Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban

I've been grappling with this all afternoon and I still cannot determine what my stance on this.

I grew up when the internet was a bit of a wildwest, and I've definitely seen things online that I wish I never had without my consent.

But there's also a bizarre thought that mayb exposure to this isn't such a bad thing because it keeps us human, and aware of privilidge and our safety - and why that is such an important thing to think about

I'd equate it at some level to seeing the inside of the production of food and being put of eating meat, or eating anything non-organic again.

I'm not sure I would like my own children to see it, but I'm hyper aware of what conflict and crime looks like as a result.

Comparatively to social media at least I was making a choice to click on something risky or that I would not like to see rather than having a algorithm choose for me. Not sure if I am just becoming a middle-aged tech dinosaur though.,

He was paid by Goldman Sachs to help Clinton get elected by raising massive amounts of money. During Obama's term he structured the DNC to be about his personal power rather than supporting Democrats across the country, costing Democrats the midterms. As mayor of Chicago he covered up a murder committed by a police officer and refused to comply with transparency laws.

On the other hand, this particular position is probably just part of the Israeli campaign against TikTok: Emanuel volunteered for the IDF and has long been an anti-Palestinian activist.

When someone wanted to do something counter-culture (i.e the *chan websites), there was actually a shared interest behind it. People would spend time making content and actually doing things on the web.

These days, internet is so ubiqutious that the majority of the users are simply consumers. There is no drive to build anything. Modern day kids aren't going to be spending time trying to figure out how to get around social media bans with technology, because most internet users simply just don't care enough to organize and build something.

Let's make some distinctions first.

On the one hand, you have violence and pornography, and also other crude content. There is nothing good about exposing children to these. It does not contribute to their growth or to their maturity as human beings and it is ridiculous to think it could. On the contrary, this content will cause psychological harm, causing distortions in their emotions, in their habituated appetites, in their self-understanding, and their understanding of normal relations. When deviance like that is tolerated, it shifts the Overton window. Children observe this tolerance and roll it into their sense of normality. Individuals suffer. The quality of society degrades substantially.

On the other hand, we have political agitation. This one is more difficult to define and handle, especially in a liberal democratic society. There are examples of obvious political agitation, of course, but children should generally not be exposed to political agitation at all, except as a subject matter at an age appropriate level and in an appropriate pedagogic setting. Children don't have the intellectual or emotional maturity to examine such material in the wild on their own where they would be at the mercy of unscrupulous adult manipulators who couldn't care less about the well-being of children. (Ask yourself what kind of person would want to involve children in their political agitation to begin with.)

So, there's a big difference between common sense things like these and coddling children. We want to prepare children for life, not teach them adaptation to depravity. You throw them into the filth of social and psychological pathology. Neither violence nor pornography should be normalized even in the adult world - it is harmful to the adults who consume it as well - so the idea that we should prepare children for life in some violent and twisted pornland is preposterous. Nobody has to put up with that garbage, and the law should be making sure they don't.

https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/63901/documents/746...

>regulations which prohibit the provision to UK children of a Relevant VPN Service (the “child VPN prohibition”).