4 ms·

From Paris to New Delhi, the Push to Ban Teens from Social Media Is Going Global

48 points by 1vuio0pswjnm7 9mo ago

pramodbiligiri 9mo ago
https://archive.is/8tMxs https://archive.is/8tMxs
PebblesHD 9mo ago
So don’t allow accounts with ages set below the limit like they already do for under 13s. Why does this translate to every other site wanting my government ID or a scan of my face? Just this past 12 months both my drivers license and passport have been involved in data breaches and there are no penalties or recompense for the companies at fault, so my patience for providing ID is near zero.
- StopDisinfo910 9mo ago
  > So don’t allow accounts with ages set below the limit like they already do for under 13s. Why does this translate to every other site wanting my government ID or a scan of my face? Because self inputed age fields don't work. People just lie to access what they want. You have to understand that the goal here is not token compliance but actually limiting teenagers exposure to something we now know to be highly addictive and damaging to mental health. Clearly, the market is not able to self restrict and will exploit every opportunities given to it. It's only logical to take stronger restriction. That's basically bringing regulations on social media on the same track as tobacco and alcohol. Personally, I think it makes a lot of sense.
  - Kim_Bruning 9mo ago
    Ok, let's assume for today that age gating is the thing to to. Requiring ID is not entirely the right approach here I think. You're forcing people to reveal PII for limited gain, and building systems you can't knock down later. The EU is working on a zero knowledge proof system for exactly this purpose, but it doesn't quite seem to be ready for prime time yet. https://ageverification.dev/Technical%20Specification/annexes/annex-B/annex-B-zkp/ https://ageverification.dev/Technical%20Specification/annexe...
    - aaplok 9mo ago
      > Requiring ID is not entirely the right approach here I think It is in the sense that it entices the industry to come up with a better approach. Otherwise they'll just sit on their piles of gold saying that it can't be done, as they have been doing for far too long.
      - pjc50 9mo ago
        This approach is just fine for the industry: delegate the problem to the lowest, shadiest bidder. After all, privacy breaches aren't their problem. If governments want an ID system they should provide one.
        aaplok 9mo ago
        And maybe they will. We have gone from the industry clamouring that what's being done now is not possible and spending millions of lobbying money against it, to such laws spreading like wildfire. The next step is the (inevitable) mess up because implementations won't be foolproof, followed by yet more millions of lobbying money being spent to amplify the effect of these mess ups. Eventually we will come to a new normal. It will take time. But the hope is that the cat is out of the bag and we don't come back to a model that we know hurts children and pretend it's just how it is.
    - StopDisinfo910 9mo ago
      The restricting law is mostly concerned with the age gating, not the how. You can expect another law or directive to explain how it has to be done. In the EU, GDPR does apply so you can be sure that poorly storing ID copies for this purpose will not fly. But, I think it's clearly what ID is for and a legitimate use case for electronic ID. ID is the tool the state uses to give you a way to prove you are who you pretend to be. I think there's something a bit funny in worrying about giving a copy of your IDs to companies who already know everything about you from your full social graph to your political leanings and interests.
      - lbeltrame 9mo ago
  - squeefers 9mo ago
    dont parents control what their kids do? if its that hysterically dangerous, take the phone off your kid.
    - hulitu 9mo ago
      Good luck with that. On Android or Windows Google or Microsoft has control on what you can run with parental controls. (I don't know if on Apples iOS parental controls work as expected). On Android you cannot limit app installation
      - hellojesus 9mo ago
        You absolutely can enroll devices in device management systems. Parents need to treat their children the same way corporations do with employees.
        tstrimple 9mo ago
        Sounds like a recipe for becoming an estranged parent and wondering where your child went so wrong.
        deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
        squeefers 9mo ago
        well its either that or let your child watch short-form videos in quick succession.... i think its blindingly obvious which one is the true evil
    - StopDisinfo910 9mo ago
      Applies equaly to land mines and crack cocaine. The tension between freedom and public health is obviously very real. That's why liberal democracies generally rely on public debate and expert opinions to decide what should be controlled and what should be widely available. Turns out, the expert opinions on social media is not very good and very much in favour of a ban for minors. Also turns out that the public is apparently in support of the ban.
  - hulitu 9mo ago
    > You have to understand that the goal here is not token compliance but actually limiting teenagers exposure to something we now know to be highly addictive and damaging to mental health. If this would have been the case, proper parental controls would have been in place everywhere. Instead, parental controls are only used to maximize profits.
Alifatisk 9mo ago
This is such great news, we have seen mental health decline a lot this decade while social media among teens have become a commodity.My only concern is how this will be enforced, trusting private entities with IDs and passport doesn’t seem reliable with the recent leaks. We do not want to risk children like this. I don’t know which country started this trend, with banning social media though, maybe it was Australia but I am in favor of it. I hope next step is for schools to ban phones as a whole.
- bmacho 9mo ago
  > This is such great news, we have seen mental health decline a lot this decade while social media among teens have become a commodity. Yes, and simple solution could be (or: could've been) making parents control their kids social media usage. It's only harmful in excessive amounts, several hours a day. (Unlike drugs, or alcohol that only needs secons to be harmful.) Parents can control that, and absolutely would if government told them so. There is absolutely no reason to ban kids from social media.
  - Aeglaecia 9mo ago
    sure, there would be absolutely no reason to ban kids from social media in a utopic society where people treated each other with respect , were all as educated as the average hacker news inhabitant , and behaved rationally. meanwhile in reality, modern social media have nothing to do with socialization and everything to do with abusing brains to maximise engagement. while this point is n=1, it really does not take more than a few minutes for short form content to crash my motivation, so i completely disagree with your 'several hours' figure. fuck it, ban kids from having any form of smart phone or social media. give em all sony ericssons with pre paid sims that force them to put effort into their texts and actually socialize. maybe that will give imagination a fighting chance. what possible benefit could there be to let kids doom scroll? if you were a kid, why would you read or play or socialize when you could doom scroll? yes it is a parents responsibility to control their kids, and not one parent has any idea or education as to how modern social media affects a child - do you expect modern parents to spontaneously manifest this knowledge? for what its worth , i once suggested to simply make it illegal for parents to let kids on facebook. but that doesn't offer much scope for multi national corporations to scrape PII (which is probably the real priority)
blell 9mo ago
A certain part of the political aisle are seeing what free flow of information is doing to their youth numbers and they don’t like it. This is only the beginning.
squeefers 9mo ago
well thank god it has absolutely no ill effects on adults or wed all be screwed amirite!>!>!/?!one
pjc50 9mo ago
I'm not normally given to "conspiracy theory", but .. this feels coordinated, right? Quite possibly by the age verification vendors, or some shadier intelligence service sockpuppeting them? It's just so rare for so many governments to simultaneously, suddenly, after so many years of social media agree that it's a problem on the scale of chloroflurocarbons.
- squeefers 9mo ago
  its because of hysteria. same thing happened with tv. some girl in england killed herself after she herself had been searching out suicide content, the algo obviously suggests it back to her and because of that we basically got the Online Child Safety act. Whos going to tell grieving parents the kid did it to herself?
  - pjc50 9mo ago
    > the algo obviously suggests it back to her Pro-suicide content has been a thing since the days of USENET. It's been a (lesser) problem on social media since the start. Is it really just that one case got over the hysteria threshold? But yes, if the algorithm is suggesting pro-suicide content then the developers are morally, if not legally, liable for that and should expect some consequences. I note that one of the few taboos maintained by the otherwise grossly irresponsible UK media is not reporting on suicide (because this is known to be a trigger). You might see "famous musician died suddenly at a young age" and have to connect the dots yourself.
    - squeefers 9mo ago
      > But yes, if the algorithm is suggesting pro-suicide content then the developers are morally, if not legally, if she hadnt searched for it herself, it wouldnt have suggested it. the parents (understandly) want to blame someone for it. politics is emotion, not logic.
      - hackable_sand 9mo ago
        Politics is also logic
hackable_sand 9mo ago
Despots are happy to have uninformed youth who cannot organize globally.
- elevation 9mo ago
  Social media inanities are exactly how we prevent youth from becoming informed.
  - alphawhisky 9mo ago
    Being informed of what? Whatever their dad tells them? Although the pitfalls of social media are many, the answer lies with regulation and moderation, not banning a significant portion of the population from them. The diversity of perspective and opinion is what allows people to gain the exposure needed to develop informed opinions. What blows my mind is that governments have the world's biggest media market makers by the throat and they refuse to force regulation. If they removed AI, made the algos public/modifiable, and actually moderated content for age restricted stuff this wouldn't be an issue.
    - TFYS 9mo ago
      > The diversity of perspective and opinion I don't think this is what social media provides. With social media people are able to choose one perspective and seem to just immerse themselves in a bubble so that they only get exposed to the view of their choice.
    - elevation 9mo ago
      > Being informed of what? From being informed of literally anything. Before COVID, the median US High school grad could not pass a middle school reading or math exam by merit. The trend has worsened so that today's median grad cannot demonstrate knowledge they were presented after elementary school. By the numbers, scrolling is inhibiting education on a societal scale. The GP implied that nefarious forces might be working to remove social media from youths in order to control them better. My argument is that social media has them pretty well under control.
iamnothere 9mo ago
Lol. Once again, so-called “leaders” mistake the symptoms for the root of the problem. This will end badly. Hopefully the kids pull a Nepal.
keernan 9mo ago
I suspect government support for limiting children's online presence is more about government tracking of adults. edit: rewording

48 points by 1vuio0pswjnm7 9mo ago

https://archive.is/8tMxs https://archive.is/8tMxs

So don’t allow accounts with ages set below the limit like they already do for under 13s. Why does this translate to every other site wanting my government ID or a scan of my face? Just this past 12 months both my drivers license and passport have been involved in data breaches and there are no penalties or recompense for the companies at fault, so my patience for providing ID is near zero.

StopDisinfo910 9mo ago
> So don’t allow accounts with ages set below the limit like they already do for under 13s. Why does this translate to every other site wanting my government ID or a scan of my face? Because self inputed age fields don't work. People just lie to access what they want. You have to understand that the goal here is not token compliance but actually limiting teenagers exposure to something we now know to be highly addictive and damaging to mental health. Clearly, the market is not able to self restrict and will exploit every opportunities given to it. It's only logical to take stronger restriction. That's basically bringing regulations on social media on the same track as tobacco and alcohol. Personally, I think it makes a lot of sense.
- Kim_Bruning 9mo ago
  Ok, let's assume for today that age gating is the thing to to. Requiring ID is not entirely the right approach here I think. You're forcing people to reveal PII for limited gain, and building systems you can't knock down later. The EU is working on a zero knowledge proof system for exactly this purpose, but it doesn't quite seem to be ready for prime time yet. https://ageverification.dev/Technical%20Specification/annexes/annex-B/annex-B-zkp/ https://ageverification.dev/Technical%20Specification/annexe...
  - aaplok 9mo ago
    > Requiring ID is not entirely the right approach here I think It is in the sense that it entices the industry to come up with a better approach. Otherwise they'll just sit on their piles of gold saying that it can't be done, as they have been doing for far too long.
    - pjc50 9mo ago
      This approach is just fine for the industry: delegate the problem to the lowest, shadiest bidder. After all, privacy breaches aren't their problem. If governments want an ID system they should provide one.
      - aaplok 9mo ago
        And maybe they will. We have gone from the industry clamouring that what's being done now is not possible and spending millions of lobbying money against it, to such laws spreading like wildfire. The next step is the (inevitable) mess up because implementations won't be foolproof, followed by yet more millions of lobbying money being spent to amplify the effect of these mess ups. Eventually we will come to a new normal. It will take time. But the hope is that the cat is out of the bag and we don't come back to a model that we know hurts children and pretend it's just how it is.
  - StopDisinfo910 9mo ago
    The restricting law is mostly concerned with the age gating, not the how. You can expect another law or directive to explain how it has to be done. In the EU, GDPR does apply so you can be sure that poorly storing ID copies for this purpose will not fly. But, I think it's clearly what ID is for and a legitimate use case for electronic ID. ID is the tool the state uses to give you a way to prove you are who you pretend to be. I think there's something a bit funny in worrying about giving a copy of your IDs to companies who already know everything about you from your full social graph to your political leanings and interests.
    - lbeltrame 9mo ago
- squeefers 9mo ago
  dont parents control what their kids do? if its that hysterically dangerous, take the phone off your kid.
  - hulitu 9mo ago
    Good luck with that. On Android or Windows Google or Microsoft has control on what you can run with parental controls. (I don't know if on Apples iOS parental controls work as expected). On Android you cannot limit app installation
    - hellojesus 9mo ago
      You absolutely can enroll devices in device management systems. Parents need to treat their children the same way corporations do with employees.
      - tstrimple 9mo ago
        Sounds like a recipe for becoming an estranged parent and wondering where your child went so wrong.
        deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
        squeefers 9mo ago
        well its either that or let your child watch short-form videos in quick succession.... i think its blindingly obvious which one is the true evil
  - StopDisinfo910 9mo ago
    Applies equaly to land mines and crack cocaine. The tension between freedom and public health is obviously very real. That's why liberal democracies generally rely on public debate and expert opinions to decide what should be controlled and what should be widely available. Turns out, the expert opinions on social media is not very good and very much in favour of a ban for minors. Also turns out that the public is apparently in support of the ban.
- hulitu 9mo ago
  > You have to understand that the goal here is not token compliance but actually limiting teenagers exposure to something we now know to be highly addictive and damaging to mental health. If this would have been the case, proper parental controls would have been in place everywhere. Instead, parental controls are only used to maximize profits.

Alifatisk 9mo ago

This is such great news, we have seen mental health decline a lot this decade while social media among teens have become a commodity.My only concern is how this will be enforced, trusting private entities with IDs and passport doesn’t seem reliable with the recent leaks. We do not want to risk children like this. I don’t know which country started this trend, with banning social media though, maybe it was Australia but I am in favor of it. I hope next step is for schools to ban phones as a whole.

bmacho 9mo ago
> This is such great news, we have seen mental health decline a lot this decade while social media among teens have become a commodity. Yes, and simple solution could be (or: could've been) making parents control their kids social media usage. It's only harmful in excessive amounts, several hours a day. (Unlike drugs, or alcohol that only needs secons to be harmful.) Parents can control that, and absolutely would if government told them so. There is absolutely no reason to ban kids from social media.
- Aeglaecia 9mo ago
  sure, there would be absolutely no reason to ban kids from social media in a utopic society where people treated each other with respect , were all as educated as the average hacker news inhabitant , and behaved rationally. meanwhile in reality, modern social media have nothing to do with socialization and everything to do with abusing brains to maximise engagement. while this point is n=1, it really does not take more than a few minutes for short form content to crash my motivation, so i completely disagree with your 'several hours' figure. fuck it, ban kids from having any form of smart phone or social media. give em all sony ericssons with pre paid sims that force them to put effort into their texts and actually socialize. maybe that will give imagination a fighting chance. what possible benefit could there be to let kids doom scroll? if you were a kid, why would you read or play or socialize when you could doom scroll? yes it is a parents responsibility to control their kids, and not one parent has any idea or education as to how modern social media affects a child - do you expect modern parents to spontaneously manifest this knowledge? for what its worth , i once suggested to simply make it illegal for parents to let kids on facebook. but that doesn't offer much scope for multi national corporations to scrape PII (which is probably the real priority)

blell 9mo ago

A certain part of the political aisle are seeing what free flow of information is doing to their youth numbers and they don’t like it. This is only the beginning.

squeefers 9mo ago

well thank god it has absolutely no ill effects on adults or wed all be screwed amirite!>!>!/?!one

pjc50 9mo ago

I'm not normally given to "conspiracy theory", but .. this feels coordinated, right? Quite possibly by the age verification vendors, or some shadier intelligence service sockpuppeting them? It's just so rare for so many governments to simultaneously, suddenly, after so many years of social media agree that it's a problem on the scale of chloroflurocarbons.

squeefers 9mo ago
its because of hysteria. same thing happened with tv. some girl in england killed herself after she herself had been searching out suicide content, the algo obviously suggests it back to her and because of that we basically got the Online Child Safety act. Whos going to tell grieving parents the kid did it to herself?
- pjc50 9mo ago
  > the algo obviously suggests it back to her Pro-suicide content has been a thing since the days of USENET. It's been a (lesser) problem on social media since the start. Is it really just that one case got over the hysteria threshold? But yes, if the algorithm is suggesting pro-suicide content then the developers are morally, if not legally, liable for that and should expect some consequences. I note that one of the few taboos maintained by the otherwise grossly irresponsible UK media is not reporting on suicide (because this is known to be a trigger). You might see "famous musician died suddenly at a young age" and have to connect the dots yourself.
  - squeefers 9mo ago
    > But yes, if the algorithm is suggesting pro-suicide content then the developers are morally, if not legally, if she hadnt searched for it herself, it wouldnt have suggested it. the parents (understandly) want to blame someone for it. politics is emotion, not logic.
    - hackable_sand 9mo ago
      Politics is also logic

hackable_sand 9mo ago

Despots are happy to have uninformed youth who cannot organize globally.

elevation 9mo ago
Social media inanities are exactly how we prevent youth from becoming informed.
- alphawhisky 9mo ago
  Being informed of what? Whatever their dad tells them? Although the pitfalls of social media are many, the answer lies with regulation and moderation, not banning a significant portion of the population from them. The diversity of perspective and opinion is what allows people to gain the exposure needed to develop informed opinions. What blows my mind is that governments have the world's biggest media market makers by the throat and they refuse to force regulation. If they removed AI, made the algos public/modifiable, and actually moderated content for age restricted stuff this wouldn't be an issue.
  - TFYS 9mo ago
    > The diversity of perspective and opinion I don't think this is what social media provides. With social media people are able to choose one perspective and seem to just immerse themselves in a bubble so that they only get exposed to the view of their choice.
  - elevation 9mo ago
    > Being informed of what? From being informed of literally anything. Before COVID, the median US High school grad could not pass a middle school reading or math exam by merit. The trend has worsened so that today's median grad cannot demonstrate knowledge they were presented after elementary school. By the numbers, scrolling is inhibiting education on a societal scale. The GP implied that nefarious forces might be working to remove social media from youths in order to control them better. My argument is that social media has them pretty well under control.

iamnothere 9mo ago

Lol. Once again, so-called “leaders” mistake the symptoms for the root of the problem. This will end badly. Hopefully the kids pull a Nepal.

keernan 9mo ago

I suspect government support for limiting children's online presence is more about government tracking of adults. edit: rewording