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Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

reuters.com

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Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#241

Post by Lendal »

cess11 wrote: post #192
feb012025 wrote: post #161

I 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…

Whether intentional or not, one consequence of a success in this area would be to isolate older people from the views of young people and to stifle the younger generations influence on these communication media in the future. Personally I suspect these elderly people in powerful political positions to be quite afraid of kids, it wouldn't be the first time in history, but it's likely the first time they're this old an…

I chuckled when I read that, when over-16 is considered elderly.

What will we do when we no longer have the views of 14 year olds at our fingertips? Well, hopefully they will write their views down on notepaper, and in two years we'll hear all about it.

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#242

Post by hearsathought »

mullingitover wrote: post #71

Florida passed a similar law, and a bunch of other states are attempting to but are blocked by federal courts. Will be interesting to see if the tech industry allows it, or decides to break up the federal government before it becomes too powerful.

> Florida passed a similar law, and a bunch of other states are attempting to but are blocked by federal courts.

When much of government ( federal, state, local ) communication is done via social meda, would it be legal to ban anyone from accessing it?

Or are official government social media sites required to be accessible to everyone?

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#243

Post by josho »

strangattractor wrote: post #237
feb012025 wrote: post #161

I 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…

Meta == Phillip Morris - This is a public health issue and will likely need to be treated like tobacco. Kids can't vote so I don't see the political motivation.

Good analogy.

The solution, however, isn't prohibition or age restrictions; it's either regulating the algorithms or holding these companies responsible for the adverse outcomes their platforms contribute to. Safe harbor laws made sense when tech wasn't filtering/promoting content, now that they are influencing the material we see, these laws must no longer apply.

This may mean adopting a modern equivalent to libel laws. Something akin to: if an algorithm pushes false information, the company behind the algorithm can be sued for harm. Disallow terms of service that force arbitration or cap liability limits.

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#244

Post by gen6acd60af »

artur44 wrote: post #191

Honestly, this feels like another case where the headline sounds bold, but the real impact will be minimal. Any age-based restriction ends up in the same place: platforms are forced to collect more data just to “prove” someone’s age. When the target group is teenagers, that’s basically a privacy disaster waiting to happen. From a technical perspective, this is impossible to enforce cleanly. Anyone with even basic int…

Please don't do this here.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46208058

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#246

Post by feb012025 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #209
feb012025 wrote: post #161

I 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…

>We've been hearing politicians complain for years that they're losing the youth when it comes to long-standing foreign policy positions, When Twitter added its location feature and it turned out that political accounts with millions of followers are run out of Pakistan or India you have to be crazy to still deny the scope of foreign influence that is exerted over social media. You see it with the rise in anti-semiti…

I would reject the notion that shifting public sentiment is a result of foreign influence campaigns, which is not to say it doesn't exist to an extent.

I've seen plenty of real information, from non-anonymous American journalists that I'm certain are the largest factor in any sea-change amongst Americans.

And despite the claim, I've yet to see solid evidence of large, pakistan-based accounts wielding massive influence on twitter. Most anonymous accounts that focus on current events tend to be located in America, Europe, or Canada from what I've seen.

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#248

Post by squigz »

safety1st wrote: post #90
rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #72

Why 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!

I don't think it's just the ads, I mean we had magazines, TV, and the web, they all had advertising, and no population-level impact on child & teen mental health impact was observed as these were adopted. Then we got the one-two punch of social media apps on phones, and everywhere we saw these get adopted, we saw depression and anxiety increase en masse. My own theory is that if you have to pick one thing it's the ph…

My own theory is that kids are rightfully anxious and depressed as they can now easily see the state of the world and the direction it's going. This is the world they have to enter soon, and they can do almost nothing to change it, so of course they're more anxious/depressed.

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#249

Post by rhines »

baby wrote: post #159
killingtime74 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Socialising != Social media. Teens can still use messenger, WhatsApp, phonecalls, text or even....face to face!

That's true. I'll say this though: my social life skyrocketed thanks to Facebook when I was ~18. Not sure what kind of impact it would have had earlier, I was def. more of a kid and social medias were not a thing anyway. Makes sense to me to have an age limit considering cyber bullying and teen suicides and all.

Social media is no longer social - it's just media. At least for most people anyway. The average user, and probably kids even more so, are just scrolling through.

If you're posting as well, or at least commenting on stuff and having discussions with people you know (even if you just know them online), I think that's fine. Like forums, or being in group chats with friends on Facebook, or sharing photos you take with a specific community.

It's when you're only consuming (like scrolling TikTok or Instagram), or when your comments are written for the algorithm rather than for actual discussion (like on Reddit, or even Hackernews to an extent), that social media is an issue.

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#250

Post by JohnMakin »

strangattractor wrote: post #237
feb012025 wrote: post #161

I 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…

Meta == Phillip Morris - This is a public health issue and will likely need to be treated like tobacco. Kids can't vote so I don't see the political motivation.

They'll vote eventually, and preferably won't be damaged in irreparable ways by then
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