221–230 of 453 posts
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I would be pretty happy about social media being banned for everyone if not the immense possibilty for the government to abuse this law to disrupt undesired communication altogether.
This website is social media.
But you know what I mean, right? The ones using intricate algorithms and tracking to keep you "engaged" and manipulate what you read and see
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I was programming age 5 in BASIC. Raspberry Pis are the modern equivalent and I think every child should have one. > they learn how to function without technological dependencies. So like the Amish? Or are they still too technologically dependent and children need to be banned from pulleys, fulcrums, wheels, etc.?
I think a better distinction is internet enabled software. I had a good time programming BASIC on my V-Tech pseudocomputer, at age 9. But that's a world away from tiktok, reels and the predatory surveillance economy.
You can teach kids electronics, have them construct toys that work on batteries,etc... work on components that don't require programming. teach them algorithms, math, crypto,etc.. without using computers.
If you're teaching kids how to code, you should give them the skills that will help them learn _what_ to code first?
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Neither of those examples result in social ostracism from peers.
I think you are massively overstating how important it is to the kids that they have a social media account. How can it hold that kids would be ignored in real life because they don't interact virtually?
Connecting online is the primary social space for many kids nowadays, not in person.
Some parents (or those without kids) have a bit of a naive view and think ‘social media’ and just imagine Facebook, instagram etc - things they understand and that don’t provide much connection.
The kids connect using private accounts, completely different apps, or even just inside the chat of other apps like games, if that is where your specific group hangs out.
You can really tell the parents vs non-parents in these comments.
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 expa…
I dont feel as if any of that applies here. In fact HN has gotten further from a social media site by not displaying comment points.
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Lots of bending over backwards and appeals to authority to rationalize an emotional feeling of "This time is different." Again, every generation thinks that. This time might be different. But it's probably not.
Letting people figure out cigarettes were bad for them took a very long time, and if social media is another form of addiction why not treat it how we treat other addictive products? We could assume that this time is different and people, well children and minors specifically, will learn to avoid the addiction rather than banning them like alcohol, cigarettes and gambling. This time might be different. But it's proba…
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This website is social media.
This is true, it's also not devoid of addictiveness :) But you know what I mean, right? The ones using intricate algorithms and tracking to keep you "engaged" and manipulate what you read and see
I'll also add that I'm not specifically opposed to banning minors from using social media. It would probably also be better if it was illegal for children to buy their own soda tbh.
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I don't know much about the Amish, so I can't comment. Teaching kids how to code isn't all that meaningful on its own. knowing what to do once you learn how to code is. If your plan is to teach your kid how to code, teach them to solve problems without code at that age. Unless you're serious about thinking learning at age 5 vs age 13 would make a big difference. I think every kid 13 and above should have an rpi too.
I think you're missing the point. 5 year old me was writing their own computer games and at no point did I need or ask my parents how to do it (though they did buy the computer; thanks mum and dad!), they didn't know. There were a plethora of books in the library on how to program, and here you are suggesting I, and everyone like me, be banned from doing so. You'd probably also ban me from the library by assuming I c…
First, my proposal is a delay, not a ban. This is such a good idea, that a lot of FAANG CEO's are doing this for their kids welfare (more or less) already.
I think the overall welfare of kids should be weighed against the benefits.
I think you should have been learning to tinker with electronics, solve math algorithms and develop all kinds of curiosities. the future of being a programmer involves competing with LLMs, you have to be good at knowing what to program. Humans aren't needed when it comes to simply knowing how to write code.
I acknowledge that there will be exceptions, and perhaps that should be considered. but also lookup terms like "ipad babies" and how gen-alpha is turning out. Most parents don't teach their kids how to code in basic. and content regulation for kids is futile, unless you want the government monitoring your devices "for the children's sake".
> If your children show an aptitude or a fascination for a topic, I hope you feed that and praise them for it.
Same, but I hope you let them learn things in the right order and consider their overall long term wellbeing instead of temporary satisfaction. Children did fine without computers for all of humanity's history. the nature of children hasn't changed in the past 3 decades. What you consider feeding might actually be stagnating. If there is a good and practical way to make sure that children are developed well enough to interact with computers, and we can also make sure that the content they consume is age-appropriate without implementing a dystopian surveillance state, i'm all for it.
But pretending the problem doesn't exist, and letting 99% of children suffer because 1% of kids might learn BASIC doesn't sound like a good plan.
I think we need fewer people having children but I also think the whole community should help raise these fewer children.
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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.