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Banning Things for Other People Is Easy

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Re: Banning Things for Other People Is Easy

#61

Post by jjgreen »

kalleboo wrote: post #22
analog31 wrote: post #9

It seems like the things we ban for children are things that we might ban for everybody, but can get away with for children. Very few of those things are conclusively proven to be harmful -- perhaps firearms, motor vehicles, and smoking, and even those things put up a pretty good fight to stay alive as long as they did. Smoking is an interesting case. Vanishingly few people who smoke learned to do so as adults. Virtu…

It's a shame the age-scaled tobacco ban (I think it was proposed in the UK) never went though. You just start raising the legal age for tobacco by one year, every year. Eventually, nobody alive will still be a smoker and you can ban it outright without having taken it away from anyone.

That's still planned in the UK; Conservatives and Labour are both filled with puritans.

Re: Banning Things for Other People Is Easy

#62

Post by podgorniy »

> it’s easy to tax other people - the rich, bankers, benefits scroungers, energy executives

Taxing the working class is the easiest: do vat tax, force income tax. Tere is no way taxing rich or executives is comparably easy.

--

Let's not bother with taxing the rich to see what could happen when smallest number of people accumulate wealth in X times faster than anyone else.

And don't tell me "it's natural order of things", dying from desease in 35 is natural, dying in childbirthing is natural, becoming a monopoly is natural, circumventing competition is natural. Does not mean we need to keep doing these things.

Re: Banning Things for Other People Is Easy

#63

Post by NalNezumi »

I think the article misses the biggest point of the social media or any "ban" for children: the environment (social) effect.

(modern) children are essentially locked in their environment without much say. You go to school, you go to extra curricula activities. But the school you attend or other activities are often not your choice or in your control. On top of that, you often don't know better when it comes to what environments are actually available to you (or the effect of it).

This makes the dynamics completely different vs an adult.

I (adult) don't want to use social media? Fine I do that. Too big consequences in my immediate environment (all my friends/work use it) fine I'll change friends and work. Everyone is smoking but I don't want to? Fine I'll hang out with people that don't like smoking either. Hell I can even move country / location.

When everyone is smoking or using social media, a kid can't do anything about it. If that behavior is tied to social inclusion or "norm" then you're actively penalized for your choice and you can do almost nothing about it.

That's why we ban certain things for children. We know it won't work 100%, but taking it away from the school yard or social spaces have a profoundly different effect on children vs adult.

We can always dicuss WHAT to ban or not, but like the article, comparing adult to kids without acknowledging this is a red herring

Re: Banning Things for Other People Is Easy

#65

Post by pfisherman »

One thing I have not seen come up in these discussions is how these bans interact with the network effects. They might actually be one of the most effective tools we have to fight back against and punish platform businesses.

I assume that something like a partially effective ban could have a devastating impact on social media because it may push active users in the teen / adolescent demographic below the critical mass necessary for self sustaining growth and retention.

Has anyone done any studies on where that tipping point / critical mass is? How effective do these bans have to be to achieve their intended outcome?

Re: Banning Things for Other People Is Easy

#66

Post by Esophagus4 »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #23

Banning social media will never work, just as banning prostitution, drugs cigarettes and gambling don't work (in a broad scale). What we can do is change the public (and our) perception of it. Understanding you have a problem is always the first step in any N-step program for whatever addictive substance. Most adults don't see their own consumption and behaviour around social media as harmful or problematic or simply…

Banning cigarette sales actually does reduce smoking.[1] The same way banning drunk driving reduces instances of drunk driving.

But it’s not either-or. We can do both: ban cigarette sales for kids and change our perception of it with informational campaigns.

[1]https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7233410/

Re: Banning Things for Other People Is Easy

#67

Post by lonelyasacloud »

The core point - that it's politically convenient to ban things for "other people", especially if they cannot vote you out - is well taken. And I share the scepticism about whether "do something" politics leads to good legislation. However, it is most definitely not hypocritical to have different rules for children and adults; the bodies and minds of children are not fully developed and there are many instances where research indicates they are both more prone to damage and unable to make effective judgement as to their own actions.

As to a social media ban making sense for children: should not the precautionary principle apply? To this end, who has the vested interests and deeper pockets to fund research backing the status quo? And yet where is the research indicating social media is good news for children?

Re: Banning Things for Other People Is Easy

#68

Post by lotsofpulp »

nomilk wrote: post #52
plastic-enjoyer wrote: post #28

>In both of these cases (and in others), the harms are there for children and adults, but it’s only children who get banned. >I don’t use TikTok and it’s no skin off of my back if it gets banned. Banned or not, though, I don’t see a reason to ban it only for children. It doesn’t seem to be more harmful for them. They don’t seem to be using it lots more than adults. >If you’re going to ban TikTok because it’s harmful…

> There are now enough statistics to prove that social media has a negative impact on the mental health of users Yes, but the point of the article is compared to what . I feel negative after 15 minutes on twitter (depending on the topic, of course), but I feel far less negative than if I'd tried getting similar info from legacy sources (10x slower, and with 10x the suits, lipstick, and ads). The point isn't that soci…

While I am prone to be against bans, I am curious how to deal with the biological problem of supernormal stimulus:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus

It is broadly accepted that you cannot educate a toddler or even young child to expect them to be able to self control all the time due to lack of brain development (frontal cortex or what have you).

But what if a significant portion or maybe even all humans’ brains never get to the point where all supernormal stimuli can be educated against, and it is just an inherent mechanical weakness?

Re: Banning Things for Other People Is Easy

#69

Post by Forgeties79 »

lapcat wrote: post #46
Forgeties79 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me make a parallel argument: We shouldn’t ban drinking and driving. It doesn’t even help, because people do it anyway. You seem to be setting the bar at “if anyone violates the law then the law is a failure and should be revoked.” But that’s why we have court systems. They don’t just determine if someone broke the law, but also what to do when people inevitably do. You’re operating in a world where the only restr…

> We shouldn’t ban drinking and driving. It doesn’t even help, because people do it anyway. > Do you see the trouble with the logic here? I think you misunderstood my comment. The second sentence was not intended to be an argument or justification for the first sentence. The first sentence stands alone: I think it's unprincipled to ban children from drinking. The second sentence is merely a corollary. Also, I think t…

Preventing children from smoking has entirely to do with the very well established and understood health impacts on children as they develop, same as alcohol. It is not because of secondhand smoke. The latter informs where we can smoke, such as (not) around a hospital.

Re: Banning Things for Other People Is Easy

#70

Post by lazide »

coldstartops wrote: post #5
lazide wrote: post #2

Also, if you get off on taking out your anger on others, enforcement for other people is fun - and stress relieving!

Hah. Try that in the Balkans, with some one your own size, and let me know after how many weeks the concussion effects go away.

It’s literally why the balkans is the way it is.

I guess I should have added a /s, but it thought it was obvious.

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