate this stuff - especially in our highly polarised political climate. The right will immediately target "wokeness", and the left will immediately target "hate speech". And the kids will be…

if the dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs, and evidently just as bad, why not ban them for adults as well?

As someone 8 years sober from social media, I’m convinced the benefits of banning it would far outweigh the cost.

Re: The case for banning children from social media

#169

Post by LoganDark »

It saddens me that there is no easy alternative to this idea. Social media is how I grew up and how I became a better person. Without social media I wouldn't have been allowed to meet some of the most important people in my life. Without social media I wouldn't have been able to explore or even discover my DID or ADHD. Or even my own identity, which I had to form essentially from scratch due to dissociation.

Most notably, I wouldn't have been able to develop any of the coping mechanisms that kept me from committing suicide during periods of depression. That is, the feeling that people out there care about me and would miss me if I died. The ability to talk to those people every day and feel love for them.

I'm autistic and the internet is the only place I was ever truly able to connect with. Only now that I've started ADHD medication—something I never would have done without the help of social media, since someone had to tell me personally that I might have ADHD—I am finally able to start trying to appreciate the real world.

But... I grew up years ago, and the world is different now. The social media back then is not the social media today. It does not have the same effect on children that it had on me, not even to mention that I'm highly neurodivergent.

Maybe that is what truly saddens me. Can not reproduce.

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