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Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws

abc.net.au

71–80 of 498 posts

Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws

#71
post #51

Here in Austria in fourth grade kids take a little test for their bicycling skill. Not that it matters much in a car-centric country, but people forget that cycling, even in company with a parent, give kids the chance to learn the necessary traffic rules. Why not have something similar for social media or as the problem seems to be general conduct in social media, educate the kids and give them better ways to raise t…

> as the problem seems to be general conduct in social media

is that the problem? I'd have thought the problem is more about the ill effects of social media on children, not the children's behavior on said social media.

Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws

#72
post #51

Here in Austria in fourth grade kids take a little test for their bicycling skill. Not that it matters much in a car-centric country, but people forget that cycling, even in company with a parent, give kids the chance to learn the necessary traffic rules. Why not have something similar for social media or as the problem seems to be general conduct in social media, educate the kids and give them better ways to raise t…

This sounds like a good idea, at least actively educate them about the psychological game they may choose to play

Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws

#73
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AKA stupid paranoia.

This is far too pat a dismissal of something which happens regularly. You can argue that it’s not frequent enough to justify this action or would happen anyway through other means but it’s a real problem which isn’t so freakishly rare that we can dismiss it.

Discord is for people over 13 years of age in many countries, yet there are many minors there. It is not working.

Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally lived in a very backwater state, surrounded by racist conservatives, and was raised hardcore Catholic by extremely abusive guardians. I owe every single ounce of my rationality to the web and the ideas and people I encountered there. Facebook, etc are definitely terrible for kids. But the wording of these laws is intentionally vague, in order for these kinds of laws to be used according to the whim of th…

I hate to break it to you, but rest of the world is not US and have different socio-cultural dynamics. Regardless. We should optimize the outcomes for the collective good, and not for the corner cases. Of course it has its cost.

Even the US is not anything like the childhood environment described by GP, for most children.

Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws

#75
post #58
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those of us who weren’t around at the time, could you d on what made it good? Thanks!

what made it good? Less good, more fun. To 'prove' that you were over 18 you had answer a series of multiple choice questions [1] about pop culture that most kids almost certainly wouldn't know. Pre internet, finding the answer was surprisingly hard without asking an adult. The main result was that 10 year old me knew a surprisingly large number of obscure facts of about US culture, like who Spiro Agnew was and that…

LLM knows, thus the children know. Parents know, thus the children may easily know. It sounds fun but its practical value is questionable.

Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws

#76

Yes, this is flawed legislation, and yes kids will find ways to bypass these protections. But I think this is a step in the right direction. There is clear evidence of the harms caused by social media, especially for adolescents. We have to start trying things - albeit imperfectly - to get to a better place. We can learn a lot from the outcomes of this experiment.

We have taken such steps in many areas now, and it simply does not work. We can keep trying this old, tired method, but it does not work. I do not want ID verification for the Internet either, to be honest.

Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws

#77
post #16

My friend is a media lawyer in Australia He can’t even advise if some video game developers he represents’ multiplayer games are exempt from the ban He says the legislation is just an under defined word salad Note this was several days ago and it may have been amended in the mean time

"He can’t even advise if some video game developers he represents’ multiplayer games are exempt from the ban" There are a lot of issues with this legislation, but I'm not sure this is one of them. Games like Roblox are so exploitative, they're probably worse for children than most social media. See, for example: https://www.eurogamer.net/roblox-exploiting-young-game-devel...

Roblox already filters out a lot of words, including links (to social media and whatnot especially). They filter so many words they may just shut down the chats entirely.

Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws

#78
post #4

Some notes: * It is illegal for a platform to provide children with a social media account, not for the child to create an account. Circumvention of this by the child is not illegal. * No grandfathering - all accounts under 16 once this takes effect (which won't be until this time next year at earliest) must be deactivated. * Maximum fine (per instance?) is 50 million AUD (about 32 million USD) * The legislation is v…

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Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws

#79

Yes, this is flawed legislation, and yes kids will find ways to bypass these protections. But I think this is a step in the right direction. There is clear evidence of the harms caused by social media, especially for adolescents. We have to start trying things - albeit imperfectly - to get to a better place. We can learn a lot from the outcomes of this experiment.

The fact that kids are going to circumvent the rules means that it's going to be a wild back and forth between companies and the courts when they do.

Re: Australia: Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes laws

#80
post #51

Here in Austria in fourth grade kids take a little test for their bicycling skill. Not that it matters much in a car-centric country, but people forget that cycling, even in company with a parent, give kids the chance to learn the necessary traffic rules. Why not have something similar for social media or as the problem seems to be general conduct in social media, educate the kids and give them better ways to raise t…

This sounds like a good idea, at least actively educate them about the psychological game they may choose to play

It’s not trivial to teach someone about a subject we don’t understand ourselves.
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