Australia Plans Age Limit To Ban Children From Social Media (yahoo.com) 99
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Agence France-Presse: Australia will ban children from using social media with a minimum age limit as high as 16, the prime minister said Tuesday, vowing to get kids off their devices and "onto the footy fields." Federal legislation to keep children off social media will be introduced this year, Anthony Albanese said, describing the impact of the sites on young people as a "scourge." The minimum age for children to log into sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok has not been decided but is expected to be between 14 and 16 years, Albanese said. The prime minister said his own preference would be a block on users aged below 16. An age verification trial to test various approaches is being conducted over the coming months, the centre-left leader said. [...]
It is not even clear that the technology exists to reliably enforce such bans, said the University of Melbourne's associate professor in computing and information technology, Toby Murray. "The government is currently trialling age assurance technology. But we already know that present age verification methods are unreliable, too easy to circumvent, or risk user privacy," he said. But the prime minister said parents expected a response to online bullying and the access social media gave to harmful material. "These social media companies think they're above everyone," he told a radio interviewer. "Well, they have a social responsibility and at the moment, they're not exercising it. And we're determined to make sure that they do," he said.
It is not even clear that the technology exists to reliably enforce such bans, said the University of Melbourne's associate professor in computing and information technology, Toby Murray. "The government is currently trialling age assurance technology. But we already know that present age verification methods are unreliable, too easy to circumvent, or risk user privacy," he said. But the prime minister said parents expected a response to online bullying and the access social media gave to harmful material. "These social media companies think they're above everyone," he told a radio interviewer. "Well, they have a social responsibility and at the moment, they're not exercising it. And we're determined to make sure that they do," he said.
If we're sure it's bad (Score:4, Insightful)
I say make it an offense to let a minor in your care have unsupervised access to social media. That avoids the technology issue, and if your kid needs to be in touch (phones are extremely convenient for giving your kid more freedom while leaving them with an ever-present link to Mom and dad)... Dumb phones or locked down smartphones. Voice and text will get the job done.
Re:If we're sure it's bad (Score:5, Informative)
I say make it an offense to let a minor in your care have unsupervised access to social media. That avoids the technology issue, and if your kid needs to be in touch (phones are extremely convenient for giving your kid more freedom while leaving them with an ever-present link to Mom and dad)... Dumb phones or locked down smartphones. Voice and text will get the job done.
You must not have kids. At this point in order to do their school work they are provided with Chromebooks and/or must have to have access to computers at home, school, libraries, etc. The Chromebooks are managed by their districts, not the parents. Even video game consoles and handhelds provide internet access. I've used blacklists and whitelists at home but it's a massive pain and kids are very tenacious about getting around blocks or just use someone else's phone or computer that has access. I'm not saying I have the solution but don't just assume it's a simple problem that any competent person can easily handle.
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"I've used blacklists and whitelists at home but it's a massive pain .."
Sounds like you are very busy and spend time on things other than with your children?
Sounds like you are making baseless assumptions
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Just drawing conclusions, he is describing putting energy into something he knows not to be working to his satisfaction.
Perhaps you can understand the "depper" logic now?
Can they ban adults too? (Score:1)
Have you seen the absolute worthlessness of what gets posted there, on purpose? Name me one social media post that has even one billionth the importance of things like the Magna Carta, or the release of AC/DC's Back In Black.
Go ahead, I'll wait.
Re:If we're sure it's bad (Score:5, Insightful)
All the replies to my post so far are essentially "but it's too haaaarrrdd".
Jesus. It's not that difficult. No, you can't supervise 100% of the time, but in your own home if you have young children with unfettered access to Internet-connected devices you're doing it wrong. You're being lazy and shirking your duty. At home you either limit their access or supervise it until they're old enough to be trusted to self-moderate. At school they have the resources to lock down school devices against all but the most tech-savvy kids, who will eventually get caught.
And if your kid sees some other kid on the playground with an unrestricted phone it's not the end of the world. In my day it was the kid who stole his dad's porn mags. It happens. The point is to limit this stuff so it doesn't dominate their formative years.
An involved parent can absolutely do this. And yes, I do in fact have children, and though I'm not young the Internet and social media were already a pervasive thing while they were growing up.
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Jesus. It's not that difficult.
Turns out, yes, it is. As anyone who has actually had children can - and has - attest.
Complicated problems don't have simple solutions, no matter how simple the people whining about them might be.
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Since I have children I can attest you're just not willing to put in the effort required to raise kids. You're not done after the kid is born, you know. It's a multiple-decade commitment.
So yeah, you're just a whiny bitch to me. It's tough, but you had the kid so suck it up and do your fucking job.
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Since I have children
I don't really believe any actual woman ever let you get that intimate with her, but if you do, I pity them, and the society you will eventually inflict them on.
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My 6 year old once hacked into my phone to the access to unblock her 8 year old sisters phone. Seriously, you cannot stop them. She was LITERALLY still in Kindergarten.
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Did I say "supervise"? I said spend time.
And all of the misschief you did and others and got away with .. and in part due to your parents effort,
you just turned out to be a just dad and law abiding citizen, even without rehearsing 1984?
And when I hear people talking about the efforts they are undertaking to "protect".
My conclusion is, it is wasted energy because they all complain that their kids are resourceful as MacGyver, and foremost it is time spent on things that could be spent on much more important t
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Jesus. It's not that difficult. No, you can't supervise 100% of the time
That's a pretty big walk back from someone who posted that it should be an offence to let something happen. At least you are no longer dealing in absolutes.
Re:If we're sure it's bad (Score:4, Insightful)
"I've used blacklists and whitelists at home but it's a massive pain .."
Sounds like you are very busy and spend time on things other than with your children?
First off, if ALL your kids' time is spent with you, the parent, then they are hopelessly stunted socially, self-reliance-wise, and probably intellectually as well. And if you assume that the time you do spend with them allows them to resist peer pressure and other societal forces when they're not in your presence, then you're delusional.
On the technical side, if a Slashdotter with much better computer skills than the average parent has finds it "a massive pain" to set up blacklists and whitelists, how does that average parent have any hope at all? Also, blacklists and whitelists assume you have control over and admin access to your routers and/or all of the devices your kids have access to. Do YOU even have that control and access? I'm betting you don't.
If you were trolling, consider yourself smacked. If you weren't trolling - and even if you were, for that matter - go get a fucking clue.
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"go get a fucking clue."
I can only return that hint to you.
Because I said spending time not 1984-style-supervising nor 1932-style-supervising.
When you are buried in your the techi world finding the last loophole, you don't provide a very good example, just a misstrusting entity that is circumvented at any occasion.
"how does that average parent have any hope at all? "
Knock Knock McFly, reality speaking the simple but true answer is: NONE
Now get a clue and burn energy on a hopeless endevour, what will the res
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I I had a Wifi black list the kids will just switch off wifi and use cellular data which I cannot block. Not brain surgery or anything
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I'm not saying I have the solution but don't just assume it's a simple problem that any competent person can easily handle.
Simple people need simple solutions, no matter how complicated the problem is.
Re:If we're sure it's bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Because access to social media is literally everywhere. You can't prevent your kids from having unsupervised access to it unless you literally supervise them constantly. You talk about phones as a way to give them some freedom. So I take that to believe you think it would be alright if your 12 year old rode his bike a few blocks to library. Guess what there is a computer there with access to Meta/Google and all their online properties!
You mention locked down smart .... guess what youtube has comments, its social media.. think you can filter it? Nope you get access to the filters and kids version and what is an isn't on it Google decides. Try to do your own content filter and you'll find there is no way to make that smart phone, or tv, or whatever else trust the certs of your personal firewall, you'll brake it entirely (THANKS https everywhere!)
The industry willfully created a situation that actively dis-empowers parents. You are left as a parent today with choices that essentially amount to lock your kid in box in near total isolation from the real world, or let them receive whatever messages big tech decides to send them! This is one place where big tech needs its hand slapped and hard, they need to be required to age verify and do identity effectively; so that parents can apply controls or bar kids from platforms that fail to provide the control the parent believes are needed.
Re:If we're sure it's bad (Score:5, Interesting)
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we've had teachers post assignments on Instagram! It's ridiculous!
Thats not a teacher. Thats an addict.
One that needs to be reminded how much of your local taxes funded dedicated educational platforms.
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So, have the library's computers require that you scan/enter a library card number, and if it belongs to someone underage it appropriately restricts access.
It's funny how when it comes to cars we generally do pretty well keeping them away from kids, guns not so much, and computing devices - forget it.
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Well, in the US an 18 year old is not allowed to drink alcohol, but can become a porn star and 14 year old have AR 15 rifles that they use to shoot up schools. Go figure.
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We don't keep cars away from kids, and near as i can tell out in the county; taking dad's truck for a joy ride is still a right of passage for the pre-teens.
The whole point here is that we should NOT have to bar kids from accessing the Internet completely. It is part of 'the public square' in the same way the library is and kids should be able to use it without being exposed to indecent material. I would not go as far as to ban indecent materials but they belong behind the counter so to speak; the same as
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A better idea which is even harder to implement but which would actually work if implemented would be to make it an offense to not teach your child how to think critically. The problem isn't that they're on social media. The problem is they're on social media without knowing how to think.
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make it an offense to not teach your child how to think critically.
Exactly. We just need to build enough prisons for all the parents whose children fail a thinking test.
You've already passed the test just by coming up with this brilliant idea.
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You've already passed the test just by coming up with this brilliant idea.
It was an illustrative ridiculous example, used in the only non-fallacious way, to show how ridiculous the idea is. You cannot successfully legislate such things without violent authoritarianism.
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The problem is adolescents are still learning to think. Hillary Clinton said exactly one (and only one, IHMO) truthful statement in her political career "It takes a village."
If society wants to be run by responsible adults with well rounded ideas and diverse viewpoints we have to agree to make the public square generally a safe place for the young and newly/increasingly independent but not yet adult to explore.
Otherwise you will get a mixture of kids raised by parents who don't, and children how grow up pr
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Kinda like how kids have been raised since the dawn of man....even before the internet, mobile phones and social media?
Blackmail (Score:2)
make it an offense to not teach your child how to think critically
Give me the car tonight, dad. Or I'll fail tomorrow's thinking test. And the tank had better be full.
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Of course, that means to make smartphones unattractive to kids. Good luck with that - the "social" media apps are on purpose designed to make kids addicted. Just look into the works of B. J. Fogg [stanford.edu]
In the end, it will be similar to how we handle all addictive substances. Part criminalisation, part social acceptance. And regulation, which has so far been missing. In an ideal world, the billions of lobbying money would be less effective than the common
Re:If we're sure it's bad (Score:4, Interesting)
Since most kids are dependent upon their parents...it would seem pretty simple to NOT buy them a cell phone till they are ready, and when you do, do NOT buy them a smart phone, just a dumb phone that they actually talk to people on....eh?
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You don't even have to go the dumbphone route. As near as I can tell, Apple did a damn good job of implementing parental controls, since short of wiping the device and bypassing the iCloud lock (which is really only doable on modern iDevices via social engineering at an Apple Store), you're not getting around it.
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it would seem pretty simple to NOT buy them a cell phone till they are ready
LOL you think kids won't be on smartphones simply because you didn't buy them one or they don't own one? Have you heard of friends? It's clear you don't have kids, but I actually wonder if you came into life as an adult clone from a lab and never were a kid yourself.
Next you'll be telling me that your parents not buying you a porn magazine meant you didn't masturbate.
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Kids are like prisoners, they have nothing but time to think of how to get around your restrictions. The perceived reward is big for them too so good luck stopping them from getting on. Then you have endless new routes to the internet, new tech constantly coming out so busy parents are perpetually behind the curve while kids are on the bleeding edge.
Re:If we're sure it's bad (Score:4, Insightful)
I say make it an offense to let a minor in your care have unsupervised access to social media. That avoids the technology issue, and if your kid needs to be in touch (phones are extremely convenient for giving your kid more freedom while leaving them with an ever-present link to Mom and dad)... Dumb phones or locked down smartphones. Voice and text will get the job done.
See, here's the thing. If parents wanted to parent, this wouldn't need to be legislated at all. Parents either don't want to parent, don't have the training/tools to parent, don't have the time to parent, or just think it's easier to shove an electronic device in front of the kid rather than parent. Thinking that, "You should probably watch your kid because they're doing some harmful shit," is beyond the grasp of the average parent? Why do we think legislating it will do anything other than cause more parents to bitch that they can't do what they're being asked to do? Until parents are allowed the time to prepare for being a parent, and the expectation of parenting is put back on the shoulders of the families having children, we're going to be seeing a lot of legislation around the world designed to teach parents how to parent. That's all this is. Trying to tell parents how to parent through legislation, whether they have the time or energy to do it or not.
It feels like society in reverse. Rather than helping parents and providing resources so they can find their feet as parents, we're starting to see legislation of shit people just absolutely refuse to do themselves. Or don't have time for. Or don't have the energy for. Whatever the excuse is. "It takes a village," has turned into "I refuse to parent." And now all of society has to adjust for that.
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Well thought out.
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Dumb phones or locked down smartphones. Voice and text will get the job done.
In Australia they shut down the 2G network, and the 3G shutdown is happening this year. Dumbphones won't work anymore, the telcos have turned them all into e-waste with the flick of a switch.
Oh, and those modern dumbphones, typically marketed at seniors? Those still run Android, albeit a lobotomised version, to match the crippled CPU. Laggy as hell, and the predictive text is worse than your Nokia from 2001.
Why not just Adult Only at 18yrs? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Why not just make it Adults Only and make the age 18yrs?
Sounds absolutely fantastic. Now just tell me how you’re going to convince the digital pimps making money hand over fist off the kids.
It would be “wrong” of US Capitalism to interfere with the addictive rights of the peddlers who designed UIs for toddlers to use for a valid reason. All that effort would be wasted. You might not even capture the same kind of addict at 18 years old.
We might even have to (gasp!) start paying for online services again. A price tag? Charging money? Isn
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Why not just make it Adults Only and make the age 18yrs?
Because then you have to provide government-issued ID to prove you're at least 18 years of age, which means no anonymity whatsoever online, your posts (and preferences) are always automatically linked to your legal name.
Meanwhile kids and criminals will use someone else's ID to get access anyway.
It's a non-starter of an idea in the face of 1A.
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Well, we pretty much already have that in place...drivers license and credit cards.
No one says you have to associate your ID with any posts, only to enter the social media site.
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Actually, the US has a substantial problem with underage drinking because we've made the legal drinking age so ridiculously high.
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I agree.
I think all "adult" things should be 18yrs of age, not some of them 21yrs.
If you're old enough to sign legally binding contracts, and sign up for military service, you are old enough to buy beer and a pistol or rifle, etc.
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If so then we've already lost.
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Why not just make it Adults Only and make the age 18yrs?
Australia doesn't have an single arbitrary age where everything is magically legal. Neither does America for that matter. 18 isn't some magic number, it's a number that applies to specific things such as drinking and voting. You can get a license under that age, own a car under that age, engage in legal disputes under that age. You can get fined and jailed under that age as well.
Do I hear VPN anyone? (Score:1)
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Love you guys as individuals, but truly, from the bottom of my heart, fuck all the nanny state shit that you guys do when you form a government.
It really drives home the link between criminality and authoritarianism ;)
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Our Nanny State government is Labor (Left Politics, Democrat equivalent) being controlled by the Greens/Teals which are watermelons thin green veneer on the outside very red fully on the inside
HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAH Oh man you live a biased sheltered life if you think that conservatives aren't just as bad. All politicians in Australia equally overreach with their regulations in your life. Shit man the "Greens/Teals" didn't even exist as any meaningful voice until a few years ago, yet the country has been a nanny state for decades. Tell me again which labour / green leader took our guns away again (something I agree with because as a nation we are dumb enough to need a nanny)? Oh right it was the libera
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I do not follow, are you saying that children should have unlimited access to the same things as adults? Or do you draw a line somewhere? You seem confident in it being a bad idea to limit children's access to social media, can you elaborate on why it's worse than, say, limiting children's access to alcohol?
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I don't think it is the governments place to do it. It is the parents decision, if, when and how to limit their children access to just about anything. Griping about a nanny state doesn't mean someone is against regulating the behavior. It just should almost never be the government that is the one that does it. In a free society, people do things that other people don't like and come to different conclusions. Authoritarian governments don't like this much. People should not like authoritarian governments.
Re: To the Aussie's out there (Score:4, Insightful)
Parents can't regulate industry. There has to be a middle ground where parents have the tools necessary to protect or not protect children from the things the decide on. Government is always going to be a compromise because not everyone has the same priorities. And somechoices are mutually exclusive.
Re:To the Aussie's out there (Score:4, Insightful)
It is the parents decision
Really? It's the parents' decision for a company to spend billions on advertising and promoting their product DIRECTLY to children?
It's the parents' decision for social media apps to be auto-loaded on every device? Really?
It's the parents' decision for a company to have games, giveaways, prizes for children who engage with the company on social media? Really?
It's the parents' decision that some companies ONLY have Facebook pages (and no website), so any information about the company (such as open hours) is ONLY available if you have a Facebook account? Really?
It's the parents' decision to create algorithms that are designed to addict children and keep them on the site for hours on end, giving a constant funnel of advertising right into children's brains? Really?
If it is parents against big tech, big tech wins. There's no way I, as a parent, can effectively compete against a company with billions of dollars in PR and advertising funds and hundreds of engineers who sit around all day trying to think of new ways to get my kids to spend EVEN MORE time on their site. We learned this over and over again with tobacco and alcohol companies. Why is social media any different?
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Parents don't have to regulate the companies, only their children. Control when where and how they access media and internet. Only allow them to use your locked down devices. For companies to do what you are talking about is difficult and requires unique identification of people on the internet which is far, far, FAR worse than a kid occasionally getting out of your sandboxed and controlled environment. So much of the things on the internet REQUIRE anonymity much to the chagrin of every company that wants
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And again, the fix is worse than the cure. There is no way to implement this without uniquely identifying everyone using the internet.
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without uniquely identifying everyone using the internet
This is how social media companies make money. Don't think they haven't already "uniquely identified" you. Besides, you have to show ID when you buy alcohol or tobacco, isn't that also "uniquely identifying" you?
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Canâ(TM)t you hear that thunder? (Score:2)
.. Out of the ruins, Out from the wreckage .. (Score:2)
.. Can't make the same mistake this time ..
This is the world we live in now (Score:3)
I'll grant the pure intentions, but government is not your parent. Also, this is impossible. Imagine: Australia successfully identifies and blocks all social media sites.. Um...how? DNS? Are they then going to block all free DNS services like 8.8.8.8? What about secure DNS connections?
Ok, maybe they find a way around that. Not sure how, but let's say they do. Some kid, or some kid's parent is going to know what a VPN is. Is Australia going to block all VPNs? That is basically impossible, since literally anyone, anywhere in the world, can set up a proxy service.
Story time: The bus I take on the way home from work, on some days, is filled with 6-7 year olds on their way home from school. Last week, there was this incredibly intense discussion about (insert topic) and where to where to go (YouTube, and a couple of other places) to find out more. This is the world we live in now. Trying to forbid children from interacting with this world is not the solution. Giving them guidelines, providing advice and assistance, teaching them the dangers and how to avoid them: That's the only real way forward.
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Trying to forbid children from interacting with this world is not the solution
Staring at a screen is NOT interacting with the world. Especially for a child.
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Out of curiosity, would you be in favor of eliminating age restrictions on purchasing alcohol? (The fact that it's easier to do age verification for alcohol purchases should not form part of a response.)
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They can also do age verification anonymously via a trusted 3rd party service. Perfectly feasible & would be useful for many other things too.
Why not follow New Zealand's tobacco proposal (Score:3)
Why not follow New Zealand's tobacco proposal and set a birthday such that anyone born after that date won't be allowed to use social media. Kill it forever.
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Why not follow New Zealand's tobacco proposal and set a birthday such that anyone born after that date won't be allowed to use social media. Kill it forever.
Something tells me it’s a HELL of a lot easier to control the flow and access of taxed and regulated tobacco, than it is policing every open WiFi access point floating in the wind.
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Why not follow New Zealand's tobacco proposal and set a birthday such that anyone born after that date won't be allowed to use social media. Kill it forever.
he posted unironically on Slashdot, a social media platform on which he has communicated on for over a decade.
Go outside, kid (Score:2)
Put the phone away, go outside and play with the dingos.
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"A dingo ate my smartphone!"
Because everyone uses their real name and birthday (Score:2)
Right?
If you do you should know better, just like these kids will learn to....
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I tend to be born on 1970-01-01, if a service that most definitely does not need to know my date of birth asks for it.
Good luck (Score:2)
They'll need to remove anonymity from the internet then. Make all access require a biometric or some such route to get on, otherwise I just see this as a cash grab for fines against websites, cash grabs by lawyers and lawsuits, etc. It would verify your name, age, etc.
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Could be Interesting (Score:2)
I'm fairly certain this will be more trouble to enforce than they are bargaining for, and may have some knock on negative side-effects.
However, assuming it isn't a complete failure and social media use is decreased substantially, it may provide some interesting independent data about childrens mental health and social media use.
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It may turn out that things like age restrictions on smartphones are the more feasible options, like we already do for tobacco, alcohol, pornography, gambling, etc..
Ban children from social media (Score:2)
Mental vs. physical age (Score:2)
Presumably they mean ban people less than xxx years old.
If they banned mental children, social media would be a barren wasteland.
Welp... (Score:2)
But the prime minister said parents expected a response to online bullying and the access social media gave to harmful material.
Because of this, something must be done. This is something. Therefore it must be done.
I guess Australia does have some experience... (Score:2)
You're missing the *real* agenda (Score:5, Interesting)
Everyone seems to have missed the *real* reason for this initiative on the part of the Australian government...
Recently a Digital ID was introduced to Australia and to suppress public outrage the public were told that the scheme was "voluntary". You didn't have to get a digital ID if you didn't want one.
Now Aussies are being told that in order to "protect the children" some kind of lower age-limit is being imposed for social media access. The Prime Minister has also said that existing age verification techniques are too easy to bypass and place privacy at risk -- so what better way to verify age than to use this new Digital ID?
That's right... the Digital ID will always be "voluntary"... unless you want to use the internet that is because unless you use your Digital ID to log in, how are social media sites going to be able to comply with this new law and block under-16's?
Also, the Australian government is working hard to get all its services online and some will only be accessible via the internet.
When that happens there'll be the situation where people are required by law to file their tax returns online but won't be able to get online without the "voluntary" Digital ID.
It seems that the Australian government has already figured out how to redefine the word "voluntary" to suit its own purposes.
Never trust a politician!
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100% correct - I was giving up hope on slashdot until I saw your comment - the last one (at this time).
Yes - this is the wedge to make everyone give up privacy rights - because..."the children".
My hero is one of my cardilologists who will nor give his (now sophomore) son a smart phone until his senior year. And he makes his son's teachers accommodate this!!! I agree, you can't control all access but you can make it very periodic. And , IMO, the need to do this for girls is even greater (on average).
But y
A Guide To Accessing The Web (Score:1)
All you people saying it's easy to restrict access have lost touch with reality. As a kid in the 90s, I was able to hide my efforts from my parents while they were away and after they moved the PC to a place with the screen visible to the rest of the house. Here's a modern guide for the people out there who crave more information on topics they're unable or unwilling to ask the people around them. It's mainly focused on PCs as that's what I have the most experience with, but I know mobile devices have th