Comment by djha-skin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by djha-skin | Hacker News Reader

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A bill just passed in the state of Utah where I live banning children from social media unless they have their parents permission under 18 years of age.

In addition, the parents must be provided with access to all of the children's messages and posts.

This now means that Facebook has to implement some sort of "are you 18" thing. Don't know how they'll implement that, reminds me of a recent law around porn in Alabama. Requiring a driver's license or some such.

It also means Facebook has to implement a back door of sorts for parents to watch their children. As of the parent of a girl who will soon reach social media age, this seems a bit much to me.

But the technical side of my brain screams, how on Earth are they going to implement this and keep spammers from abusing it.

It changes so many things. Child predators pretending to be 14. Indeed, any kind of anonymity has been largely banned because I have to know how old you are to let you on my site.

And it's not just Facebook it's any sort of social media, including our host.

The Utah law is a back-door to Christian/Mormon fundamentalists who want to enforce religious doctrine and parental control over teenagers who are attempting to establish their own identities. This will be disastrous for any teenager in Utah who doesn't meet the local-region-socially-acceptable stereotype of a normal person, such as LGBTQ. All that I can see is even more ex-Mormon teenagers who cut off their parents they day they turn 18 and move to a city somewhere far away from Utah, at the earliest possible financially feasible moment.

Good. You can establish your own “identity” when you’re an adult at 18. I don’t have a religious bone in my body but I wish this law was made effective nationwide.

Just go try going back and telling that to yourself as a teenager. Can you imagine?

“Sorry jutrewag I know these are your formative years, but I’m going to need you to put off that formation until an arbitrary date that I and the rest of the adults have decided upon without any input from you or your peers.”

It sounds about as backwards and ridiculous as decreeing puberty blockers until they turn 18 - part of growing up is establishing your own “identity.” The reason that ‘18’ feels like an early candidate for adulthood is because you’ve spent all your time as a teenager up until that point establishing your own “identity” and it’s time for that “identity” to be put to the test in the ‘real world.’

You don’t just become an adult, you arrive there after a long bumpy period of growth, and delaying that growth only serves to delay adulthood. Establishing an identity is essential to that growth. You need to give kids time to figure themselves out. You need to give their bodies and minds time to grow before you call them adults.

In other words you do not ‘choose’ your identity once you become an adult - rather you settle on sexuality after years of experimentation and exploration.

I know you probably aren’t thinking of it that way, but speaking from experience as a former queer teen (lately queer adult) what you are describing is oppression, being denied the opportunity to develop along a ‘normal’ timeline compared to your peers.

I see what you’re saying but there is some merit to kids being influenced to question their identity by outside forces when they probably would never have arrived at that conclusion themselves. You can be peer pressured into trying out a different sexuality- it happens a lot in prison, price of admission for acceptance into a new circle of friends etc.

But questioning your identity is a good thing - of course the broader experiences you’re exposed to the more opportunity you’ll have to question. You might as well keep kids away from the library which - let’s not kid ourselves - is a known conservative position as well. How are you ever going to learn about yourself if you only get to see one thing? The only reason to stop kids from learning about queerness is to constrain them to straightness.

I mean - growing up, when was the first time you had a gay peer? A gay friend? A gay family member? The first time you even saw an out and proud gay person, let alone someone you knew personally? The first time you saw a gay character in media, without it being either queer-coded villainy or a homophobia sob story? Like - obviously, as a kid, I knew that I wanted to have sex with other boys, I’m not an idiot, I can feel my own feelings - I just didn’t see a lot of good examples in my life of how I could do that, and still grow up to live a fully fleshed out adult life. Like I didn’t come out until college, and even then I was real hesitant about it, because I just didn’t know how being gay ‘in the real world’ would work -

And that was bullshit, I should have been out and proud at 11, instead of delaying my sexual and romantic development until my 20s. I had no idea how to date. My peers had had plenty of adolescent fumblings with dating, and I didn’t have a real boyfriend until I was like 27. That’s crazy! Why did I waste all that time?

All that time was wasted because of the double standard: Cishets get to practice cishettery whenever they want - queers are told “no you need to wait until it’s appropriate.” That’s not fair. If we really want to see that change, if we want real equality, we need to push back hard against this kind of oppressive policy, in my experience. You can’t just say “wait til you’re older” and expect things to magically sort themselves out. It’s hurting kids under the guise of helping them. Peer pressure will always exist, prison doesn’t even seem relevant here, but regardless, what will help kids is supporting them, not suppressing them.

Thankfully, America is not yet operating in the political reality of The Handmaid's Tale, much as you might wish it to be so.

I feel like that’s a hyperbolic take. Outside forces injecting chaos into the internal workings of a family are about as bad as things can get for a growing child. What’s the problem with deferring sexual issues to adulthood when you’re more mature?

What makes you think that a marriage between two people gives them absolute knowledge how to raise a child in an optimal way?

That’s part of the deal isn’t it. The government can’t decide and mandate what the optimal way to raise a child is outside of certain aspects like schooling, corporal punishment, age of consent etc.

What makes schooling, corporal punishment, age of consent, and - as discussed here - control over online communication acceptable government interventions into an otherwise wise, benevolent and self-sufficient family?

The problem is that those sexual issues arise for the individual almost as soon as they begin to experience puberty. You can’t make teens to ignore their sexuality for 6+ years. It simply will not work, it never has, it never will.

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