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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

#181

Post by wizzwizz4 »

logifail wrote: post #144
colechristensen wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> prohibition breeds desire Sure, but we (as societies) have always had to deal with this. Wherever you are in the world there are things that simply aren't allowed under a certain age, whether that's 15, 16, 18, 21 or whatever. My (just turned) 16 year old told me last that he didn't think it looked to be that hard to drive a car. Me: "Umm. You'll find out. When you get to it."

It's not that hard to drive a car! Unfortunately, physics motivates us to have unreasonable expectations of our drivers, like "doesn't drive off the road at 100km/h ever", and "avoids all obstacles all of the time". That's the hard part.

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

#182

Post by energy123 »

iamnothere wrote: post #134
josephg wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you want your kid to be ostracised from their community at school? Do you think that would be good for them? IMO it’s much better - for everyone - to ban this stuff at the community level. Then there’s no FOMO.

If social media is as bad for them as you seem to think it is, then why wouldn’t it be best for them? I’m old enough to remember the same trash arguments over video games, rap music, even (for some unknown reason) the Disney Channel. This is just another moral panic.

There were also moral panics about teenage smoking, cannabis and alcohol.

There's three outcomes here, sorted from worst to best

- Kid uses social media, which is bad for kid due to social media.

- Kid doesn't use social media and everyone else does, which is bad for kid due to ostracism

- No kids use social media, which is best for kid because they don't get ostracized.

What you're saying here is to just settle for the middle option which is not as bad as the worst option but is still bad.

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

#183

Post by ceejayoz »

SunshineTheCat wrote: post #76
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.

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."

I, too, was a really great parent before having children.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/teen-goes-viral-for-tweeting-fr...

> Dorothy, who runs an Ariana Grande fan account, was suffering through a typical teenage nightmare: Her mom took away her phone. But the resourceful teen didn't let that stop her from communicating with her followers. First, she started using Twitter on her Nintendo DS, a handheld video game device.

> Sometime after finding her DS, it was taken again, so Dorothy started tweeting from yet another connected device: her fridge. "My mom uses it to google recipes for baking so I just googled Twitter," she told CBS News.

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

#184

Post by worldfoodgood »

DocTomoe wrote: post #152
worldfoodgood wrote: post #12

Great. Please raise the age to 115.

You know that you can just, you know, cancel your ISP contract and live in a hut in Montana, right? HN is 'social media', btw.

> HN is 'social media', btw.

Sure is! If you read the thread before posting in the thread, you'd see that it's come up already.

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

#186

Post by arcfour »

HeinzStuckeIt wrote: post #148
arcfour wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Cultures around the world have barred children from certain social places until they go through a rite of passage that the whole society, not just the parents, recognize.

Yes, cultures around the world have done this through parents parenting their child successfully, and not through arbitrary government overreach telling you how to parent.

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

#187

Post by arcfour »

energy123 wrote: post #182
iamnothere wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If social media is as bad for them as you seem to think it is, then why wouldn’t it be best for them? I’m old enough to remember the same trash arguments over video games, rap music, even (for some unknown reason) the Disney Channel. This is just another moral panic.

There were also moral panics about teenage smoking, cannabis and alcohol. There's three outcomes here, sorted from worst to best - Kid uses social media, which is bad for kid due to social media. - Kid doesn't use social media and everyone else does, which is bad for kid due to ostracism - No kids use social media, which is best for kid because they don't get ostracized. What you're saying here is to just settle for…

This is an overly simplistic, idealistic view of the world that leads to people thinking things like the OP are good and necessary. By recognizing that the world doesn't actually work this way at all—things aren't black and white, they're gray—you come to the conclusion that legislation is the worst way to solve these issues and is totally unnecessary.

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

#188

Post by ulrikrasmussen »

notepad0x90 wrote: post #164
ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was learning to program at age 11. This does indeed sound extreme.

Would it have made a big difference if you learned to code at 13? Is there a pressing need as to why kids need to code at a young age? Maybe there could be exceptions for children that develop sooner? If your other developmental metrics were met early on, I don't see why an earlier age would be a problem.

I don't know, maybe? Maybe it's not up to the state to decide whether my kids developmental metrics allows them screen time before age 13? What kind of nanny state is that?

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

#189

Post by HeinzStuckeIt »

arcfour wrote: post #186
HeinzStuckeIt wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cultures around the world have barred children from certain social places until they go through a rite of passage that the whole society, not just the parents, recognize.

Yes, cultures around the world have done this through parents parenting their child successfully, and not through arbitrary government overreach telling you how to parent.

Not really. The ideal you are describing, where there is no role for the community in regulating public spaces outside the household and determining when young people can enter them, strikes me as highly unusual historically and geographically. It’s an example of that streak of libertarianism that took off from early American internet culture and hardly exists outside internet pontificating.

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

#190

Post by eszed »

ceejayoz wrote: post #183
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."

I, too, was a really great parent before having children. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/teen-goes-viral-for-tweeting-fr... > Dorothy, who runs an Ariana Grande fan account, was suffering through a typical teenage nightmare: Her mom took away her phone. But the resourceful teen didn't let that stop her from communicating with her followers. First, she started using Twitter on her Nintendo DS, a handheld video game devi…

That's the hacker spirit!
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