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Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws

abc.net.au

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Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws

#241

Post by tom_ »

afavour wrote: post #236
throw10920 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've grown very tired of this “any regulation is bad regulation” viewpoint, it doesn’t hold up to the slightest bit of scrutiny. This is sneering , where you don't respond to a particular poster's point, but instead attack an unrelated (and even fictional) group of people based on something you don't like, or an attitude that you subjectively perceive to be common. Precisely zero people in this thread have made the…

[EDIT: removed a snarky reply, need to remind myself not to engage with off topic trolling]

Sneering is one of the things posters are specifically requested not to do: "Please don't sneer".

Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws

#242

Post by alt227 »

academic_84572 wrote: post #33

Yes, this is flawed legislation, and yes kids will find ways to bypass these protections. But I think this is a step in the right direction. There is clear evidence of the harms caused by social media, especially for adolescents. We have to start trying things - albeit imperfectly - to get to a better place. We can learn a lot from the outcomes of this experiment.

> kids will find ways to bypass these protections.

But this is a change in law. Yes kids will easily be able to access social media if they want to, but it will be illegal and punishable.

Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws

#243

Post by kylecazar »

nomilk wrote: post #175

Every single Australian 's ID will have to be verified (in order to confirm their age). Depending on the degree of cooperation (/coercion) the Australian government has with social media companies, the Aus Govt will be able to access citizen social media data with relative ease. So no more pseudo anonymous accounts (or, at least, they'll be made more difficult, especially for non-technical folk). Reminds of the 'chil…

Bad for business, and arguably, the world.

Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws

#244

Post by slibhb »

afavour wrote: post #223
slibhb wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you really not see a difference between _lung cancer_ and "my teenager is moody"? The evidence that Facebook harms people is extremely iffy.

Do you not see the difference between “my teenager is moody” and “depression”? Using minimizing language here helps no one. I agree that there should be more formal research into the effects of social media but as a parent I see concern about the effects of social media in conversation with other parents and teachers all the time. It is something we all witness in our own lives to some extent or another. “We should l…

It's very hard, maybe impossible, to answer the question of whether social media harms people. It's like asking if TV, video games, etc harm people. Maybe -- but I don't trust the studies and at any rate, these are things people should decide for themselves and their families.

Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws

#245

Post by azemetre »

Funes- wrote: post #187
xp84 wrote: post #104

If you’re tempted to think “this isn’t worth it, too hard to enforce without affecting something else”… read “The Anxious Generation” by Jonathan Haidt. There is very real, irreparable harm being done to young people, and it merits trying to make it right, not just surrendering to it. Surely the problem of verifying a property of someone (the Boolean of “is over X age”) without sharing further details, is a surmounta…

Parents should be more responsible. That's it. This measure is, potentially, deeply ingraining the (terrible) idea that the State is responsible instead, so when all these young kids have children, they, just as their parents, will lack the ability to take responsibility and make their children more responsible by proxy, and so on, and so forth. It's a never ending cycle that is perpetuated by not tackling the proble…

How does a parent compete with trillion dollar corporations that hire psychologist, cognitive scientists, and neuroscientists to make their apps highly addictive?

Being honest here because just telling parents to deal with a societal ill seems very shortsighted and comes from an immense place of priviledge.

Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws

#246

Post by EduardoBautista »

cen4 wrote: post #218
afavour wrote: post #141

Like the spirit, dislike the execution. Passing legislation to “protect the kids” is politically easy. Bans are simple. Much more effective, IMO, would be to legislate the way social networks behave. Stop their most addictive patterns. Adults are just as susceptible as kids in my experience. If there needs to be anything kid specific, perhaps a block on using the service during school hours, or only for X hours a day…

Easiest way it to limit Ads. If you are selling more ads than there are minutes in a day * population some large enough group is getting mind fucked.

In my experience, the ads are the _least_ harmful parts of social media. It's the regular accounts that are causing FOMO and mental health issues by displaying unrealistic lifestyles that the majority of people won't ever achieve.

Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws

#247

Post by alt227 »

soulofmischief wrote: post #68
reliabilityguy wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to break it to you, but rest of the world is not US and have different socio-cultural dynamics. Regardless. We should optimize the outcomes for the collective good, and not for the corner cases. Of course it has its cost.

I think that's pretty obvious, no? The entire point is that I got to grow up with a wide variety of opinions and ideas from people across the world. I have good friends all over the world today thanks to the web. We have influenced and helped each other over the years. We depend on each other. That's not a corner case.

> I got to grow up with a wide variety of opinions and ideas from people across the world.

You got to grow up with the vocal minority on the internet, in otherwords the 4% of the worlds population which is most extreme in their views and most arrogant in how they express them.

Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws

#248

Post by mickeyfrac »

nomilk wrote: post #175

Every single Australian 's ID will have to be verified (in order to confirm their age). Depending on the degree of cooperation (/coercion) the Australian government has with social media companies, the Aus Govt will be able to access citizen social media data with relative ease. So no more pseudo anonymous accounts (or, at least, they'll be made more difficult, especially for non-technical folk). Reminds of the 'chil…

How many under 16s read newspapers or watch news anyway?

All you need to do is look up the mental health stats since the iPhone release to see why parents are massively concerned. There has never been a time when an alert parent didn’t have a fair idea of what info a kid was exposed to. This is why going to university is such an awakening.

Now the parents basically need a background in infosec to stop their kids accessing hardcore porn, violence and other mind bending content. That only works in your household. Do you stop play dates? Single your kids out as weird by banning all device use?

Societal norms do not move at the speed of technology, so regulation needs to be applied unless there’s another alternative.

Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws

#249

Post by throw10920 »

afavour wrote: post #236
throw10920 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've grown very tired of this “any regulation is bad regulation” viewpoint, it doesn’t hold up to the slightest bit of scrutiny. This is sneering , where you don't respond to a particular poster's point, but instead attack an unrelated (and even fictional) group of people based on something you don't like, or an attitude that you subjectively perceive to be common. Precisely zero people in this thread have made the…

[EDIT: removed a snarky reply, need to remind myself not to engage with off topic trolling]

> Ctrl-F “sneering”, no results

Ctrl-F for "sneer" - or just read the guidelines, as you should have before posting, and clearly did not:

> Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

> I for one find dismissing a thought by pointing to the big board of rules to be boring, unenlightening and not intellectually gratifying. But that’s just me.

You did not read the rest of my comment, then, which pointed out why sneering is bad. Or maybe you did, because you quoted it, but then chose to forget what you quoted?

Separate from the enumerated rules, it's pretty obvious why this kind of behavior - both in your original comment, and your reply - is generally anti-intellectual, and better suited for Reddit than HN.

If you're not going to follow the guidelines, and going to act in such a hostile and shallow manner, then perhaps you should go somewhere else.

> [EDIT: removed a snarky reply, need to remind myself not to engage with off topic trolling]

Reminding you of the HN guidelines that you repeatedly and blatantly violate, and calling out your hostile, dishonest, emotionally manipulative, and anti-intellectual behavior, is not trolling.

The only one engaging in off-topic trolling, by bringing up fictional positions that nobody adopted, is you.

Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws

#250

Post by throwaway71271 »

jedberg wrote: post #239
afavour wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My personal hunch is legacy media is largely driving this The level of conspiracy theory about the “mainstream media” feels out of control at times. Legacy media’s control over the population is already gone (as you stated), with what leverage would they be forcing this? Occam’s Razor: voters are genuinely concerned about the effect social media is having on kids. As a parent I hear about these concerns a lot. That…

> voters are genuinely concerned about the effect social media is having on kids. But where are they hearing about these effects that get them so concerned? Is it the Australian news? Australian news is fairly concentrated and is mostly owned by one family. A family that got a law passed forcing only Google and Facebook to pay pretty much only them. The conspiracy isn't that far fetched.

> But where are they hearing about these effects that get them so concerned? Is it the Australian news?

Their friends who have kids?

People still talk to other people.

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