661–670 of 1001 posts
It will be interesting to see how this pans out. I think many in tech are afraid that this will lead to a positive outcome.
I fully support this legislation, and government regulation around this topic. Given the current (2025) state of the social media landscape, I believe that the positives of restricting access to them for teenagers well outweighs any potential harms. As the parent of a teenager affected by this ban (plus one who has aged past it): I wish that it had been in place 8-10 years ago, before either of my kids got smartphone…
So, you haven't identified any actual problems with them being on social media though. For example, were this lament that parenting is hard written 50 years ago: > As the parent of a teenager affected by this ban (plus one who has aged past it): I wish that it had been in place 8-10 years ago, before either of my kids got introduced to Rock n' Roll. We tried to be reasonably conservative in their introduction to musi…
On social media kids will be subjected to undisclosed advertising for all kinds of products legal and illegal. They will be directly targeted and manipulated into real world harm situations and mental manipulation into harmful mindsets.
Most of this cannot be prevented by "being a watchful parent". If your kid watches andrew tate and you see and put a restriction youtube will recommend them a tate adjacent channel or one of the 1million alts that posts clips. Same for tiktok, X and Instagram.The only control you have is to ban them from using the platform which is a roundabout way of achieving the same thing.
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I disagree. It’s easy to say this from your armchair, but when your kid is the one kid not on social media because you’re such an righteous parent, and that kid is getting bullied by all the other kids for not knowing what’s going on in TikTok or Insta, you start seeing this as a problem that requires the coordination of large numbers of people who you may or may not know, many of whom are kids who lack executive fun…
Agreed. Individualists don't understand how people actually don't have much free will and decisions are mostly influenced by culture. Having an anything goes culture is a massive head wind.
And by prisoner's dilemma / double bind type phenomenon, such as being forced to choose between being a social outcast, or to be on social media. That double bind would not exist if you nuke the whole thing. The libertarian theory of the world does not have such phenomenon within its descriptive aperture.
A lot of the criticism is based on the concept that it won't be technically watertight. But the key is that it doesn't have to be watertight to work. Social media is all about network effects. Once most kids are on there, everyone has to be on there. If you knock the percentage down far enough, you break the network effect to the point where those who don't want to don't feel pressured to. If that is all it does, it'…
(b) a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly. This already happens, and I don't see how a law like this would significantly change the volume of edgelords and incels funneling into imageboards
4chan's origin itself fits that archetype, as well. It was created when a hentai subforum got banned on a larger forum, and the community moved over to the new imageboard.
It acts as sponge for more than just edgelords.
Think for a moment instead of just accepting whatever the media is telling you to think.
How many social networks are there?
Are some of those decentralised?
Will kids move to unmoderated underground ones in response to this?
Will the government expand these laws now that it achieved a foothold?
Parenting and teaching your kids to think and understand how the world works is how you really solve the problems. Not building weak fences and encouraging government over-reach. Raising and guiding your kids is YOUR responsibility, not the governments.
All this came about because some absolute slog of a parent had their kid kill themselves and blamed social media. Where the hell was he while their kid struggled?!
So Australian teens will finally learn how they computers and home wifi works.
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 I have literally never heard this. The ban doesn't stop teens consuming social media content like tik tok. Your argument seems like quite a stretch.
There is a lot of Australian-American political confusion/conflation in this whole thread.
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Am I wrong in feeling like the solution you outline is only applicable to an individual's kids? But at the societal level, it clearly seems we can't depend on enough parents to do what you talk about. Something else is needed. I don't have answers to give. Certainly not a fan of the government approach of "everyone must prove their age online now", which I believe is how the AU law is done. (casual listening to Secur…
Yes, this is one of those game theory traps like the prisoners dilemma, because it requires coordinated action across a large group of people. Unfortunately the lowest common denominator parenting is not able to handle the problem, because the parents don't understand the situation, are addicted to platforms themselves, and just generally don't have the necessary skills. Government regulation is a ham fisted approach…
It will be interesting to see how this pans out.