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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

#231

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."

Let's do away with the laws requiring shops to check ID before selling cigarettes. After all, a parent can simply tell their child not to smoke cigarettes and that's clearly good enough, right? All in the name of less government, which is clearly the most important priority here.

You make a persuasive case, but nicotine is genuinely addictive. Something to do with releasing stored glucose and substituting for food, and causing irritability on what I take to be a physiological level on withdrawal. Otherwise I'd agree.

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

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 don't think HN is a social media site. The goals of a social media site is to keep you engaged for as long as possible with the assistance of various algorithms, dark patterns while your data is sold to businesses so they can have a slice of your attention pie via ads and supported content. 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 p…

You can argue this, but if you hand over this authority to government, it will not be up to you.

Fundamentally this is an upvote driven social media platform no different from Reddit, which everyone agrees is social media.

If you live in Denmark, get ready to tie your State ID to your HN profile to login and hope that you don't say anything that would make the wrong official (or your employer) upset with you.

As we know from history, well-intentioned government laws have zero unintended consequences, always work perfectly every time, and are very easy to remove once they've been created...

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

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 strongly suspect the network connection is the issue, not the software. Let the kids have graphing calculators!

I generally agree. But so much software today is useless without a network connection. Online help (anybody remember those chm files?) was often very very good, because it was supposed to be _the_ documentation for most software.

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

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I look forward to being able to buy your porn surfing habits on the darkweb in a few years.

The ID card allows age verification without disclosing the identity to the service which needs the age verified.

You don't think that the digital ID provider is keeping logs of which sites requested to verify which users? Even government websites are not exactly known for their high security.

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

#235

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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 doesn't look to be that hard to be a dentist.

You drill a dark spot on tooth and put some resin inside to fill it up. /s

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

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I don't think that's a nanny state. you can't give your kid alcohol for example at that age, let them drive, get married (don't get me started on some countries!), operate a chainsaw or other dangerous machinery. This is a danger to their mental development. Look at teacher forums all over. r/Teachers on reddit should be illuminating. Tech and parents sticking devices to their kids instead of raising them properly ha…

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

#237

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."

Many countries have the driving license at 16. In France it’s accompanied by a parent; in USA it’s the full driving license (I’ve learnt at 13 and never had an accident for 30 years). 16 is ok if you withstand peer pressure.

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

#238

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.

If you're a parent then act like one. You're perfectly able to enact that ban yourself - why do you need the governments help?

you can take a teen’s phone off them and they can just walk into a store and buy an inexpensive second hand handset and use the WiFi from a local cafe.

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

#239
Why don't governments start at the source instead of at the access?

I always have questions that go a bit deeper but maybe because I think differently. I understand it can trample on rights, but I guess I like to still ask and have the thought experiment anyway.

If things like this are so harmful, and it's recognized why is it okay for a parent to give their child access to it in the first place? Why do kids get to control what they have access to just because parents don't want to parent well, and because they think it'll be a death sentence for their kids social groups? Is it feasible to police parents in that way? Would we even want that?

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

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Books, for instance. Some people will read for five hours without pausing, and they can use three or four books every week.

What is your point? I'm afraid I missed the point of your statement.
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