Sadly, it never is about protecting the children. It's always about pushing other agendas that are, at best, tangentially aimed at protecting children.
For example, holding back Texan teens (aka Gen Z, who had a huge impact on the recent midterms) from being a part of the broader political discussion; from informing themselves before they're able to vote.
I live in TX, and it is many people's greatest fear that their kids might start to think differently than their parents.
The only reason I can think of, for why we would be OK with this, is not a principled stance - rather, you just support the political views social media is instilling.
People being able to see ideas outside of what their parents and communities see, particularly with respect to human rights (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33924352)?
I suppose I do agree with that.
To be clear - facebook? Trash. Twitter? Trash. Instagram? Trash.
But it is important for people to learn that things they've been told their whole life are not necessarily true, and social media is sometimes the only way for that to happen.
And what do they fear the impact of this to be? (Honest question)
E for more detail: Most individuals who feel this way fear at least one of these greatly, and may or may not fear the others. The people I am thinking of mostly fall in the "cultural change" category. See (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33924352) for one example.
I'd like to transmit this culture to my children as I feel it's valuable.
Unless invited, it's reasonable to reject others imposing their values on our culture.
I do agree with this sentiment for all cases with a caveat (for any given culture)
- Protection of individuals must be improved/maintained. Racism and queerphobia are two obvious examples that many of us would do well to move on from within our own cultures, and will lead to youth rejecting the culture that they are raised in (in my experience)
This doesn't need to be _forced_ on any given culture, but it will be the end result, as if a given culture refuses to drop baggage that youth find unacceptable it will eventually die.
This take is largely driven by my analysis of conservative's who claim to worship Christ, but I think is generalizable across cultures.
Teaching children history and customs is great -- it informs how they live within society. But forcing them to only heed the customs of the culture back then makes them ill equipped to survive in today. That's many times more so in a multi-cultural society, as everyone's culture goes into the so-called melting pot.
I have respect for where I come from, but that knowledge alone is absolutely not enough to equip me for living in today's world. My parents (and many others) say it all the time "when I was X it was different ...". Yeah. It was.
Edit: to emphasize my sincerity. No disrespect intended and I hope non-taken.
No - but I oppose usage of law to prevent this, at least in this way.
Either a site should be up, or it shouldn't. I know many Gen Z individuals with better critical thinking then some people of older gens and vice versa.
As long as a site is not actively promoting harm/hate[0], it should be allowed to argue for it's ideas (whether win or lose).
[0] See the Paradox of Tolerance.
Or, more likely, when you look back at yourself as a teen do you cringe at what you believed?
My sisters are way more aware of the world than I was at the time, for instance. But if you talk to some younger people, you'll find that things are different than even a decade ago for younger people.
(Source: Raised in TX, knew people taught both of the things above and learned otherwise thanks to social media. For the record, my parents did _not_ teach either of the above)
Last year there was a week where the students at the nearby school stole all of the faucet knobs, towel dispensers, and even a mirror from the bathrooms. The following week they went about doing random acts of absurd "public service" (a TV was installed in the bathroom, poorly). Why? Some meme, no greater explanation.
If you maintain an oppressive status quo, that kind of thing scares the bejeezus out of you.
And by the way, in the 2000s, before facebook arrived in my country, we created websites and chatroom spawning entire grades, entire school even. The rumor mill was worse than facebook. I've heard of one of those project (a real website, not just an IRC like in my highschool) was used by students of multiple schools, until it was "hacked" and the admin took it down.
It was a bit discriminatory for kids who didn't had enough money to participate, or for groups of kids who weren't interested enough to get on it (i mean, it _was_ geeky) because there was an entry barrier. If we could've coordinate our stupidity amongst all the students, those years would have been even better, and for them too
The only good thing I can see coming out of a social media ban is that hacking will be cool again (much like it was when you had to be somewhat savvy to customize your myspace page).
Learning that it's not you vs your peers, but you and your peers vs the status quo, is an important part of teenagerhood. Attempting to keep kids from being kids is probably a pretty reliable way to remove any ambiguity about who their enemy is.
I guess the same people believed Twitter didn’t either.
Is it malicious? I think so, though not everyone agrees, but the outcome is the same both ways: I would say it is indoctrination into stupidity, not an ideology.
Remember, these are the future soldiers who could, potentially, fight China in a Taiwan skirmish. If they only know how to communicate by meme, can't spell anything, have no sense of achievement, and all dream of being YouTube stars, you've won before firing a single shot.
[just read paragraph 2 and 3 from the parent, yeah, sorry for taking it seriously]