421–430 of 593 posts
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"It's not hard. It just upsets vested interests." Yeah, this is what makes regulating anything hard or pointless, if the "vested interests" are powerful enough.
This is primarily a problem in American where bribing politicians is seen as a fundamental freedom for corporations.
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Kids are as different from each other as adults can be, so there's not really a one size fits all solution. That said, we've found that setting limits works fine. At least for the ages under 10. There's a limit in duration and time they can use a screen, both of which are easy to keep taps on. It's 5-10 minutes before leaving for school, if and only if they are all ready to leave. It encourages them to be done quicke…
> I feel that they do need some freedom in tech land to follow their curiosities I wish that was how it was used, however my own experience (and that of parents I speak to) is that the firehose is determined by the algorithm, not the individual which subsequently drives the habits and interests. For example, my son will want to look up how to do something in Minecraft. Ace, he's using the resources available to him t…
If the internet as we've made it over the last 20 years is a breeding ground for addictive content and advertising, why not just stop using it? If we're going to ban anything because of this problem it should be situations that effectively force us to use the internet or be left behind.
Kids shouldn't have to be online for school. Adults shouldn't have to be online to get a job. Banning those kinds of situations would at least leave the door open for individuals to decide if using the internet regularly is really worth it to them.
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Funnily enough with ChatGpt like language models available even without banning censorship will become very prevalent. Instead of banning your child from social media outright you will be able to get a bot to monitor their account and filter out what you feel is inappropriate. So instead of their social feed being controlled by a company it can be monitored and controlled by parents.
> So instead of their social feed being controlled by a company it can be monitored and controlled by parents. Huge win for helicopter parents
> These bills will likely face considerable constitutional challenges. Previous attempts to block minors from accessing Web sites via broad legislation, including the Child Online Protection Act, from 1998, have been struck down on First Amendment grounds. You might get farther instead of banning children from social media, ban all ads to children on social media. Every single ad impression shown to a child is a $1,0…
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It's your (our) generation who built all this stuff. We thought it would be "neat".
It's a very small subset of our generation that built all this stuff.
We signed away our integrity for validation and money.
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Ads have very little to do with the harmful effects on minors of social media use. And besides, banning ads will not prevent social media from trying to lock minors in, either to already have them when they turn 18, or to benefit from peer network effects to rope in more of the 18+ audience.
But the ability to show ads is the only reason to allow the youth on the apps. Remove the commercial reason for brainwashing kids, and the rest will probably sort itself out (I guess is the logic)
I just don't see any alternatives to banning social media, perhaps even up to the age of 18. The dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs and social media is just as addictive. It's not clear how you could effectively regulate this stuff - especially in our highly polarised political climate. The right will immediately target "wokeness", and the left will immediately target "hate speech". And the kids will be…
> That's why I think, don't bother trying to regulate social media. Just ban it for under 18s when they're most vulnerable. > I don't relish this solution either. When I was 13, I was on forums making online friends. I loved it. But it was clearly different back then, before smartphones, before content-creators, when the internet was mostly nerds. The main difference between forums like that (which still exist) and s…
Advertising to kids is obviously a big part of the problem. But it's not the ONLY problem with social media – it's just one piece of a much bigger puzzle.
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> People feel uneasy and judged if someone refuses to drink alcohol with them I always read this on HN but I've never cared, or met any adult that seemed to care, when only a few of us drink beer in a group. Is this a US/Anglosphere thing maybe?
In the UK, it's definitely a thing. Being teetotal excludes you from a lot of social events, and even somewhat unrelated events. We have hiking/fitness groups that typically end the training session with a round at the pub. Many workplaces go to the pub together after work. Not engaging with this can set you back socially and professionally, because drinking is hugely ingrained in the British population. Most people…
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100% agree. Social media is as addictive as drugs but even more damaging with life long effects on that person. A big part of going through teenage years is the development of one's own personality and finding YOUR OWN identity. Figuring out who you are and who you want to be, building real relationships with real people to learn about social contracts, trust, bonds, friendships, mistakes, and most importantly it is…
>but even more damaging with life long effects on that person. I suspect heroin has led to considerably more felony convictions and fatal overdoses than any social media platform.
I just don't see any alternatives to banning social media, perhaps even up to the age of 18. The dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs and social media is just as addictive. It's not clear how you could effectively regulate this stuff - especially in our highly polarised political climate. The right will immediately target "wokeness", and the left will immediately target "hate speech". And the kids will be…
The main goal of raising children, after keeping them alive, is teaching them the skills they need to survive and (hopefully) thrive in their world. These skills have changed over time and vary based on environment, society. Today, that means teaching kids how to cope with social media. It is in their world. It’s not going away. As a parent, I can understand the temptation to just want to ban it. I wish I could ban a…
Snakes are part of the world, but you teach your kids that you don't let snakes into your house because they are toxic. You can apply the same analogy to social media.
You make social media inaccessible to your kids until they have developed into a confident young adult at which point they will have acquired the mental strength to navigate through the toxicity of social media themselves with a strong self identity which will make them immune to a lot of the online grift and attempts to feed off their insecurities.