Australia Proposes Ban On Social Media For Those Under 16 (reuters.com) 90
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Australia Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Thursday the government would legislate for a ban on social media for children under 16, a policy the government says is world-leading. "Social media is doing harm to our kids and I'm calling time on it," Albanese told a news conference. Legislation will be introduced into parliament this year, with the laws coming into effect 12 months after it is ratified by lawmakers, he added. There will be no exemptions for users who have parental consent.
"The onus will be on social media platforms to demonstrate they are taking reasonable steps to prevent access," Albanese said. "The onus won't be on parents or young people." Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said platforms impacted would include Meta Platforms' Instagram and Facebook, as well as Bytedance's TikTok and Elon Musk's X. Alphabet's YouTube would likely also fall within the scope of the legislation, she added.
"The onus will be on social media platforms to demonstrate they are taking reasonable steps to prevent access," Albanese said. "The onus won't be on parents or young people." Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said platforms impacted would include Meta Platforms' Instagram and Facebook, as well as Bytedance's TikTok and Elon Musk's X. Alphabet's YouTube would likely also fall within the scope of the legislation, she added.
You know what else did harm to our kids? (Score:1, Insightful)
Social media is the new moral panic for the post-boomer generations.
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Sky News are the ones who suggested and are pushing this hare-brained idea, at Rupert Murdoch's behest.
Most *Australian* citizens would be against this approach.
Old media + Old government wants it's IT back (Score:2)
The reporting says social media has negative mental health and physical health effects on people, and people under 18 in particular.
I agree to an extent here.
It's also plain that social media has become the primary information and news source for younger people; the government and old media wants to regain its narrative control back that it once had.
The politicians and old media have spent 50 years building out a repeatable playbook of narratives that work to keep the same set of old time parties winning el
Re: You know what else did harm to our kids? (Score:2)
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Our country desperately needs a mighty leader who will do what has to be done to destroy the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us.
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The Beatles are pretty evil, I'll give you that, AC.
Re: You know what else did harm to our kids? (Score:2)
It is truly hilarious that the mantra of blaming the customer when they are not buying the product you are selling is so pervasive when it has been empirically proven not to work wherever it raises its stupid head.
If people are not buying what you are selling, the problem is unequivocally on your end. There never has been nor will there ever be a case in modern times where insistence on the erroneous assumption that the customer is too stupid to know what they want produces a positive outcome. Failure is in
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And there's damnably few (basically none) studies even attempting to find causation versus correlation, and many of those aren't finding that being on social media harms kids, but that harmed kids flock to social media as their only available avenue to find others when those in the guardian roles fail them.
And yes, I'm being specific in choosing my words to be as general as I meant to be, please don't try to waffle these rice-cooker pancakes.
Re:You know what else did harm to our kids? (Score:5, Insightful)
Social media is not all that great for most adults - it's 'keeping up with the Joneses' except on crack and 24/7.
While I'm happy to look at studies to confirm or refute my suspicion, that suspicion is that it's worse for kids than adults as the kids have less experience and self-confidence when dealing with something that is designed to trigger your worst instincts in order to keep you engaged for the social media supplier's purposes.
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While I'm happy to look at studies to confirm or refute my suspicion, that suspicion is that it's worse for kids
Perhaps you're correct. But laws should not be based on "suspicions".
The burden of proof is on those proposing laws to control private behavior to show that the problem exists and is serious enough to warrant a legal remedy.
I am very skeptical.
Kids socialize. It's what they do.
Re:You know what else did harm to our kids? (Score:4, Insightful)
Kids socialize. It's what they do.
This would not prevent kids from socializing. Perhaps the question is not whether kids are harmed by social media but whether they get anything of value from them for the time and attention they take. You don't need a study to see that they take up kids time and attention. You don't need some sort of theoretical proof to pass legislation if you think there is harm. If you disagree, find a study that shows kids benefit from spending hours on social media. That it doesn't prevent them from engaging in other more valuable activities and from socializing with kids in person.
There was a recent story from Japan that most Japanese high school senior boys had never been kissed. Largely because they never engaged with girls socially in physical proximity.
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You don't need a study to see that they take up kids time and attention.
Actually, you do.
The crime rate for the 15-25 "prime crime" age group has plummeted since social media was introduced. One theory is that kids spend more time online and less time out on the streets, getting in trouble.
Ban chatting, and we may get more violent crime.
You don't need some sort of theoretical proof to pass legislation if you think there is harm.
There's no such thing as "proof" outside of mathematics. What is needed is strong evidence that the legislation will do significantly more good than harm. So far, we don't have that.
If you disagree, find a study that shows kids benefit from spending hours on social media.
Hogwash. The burden of proof is never on the skeptics.
There was a recent story from Japan that most Japanese high school senior boys had never been kissed. Largely because they never engaged with girls socially in physical proximity.
Japan has
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Japan has the world's lowest teen pregnancy rate. Less physical proximity isn't all bad.
They have one of the lowest adult pregnancy rates too.
Re: You know what else did harm to our kids? (Score:1)
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The crime rate for the 15-25 "prime crime" age group has plummeted since social media was introduced.
The decline in youth crime trend is a little off for it to be from social media use as it wasn't a very big thing in the mid 90's when youth crime in the US began its big decline, particularly for kids in lower income families who are statistically more likely to commit crimes. Many middle class families in the 90's didnt even have internet access let alone those on the lower end of income.
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Woops, sorry. Forgot to site a source for youth crime https://ojjdp.ojp.gov/publicat... [ojp.gov] .
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If you disagree, find a study that shows kids benefit from spending hours on social media.
Of course kids have *some* benefits from using those platforms. For example my daughter learned a low about drawing (pen on paper), also a lot about paper crafting, and a huge lot of English language (at school she has only 1 hour/week of English).
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For example my daughter learned a low about drawing (pen on paper)
There are plenty of places online to learn that kind of thing other than social media. If you exclude them entirely from YouTube content, not just as a social media site but also any video content that is hosted there, that would certainly shut off some valuable resources. But excluding them from posting content would not.
Re: You know what else did harm to our kids? (Score:2)
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you got home from school, you did your homework and that's it. No more socializing with the kids at school.
Are you serious? Are you aware that there was a nearly identical moral panic over a device of the devil called a TELEPHONE?
My sisters spent hours on the phone every evening.
I hope you're not a history teacher.
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Why can't they just go back to the telephone then? Nobody is proposing to ban that.
False. There were many proposals in the 1950s and 60s to ban or restrict teens from using telephones.
Moral panics are not a new phenomenon.
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Re: You know what else did harm to our kids? (Score:2)
What are the similarities and differences between a telephone call and a social media post? Take your time. Don't rush your answer.
Re:You know what else did harm to our kids? (Score:4, Interesting)
Perhaps you're correct. But laws should not be based on "suspicions".
The burden of proof is on those proposing laws to control private behavior to show that the problem exists and is serious enough to warrant a legal remedy.
To put it bluntly, that isn't a requirement of democracy. There is no burden of proof, just a requirement to have sufficient majority in parliament to pass the laws. It remains up to the people to vote accordingly for their representative, at an election.
In the case of Australia, which has no bill of rights, statute practically dominates, so the only matter is whether the Albanese government feels courageous enough to push this matter through, as the only recourse the public have, if they desperately don't want it, is to vote for someone who campaigns on repealing it. Sucks if the parliament deems the matter non-controversial or bi-partisan as that means that the public are mostly shut out of the discourse.
I think it's worth pointing out that there are huge bodies of laws that deal without any factual basis, usually just a suspicion, ultimately giving governments the power to arrest people on a suspicion, or spy on them on a suspicion, or ultimately regulate populations on the suspicion that maybe someone is up to no good.
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The opposition have already said they support it. So good luck creating a 5th? 6th? party with this one agenda and getting enough people to vote for it.
Australia has single transfer voting for the senate, this means that minor parties and independents frequently get elected to the senate, and not infrequently parliament is hung (meaning that these minor parties get to push their specific single issue wishes through).
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In the case of Australia, which has no bill of rights, statute practically dominates, so the only matter is whether the Albanese government feels courageous enough to push this matter through, as the only recourse the public have, if they desperately don't want it, is to vote for someone who campaigns on repealing it. Sucks if the parliament deems the matter non-controversial or bi-partisan as that means that the public are mostly shut out of the discourse.
That is a major problem with current democracies because most people will not change their vote because of this issue, even if they disagree they are much more likely vote on issues like their ability afford to live. This means that governments can get away with doing whatever they want on minor issue even if the majority of the population disagrees.
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While I'm happy to look at studies to confirm or refute my suspicion, that suspicion is that it's worse for kids
Perhaps you're correct. But laws should not be based on "suspicions".
The burden of proof is on those proposing laws to control private behavior to show that the problem exists and is serious enough to warrant a legal remedy.
I am very skeptical.
Kids socialize. It's what they do.
Laws must often be based on suspicions and educated guesses. If we waited for studies to tell us what to do or think analysis paralysis would halt any progress at all, and laws would need to be flopped back and forth every few years as new studies invalidate the old ones in some way.
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Remember when the tobacco corporations played this game with all the harmful effects of smoking? Well, that's what big tech are doing today, only they have a much bigger war chest to spread disinformation & misinformation, & lobb
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Social media is not all that great for most adults - it's 'keeping up with the Joneses' except on crack and 24/7.
That was old social media. New social media is just memes and video shorts, over and over, enough to keep you scrolling.
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Social media is not all that great for most adults - it's 'keeping up with the Joneses' except on crack and 24/7.
While I'm happy to look at studies to confirm or refute my suspicion, that suspicion is that it's worse for kids than adults as the kids have less experience and self-confidence when dealing with something that is designed to trigger your worst instincts in order to keep you engaged for the social media supplier's purposes.
Yes, It isn't good for most people. Between Facebook's radicalizing algorithms to pointless validation engines like Instagram, and lunacy enablers like TikTok, it would appear that many are designed to induce cognitive dissonance and create depression. If so, they are doing a great job.
The results appear to be lonely people with little local human networking, having some group of people online as "friends", and relying on that toxic crowd to help them make life's decisions.
While I can cite thousands o
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There are also social experiments underway, e.g. in Greystones, Ireland: https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com] That illustrates how difficult it can be for parents to regulate their children's smartphone use when there is constant pressure in the opposite direction from all around.
Re: You know what else did harm to our kids? (Score:1)
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In this case, all their friends won't have it (social media) because the rules will apply across the board. It's a level playing field. I'm sure there will be some kind of "forbidden fruit" attraction to social media as there is with anything that is banned.
But it's apparent from studies that kids spending hours on social media does have a deleterious impact on their academic performance, mental health, sleep, lack of social interaction, misinformation and things like cyberbullying & consequent suicides
Re:You know what else did harm to our kids? (Score:4, Informative)
No, they really didn't. Especially not the Beatles and Elvis. That was a silly moral panic. Nobody ever produced clear evidence that any of those things you mentioned harmed developing teenagers.
Social media, on the other hand...
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No, they really didn't.
That was his point. The boomers' parent generation was convinced that they did, and tried to get all of those things banned in one form or another. It's laughable to look back on those times and see the moral outrage over such trivial things.
Social media is the new trivial thing that our descendants will look back on and laugh at the stupidity shown by the parent generations of today's kids.
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Oh?
https://childmind.org/article/... [childmind.org]
There's at least a correlation between social media use and increased depression/anxiety.
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Correlation, meet causation.
What is different between teenagers using social media and those who don't (I suppose other than the other group living in some Himalayan valley without Internet)? Do parents spend more time with less terminally online teens? Do they engage in high-engagement hobbies (like horseriding, or electronics) that are fulfilling, though maybe costly (which would make that approach less available to the majority)?
If you control for these things, I am fairly sure you will find that kids wi
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None of those things empowered extremists to band together to become a serious threat like social media has done. I'm all for free speech and shining the light of truth, but it's hard to deny the unprecedented destructive force social media has unleashed.
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What extremists? What evidence is there that there is more extremism now than their was before the internet? I agree that extremism is more visible now, but that does not mean that there is more now. Remember historically we have had Hitler, slavery, the KKK, most people believed the earth was flat, old time medicine, cults ....
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The Beatles, Elvis dancing like a black man, comic books, Dungeons & Dragons, Ozzy Osborne.
Synchronizing brainwaves with music and games is not the same as pinging brain functions that causes a release of Neuropeptides [wikipedia.org], you can do that with a U.I and timing certain sounds. It's not a recent discovery. Socializing is good for the brain, anti-socializing is less so.
Social media is the new moral panic for the post-boomer generations.
Of course it is. As humanity gets more advanced so to do our issues.
Re:You know what else did harm to our kids? (Score:4, Informative)
Erm no. Not at all. Comparing the two shows incredible ignorance as to what is going on here. There's actual evidence of psychological harm caused by social media. On the flip side there's actual evidence (or an abundant lack thereof) that there is no harm caused by any of the things you list (movies, music, games, etc).
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The Beatles, Elvis dancing like a black man, comic books, Dungeons & Dragons, Ozzy Osborne. Social media is the new moral panic for the post-boomer generations.
Tell me what the documented and observed suicide statistics were among 12-16 year old girls with your list.
Then you can look at the alarming reality of social media and realize how “Boomer” that defense is. Bet you think today’s prescribed psychotropic drugs are just like the drugs we gave mass shooters way back in the D&D days too.
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That is not at all what he said, my interpretation he is saying that there was no evidence of harm from those and there is no evidence that there is harm from social media either. There might be I don't know I am no expert in this area, but it is not a valid counter argument to insist on him providing evidence to support a claim he did not make. What would be a valid argument is you providing evidence that there is a causal relationship between social media use and harm to children.
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Re: You know what else did harm to our kids? (Score:2)
Perhaps instead of an outright ban, ban youngens from any social media that uses injurious algorithms, it that fail to protect younger users. Set the standard of review or evidentiary standard as low as you like. Then block as needed. Might help the rest of the world if sites have to pull back on their engagement maximizing algorithms.
Of course it could all go horribly wrong and fail to protect the children if implemented.
IIRC Australia previously considered banning small breasted women from producing po
Is Slashdot social media? (Score:2)
What is social media? When is a site not social media? I imagine calling Reddit social media is reasonable. What's the difference between Slashdot and Reddit, besides the number of users?
Would a 16 year old be allowed to view Reddit to research topics but not be allowed to create an account or login?
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When is a site not social media?
4Chan. Antisocial media.
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Well, we can fix that the same way various countries are fixing tobacco:
1. Set the minimum age for people to use Social Media at 16
2. Every year increase the number by 1.
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If Albanese had any plums he'd block entirely swastika.com (or whatever they're calling Twitter these days)
It won't work, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
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it will give parents a reason to not give kids access to social media platforms for a bit longer and that doesn't sound like such a bad thing.
It puts it right up there with beer and driving and such, which is a good idea. Given what happens when kids turn 21 and get beer and cars at the same time, we can anticipate some issues at that bottleneck. However, the idea is that, lacking the wonders [cough] of social media in their earliest developmental years, they will have been (in-persn-IRL-as-a-living-breathing-human) socialized enough by the time they reach adulthood, that their brains will be able to better handle social media.
The nerds reading S
Social Media always has a legal agreement. (Score:2)
Re:Social Media always has a legal agreement. (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone not of age to legally enter into a contract should be on Social Media, since they all have a click-through Terms of Service. Just enforce the existing laws.
The lawbreaker, unfortunately there, is the child who is lying. And maybe also their parents who allowed it to happen. Oh, and you have to catch them!
So then the solution is to pass a new law that puts the onus on the SM provider. The company now has to vet the contract, in the face of everyone trying to trick them.
So to get on these sites, you must be verified. This is typically done with a credit card, because no kids have cards and they can't "borrow" them from their parents.
So. this turns out to be a PKI exercise.
If you already know what I mean, you can skip to the last paragraph of this lengthy explanation.
You conduct an in person visit to an approved (probably government licensed) verification service. It may be available at your bank. You bring your government ID (drivers license or birth certificate). They scan your ID to ensure that it is valid. (If this means a query to a government server, that's OK, since nobody is going to know what you are applying for.) Then the service bureau does a physical match to the ID (facial recognition, possibly just with their human eyes), height, hair color, etc. (For additional security you present a credit card, maybe with required PIN. Whatever.) Once they know that you and the ID match, they generate a digital token (ie. cryptographic certificate). No information about the ID or the person is retained.
The cert does not have your ID on it, but it does say that the bearer is of the required application class (i.e. they are over 18 years of age).
Now you have an anonymous verified third-party document that says you are over 18. The trick is that you want it to be harder to steal, than just stealing your driver's license or credit card number would have been in the first place.
One practical way could be that the cert is expiring ten minutes from it's issue date. You don't have time to (deliberately or otherwise) hand it to someone else. Another thing (which I will not invent, but you can imagine) might be the need to produce another signal/token that is only available while physically sitting at the booth.
(And bear in mind that when you sign up for Facebook, it will be over a VPN or something. You don't want the bureau to see that you're connecting to FB, even though you're probably using their Wifi.)
Facebook or DisgustingPorn.com isn't going to know who you are. The bureau isn't going to know why you want this certificate, and they don't remember who you are or anything about you, either. I don't see why they even need to remember they issued anyone a cert (expiration versus CRL). And the Government is left entirely out of it, except that if the bureau can't self-validate your ID, they will know that on a certain date, someone who may or may not be you asked for an ID validity check.
You can (only) use your cert right there in the booth to sign up for as many things as you want, everyone is happy, and none the wiser. After you exit, your cert is void and useless.
Something like that.
But what's really going to happen is that there will be no privacy-preserving solution offered. Instead, to sign up for Facebook or, you will have to scan your Government ID into Facebook, and look into the webcam for Facebook's AI to do facial recognition on you. (Facebook or DonkeyDicks or whoever may also need to ask the government, or some random third party, to validate the ID and face for them.) And sometimes it will fail, but mostly that will work. And now Facebook (and maybe several other entities) knows exactly who you are, has your face, and a copy of your Government ID, for abuse and losing/leaing. And that you signed up for DonkeyPorn or OverThrowUp or whatever.
Re:Social Media always has a legal agreement. (Score:5, Interesting)
Given this is Australian focused, I'll point out that contracts with minors are perfectly legal here.
Until said minor is 19, however, they can choose whether to be bound by said contract (though the adult party doesn't have the same leeway). Except for employment contracts.
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Fox is by far the most watched cable news channel. Would they not be mainstream? https://www.nexttv.com/news/we... [nexttv.com]
Social media isn't the problem... (Score:2)
Social media isn't the problem, the content on it is. Get the bad content off social media so kids (and adults) aren't exposed to it and it won't be a problem that kids are on there.
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Social media isn't the problem, the content on it is.
Some of the content is exactly the same as it would be in person in "real life". For example, gossiping about your peers (schoolmates for the most part). However, something qualitatively different happens when it is multi-media, and the dissemination speed (instantenous) and network size is wider, than humanly possible. And it is constantly in your pocket, beeping for your attention like a slot machine. Aside from pornographic (*personally* pornographic) and other objectionable matrial, hurtful messages are
Here we go again (Score:3)
"The onus will be on social media platforms to demonstrate they are taking reasonable steps to prevent access," Albanese said. "The onus won't be on parents or young people."
Tell me you have no farking idea of how the internet works without actuqally saying "I'm a clueless troglodyte pushing garbage legislation for points!"
Idiots. I'ts idiots all the way down.
Enforcement (Score:3)
But what should be the punishment for kids that do get on social media?
Back in the 1800's people who broke the law were sent to Australia.
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Some Australian juristrictions will imprison offenders as young as 10yo.
Re: Enforcement (Score:2)
Luddites (Score:2)
This just in: Australia bans Internet access for those under 16.... Luddite thinking.
Niced try (Score:2)
I guess schools will have a second dumpster bin, where illegal social media kids are hiding behind, since the one the smokers use, has no more space.
Show of hands (Score:2)
Is there anyone here who believes Social Media isn't one of the most toxic places you can visit on the internet ?
While they do vary in levels of Toxicity depending on the site, a vast majority of them are places everyone should simply
avoid due to the data farming and attempts at the manipulation of public opinions.
Hell, X even rewards this behavior in the form of monetary compensation. The more people you get to engage, the more
you get paid. This is a perfect environment for bots, trolls and clickbait to op
I'm going to try not to rant (Score:3)
In principle it could be useful for conveying actual valuable information, but the sites themselves actively put up obstacles to that in order to increase their ad revenue. Yesterday I was trying to assemble a database of distribution points where people in the flood-hit towns around Valencia can get food. Because I want reliable sources, I was looking for information directly from the respective town halls. None of them seem to have this information on their own websites, but a number of them have it on th
Won't matter (Score:2)
This isn't going to matter. Most of the sites in the US require that a user be 13 already, and all the kids do is backdate their birthyear by however much is required to meet the minimum.
Sure parents can check to make sure they're not doing that, but the parents that would/could check on that could have already forbade their kids from using it anyways.