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Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

reuters.com

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Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#861

Post by ellrob88 »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #844
ropable wrote: post #594

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…

[flagged]

I get why people from certain countries instinctively see any government involvement as bad, but I don’t think that’s a universal truth? Yes, bad government can do enormous harm, but I think good government can also raise society above what would happen if everyone were simply left to their own devices.

As others have noted, we already accept a long list of age-based rules: alcohol, driving, tobacco, gambling, movies and games, compulsory schooling, consent, marriage, tattoos, credit cards, pornography, firearms, etc.

Seen in that context, restricting social media for children isn’t some unprecedented intrusion - it’s another attempt to limit access to something that appears harmful for younger people. Will it work? I can only hope. But it seems reasonable to at least try.

I’m not claiming this opinion fits every country - it may be due to biases of where I live. Where I am (and in my opinion), social media seems like a clear and massive net negative, especially for kids. Perhaps in some places social media is a genuinely positive part of daily life, and from that perspective the same law might look like needless government overreach.

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#862

Post by bigB »

manindahat wrote: post #712
roenxi wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yes but the other problem is this is putting authoritarians in charge of more stuff. I had a comment comparing this to allowing people to eat too much food and that is literally where the logical outcome of this sort of thinking goes - it happens in practice, that isn't some sort of theoretical risk. The more the government decides what people can and can't want to do the worse the potential gets when they make…

That is an argument and worth monitoring, but IMO it's not a strong enough argument to stop this. This sort of ban is the same as existing laws banning the sale and consumption of alcohol or driving until kids are of age they will (on average) have sufficient maturity to handle the responsibility. Something we accept. Kids are not banned from digital communication. My daughter can still send text messages and make ph…

How long will it take them to ban communications ?

A big reason they are pushing this is Cyberbullying....yet a recent death in the news this week, the kid was literally bullied/sextorted via SMS....not social media.

Without banning SMS and possibly calls as well, it debunks this argument

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#863

Post by 256_ »

denismi wrote: post #850
256_ wrote: post #803

A lot of the arguments I see in this thread are about whether modern mainstream social media are bad for young people. When the debate becomes about that, it's very easy to defend these types of Orwellian laws. It becomes "This is a problem, therefore the solution is good", without questioning the solution itself. I think this type of thinking is demonstrated, or perhaps exploited, very well by this article (I'm not…

Australia is a Five Eyes country, with carte blanche access to data that the incumbent social media companies freely share with all the acronym deep-state authorities. Could you elaborate further on how preventing a sizeable proportion of its citizens from communicating through these established spy-nets, causing them to disperse out to unpredictable alternatives they might not be able to control, increases mass surv…

That's definitely an interesting argument I haven't seen before.

I suppose it depends on how effective these types of measures actually are, and also on how many adults refuse to identify themselves. I would assume governments are more interested in spying on adults than under-16s, so the adults are probably more relevant here.

I hope you're right, though. Maybe there'll be a renaissance of smaller platforms. Probably not, but I can hope.

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#865

Post by fpauser »

amatecha wrote: post #597
plantain wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No Atlassian products are included in the ban. I think you have seen a joke.

Yeah turns out that is the case, it was a joke image but the person didn't say it was a joke and posted it as if it was real :\

Social media ...

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#866

Post by re-thc »

bigB wrote: post #862
manindahat wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is an argument and worth monitoring, but IMO it's not a strong enough argument to stop this. This sort of ban is the same as existing laws banning the sale and consumption of alcohol or driving until kids are of age they will (on average) have sufficient maturity to handle the responsibility. Something we accept. Kids are not banned from digital communication. My daughter can still send text messages and make ph…

How long will it take them to ban communications ? A big reason they are pushing this is Cyberbullying....yet a recent death in the news this week, the kid was literally bullied/sextorted via SMS....not social media. Without banning SMS and possibly calls as well, it debunks this argument

> How long will it take them to ban communications ?

Just ban Australia themselves.

> A big reason they are pushing this is Cyberbullying

Oh really now? It has been going on for so many years... A big reason they've been pushing this is it impacts their own pockets i.e. the traditional media companies.

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#867

Post by hsuduebc2 »

kubb wrote: post #619
roenxi wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yes but the other problem is this is putting authoritarians in charge of more stuff. I had a comment comparing this to allowing people to eat too much food and that is literally where the logical outcome of this sort of thinking goes - it happens in practice, that isn't some sort of theoretical risk. The more the government decides what people can and can't want to do the worse the potential gets when they make…

Authoritarians use social networks to undermine democratic principles so not exposing kids to that takes power away from them. Or did I misunderstand something?

It seems to me that this is much bigger problem for vulnerable or stupid adults. You can be naive when you are young but you can change.

I would say that much bigger problem is possibly the influence of these sites on development of young people. We know it's addictive, we know it's harmful. Cigarettes and alcohol are banned for the same reason so I'm kinda glad for this Australian experiment. We'll see.

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#868

Post by fpauser »

OhioMan2943 wrote: post #11
bob_theslob646 wrote: post #9

How does a country effectively enforce this? Below is how they propose doing this. If you don't have any form of verification of your actual age, it's seems like they are just going on what the user says ( self reports). How can a company be found liable if a used lies about their age? >the days leading to the ban, some teenagers said that they were prompted to verify their ages using a facial analysis feature, but t…

How can seatbelts be enforced? This is preposterous and imbecilic- if there isn't a policeman inside every car checking every minute how will we make sure that people are wearing them. Clearly there is no point in trying!

Not wearing seatbelts is preposterous.

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#869

Post by miroljub »

oersted wrote: post #204
miroljub wrote: post #197

The only appropriate comment here would be invoking Goodwin Law. Everything else is too mild to describe the journey of former democracies to totalitarian regimes.

Let's not go overboard. While I don't agree with this law, it's not much different from other underage laws that are commonplace: alcohol, tobacco, driving... I don't think it's an indicator of totalitarianism, it's just the same-old lawmaking philosophy updating to new developments.

It's not about underage protection. It's about requiring an ID from adults and keeping information about their identity while using social media.

But, I suppose you don't care because you don't have something to hide, don't you :)

Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

#870

Post by concinds »

jancsika wrote: post #595
indymike wrote: post #406

Father of five here, and founder of a social media marketing company (exited). Our kids are up against problems we didn't have during the great expansion of social. The three big things: 1. State level actors and well funded not for profits are fighting an information war to influence our kids. And they are very good at it. Down to having troll farms to talk one on one. Every time something new happens in the world,…

> Every time something new happens in the world, my younger kids ask me about what they saw on Tik-Tok and their initial understanding is shaped by a well funded actor, and is often completely a false narrative. As someone who remembers the near lack of anti-war voices on network/cable news in the lead-up to the Iraq War (Donahue on MSNBC being the lone example), I'd like to get more details on your strongest example…

I'm guessing they mean Gaza, and that the author is pro-Israel. Which really undermines their point.
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