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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

#171

Post by angiolillo »

dyauspitr wrote: post #138
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.

All that local level stuff doesn’t work. As soon as a couple of kids have a smartphone, the online world becomes vastly more interesting than the day to day.

> All that local level stuff doesn’t work

I can't speak to anyone else, but it seems to be working well enough in our town. The overwhelming majority of kids don't have cell phones until high school. That doesn't mean your kids won't beg you for a smartphone, it just means you can say "no" without socially isolating them.

> As soon as a couple of kids have a smartphone

The point is to engage in collective action early enough that you can prevent these situations in the first place. Once a critical mass of kids have smartphones and their socialization and coordination moves to online spaces it becomes intensely isolating to be the only kid in a friend group without a smartphone.

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

#172

Post by skapadia »

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.

1000% agree.

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

#173

Post by Phelinofist »

Germanys ID has the technical means to allow something like that (age verification without disclosing identity), but knowing the German Gov and their absolute stasis something like this will never happen. It is absolutely necessary to do something like this, because social media has a net negative influence on society.

A lot of kids in my daughters class (~7yo's) are consuming brain rot content already. They shout "SIGMA BOY" or "SKIBIDI TOILET" like little retards during lessons. Yeah memes are cool and all, but not at this age.

While at it, ban lootboxes.

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

#174

Post by pembrook »

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.

Denmark's government has authoritarian aims and are one of the primary groups pushing chat control in the EU. I think you are falling for the "think of the children..." fallacy here.

This is a stepping stone towards further control elsewhere, especially once a framework for enforcement is in place (which nobody actually thinks about when emotionally reacting to feel-good ideas like this). How easy would it be to expand ID based age enforcement to tracking ALL online activity and cracking down on "non-approved" speech? No thanks. I'll handle parenting myself.

Also, if you don't care about the age number, and think social media is just objectively bad...why are you on this social media site? Isn't posting here the definition of hypocrisy...given you're supporting what you believe to be worse than cigarettes?

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

#175

Post by Jap2-0 »

DocTomoe wrote: post #149
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.

Teachers are not good indicators of measuring 'benefits', as they are both the beneficiaries of a more brain-dead, more bored, more asleep student body, they have rose-tinted ideas about the way things used to be, and they are also grading the success - which all too often comes down to compliance. That's why if this was a serious attempt to gauge whether smartphones are diametral or beneficial, we'd have a double-bl…

> they are... the beneficiaries of a more brain-dead, more bored, more asleep student body

> 'peace and quiet' in the classroom is mistaken for educational success.

To clarify, do you think that phones or the removal of phones leads to these outcomes? Do you think that teachers like or dislike phones? Or is the point that there are many biases both ways?

> they have rose-tinted ideas about the way things used to be

Some do. Are teachers the only ones?

> if this was a serious attempt to gauge whether smartphones are [detrimental] or beneficial, we'd have a double-blind, standardised anonymously-graded test.... Funny how no-one seems to be eager to finance such a study.

I am not sure how you would set this up in a way that does not fall victim to a dozen confounding variables. There have been comparisons of standardized tests before and after phone bans, of course, but those also fall victim to similar statistical issues.

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

#176

Post by IlikeKitties »

Semaphor wrote: post #160
IlikeKitties wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah, sorry I mixed up the old German Ausweisapp and the euID Reference App

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

#177

Post by balamatom »

jmye wrote: post #156
josephg wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[flagged]

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

#178

Post by [deleted] »

arcfour wrote: post #69
mrtesthah wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the kid feeling left out at school when they're the only one without a smartphone and can't participate in their friends' activities.

...and this needs to be solved with a law? Kids feeling left out over something well and truly inconsequentual?

[deleted]

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

#179

Post by zurfer »

DocTomoe wrote: post #157
zurfer wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're right, I didn't produce evidence in my comment. Smoking and lung cancer are more clear cut than social media problems in general.

The effects of social media are more complex and nuanced than smoking. There are a lot of studies that show that social media has a negative effect on mental well being. When someones dies of loneliness or birth rates collapse and young people have less sex than ever, social media is never the only cause and might not even be the main reason, but it seems to play an important role.

Also, I don't think all social media is bad. I do love these discussions on HN even or especially when we don't agree, but tiktok and similar services have a lot of bad incentives with regards to user well being.

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

#180

Post by pembrook »

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.

Bans that don't make sense at an individual level do not suddenly make sense at a community level. This is terrible "we'll make it up on volume" logic.

It's also the justification used for some of the dumbest laws in history.

Think about what level of enforcement is going to be required for this (National IDs tied to online activity), and then think about the fact that Denmark is one of the main governments pushing chat control. Now start to think about how, once this tracking/enforcement scheme is created, that it might be expanded to things outside the scope of this law.

Like communism, this idea sounds good in theory, but is going to turn into an authoritarian nightmare in practice.

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