No, it’s surveillance masquerading as “think of the children”. You can’t verify age without verifying identity.
The UK's Teen Social Media Ban Is Political Theater, Not Child Safety Policy
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Re: The UK's Teen Social Media Ban Is Political Theater, Not Child Safety Policy
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is growing acknowledgement that this is related to laptop usage in classroom. Countries are recognizing this and rolling back policies, citing PISA rankings. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly0vk77vdko https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/jun/15/educa...
Quoted in your article: “Later this year a ban on mobiles in schools – even for educational use – comes into force.” It’s obvious to most that taking away the laptop while leaving the TikTok will not have the intended effect.
Nationalized social media bans and restricted device usage while in a classroom are different things. Why would TikTok ever belong in the classroom?
Of course if even educational use of laptops is restricted then personal mobile devices would also be. They are already banned in my country.
Re: The UK's Teen Social Media Ban Is Political Theater, Not Child Safety Policy
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's interesting to see UK-based influencers all citing these weak studies (internet surveys) about how social media is not so bad for children, or bemoaning the huge loss for children whose access to educational videos will be cut. While the financial motive is clear, they must all believe it to an extent, because social media made their careers and changed their lives. The reality is that the vast majority of kids…
>> The reality is that the vast majority of kids aren't interested in learning video editing or movie directing Also the idea that they can't do these things without social media or YouTube is absurd. The people actually interested in learning something new will go down even deeper rabbit holes, try things themselves, and come out better than they would have following some YouTube tutorials.
It's not that people can't learn something from youtube, but that's not where most of people (not just the children) are spending most of the time. Just because someone watches a few videos about something useful to them that doesn't mean they aren't also being exposed to things that are harmful to them.
There are a lot of benefits to social media, and it could be a positive thing with fewer downsides, but there are basically no regulations to stop platforms from exploiting and harming children. The industry also refuses to regulate itself and prevent harms (many of which they created/cause in the first place). Parents clearly need to do a better job protecting their kids, but I have to admit that it's difficult when their children are being targeted and manipulated by companies with trillions of dollars while parents have to spend most of their time working just to keep their kids housed and fed.
Re: The UK's Teen Social Media Ban Is Political Theater, Not Child Safety Policy
#74> Again, every detailed study on the subject has found that the number of teenagers who have negative experiences on social media is tiny. The study they linked is just self reported data from an internet survey. I'm sure that 13 year olds who don't get enough sleep because they're endlessly scrolling through ads, influencers, and disinformation don't see any problem with it the same way that a survey of alcoholics w…
> I'm sure that 13 year olds who don't get enough sleep because they're endlessly scrolling through ads, influencers, and disinformation I didn't get sleep as a teenager because I read books. Should we ban those too?
If books were collecting every scrap of data they could on you, and every new page you turned to was algorithmically changed using data collected from your reading history and from additional information purchased from data brokers, and the words and pictures were being used to manipulate you and encourage you to engage in harmful actions ranging from sending the publisher nudes to killing yourself then yes, we should probably have some kind of regulations on when and how children use those books. Facebook's own internal research shows that their platform is harmful to children. We don't need to depend on opinions of child victims.
Re: The UK's Teen Social Media Ban Is Political Theater, Not Child Safety Policy
#75A lot of issues require holding two ideas in your head at once. Age verification chips away at privacy and internet freedom. It likely also reduces harm to some/many/whatever children, even if it’s imperfect and won’t stop everyone. The interesting question is where the right trade off sits. People often end up arguing only one side.
A point I don’t often see made is: the argument that “the parents need to parent” is unintentionally classist. Wealthier people who can afford to have one parent stay home or have babysitters or nannies who will actually supervise the kid can do a much better job monitoring and redirecting than when both parents work long hours and have no money. So poorer kids are going to spend more time scrolling brain rot, which…
There are plenty of tech controls that exist for children's personal technological devices that do not require the state to intervene.
Re: The UK's Teen Social Media Ban Is Political Theater, Not Child Safety Policy
#76A lot of issues require holding two ideas in your head at once. Age verification chips away at privacy and internet freedom. It likely also reduces harm to some/many/whatever children, even if it’s imperfect and won’t stop everyone. The interesting question is where the right trade off sits. People often end up arguing only one side.
A point I don’t often see made is: the argument that “the parents need to parent” is unintentionally classist. Wealthier people who can afford to have one parent stay home or have babysitters or nannies who will actually supervise the kid can do a much better job monitoring and redirecting than when both parents work long hours and have no money. So poorer kids are going to spend more time scrolling brain rot, which…
I'll take that over everyone being forced to accept the same, standardized, government-mandated "cults, wacko ideologies, and dumb fads", thanks!
Government makes everyone poorer through their terrible policies -> parents need to work more to stay above water -> nanny state must grow to take care of kids -> terrible government policies entrench. Nope, don't want it
Re: The UK's Teen Social Media Ban Is Political Theater, Not Child Safety Policy
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
At what cost though? Everyone will now need to submit real ID to access social media. Smaller social media sites will probably just shutdown since it’s unlikely they can afford the whole verification process.
The same was true of food safety. Aunt Tracey might not be able to sell cupcakes from her home any more (made in the oven next to where the cat likes to sleep because of the heat), but we centralised things enough that when BSE and Salmonella outbreaks happen, which nowadays is extremely rare, we know how and why almost immediately. If the cost of ridding ourselves of animal torture, terrorism and child pornography i…
This is a social media ban. It's not going to fix any of the issues you're talking about, and there are far greater risks and costs. I say this as someone who despises social media, too.
Re: The UK's Teen Social Media Ban Is Political Theater, Not Child Safety Policy
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't care if it's trivial to implement and impossible to bypass: it's an effort to eliminate anonymous Internet browsing/commenting because everyone over 16 has to submit ID as well. Its the end of free speech on the part of the Internet the UK controls.
A cynic might wonder if this is the real aim. Context: the government has objectively become increasingly authoritarian, with the partial elimination of jury trials, the criminalisation of peaceful protest, the use of anti-terror sentencing laws for activities that are clearly not terrorist, and other actions which set up ideal conditions for an oppressive dictatorship. It's hard to take the idea that this is about c…
I'll believe this is actually about protecting children when they do anything to address the myriad of other issues young people today are facing. So far that doesn't seem to be happening.
Funnily, I'm also not seeing any talk about holding the social media companies themselves accountable for any of the damage they've done to society.
Re: The UK's Teen Social Media Ban Is Political Theater, Not Child Safety Policy
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there a plan to start fining the social media companies themselves? Or raise their liability thresholds? This is sort of like the illegal-immigration debate. If you’re serious about fixing it, go after employers. Same for underage social media users. If you want to actually solve it, you have to penalize the platforms.
they will apparently be fined around AUD$50M if they fail to do due diligence (not sure how the legislation phrases. I am not sure if any social media company has at this stage. Unfortunately we have a dictator as a so-called e-safety commissioner backed up by an equally useless PM who seem to think all parents are unable to monitor themselves or their kids online behaviour
Seems like a drop in the bucket for these corporations. If anything, it'll just entrench the existing social media sites further and be another operating cost for them.
Re: The UK's Teen Social Media Ban Is Political Theater, Not Child Safety Policy
#80A lot of issues require holding two ideas in your head at once. Age verification chips away at privacy and internet freedom. It likely also reduces harm to some/many/whatever children, even if it’s imperfect and won’t stop everyone. The interesting question is where the right trade off sits. People often end up arguing only one side.
Massively downplaying it to say "chips away" this takes a sledgehammer to the core of internet privacy. In all cases in the world where this has been done before like China or Russia, freedom is also lost shortly after. Of course people only argue one side, the stakes are losing internet privacy and freedom in the entire world if the west also succumbs to these authoritarian policies. It isn't the government's job to…
The government’s job is to make sure we behave (and vote) properly.
Otherwise, as Bertolt Brecht said, the government might simply dissolve the people and elect a different one.