How will Australia's under-16 social media ban work? We asked the law's enforcer (2024) • Hacker News Board

Re: How will Australia's under-16 social media ban work? We asked the law's enforcer (2024)

#51

Post by WarOnPrivacy » Sat, Feb 01, 2025, 6:09 PM UTC

reshlo wrote: post #37

mianos wrote: post #15

As an Australian parent of a 14-year-old, I find social media to be a significant hassle. Yet, I know delivery drivers who are far more technologically proficient than many government leaders. I had expected that, even if the public face was somewhat just a pretty face and a good talker, there would be a knowledgeable team working behind the scenes. However, this ban has convinced me that there isn’t a single informe…

And if you weren’t already convinced, along comes the article to drive that point home… > “I think the genesis of this movement has been Jonathan Haidt, author of the book The Anxious Generation, and he even admits some of the research is mixed. And it's true that it is not necessarily causal.”

For anyone looking for info on Jonathan Haidt, Techdirt has covered him for a while.

https://www.techdirt.com/tag/jonathan-haidt/

JH is the poster child for SM->Youth MH alarmism. His flawed premise have directed society down a wrong road.

Re: How will Australia's under-16 social media ban work? We asked the law's enforcer (2024)

#52

Post by averageRoyalty » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 2:02 AM UTC

kennysoona wrote: post #49

averageRoyalty wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of teens don't have the skillset to cover their tracks like that. Although the vast majority of parents don't know how to check logs. The issue here (as always) is a parenting one. If you are supervising your children (as is your responsibility) then these issues can't happen. I hear from people all the time that supervision is unrealistic and not feasible, from the same people who have 12+ hours of…

> The vast majority of teens don't have the skillset to cover their tracks like that. Every class has a classmate, or sibling or friend of a classmate who would have the skills, and you only need one such kid for a few hundred people. > The issue here (as always) is a parenting one. If you are supervising your children (as is your responsibility) then these issues can't happen. I would say teens shouldn't be supervis…

> Every class has a classmate, or sibling or friend of a classmate who would have the skills, and you only need one such kid for a few hundred people.

You're discussing organised conspiracy, opsec across teenagers here, and a subject knowledge cover all sorts of different networks and devices across a single source unlikely for teenagers. Not to mention many hours of tech support. It's therotically possible, but in reality it's unlikely.

> I would say teens shouldn't be supervised to this extent and pushback against such tight supervision is natural and IMO justified.

You're right, my statement came across too absolutist. I'm not advocating for a prison level supervision program, but an awareness of what your child is doing online and who they're interacting with. There are also other elements that come down to parenting - building healthy and trusting relationships with your kids, giving them pathways to be able to talk to you about mistakes or things they're uncomfortable with, pushing for honesty as a core attribute, etc.

A mixture of these things and a reasonable level of age appropriate supervision will remove this problem in all but the most extreme edge cases. However most parents don't do even the bare minimum - giving their kids phones, not bothering to learn how to set up restrictions, spending their time staring at their own devices, etc.

The issue that is being attempted to solve here is a parenting one fundamentally, not a technology or government policy one.

Re: How will Australia's under-16 social media ban work? We asked the law's enforcer (2024)

#53

Post by kennysoona » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 6:49 AM UTC

averageRoyalty wrote: post #52

kennysoona wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The vast majority of teens don't have the skillset to cover their tracks like that. Every class has a classmate, or sibling or friend of a classmate who would have the skills, and you only need one such kid for a few hundred people. > The issue here (as always) is a parenting one. If you are supervising your children (as is your responsibility) then these issues can't happen. I would say teens shouldn't be supervis…

> Every class has a classmate, or sibling or friend of a classmate who would have the skills, and you only need one such kid for a few hundred people. You're discussing organised conspiracy, opsec across teenagers here, and a subject knowledge cover all sorts of different networks and devices across a single source unlikely for teenagers. Not to mention many hours of tech support. It's therotically possible, but in r…

> You're discussing organised conspiracy, opsec across teenagers here, and a subject knowledge cover all sorts of different networks and devices across a single source unlikely for teenagers. Not to mention many hours of tech support. It's therotically possible, but in reality it's unlikely.

Alternatively, I'm discussing a tech savvy teen creating something that takes maybe an hour to setup and it spreading via word of mouth, which seems pretty likely.

I agree it makes sense to monitor internet activity to an extent, I just don't know to what extent. being able to look up the stuff I was able to look up in the 90s was incredibly useful to my development, even if it would not have been allowed. I might monitor, reluctantly and mainly for certain keywords, but mostly I would want to foster trust and responsibility.