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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

#411

Post by musicale »

b112 wrote: post #354
blitzar wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once the data is in bosses will see the massive benefits and ban mobile phones entirely during work hours.

Good. I recall "no personal calls" at work as a rule, in the old days. Inbound emergencies allowed, of course. Why do people think looking at their personal email, or looking at their phone is acceptable at work? It's no different than sitting, reading a magazine pre-Internet. The very idea would have been absurd.

> It's no different than sitting, reading a magazine pre-Internet. The very idea would have been absurd

Breaks improve employee health and reduces burnout. Not taking breaks harms performance.

Work breaks are also required by law in many states.

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

#412

Post by defrost »

encrypted_bird wrote: post #410
defrost wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As I said, no one becomes a billionaire without doing horrible things because said horrible things are exactly how you amass such a large amount of wealth amongst a single person. Not exactly true. Andrew Forrest became a billionaire via Fortescue Metals and leveraging development of vast iron ore fields for sale to China. Since then he's focused on renewable energy to reduce harmful emissions in resource mining. H…

The same Andrew Forrest whose company were found to have knowingly destroyed hundreds of local Australian aboriginal sacred sites in its mining operations? Also, he's a billionaire. He may not be "scum of the earth", and maybe he's tried to do better in his latter days, but he still got horrifically rich off of everyday workers' sweat, injuries, and hardships (mining is no joke). Besides, this philanthropy is largely…

That's the one, and there's the rub.

Are you comfortable blaming individuals like Forrest for the destruction that global consumption of iron, copper, and renewables brings, or would you rather 'fess up to collective responsiblity?

The largest Copper resource in the US currently is on naive American sacred land, and the latest proposal for providing rare earth elements essntial for modern lifestyles would disrupt a river system that spans a land area similar in size to Texas.

Do you wish to blame Forrest for these things, or the end customers and their demands?

NB: I've things to attend to now, I'll be back in some hours if you've an interest in all this.

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

#413

Post by encrypted_bird »

defrost wrote: post #412
encrypted_bird wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same Andrew Forrest whose company were found to have knowingly destroyed hundreds of local Australian aboriginal sacred sites in its mining operations? Also, he's a billionaire. He may not be "scum of the earth", and maybe he's tried to do better in his latter days, but he still got horrifically rich off of everyday workers' sweat, injuries, and hardships (mining is no joke). Besides, this philanthropy is largely…

That's the one, and there's the rub. Are you comfortable blaming individuals like Forrest for the destruction that global consumption of iron, copper, and renewables brings, or would you rather 'fess up to collective responsiblity? The largest Copper resource in the US currently is on naive American sacred land, and the latest proposal for providing rare earth elements essntial for modern lifestyles would disrupt a r…

I would rather blame both.

It is our collective society's fault, yes, but the billionaires are the ones who exploit it. They are just as bad, if not worse.

Also, apologies, but I edited my above comment, and wasn't able to submit it before you replied.

And no worries. Good luck on your things. Honestly, I'm kinda done with this conversation, as interesting as it has been. It feels like it's run its course.

In any case, I hope you have a good day!

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

#414

Post by rsolva »

squigz wrote: post #361
glaucon wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Banning personalised ads I'm in favour of anything that tries to address the appaling effects of social media, but as long as there is advertising that will, surely, be some sort of personalisation. In the past you bought a magazine about, say, gardening, and all the ads were about gardening. The advertisers were betting that most people reading a gardening magazine were interested in gardening products, the ads we…

> to some degree This is the key part, isn't it? There's a large degree of difference between "these garden magazine readers might enjoy these gardening ads" and "based on our profile of you collected over 15 years and including every single bit of private data we can acquire about you, we think you might like..." Personally I think any advertising targeted at children should be banned, but I guess that's probably to…

Ads that could be interpreted as targeted towards children is banned in Norway. Unfortunately we have not managed to enforce this sensible law in the digital realm, where children are routinely and brutally pillaged for their habits an behaviors and shown ads based on their insecurities and fumbling step into the wider world. It is truly sickening to observe society's naïveté, and especially how big tech (and thus data harvesting) has become a mandatory part of schools now, where every child is provided with personal device at the age of 6.

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

#415

Post by notepad0x90 »

ipaddr wrote: post #385
notepad0x90 wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that survivor's bias? there are many other mental development goals chidren should have. for the very small number of children that will learn to program at that age, there is no harm in delaying it a few years, but for the vast majority whose development would be stunted, or worse, they'll be harmed. Some kids learn to drink and smoke at a that age too, and many turn out ok.

Kids who drink qt an earlier age respect it more. Americans waiting until 21 ends up in binge drink / problem drinking. Social media is going to be the same.

No they don't, that's a lie adults tell themselves. Many adult alcoholics started drinking as children. People who "respect it more" tend to also be alcoholics. Very few people who start drinking as children abstain as adults.

Keep in mind that alcohol is also a carcinogen. Similar to cigarettes, even one drink shouldn't be tolerated. Even if a certain amount will have no ill effects on average, impacts on individuals depends on individual factors, so one harmless drink for you might be one deadly drink for someone else. It is poison.

That said, I don't judge anyone who uses substances. But there is no tolerable threshold to giving children poison.

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

#416

Post by notepad0x90 »

lm28469 wrote: post #402
tintor wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very extreme take. I learned to program at age 10. It is an amazing tool for mind development. Had to invent sine and cosine tables to make my computer games, before even encountering the concept at school.

YouTube is an amazing tool for learning too yet 99% of the traffic is for brain rot It doesn't matter how good the tool can be, what matters is how it actually is used

I agree. my argument is that the benefits of learning from youtube or computers in general is overshadowed by their harm for children undergoing development. Once a person is more or less developed, they can tackle riskier learning sources.

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

#417

Post by thw_9a83c »

lukasm wrote: post #201
trey-jones wrote: post #53

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.

I fully agree. There should be a complete ban on social media and similar addictive platforms for those under 16, and a nighttime ban (10 p.m.–7 a.m.) for users aged 16 to 18. We basically give cigarettes to children.

> nighttime ban (10 p.m.–7 a.m.)

I agree, and this is easy to implement. My kids have to hand over their phones every day before bedtime. I see no need for any institutional interference to implement such trivial policy in any family.

> We basically give cigarettes to children.

In my opinion, this is not a good comparison. Just because parents give their kids smartphones doesn't mean they want or force them to use social networks. Kids use them because it's socially acceptable, and they aren't warned against using them.

When I was a kid, my father sometimes asked me to go to the store to buy cigarettes for him. At that time, this was a socially acceptable thing for a parent to do. However, the problem of kids smoking cigarettes was almost non-existent. This is because every kid was strongly advised that only adults could do this. There would be consequences if you didn't obey this advice. By the way, I never started smoking.

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

#418

Post by lurking_swe »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #281
JoshTriplett wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if they do it with their own money, it's their phone. Children prior to 18 are not subhuman. If you're old enough to buy your own phone, you're old enough to decide whether and how to use it.

The idea of treating under 18s like they are human is extremely undesirable in the USA because it among other things opens up a lot of doctors to be held accountable for their participation in the mass mutilation of baby boys. It also holds a whole lot of physically abusive parents to a standard where their children could call CPS and get their parents in legal trouble for corporal punishment. Of course, these are in…

what did i just read

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

#419

Post by tomhow »

isaacremuant wrote: post #379
tomhow wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't comment like this on Hacker News, no matter what you're replying to. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

If you are not doing this same thing to every comment trying to remove my freedom, which then will call me some label for disagreeing with COVID policies or whatever then I can't really take any of the guidelines seriously. I was here when it was all about segregating the ones who disagreed from life, even denying healthcare while still forcing them to pay taxes. We're way past fake politeness when the discourse is a…

I don't even know what your position or point was. It’s irrelevant. We're don't moderate for/against any side or position. We just don't have time to take that into account. The guidelines apply regardless of what you're trying to say, and we routinely get these kinds of grandiose claims about our covert motivations and biases, when the reality is far more boring: just preventing this site from turning into a flaming hellscape is a big enough task, without trying to complicate things further by promoting any particular ideology or narrative.

For what it's worth I was here behind the scenes in 2020-21, and I know very well that plenty of effort was made to give all perspectives a fair hearing.

What we're asking for is quite simple. The guidelines are a condition of participating here. A sincere effort to observe them is expected from everyone, otherwise it's fine to choose not to participate.

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

#420

Post by martin82 »

thw_9a83c wrote: post #408
trey-jones wrote: post #53

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.

> 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. I see no logic in the above statement. You gave your kid a smartphone when she was 14. By today's standards, that's very late, and it's basically just one year before Denmark's proposed ban on social media. You can ban your child from having a smartphone for an arb…

"adults use smartphones"

Is this so?

I think of it like the time when Hong Kong was flooded with Opium.

"adults smoke opium"

If you find that too crass, there are countless other ways to put it:

"adults eat sugar"

"adults watch TV"

Just because everyone in the mainstream does something, DOES NOT mean that this is a good thing or a smart thing to do.

In fact, we can easily observe that the few adults who are at the absolute top of their game, the most skilled, the most wealthy, the most powerful... well guess what? They DO NOT use smartphones. They don't tweet. They don't have profiles anywhere.

Except for GPS directions, there is actually very very little actual need to use a smartphone. At work, you have a computer for access to Google. At home, you have a tablet or TV or books or a Kindle for media consumption.

You can just swipe a credit card for payments.

A smartphone is not at all needed to be a highly functioning adult.

In fact - it actually prevents you from ever unlocking your fullest potential by removing any chance for your brain to ever catch a breath and just be bored for half an hour and hear your own thoughts.

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