The aussies are huge fans of big brother
Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban
211–220 of 1001 posts
Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban
#212I feel like everyone in this thread is assuming this is a good faith move by Australia to help kids in school and with socialization. I think phones and social media are harmful, but I get the sense there's a political motive behind this. We've been hearing politicians complain for years that they're losing the youth when it comes to long-standing foreign policy positions, etc... And suddenly they ban social media. R…
All the ban does is stop kids from having accounts, if the service allows anonymous usage then they can still find somewhere to doom scroll. My teen son has been blocked from Snapchat, and was this evening doom scrolling on Tik Tok until I blocked it on our home network.
Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban
#213Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban
#214I feel like everyone in this thread is assuming this is a good faith move by Australia to help kids in school and with socialization. I think phones and social media are harmful, but I get the sense there's a political motive behind this. We've been hearing politicians complain for years that they're losing the youth when it comes to long-standing foreign policy positions, etc... And suddenly they ban social media. R…
I actually do think people directly see the negative public health impact, its so visceral in so many parents lives, and that that is the driving force behind all of this. I love being cynical, but I actually do buy these efforts as being purely "for the kids", kind of thing. Sure, there are knock-on effects, but I do buy the good faith-ness of phone bans in school and of these social media bans for kids.
It's very unfortunate. As a parent, I feel like it requires regulation at the national level because I can't win against Meta (FB, Insta), Google (Youtube), Snapchat and TikTok.
Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban
#215I feel like everyone in this thread is assuming this is a good faith move by Australia to help kids in school and with socialization. I think phones and social media are harmful, but I get the sense there's a political motive behind this. We've been hearing politicians complain for years that they're losing the youth when it comes to long-standing foreign policy positions, etc... And suddenly they ban social media. R…
I don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation, sexual and violent content, crypto and fintech scams, etc. Especially when this content is packaged up to them and commodified.
These platforms make more money than the ATO (Australian Tax Office) brings in a year. I think they have the moral obligation and means to create safer spaces- either inside or seperate from their adult platforms; they can reduce or prevent the types of harms when children are exposed to this type of content.
Whether this approach is the best one, or even worth it as it is written in law is definitely something you can argue, but the idea that there isn't a legitimate goal here (keeping children safe), just isn't true. I know not everyone that says this always has good intentions, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be preventing harm upon them.
If you look back at vox pops from when drink-driving laws were introduced, or when seatbelts became mandatory, or when ID requirements were tightened, the arguments for and against were eerily similar. We haven’t changed much in that regard, but now people wear seatbelts, children can’t buy cigarettes as easily as they used to, and drink-driving rates have fallen. I think these are noble goals.
Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban
#216Putting "teens" in the title is misleading. The ban is for ages 15 and below.
The ban is also for anyone who refuses to submit their private data (face scan or government ID) to an unrelated 3rd party company which will invariably store that data with insufficient security.
The ban does not specify how companies are supposed to do it.
Eg Snapchat is not requiring ID (which the average Australian 15yo wouldn't have anyway), they're trying to determine age with the user's camera, and this is trivially spoofed using video played back on another device.
Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban
#217Putting "teens" in the title is misleading. The ban is for ages 15 and below.
Thir teen , four teen , fif teen . It's half of the "teens" someone experiences before hitting the age of majority. I think it's fine to say "teen" in the title.
TIL English teenager isn't necessarily the translation of Dutch tiener. Wikipedia at least says 10–19 for us and 13–19 for English. In German the word teenager is also used and the page gives both definitions on the same page without realising it's self-contradictory
Idk that anyone takes this so literally (as that you're only a teenager if your cardinal age ends in the literal word teen and so twelve is definitely not a teenager), I've always understood it as "in their tens" but that may be my origin
Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban
#218I feel like everyone in this thread is assuming this is a good faith move by Australia to help kids in school and with socialization. I think phones and social media are harmful, but I get the sense there's a political motive behind this. We've been hearing politicians complain for years that they're losing the youth when it comes to long-standing foreign policy positions, etc... And suddenly they ban social media. R…
All the ban does is stop kids from having accounts, if the service allows anonymous usage then they can still find somewhere to doom scroll. My teen son has been blocked from Snapchat, and was this evening doom scrolling on Tik Tok until I blocked it on our home network.
I'm curious to understand why your approach to TikTok is banning it. Why do you think this is the right solution? Are you concerned at all about your son's ability to cope independently from oversight and control?
Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thir teen , four teen , fif teen . It's half of the "teens" someone experiences before hitting the age of majority. I think it's fine to say "teen" in the title.
TIL English teenager isn't necessarily the translation of Dutch tiener. Wikipedia at least says 10–19 for us and 13–19 for English. In German the word teenager is also used and the page gives both definitions on the same page without realising it's self-contradictory Idk that anyone takes this so literally (as that you're only a teenager if your cardinal age ends in the literal word teen and so twelve is definitely n…
Where I am, "teens" is 13-19 because they are all suffixed with "teen". Ten, eleven, and twelve are generally called "pre-teens", if anything.
Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban
#220Why 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.
TV programming has to broadly appeal to society generally... you can't really go down a niche algorithm that progressively feeds you more specific content until you're radicalized any certain way (it can sorta, see conservative media, but there are some guardrails). Social media can with much less restriction.