4 ms·

It's good to see that many countries are working on lesiglation to protect children and teens against this, since the companies clearly aren't trying.

idontwantthis 8mo ago
That’s pretty much the whole purpose of government and if it isn’t doing that then it has abdicated its primary responsibility.
- akramachamarei 8mo ago
  I think many people would disagree with you that the primary responsibility of government is to protect people from themselves.
  - idontwantthis 8mo ago
    I’m talking about protecting people from evil actors with immense power to do harm.
    - akramachamarei 8mo ago
      I don't think so. What you're saying is that kids (and maybe adults) don't have enough agency over their own usage of social media; that these social media are so addicting and harmful that we cannot trust users (in concert with their parents, teachers, etc.) not to harm themselves with them, and that we must construct government apparatus to protect them.
      - idontwantthis 8mo ago
        Yes
mikkupikku 8mo ago
American tech corps act like cigarette companies but we're still at the point where banning them for kids is considered weird, fringe and even dangerous. Crazy.
- AnthonyMouse 8mo ago
  The general problem is that nobody actually needs cigarettes but communication is fundamental to the human experience. How do you even propose to define "social media" in a way that can distinguish between it and any other public forum for discussion? The actual problem is not that kids are using group communications technology, it's that the network effect in public interaction has been captured by private companies with a perverse incentive to maximize engagement. That's just as much of a problem for adults as for teenagers and the solution doesn't look anything like "ban people from using this category of thing" and instead looks something like "require interoperability/federation" so there isn't a central middle man sitting on the chokepoint who makes more money the more time people waste using the service.
  - dylan604 8mo ago
    > but communication is fundamental to the human experience. Humans survived well before the internet, the telephone, the telegraph, or even international post.
    - AnthonyMouse 8mo ago
      In those days they did this by having physical public spaces for interaction, which we've since priced people out of through artificial scarcity of real estate via zoning laws. And even if people were willing to solve that one, it would take time to actually build new buildings, and doing that would have to be done first. It's also assuming that we're willing to abandon a technological capacity (not having to personally travel to someone's location to communicate with them) that humans have had since before Moses came down from the mountain, which seems like a fairly silly constraint to impose when there are obviously better alternatives available.
uniq7 8mo ago
The problem is when government's solutions go through identifying everyone and collaterally tracking their actions. In the same way parents can be blamed for not keeping their children safe around guns/alcohol/drugs, they should also be blamed for not keeping the children out of digital dangers, and keep mandatory age verifications out of here.
- ares623 8mo ago
  Problem is that social media doesn’t have negative connotations like guns/alcohol/drugs do. That makes it hard or impossible for individual parents to restrict it. They are perceived as crazy or paranoid or controlling. Plus if their child does opt out of social media, they become a social outcast from their peers who are still on it, which is a worse outcome for the child. It almost sounds like multiple parents from a large number of households need to collectively act in unison to address the problem effectively. Hmm collective action, that sounds familiar. I wonder if there’s a way to enforce such a collective action? To be clear, I do agree that putting the ban on the software/platform side is the wrong approach. The ban should be on the physical hardware, similar to how guns/alcohol/tobacco which are all physical objects. But I don’t have the luxury to let perfect be the enemy of close enough.
  - rightbyte 8mo ago
    > Plus if their child does opt out of social media, they become a social outcast from their peers who are still on it, which is a worse outcome for the child. I don't think that is the case any more since social media isn't social like it used to be?
- sagacity 8mo ago
  This is like saying parents are at fault when a gun salesman sells a weapon to their 12 year old.
  - ares623 8mo ago
    Not even “sell” but “give for free, constantly, every day, delivered directly to their house, disguised as a toy”
irae 8mo ago
Government will do a terrible job at it. Society lost the capability of creating good and simple laws that can be disputed on courts based on law intention. Instead, laws nowadays are full of details hard to understand that attack the symptom and not the cause. For instance, a simple law like "Companies should take measure, even if it lowers revenue and growth, to reduce addictive behavior. They should to it more emphatically on under age users and even more on under 13 years old.". But no. Instead, they will write 40 pages of what companies should implement in their software, and than have the 40 pages be quickly outdated, partially impossible to implement and hell for developers who try to do the right thing to comply. Total crap of standards and regulation bodies that help nothing and slow down all innovation. Solution will only come from social pressure, movements to delete the apps, parents actually educating their children to avoid adicitive features. It will take time. But Government will solve nothing.

idontwantthis 8mo ago

That’s pretty much the whole purpose of government and if it isn’t doing that then it has abdicated its primary responsibility.

akramachamarei 8mo ago
I think many people would disagree with you that the primary responsibility of government is to protect people from themselves.
- idontwantthis 8mo ago
  I’m talking about protecting people from evil actors with immense power to do harm.
  - akramachamarei 8mo ago
    I don't think so. What you're saying is that kids (and maybe adults) don't have enough agency over their own usage of social media; that these social media are so addicting and harmful that we cannot trust users (in concert with their parents, teachers, etc.) not to harm themselves with them, and that we must construct government apparatus to protect them.
    - idontwantthis 8mo ago
      Yes

mikkupikku 8mo ago

American tech corps act like cigarette companies but we're still at the point where banning them for kids is considered weird, fringe and even dangerous. Crazy.

AnthonyMouse 8mo ago
The general problem is that nobody actually needs cigarettes but communication is fundamental to the human experience. How do you even propose to define "social media" in a way that can distinguish between it and any other public forum for discussion? The actual problem is not that kids are using group communications technology, it's that the network effect in public interaction has been captured by private companies with a perverse incentive to maximize engagement. That's just as much of a problem for adults as for teenagers and the solution doesn't look anything like "ban people from using this category of thing" and instead looks something like "require interoperability/federation" so there isn't a central middle man sitting on the chokepoint who makes more money the more time people waste using the service.
- dylan604 8mo ago
  > but communication is fundamental to the human experience. Humans survived well before the internet, the telephone, the telegraph, or even international post.
  - AnthonyMouse 8mo ago
    In those days they did this by having physical public spaces for interaction, which we've since priced people out of through artificial scarcity of real estate via zoning laws. And even if people were willing to solve that one, it would take time to actually build new buildings, and doing that would have to be done first. It's also assuming that we're willing to abandon a technological capacity (not having to personally travel to someone's location to communicate with them) that humans have had since before Moses came down from the mountain, which seems like a fairly silly constraint to impose when there are obviously better alternatives available.

uniq7 8mo ago

The problem is when government's solutions go through identifying everyone and collaterally tracking their actions. In the same way parents can be blamed for not keeping their children safe around guns/alcohol/drugs, they should also be blamed for not keeping the children out of digital dangers, and keep mandatory age verifications out of here.

ares623 8mo ago
Problem is that social media doesn’t have negative connotations like guns/alcohol/drugs do. That makes it hard or impossible for individual parents to restrict it. They are perceived as crazy or paranoid or controlling. Plus if their child does opt out of social media, they become a social outcast from their peers who are still on it, which is a worse outcome for the child. It almost sounds like multiple parents from a large number of households need to collectively act in unison to address the problem effectively. Hmm collective action, that sounds familiar. I wonder if there’s a way to enforce such a collective action? To be clear, I do agree that putting the ban on the software/platform side is the wrong approach. The ban should be on the physical hardware, similar to how guns/alcohol/tobacco which are all physical objects. But I don’t have the luxury to let perfect be the enemy of close enough.
- rightbyte 8mo ago
  > Plus if their child does opt out of social media, they become a social outcast from their peers who are still on it, which is a worse outcome for the child. I don't think that is the case any more since social media isn't social like it used to be?
sagacity 8mo ago
This is like saying parents are at fault when a gun salesman sells a weapon to their 12 year old.
- ares623 8mo ago
  Not even “sell” but “give for free, constantly, every day, delivered directly to their house, disguised as a toy”

irae 8mo ago

Government will do a terrible job at it. Society lost the capability of creating good and simple laws that can be disputed on courts based on law intention. Instead, laws nowadays are full of details hard to understand that attack the symptom and not the cause. For instance, a simple law like "Companies should take measure, even if it lowers revenue and growth, to reduce addictive behavior. They should to it more emphatically on under age users and even more on under 13 years old.". But no. Instead, they will write 40 pages of what companies should implement in their software, and than have the 40 pages be quickly outdated, partially impossible to implement and hell for developers who try to do the right thing to comply. Total crap of standards and regulation bodies that help nothing and slow down all innovation. Solution will only come from social pressure, movements to delete the apps, parents actually educating their children to avoid adicitive features. It will take time. But Government will solve nothing.