Summary
A YouGov poll revealed that 77% of Germans support banning social media for those under 16, similar to a new Australian law.
The survey found that 82% believe social media harms young people, citing harmful content and addiction.
In Australia, the law fines platforms up to AUD 49.5 million (€30.5M) for allowing under-16s to create accounts, with enforcement trials set before implementation next year. Critics
Real question: how is anyone supposed to implement this without eliminating anonymity for those services?
German ID already has a feature for this if I remember correctly. You can use it to cryptographically prove your age without revealing your identity. Problem is, no one is trusting that it’s really anonymous.
Banning social media is the easy cowardly thing to do. Are our representatives to afraid to regulate big tech?
Force these shitters to make their products healthier for all age groups. Yes it’s hard. Grow the fuck up, put on your big boy underpants and do your fucking job.
Force these shitters to make their products healthier for all age groups.
There’s a lot of nuance here, but in general I agree. Hank (of vlogbrothers and SciShow fame), summed this problem up brilliantly. To paraphrase: social media is engagement based, not quality based. Upvote/like content on all you want, but misinformation, propaganda, rage bait, and doom-scrolling fodder will dominate any platform where the only valued metric is eyeball time.
So, the top-down solution would be to somehow strictly define how for-profit ranked media feeds and news aggregators are allowed to operate. Unintended consequences of such a law aside, I think it’s possible to legally define a “well-behaved” social media site, but it won’t be easy.
i dunno ab this bc social media is vague. corporate sites that pump out politically divisive content, misinformation, harmful content, etc. should be a bigger target? when i was a teenager, using social media platforms to connect to queer spaces was essential for me, but i was on reddit and tumblr rather than instagram or tiktok. its a tough line between protecting minors and restricting their freedom on their behalf. sucks that parents cant just step up and do what’s right, because the law can be unnecessarily suffocating. at the very least, seems like its the companies, not the kids, who’d be punished. curious to see how this plays out.
edit: spelling is hard
Urgh. This is a tough one. Social media has been a part of asymmetric warfare for at least the past ten years, and I don’t want my kids to be bombarded with propaganda from Russian and Chinese-funded far-right groups like the AfD.
At the same time, I understand how important it is for kids to explore the internet on their own.
If I had the choice, I would ban TikTok and Instagram.
But if that’s not possible – then honestly, ban everything. I will then work something out with my kids myself.
It used to be valuable to explore the internet but the internet has largely been corrupted by corporate greed.
By and large the experience Young folks have on the Internet is almost entirely through applications meant to abuse and take advantage of their underdeveloped brains. Behavior driven by algorithmic pressure.
This is bad news bears for society.
There isn’t a whole lot of exploring to be done for the grand majority of kids on the internet. Instead they will be classified bucketed and used for further financial gain by a select few corporations.
At the same time, I understand how important it is for kids to explore the internet on their own.
No more though. It’s more important that they spend time at the fresh air & play. The internet has become pretty useless outside of wikipedia & social media, and social media has become pretty toxic outside of a few spots (like we can hopefully keep lemmy).
- everything is ridden with ads
- news websites locked behind paywalls
- news websites reporting agenda-driven propaganda
- major email providers auto-classify emails from smaller providers as spam (despite correct SPF entries)
- every good service that is not decentralized, eventually gets hit by enshittification due reap profits
I would absolutely support a 100% social media ban for all centralized networks (corporation controlled). Because they are used not only to damage the brains of children, but those of adults as well (see Eastern German elections). Only federated chat systems / social media should be allowed. But that’s where our fascist overlords have a conflict of interest - they desperately want to see everything we communicate - and chat control (literally, fuck you EU) is not possible in federated networks.
Oh, I have to disagree strongly. Precisely because the internet has gotten worse, it’s even more important for children to learn how to navigate it effectively.
Take my former colleague as an example: a 45-year-old downloading a “better zip tool” from a Russian website full of awful spelling and dubious claims.
Kids need to learn about ad blockers, VPNs, and how to identify fake news. Not teaching them these skills leaves them far more vulnerable to online threats than if they were taught how to handle these issues from an early age. And as many people tell you, the best way to truly learn about something is by doing it yourself.
The internet is only going to become more relevant in the future.
Side note.
Social media is now a theater of war, with adults and children alike being the weapons created by way of social media propaganda.
Children, who are the most likely to be affected and manipulated, who are also primary targets due to said vulnerabilities should be excluded from these platforms for this reason alone.
This is a problem that’s growing at a scale to affect entire countries. Countries with populations vulnerable to social media targeting propaganda, astroturfing, and manipulation are vulnerable on the world stage.
Making this a growing national security concern for any country.
True! That’s why I hate TikTok and Instagram so much. From my experience, these are the two worst offenders.
Oh, I have to disagree strongly. Precisely because the internet has gotten worse, it’s even more important for children to learn how to navigate it effectively.
Okay, you have a point there. But in a way, that doesn’t refute my point - the opposite of “learning how to navigate it effectively” is letting children have access to it on their own. It would need to be taught in school, by qualified teachers (who don’t exist in sufficient quantity).
The internet is only going to become more relevant in the future.
I am not so sure about this - because I have seen it evolve over the past decades, and as I previously pointed out, it’s become mostly ads, propaganda and bullshit. The only reason people spend more time online is because of the addictive mechanisms in most modern smartphone apps. Me, not using those, I find myself spending less and less time on the internet.
Okay, you have a point there. But in a way, that doesn’t refute my point - the opposite of “learning how to navigate it effectively” is letting children have access to it on their own. It would need to be taught in school, by qualified teachers (who don’t exist in sufficient quantity).
Of course, children need basic training on how to use the internet, and I know it’s going to be tedious, but I will explain to them why I think it’s not good for them to use TikTok and Instagram—at least until they’re 14, 15, or 16.
You will, and I would - but for every person who’s somewhat qualified to explain that, there will be dozens who aren’t :/ And even for those who are, the children might not listen because … well they’re children and peer pressure is high in school.
I would absolutely favor a complete ban on corporate social media just because it gives billionaire scumbags a direct algorithmic wire into the brains of the most malleable, most vulnerable part of the population. And you can already see it in how young men on average have become more toxic, misogynist and authority loving in Europe & the DS (divided states, get used to the acronym)
but for every person who’s somewhat qualified to explain that, there will be dozens who aren’t
That’s sadly 100% true. I’m not against all corporate social media, at least not for now. For example, YouTube is my main source of entertainment, but I use NewPipe to avoid ads and algorithms. And I will try to teach my kids to do the same. My main concern is TikTok and Instagram.
That said, I’d rather see all corporate social media banned for children than continue as things are now. I would then tailor a solution for my kids that I see fit.
The problem with corporate social media is that things can go downhill very quickly - just look at shitter… Imagine youtube got bought by the same useless dipshit who was born with a golden spoon in his mouth and never invented anything…
Otherwise, we’re in full agreement, I guess :)
All the things you’re saying that kids need to learn about are things that they do not and cannot and will not learn about in closed wall garden environments ran by corporations. Which constitutes an ever-growing majority of children’s “experience” with the internet. “The Internet” to many is “Instagram” or “Facebook” or “Tic Tok”. It doesn’t mean anything else other than a portal to access their addiction through.
They won’t learn about online threats or how to critically think or how to avoid being manipulated.
Young users funnel it into centralized corporate ran networks are abused for financial gain using carefully and intentionally crafted content designed over decades to take advantage of the human psyche algorithmically shoved down their throats until they are addicted.
This isn’t the internet children need to be on, it’s not the Internet, it’s just a corporate controlled environment that just so happen to exist along the same wires as the rest of the internet.
As such I don’t see where your argument has any room to stand.
Not teaching them these skills leaves them more vulnerable to online threats
Algorithmically & bot driven social media IS the “online threat” these days.
The only skills that they are learning are how to adapt to fit that corporate environment, which is a transitive state that often comes with the cost of actual life skills.
Kids need to be on the internet I agree with this but their use of the internet needs to be as romantically hued as you state it. Which is unfortunately not the reality we see today.
All the things you’re saying that kids need to learn about are things that they do not and cannot and will not learn about in closed wall garden environments ran by corporations. They won’t learn about online threats or how to critically think or how to avoid being manipulated.
Yes, you need to teach your kids these things. Not the schools, because they don’t have the manpower; not the corporations, because they won’t do it. No, you must teach them.
You can try to keep them off social media for as long as possible, but they’ll eventually find a way. Use that time to teach them about all these predatory mechanics, so when they do go on social media, they’ll understand what’s going on.
I’m not sure what argument you’re making here yes of course parents should be teaching their children these skills instead of letting them go on social media.
How is that relevant to the argument that I’m making though?
This is obviously not occurring today so how do you expect it to occur tomorrow when we make no changes today?
You do realize that the children of tomorrow will be raised by the children of today right? And as we let the children of today become addicted to social media and don’t provide them with the tools skills and safety to protect themselves from social media how do you expect them to teach their children how?
Sure I may be cognizant of this but again, as stated previously in these messages…, this is a systemic problem. You cannot solve a systemic problem by putting the burden of solution on each individual involved in the problem. Systemic problems require systematic solutions, this is largely an inarguable point.
I think we’re talking past each other.
My Argument is basically if I could I would block Instagram and TikTok for everyone under 16. If that’s not possible then block rather everything then nothing. But I also think it’s neither wise nor possible to keep children away from social media. You can limit their exposure yes, but because of their friends, their school or even a relative they will access social media before the set age. Use this time of limited exposure to prepare them as good as you can. Otherwise they will still access social media and will be even more vulnerable to scams, algorithms and fake news.
It most definitely is possible in federated networks to be clear.
Federated networks are extremely vulnerable to bots. And “organic” online narrative is easily manipulated with bots and bot driven content.
We see this in centralized platforms like Reddit which have mature and centralized bot detection and control mechanisms which are largely ineffective in an ideal scenario for them to be the most effective.
The only saving grace for federated services right now is that they are simply far too small to be worth the time and money to manipulate narratives on. The user bases are infinitesimal in comparison to mainstream social media.
This changes if their popularity skyrockets. The only thing it takes to manipulate opinions and narrative is money and a vulnerable target. The fediverse is largely a vulnerable target and current mega corporations have more than enough money to do what they need done a million times over.
You misread my comment. I do agree that manipulation is possible in federated systems. What’s not possible is “chat control” / spying on individual communication on a large scale.
Libs will do anything but touch the corp :v
Get off my lawn kids!
As an Australian social media isn’t the problem, like the internet isnt the problem, its commersialisation thats the problem. The need to grow the custoner base sees outrageous behaviours from corporations like Meta, Google, Apple etal but that’s what they’re incentivised to do, so that’s what happens.
This legilisation won’t solve shit. The government and the polotical class forcing citizens to use Facebook or Twitter to get information, they could start there.
Absolutely social media is the problem.
The echo chambers, the propagation of facist ideology, the state sponsored misinformation campaigns, the anti-intellectualism, all made possible by social media. No where else could these banes on modern democracy and society have been so easily bred but on social media.
The networks that do the most damage were specifically engineered that way due to the profit motive rewarding engagement of all sorts above positive connection. Social media is the problem, but it’s only that way because of the economic and commercial factors involved. Individuals can always be assholes, but nobody has miserable memories of myspace and MSN online as genocide-facilitating false news propagators, because they weren’t specifically designed to make people angry and breathlessly message everyone they know about a perceived problem.
Social media has the capacity to connect disparate groups of people, become a forum for interests, and open the world up to new perspectives and information - the intentional monopolisation of that promise by frankly, evil, multinationals is the root cause of the issue - not the technology itself.
Australia’s new law will do fucking nothing, and as many experts have suggested, will probably make the issues worse. Bullying isn’t limited to social media, so a child that previously found refuge by connecting with like-minded friends elsewhere or staying in touch when living remote, now gets to be ‘saved’ by being kicked off the platform and left with only the real-life bullying they endure at school. Counterproductive.
Additionally, if the platforms are such violent cesspools for children, why is it then acceptable for them to continue with their perverse rage-bait designs, so long as the user is over 16? The government should instead be regulating the mechanics and algorithms of the sites to make them safer, more reasonable and positive entities - rather than just giving up on any meaningful regulation and saying that meta is fine, because a 17 year old can get bullied in person instead of a 35 year old having revenge porn posted of them, or a 72 year old falling down a facebook conspiracy rabbit hole is a-ok.
This legislation was half-baked, forced through with little-to-no debate, stands to worsen the stranglehold of monopolised tech. It places the responsibility of parenting onto facebook, twitter, etc. which are the last entities in the damn world that should get to define ‘safety’ or police responsible usage. It does absolutely nothing to address the serious fundamental problems that pervade our modern, highly concentrated technology ecosystems, and actually gives them a free pass to allow the sites to fester even more (bringing in more profit as people doom-scroll longer, viewing more ads, when their specific fears and annoyances are deliberately tabulated and curated to make them as angry, paranoid, isolated, unhappy, and antagonistic as possible) by saying that it’s a foregone conclusion that social media is evil, and we can’t fix that, so why even try? /s
If they actually wanted to fix this problem, investing in education and help resources, probing into the design and function of these sites would be the way to do it. We’ve just scored a massive own goal at Zuckerberg, et. al’s benefit, by asking them to police themselves and sacrificing everyone over the age of 16 to the hellscape of media as it is, instead of as it could be.
I’m 63 and addicted to social media. Checkmate government lackey.
Those under 16 will definitely see this as patronising. In a way, they’re right. Social media is bad for everybody—not just young people. It needs to be destroyed.
I’m just waiting until people realise that it won’t work.
It makes me wonder if the result of this ban in Australia will see a rise in forums and chat rooms.
Ain’t that still social media, same with multiplayer games though I don’t know the law itself I could be wrong.
No, social media is driven by algorithms that control what you see and how much you see. Chat rooms and forums are old school, more analog. You chat with other people in realtime and are able to choose the posts you want to see.
One can only hope.
An even higher percentage — 82% — were “absolutely certain” or “somewhat certain” that social media use is in some way bad for children and teenagers.
What’s the percentage of those who are “absolutely certain” or “somewhat certain” that authoritarian adults wanting to control teenagers’ lives out of a belief that the former know what’s actually best for the latter is “in some way bad” for children and teenagers?
Whatever it is, it certainly includes me.
The thing is, older people can remember what life was like before the younger people were born.
For me, I had to find a playboy out in nature, which was like winning the lottery, or you had to know someone, which was weird. Nowadays you just google it and you can watch grandma scat porn on auto for days. As a fully grown adult I know which life was actually better, the one with less granny scat. I didn’t jerk off as much but I went outside and socialized with people and played hacky sack because that’s what my friends did or looked through their mtg cards, or waxed a curb and tried to pull off some rondey mullen shit.
The internet as we know it and the world we built around it is not good for people, the kind of social media that we have is not good for people. I don’t think we need government regulations, in some ways sure, but what we really need is education and understanding. We need a pro-people movement that prioritizes quality of life in a meaningful way.
I absolutely agree that the modern internet has been turned into a corporate rage-bait hellscape, but do keep in mind that every generation that’s ever lived feels that their childhood was better and safer than what exists today. It’s human nature to prefer our fondest memories at our most carefree point in life - but although ipad babies are a scourge that terrify me, it’s important to remember that children aren’t all drooling fortnight zombies these days either.
I’m aware of rosy retrospection and declinism bias, I actually hated my childhood and I think about how amazing things now all the time. I use to deliver pizza with a paper map and no cell phone.
Notice I didn’t say that we need to roll back to the 90’s. Tech is good, it feeds my family, but its not good for people in its current form. I’m reluctant to give my child access to computers and the internet, she’s only 2 now but her eyes sparkle when she sees a screen and as soon as we show her a video she goes from borderline adhd to comatose. Screens have a lot of power over peoples attention so we should be careful about what we put in them, for the well being of the end user.
All they have to do is say they are doing it to protect their children and the pitch forks come out.
Ffs. Don’t copy us germany. The social media ban is not a good policy.
Not worry chap…Nobody ain’t doing nuthin’
It seems that most in Germany do not understand they’ll give even more of their online freedom away for no net gain.
Let’s mandate state-sanctioned age verification. Some service may accept this, other won’t. First loss. Then, some kids will get around that with complacent parents. Other will be pressured into it. In the end, it won’t work as a full ban. So, either turn a blind eye to the whole situation (then why bother in the first place), or make it worse: only one account per ID maybe. Big second loss there. And even if it works, it’s ignoring that some sites that would qualify as “social media” are the only communication outlet some people have. Third huge loss.
This will only be a terrible annoyance to everyone, prevent some services from growing or even exist, to the benefit of kids using their parents accounts anyway or VPNing around it. They learned how to do that very quickly for other online content.
Laws and rules that are unenforceable at scale are only useful to pin more faults on people when needed, not to help them.
So sad that this will cause social media services to decline
You forgot the /s. “Unexpected end of line error in line 182”
Sorry i don’t understand what you are saying, did you mean to close your comment with “/c” to indicate comedy?
Aha…sarcasm in a comment to a sarcastic comment.
Oops, sorry, I flubbed it. Oh well.
Sarcasm starts with an S unless you are being sarcastic, which is even more funny if you are.
In HTML and stuff, you would write something like:
<s “sarcastic comment that makes everyone laugh” /s>
And so many dipshit billionaires will become common man…Aint it good at least in this way.
I was being sarcastic
This sounds good on paper until you realize that what is considered “social media” is up to whoever happens to hold that position. Even ignoring the fact that it’s unenforceable anyway, unless you require a real ID, wish is just straight up worse for all sorts of reasons.
The idea is nice, but actually putting it into law without opening the door to censorship and other side effects is just not plausible.
Edit: also, Everytime you read about a poll like this, ask yourself: what was the question they asked? Did it provide any context? Did it require any understanding of the actual underlying issues and laws? Or was it some variation of “think of the children”?
It’s not censorship. Social media isn’t the street. It’s mostly private companies and when you post something it’s like saying something inside the building of a private company and not on the street.
The law is about regulating the companies and who can access these spaces.
Lots of countries have a similar law for work. You have age restriction and speech limits by law.
And yes, you can ask for a physical ID and even mandate an in person account opening. Or, you built a national account and social media must use it to allow access.
Most of the people where I live are in favor of this and even until majority including smartphones.
I think the question was; “how can we protect the kids when obviously their parents have failed?”
Parent here. Having an extra reason to explain why my son won’t be doing something that some of his friends are is helpful.
Censoring social media?
Sounds like another benefit!
Even ignoring the fact that it’s unenforceable anyway, unless you require a real ID, wish is just straight up worse for all sorts of reasons.
It is possible to verify age using a real ID without sharing other details from that ID with a social media company with apps like https://www.yivi.app/en/
The politicians in charge of making the laws often lack the understanding needed to make privacy respecting laws. So it’s possible, it’s just not happening. They also listen to actual experts ready to little, but do listen to lobbyists.
This also doesn’t address the censorship side of the problems.
Just for a random example, literally the first thing I thought of: let’s say there’s a youth movement to affect climate change, or some other issue. They organize general protests, boycotts on “bad companies” and are starting to get somewhere (politically and affecting the bottom lines of these companies). This is coordinated using some online communication platform, think Reddit, lemmy or whatever (Facebook, whatever). Those that want it to “go away” can just include that in the list of sites that fall under thes “youth protection” laws.
Then there’s laws like that being extended it abused to do things that weren’t originally intended, which is also hard to safeguard against. Future legislation might extend the age range from 16 to 18, then to 21. With the list of blocked sites also growing conveniently alongside, and boom you got a nice censorship platform. Not saying that will happen, but making sure it can’t is what’s hard.
You’re right. I’m not arguing that this whole thing is a good idea. I just pointed out that it would be possible to implement without sharing real IDs with the social media platforms. It would not be unenforceable as the top comment said.
yeah no way I’m trusting a corpo like that with my data thanks
Which corporation are you talking about? The app i linked is open source and originally developed by SIDN. You can verify what details it shares. In a case like this that should only be “the person logging in 16 year or older”
No it’s not. It’s literally impossible, that’s the issue.
Of course you can. All you need is a trusted 3rd party (the organization who issued your ID, probably your government) to verify your identity and sign a statement that you are over 16 years old. Then you present that statement to the social media company and you’ve done it.
First off, how can you possibly trust any 3rd party with that information and whatever you’re browsing. Secondly, as soon as you show a statement to this company, that is privacy invasive right there. Also how do you know they’re securely processing this and deleting it when they’re done? This is where is becomes insecure and creates a surveillance state.
By using an identifier like a session token the verifier never has to know what website you’re visiting. You show the social media company a message containing this season token, an assertion that you are over 16 years old and a signature. You don’t need it to delete or securely process that data, as the only thing it knows is that you’re over 16 and it’s required to verify this for all users.
Session tokens are valid because they come from the service themselves, that’s how they know they’re good.
That doesn’t work here because if there’s no identifying information in this token from a 3rd party service (the ID verification service), then it is useless because it can simply be reused by everyone.
So you’d have to create a unique one for each site, which would involve the login website and verification service to link to each other, which is extremely privacy violating.
If it is NOT unique (ex: anonymous person request verification for site A), then that service can reuse that verification token and break it. So identifying the sites together is required for this to work and is a massive issue.
The solution is simple on-device parental controls and have the browser flag this. Yes it can be cheated just like “are you 18+?” prompts, and that’s how it should be.
It’s also important to point out that you’re saying social media. ID verification would not stop there, it would then be used for sites like porn, which nonsense laws have already passed for this without proper solutions. Which the government should have zero business seeing what legal porn you watch, nor is there anything wrong with porn that it should be banned.
From what I understand of the Australian law, companies are prohibited from requiring a government-issued ID. In practical terms, how can this law be implemented, then? Bypassing a prompt that asks for a birthday is as easy as just lying. Other than requiring an ID, I honestly can’t fathom a way this would actually work. I suppose you could require a active credit card number, but that would exclude adults and kids over 16.
It’s Facebook, kids will post pictures of themselves.
now Facebook has to close the accounts that are reported.
then it only effects the stupider children, not all children.
Not that hard. When you allow reporting and then removal of their accounts. They may get through but their accounts are removed rapidly.
So you want people to report others accounts as being under age? There’s absolutely zero way that could go wrong or has ever gone wrong in history.
