10 ms·

Rather than this law, I would start at banning social media accounts for under 16s. Social media has arguably had an appalling effect on the mental being of te

Rather than this law, I would start at banning social media accounts for under 16s. Social media has arguably had an appalling effect on the mental being of teenage girls. https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/metaverse-facebook-instagram-social-media-b2008700.html https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/metaverse-facebook-inst...

ghusto 3y ago
Why on earth is this being down-voted? It's patently and demonstrably true. The Independent isn't the source I'd use, but there are plenty more. Personally, I'd be happy if there was some magic way to stop people under 30 interacting with me online in any way (as long as it _was_ magic, and didn't laws or "technical" fixes).
- wcerfgba 3y ago
  Is it "patently and demonstrably true"? This article is 80% opinion and 20% descriptive statistics. There's no experimental, quasiexperimental, or qualitative research cited. A systematic review from 2020 found that the evidence is mixed at best, and more research is needed: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02673843.2019.1590851 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02673843.2019.1... Ultimately, we have responsibilities to ourselves and our loved ones. Reflect on your life, talk to your friends and family, and if you think introducing restrictions on your social media use would improve your/their wellbeing, then do so and see if it helps. Xx
  - ghusto 3y ago
    > Ultimately, we have responsibilities to ourselves and our loved ones. Reflect on your life, talk to your friends and family, and if you think introducing restrictions on your social media use would improve your/their wellbeing, then do so and see if it helps. Xx Absolutely, and I'm not suggesting I shirk my responsibilities as a parent. One of the things that annoyed me when I was a kid was parents wanting to restrict TV and video games, because they didn't want to take their precious "me-me-me" time and devote it to actually raising their children. This isn't the same thing though. You can be as present and involved as possible in your kids life today, but the web trumps all. It's all pervasive, all encompassing, and normalised. You could switch the TV off, or talk about problematic themes on it, but the web is a different beast. If you lived through the before-times, you saw the difference between then, during, and after the iPhone. The kids have never been alright, but as one of those kids who was on the wrong side of the outer-edges of not-alright, I can tell you that the situation now is dire in comparison.
- 1827163 3y ago
  So you are advocating for even more discrimination and prejudice in society than there is already? Yes, prejudice because we are treating people based on a characteristic that may be completely unrepresentative of their character. This time it's age, not race, but that doesn't make it any less awful. We've been down this path before....
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    Nah, I can comfortably say that racial discrimination is worse than a minimum age.
    - 1827163 3y ago
      But what about the humiliation that young people have to suffer from age discrimination. Being told that "you're not old enough" while being perfectly capable of handling the task, for example. Nobody complains because it's been normalized in society. Just as racial discrimination was, in the past. We only get outraged about it after it is gone, not when we are living through it. In fact I feel somewhat, that some of the these types of discrimination is just a way for one group, i.e. adults to exert their dominance over younger people. Just as way of showing power. There might be some kind of unconscious primitive behavior at work here????
      - ghusto 3y ago
        > But what about the humiliation that young people have to suffer from age discrimination. Being told that "you're not old enough" while being perfectly capable of handling the task, for example It's called "being young", you'll get over it. I remember feeling pretty pissed off about this very thing around 16, but I had completely forgotten until just now when I read your comment. An unpopular truth — that'll no doubt send you into a fit of rage, apologies — is that "you'll understand when you're older" is a cliche for a solid reason. Every one of us who says that, was your age, and felt the same way you do now. There's nothing new under the sun. Some constructive practical advice though: Prove the adults wrong by working around the limitations and restrictions placed on you. You'll be amazed how quickly they scramble to move them out of your way. You don't even need to succeed, it'll be enough that they see you're trying your best despite the obstacles.
djoldman 3y ago
Why would it not be enough to allow parents to make that decision?
- nunuvit 3y ago
  For the same reason it's illegal to sell tobacco to minors. Your kids have a right to exist in society without a constant chaperone, and other adults don't have a right to interact with your kids as if they're adults.
  - CyberWraith 3y ago
    Social media is good for kids. Here they can't just be dismissed because they're kids but will be judged fairly on the basis of their merit. Freedom of speech only exists online for them.
    - nunuvit 3y ago
      They can design the law to ban companies from giving an account directly to a kid, but allow parents to give their kids an account. There's room to negotiate down from this proposal.
  - kelseyfrog 3y ago
    Absolutely anything to coddle the mind. Without the exposure, children will never be able to build resilience to these ideas. You can see the effects of this type of parenting today in the students who can't handle ideas they don't like. I can't seriously believe that folks want to make it illegal for parents to parent any other way.
    - nunuvit 3y ago
      I guess you didn't read my other reply. You can balance the rights and interests of both parents and kids by narrowing the proposal. There's plenty of precedent. I'm allowed to give my kids alcohol, but you're not. Something similar could make sense for social media below a certain age.
CyberWraith 3y ago
banning social media accounts for under 16s. You mean, ban it everyone under 16? Why ban social media for boys if it only negatively affects teenage girls?
- jstarfish 3y ago
  The number of incels out there speaks for itself.
  - CyberWraith 3y ago
    What's wrong with incels? are they bad people because they can't find a relationship? what?
    - fknorangesite 3y ago
      Playing dumb is not a good look.
      - CyberWraith 3y ago
        Still haven't answered what's wrong with incels
        bluefirebrand 3y ago
        Male incels are generally very miserable people with a lot of mental health struggles. The implication is that society is also very hostile to men and boys right now, demonstrated by them becoming incels in large numbers.
        vgatherps 3y ago
        incel generally isn't used literally to refer to all people who want to have sex but can't, but a male subset of said group who tend to hold really strong beliefs along the lines of "women won't sleep with me because they're bad", "women only like the bad dudes not nice guys like me", etc.
1827163 3y ago
No, I think this is wrong, we should be expanding children's rights, not be taking them away. Instead force social media companies to change the recommendation algorithms and make other tweaks to the sites to reduce the amount of harm from occurring. We are already raising a coddled generation who have little concept of basic liberties and natural rights. We will have a disaster on the horizon when they grow into adults, and who will accept the same treatment from the government this time.
- lumb63 3y ago
  I know it is in vogue to criticize social media companies for their algorithms and for dark patterns. I do it too. But I think there is more to why social media is harmful to mental health, especially for young people, especially for girls. I think it’s related to how people use the platforms and what they post on them. For instance, I follow powerlifting pretty closely. A lot of folks who have been around for a while will tell their viewers something similar to, “don’t structure your training like the people on Instagram”, or “don’t believe everyone is like the people on Instagram - it’s just a highlight reel”. Because of the algorithms they use, you only see the strongest people on your feed, because that’s what people want to see. It’s exciting. But even if the algorithms were tweaked so that somehow this didn’t happen, while still providing content you wanted to see, it wouldn’t solve the issue. Continuing with my above example, nobody posts their grueling, three-hour-long workouts. They post the single PR (personal record) they hit, or some motivational song played over their heaviest set of the day. They post the four-month diet transformation, not the daily low-calorie meals, the times they have cravings, the unremarkable week-to-week changes. They do that because they know that’s what people want to see, but more than that, they do it because that’s what they’re proud of. The reality is that people are much more than what they are proud of. People have good days, and people have bad days. People have motivated days, and people have days where they drag their feet. People have strong and weak days, heavy and light days. Sometimes these phases last for weeks or months. When you assess others through the lens of their social media profile, you see a minuscule sliver of who they are and what is going on in their life. That sliver is curated by them to be exactly what they think makes them look best. So to come full circle, even if all the algorithms on social media platforms tried to be less detrimental to mental health, I don’t think it would work. Instead of seeing the strongest people on the planet hitting PRs and thinking themselves weak, people would see whoever they followed hitting PRs and think themselves weak. Social media encourages you to compare yourself to what others are posting, which is a cherry-picked sample of the best moments in their life.
radq 3y ago
I started programming when I was 12, mostly writing small scripts to customize PHP forum software. I joined a number of online forums and mailing lists with more experienced folks doing similar things and learned a ton from reading their code and getting feedback on mine. The experience helped me a ton with my career later on, and I formed friendships that last to this day. I can't think of a way to define "social media" that wouldn't include forums, mailing lists, Stack Overflow etc. It would be a shame to deprive young people today of the opportunities I had growing up.
- silisili 3y ago
  That's a great point. Not sure how you could differentiate, but there has to be a way, as forums -feel- different than, say, Instagram. Maybe something around media? Banning sites that allow or host media(pics/vids/audio) sharing directly?
  - Swizec 3y ago
    > Not sure how you could differentiate Imgur is an example of social media that pulls this off perfectly. Yes it's still a silly place designed for wasting time rather than personal enrichment, but it doesn't -feel- like other social media does. Here's the trick: No selfies. No profiles. No follows. You post your meme pseudo-anonymously and hope it makes the central stream. Everything else dies in obscurity. It's a lot like Hacker News in that way, which is also social media but feels different. Because 99% of the time I don't even read the usernames of who I'm talking to. We live and die on the basis of our ideas, not our identities. Even the famous people.
    - OJFord 3y ago
      > It's a lot like Hacker News in that way, which is also social media but feels different. Because 99% of the time I don't even read the usernames of who I'm talking to. That's a great point and interesting because I'd thought of HN as much like fora, but there it was (is?) common to address people by username (or partial) - 'Thanks cheesepuff[86] that worked perfectly' - which is seldom seen and would be a bit jarring, wouldn't it Swizec, on HN.
LinuxBender 3y ago
I'd rather unban everything, legalize everything and instead have people take an aptitude test to determine how well they can deal with all aspects of the internet. There should probably be grade school and high school classes to harden people against all facets of unstable people. An Internet version of the Agoge [1]. If a student does not pass the class they are sent to an advanced training camp to fix their nutrition, get them off all prescription drugs and teach them how to verbally joust with the master trolls. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agoge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agoge
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
yamtaddle 3y ago
The mass-surveillance-based, creepy-stalker-but-at-scale business model of these companies ought to be illegal. IMO we should try to outlaw that and see what happens, before legislating on the downstream effects. Might still need stuff like social media account age minimums, but... might not.
csomar 3y ago
Sure, why not. Let's add this to the 252 pages of the bill.
iudqnolq 3y ago
Five million UK children lost a parent or other caregiver because of the pandemic. I'd start by doing something to reduce that. Source: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/234197/at-least-million-children-have-lost/ https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/234197/at-least-million-chil...
- billforsternz 3y ago
  This statement is obviously untrue, there's probably only 10 million children in the UK. Have half lost a parent to Covid? Of course not. And indeed looking at your source, it turns out that it's five million children in the world.
madeofpalk 3y ago
Okay, maybe. How? Social media sites already don’t allow accounts for those under 13, but kids can just lie…
- mixmastamyk 3y ago
  That’s where parents come in.
DoItToMe81 3y ago
The enforcement of this would inherently involve tying internet IDs to real IDs, which is incredibly bad for UK internetters. They arrest children for posting rap lyrics and adults for saying things as simple as "get off of my football team" or "you look ugly". They were detaining thousands annually by 2016, for speech deemed innocuous enough in any other country, and the number has only grown.
- 1827163 3y ago
  Yes, that's why I want to leave the UK, I am absolutely shocked what happened to this country. It never used to be this bad in the 1990s. And I am unnerved by expressing some of my opinions here on this forum, fully knowing that intelligence agencies such as GCHQ are likely monitoring my controversial posts. Well controversy is required for society to progress, and the chilling effect on other people is hindering the development of society itself. However I am not going to let the chill have any effect on me here. And I am thus going to continue to speak my mind. Because I don't think I'll be in the UK for much longer, being able to get an EU passport relatively easily. The faster I get out of this sinking ship of a country, the better.
rjmunro 3y ago
1. I don't think banning having an account is the problem. TikTok, YouTube, Facebook watch etc. can be used anonymously. The things that need accounts are probably less bad. 2. I think we need a better term than "social media". I suspect it's mostly not the "social" side that are causing mental health problems, it's the celeb / influencer / brands that are the problem. Maybe we need a social network where all messages disappear after more than 10 people read them or something.

ghusto 3y ago

Why on earth is this being down-voted? It's patently and demonstrably true. The Independent isn't the source I'd use, but there are plenty more. Personally, I'd be happy if there was some magic way to stop people under 30 interacting with me online in any way (as long as it _was_ magic, and didn't laws or "technical" fixes).

wcerfgba 3y ago
Is it "patently and demonstrably true"? This article is 80% opinion and 20% descriptive statistics. There's no experimental, quasiexperimental, or qualitative research cited. A systematic review from 2020 found that the evidence is mixed at best, and more research is needed: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02673843.2019.1590851 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02673843.2019.1... Ultimately, we have responsibilities to ourselves and our loved ones. Reflect on your life, talk to your friends and family, and if you think introducing restrictions on your social media use would improve your/their wellbeing, then do so and see if it helps. Xx
- ghusto 3y ago
  > Ultimately, we have responsibilities to ourselves and our loved ones. Reflect on your life, talk to your friends and family, and if you think introducing restrictions on your social media use would improve your/their wellbeing, then do so and see if it helps. Xx Absolutely, and I'm not suggesting I shirk my responsibilities as a parent. One of the things that annoyed me when I was a kid was parents wanting to restrict TV and video games, because they didn't want to take their precious "me-me-me" time and devote it to actually raising their children. This isn't the same thing though. You can be as present and involved as possible in your kids life today, but the web trumps all. It's all pervasive, all encompassing, and normalised. You could switch the TV off, or talk about problematic themes on it, but the web is a different beast. If you lived through the before-times, you saw the difference between then, during, and after the iPhone. The kids have never been alright, but as one of those kids who was on the wrong side of the outer-edges of not-alright, I can tell you that the situation now is dire in comparison.
1827163 3y ago
So you are advocating for even more discrimination and prejudice in society than there is already? Yes, prejudice because we are treating people based on a characteristic that may be completely unrepresentative of their character. This time it's age, not race, but that doesn't make it any less awful. We've been down this path before....
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  Nah, I can comfortably say that racial discrimination is worse than a minimum age.
  - 1827163 3y ago
    But what about the humiliation that young people have to suffer from age discrimination. Being told that "you're not old enough" while being perfectly capable of handling the task, for example. Nobody complains because it's been normalized in society. Just as racial discrimination was, in the past. We only get outraged about it after it is gone, not when we are living through it. In fact I feel somewhat, that some of the these types of discrimination is just a way for one group, i.e. adults to exert their dominance over younger people. Just as way of showing power. There might be some kind of unconscious primitive behavior at work here????
    - ghusto 3y ago
      > But what about the humiliation that young people have to suffer from age discrimination. Being told that "you're not old enough" while being perfectly capable of handling the task, for example It's called "being young", you'll get over it. I remember feeling pretty pissed off about this very thing around 16, but I had completely forgotten until just now when I read your comment. An unpopular truth — that'll no doubt send you into a fit of rage, apologies — is that "you'll understand when you're older" is a cliche for a solid reason. Every one of us who says that, was your age, and felt the same way you do now. There's nothing new under the sun. Some constructive practical advice though: Prove the adults wrong by working around the limitations and restrictions placed on you. You'll be amazed how quickly they scramble to move them out of your way. You don't even need to succeed, it'll be enough that they see you're trying your best despite the obstacles.

djoldman 3y ago

Why would it not be enough to allow parents to make that decision?

nunuvit 3y ago
For the same reason it's illegal to sell tobacco to minors. Your kids have a right to exist in society without a constant chaperone, and other adults don't have a right to interact with your kids as if they're adults.
- CyberWraith 3y ago
  Social media is good for kids. Here they can't just be dismissed because they're kids but will be judged fairly on the basis of their merit. Freedom of speech only exists online for them.
  - nunuvit 3y ago
    They can design the law to ban companies from giving an account directly to a kid, but allow parents to give their kids an account. There's room to negotiate down from this proposal.
- kelseyfrog 3y ago
  Absolutely anything to coddle the mind. Without the exposure, children will never be able to build resilience to these ideas. You can see the effects of this type of parenting today in the students who can't handle ideas they don't like. I can't seriously believe that folks want to make it illegal for parents to parent any other way.
  - nunuvit 3y ago
    I guess you didn't read my other reply. You can balance the rights and interests of both parents and kids by narrowing the proposal. There's plenty of precedent. I'm allowed to give my kids alcohol, but you're not. Something similar could make sense for social media below a certain age.

CyberWraith 3y ago

banning social media accounts for under 16s. You mean, ban it everyone under 16? Why ban social media for boys if it only negatively affects teenage girls?

jstarfish 3y ago
The number of incels out there speaks for itself.
- CyberWraith 3y ago
  What's wrong with incels? are they bad people because they can't find a relationship? what?
  - fknorangesite 3y ago
    Playing dumb is not a good look.
    - CyberWraith 3y ago
      Still haven't answered what's wrong with incels
      - bluefirebrand 3y ago
        Male incels are generally very miserable people with a lot of mental health struggles. The implication is that society is also very hostile to men and boys right now, demonstrated by them becoming incels in large numbers.
      - vgatherps 3y ago
        incel generally isn't used literally to refer to all people who want to have sex but can't, but a male subset of said group who tend to hold really strong beliefs along the lines of "women won't sleep with me because they're bad", "women only like the bad dudes not nice guys like me", etc.

1827163 3y ago

No, I think this is wrong, we should be expanding children's rights, not be taking them away. Instead force social media companies to change the recommendation algorithms and make other tweaks to the sites to reduce the amount of harm from occurring. We are already raising a coddled generation who have little concept of basic liberties and natural rights. We will have a disaster on the horizon when they grow into adults, and who will accept the same treatment from the government this time.

lumb63 3y ago
I know it is in vogue to criticize social media companies for their algorithms and for dark patterns. I do it too. But I think there is more to why social media is harmful to mental health, especially for young people, especially for girls. I think it’s related to how people use the platforms and what they post on them. For instance, I follow powerlifting pretty closely. A lot of folks who have been around for a while will tell their viewers something similar to, “don’t structure your training like the people on Instagram”, or “don’t believe everyone is like the people on Instagram - it’s just a highlight reel”. Because of the algorithms they use, you only see the strongest people on your feed, because that’s what people want to see. It’s exciting. But even if the algorithms were tweaked so that somehow this didn’t happen, while still providing content you wanted to see, it wouldn’t solve the issue. Continuing with my above example, nobody posts their grueling, three-hour-long workouts. They post the single PR (personal record) they hit, or some motivational song played over their heaviest set of the day. They post the four-month diet transformation, not the daily low-calorie meals, the times they have cravings, the unremarkable week-to-week changes. They do that because they know that’s what people want to see, but more than that, they do it because that’s what they’re proud of. The reality is that people are much more than what they are proud of. People have good days, and people have bad days. People have motivated days, and people have days where they drag their feet. People have strong and weak days, heavy and light days. Sometimes these phases last for weeks or months. When you assess others through the lens of their social media profile, you see a minuscule sliver of who they are and what is going on in their life. That sliver is curated by them to be exactly what they think makes them look best. So to come full circle, even if all the algorithms on social media platforms tried to be less detrimental to mental health, I don’t think it would work. Instead of seeing the strongest people on the planet hitting PRs and thinking themselves weak, people would see whoever they followed hitting PRs and think themselves weak. Social media encourages you to compare yourself to what others are posting, which is a cherry-picked sample of the best moments in their life.

radq 3y ago

I started programming when I was 12, mostly writing small scripts to customize PHP forum software. I joined a number of online forums and mailing lists with more experienced folks doing similar things and learned a ton from reading their code and getting feedback on mine. The experience helped me a ton with my career later on, and I formed friendships that last to this day. I can't think of a way to define "social media" that wouldn't include forums, mailing lists, Stack Overflow etc. It would be a shame to deprive young people today of the opportunities I had growing up.

silisili 3y ago
That's a great point. Not sure how you could differentiate, but there has to be a way, as forums -feel- different than, say, Instagram. Maybe something around media? Banning sites that allow or host media(pics/vids/audio) sharing directly?
- Swizec 3y ago
  > Not sure how you could differentiate Imgur is an example of social media that pulls this off perfectly. Yes it's still a silly place designed for wasting time rather than personal enrichment, but it doesn't -feel- like other social media does. Here's the trick: No selfies. No profiles. No follows. You post your meme pseudo-anonymously and hope it makes the central stream. Everything else dies in obscurity. It's a lot like Hacker News in that way, which is also social media but feels different. Because 99% of the time I don't even read the usernames of who I'm talking to. We live and die on the basis of our ideas, not our identities. Even the famous people.
  - OJFord 3y ago
    > It's a lot like Hacker News in that way, which is also social media but feels different. Because 99% of the time I don't even read the usernames of who I'm talking to. That's a great point and interesting because I'd thought of HN as much like fora, but there it was (is?) common to address people by username (or partial) - 'Thanks cheesepuff[86] that worked perfectly' - which is seldom seen and would be a bit jarring, wouldn't it Swizec, on HN.

LinuxBender 3y ago

I'd rather unban everything, legalize everything and instead have people take an aptitude test to determine how well they can deal with all aspects of the internet. There should probably be grade school and high school classes to harden people against all facets of unstable people. An Internet version of the Agoge [1]. If a student does not pass the class they are sent to an advanced training camp to fix their nutrition, get them off all prescription drugs and teach them how to verbally joust with the master trolls. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agoge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agoge

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

yamtaddle 3y ago

The mass-surveillance-based, creepy-stalker-but-at-scale business model of these companies ought to be illegal. IMO we should try to outlaw that and see what happens, before legislating on the downstream effects. Might still need stuff like social media account age minimums, but... might not.

csomar 3y ago

Sure, why not. Let's add this to the 252 pages of the bill.

iudqnolq 3y ago

Five million UK children lost a parent or other caregiver because of the pandemic. I'd start by doing something to reduce that. Source: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/234197/at-least-million-children-have-lost/ https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/234197/at-least-million-chil...

billforsternz 3y ago
This statement is obviously untrue, there's probably only 10 million children in the UK. Have half lost a parent to Covid? Of course not. And indeed looking at your source, it turns out that it's five million children in the world.

madeofpalk 3y ago

Okay, maybe. How? Social media sites already don’t allow accounts for those under 13, but kids can just lie…

mixmastamyk 3y ago
That’s where parents come in.

DoItToMe81 3y ago

The enforcement of this would inherently involve tying internet IDs to real IDs, which is incredibly bad for UK internetters. They arrest children for posting rap lyrics and adults for saying things as simple as "get off of my football team" or "you look ugly". They were detaining thousands annually by 2016, for speech deemed innocuous enough in any other country, and the number has only grown.

1827163 3y ago
Yes, that's why I want to leave the UK, I am absolutely shocked what happened to this country. It never used to be this bad in the 1990s. And I am unnerved by expressing some of my opinions here on this forum, fully knowing that intelligence agencies such as GCHQ are likely monitoring my controversial posts. Well controversy is required for society to progress, and the chilling effect on other people is hindering the development of society itself. However I am not going to let the chill have any effect on me here. And I am thus going to continue to speak my mind. Because I don't think I'll be in the UK for much longer, being able to get an EU passport relatively easily. The faster I get out of this sinking ship of a country, the better.

rjmunro 3y ago

1. I don't think banning having an account is the problem. TikTok, YouTube, Facebook watch etc. can be used anonymously. The things that need accounts are probably less bad. 2. I think we need a better term than "social media". I suspect it's mostly not the "social" side that are causing mental health problems, it's the celeb / influencer / brands that are the problem. Maybe we need a social network where all messages disappear after more than 10 people read them or something.