Rather than this law, I would start at banning social media accounts for under 16s.
Social media has arguably had an appalling effect on the mental being of teenage girls.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/metaverse-facebook-inst...
Social media has arguably had an appalling effect on the mental being of teenage girls.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/metaverse-facebook-inst...
I can't think of a way to define "social media" that wouldn't include forums, mailing lists, Stack Overflow etc. It would be a shame to deprive young people today of the opportunities I had growing up.
Not sure how you could differentiate, but there has to be a way, as forums -feel- different than, say, Instagram.
Maybe something around media? Banning sites that allow or host media(pics/vids/audio) sharing directly?
Imgur is an example of social media that pulls this off perfectly. Yes it's still a silly place designed for wasting time rather than personal enrichment, but it doesn't -feel- like other social media does.
Here's the trick: No selfies. No profiles. No follows. You post your meme pseudo-anonymously and hope it makes the central stream. Everything else dies in obscurity.
It's a lot like Hacker News in that way, which is also social media but feels different. Because 99% of the time I don't even read the usernames of who I'm talking to. We live and die on the basis of our ideas, not our identities. Even the famous people.
That's a great point and interesting because I'd thought of HN as much like fora, but there it was (is?) common to address people by username (or partial) - 'Thanks cheesepuff[86] that worked perfectly' - which is seldom seen and would be a bit jarring, wouldn't it Swizec, on HN.
Yes. Even Wikipedia has a comments section and profile pages.
I'm also deeply grateful for all the things I learned from interacting with other people on the internet. In fact, most interactions I've had were without any party knowing much about who the other person was. We didn't care about age, gender, race or any of the other real-life traits. We only cared about a shared curiosity. Forcing real identities and age verification onto the internet will destroy safe spaces for human interactions.
Social media isn’t a requirement for learning a skill.
Access to a table saw isn't a requirement for making cabinets.
It makes things a lot faster and easier. At the risk of a little danger.
Why does it need to be faster and easier? I wrote about this in another reply [1], the difficulty of the trial and error process was what gave me the insight (I believe anyway). Obviously, not everyone's the same, so I don't expect my journey to map perfectly onto everybody else's, but there is definitely something to be said for the joy of finding out yourself.
I'd say the majority of my learning came from manuals [1] and books I either read in the library or bought [2][3a][3b][ca][3d].
The rest came from brute-force trial & error - which I don't think should be downplayed. As a child I had time and energy to just try stuff out, that repeated process of failing until succeeding probably gave me more insight than any online writings would today.
It's probably not that far from how I learn new things now. I might learn the basics of something online (a few key pointers) and then go and prototype and try until I'm happy it's sunk into my brain.
I see this as similar to the kind of constraints that music producers have. Whether it's an instrument they play, or the limited kit they have in a home studio. Being forced to learn the thing inside out, because of some arbitrary constraint, often leads to more creative use and a deeper understanding. Modern producers have access to thousands of plugins that replicate the old expensive gear. What happens is they drown in a sea of options, never really learning any one of them in any depth.
Back to the point, if a child wanted to learn programming (without social spaces) - then perhaps some online free-courses, good references sources, combined with the trial & error process I describe above, would be just as effective as the social-network approach? Who knows, it may even be more effective. I see a lot of junior engineers struggle with the basics - basics I taught myself in my teens.
I guess we'll never know, there are so many variables in this equation:
* Are there good non-social-space reference resources?
* Are the free courses good enough - and would they inspire a child to do them?
* Is the current landscape of technology so large that this approach wouldn't work?
I believe inspiration is the key to learning. On the first manual I read [1], after the pages for plugging the computer in:
* Page 10 - drawing lines and triangles on the screen
* Page 11 - making sounds
Before long I'm making a rocket fly up the screen. I'm instantly thinking "I can make a game", and that's it, I'm hooked...
[1] BBC Micro User Guide - https://stardot.org.uk/forums/download/file.php?id=91666
[2] BBC Micro Advanced User Guide - https://stardot.org.uk/mirrors/www.bbcdocs.com/filebase/esse...
[3a] RISC OS Programmers Reference Manual [Volume 1] - https://www.4corn.co.uk/archive/docs/RISC%20OS%20Programmer'...
[3b] RISC OS Programmers Reference Manual [Volume 2] - https://www.4corn.co.uk/archive/docs/RISC%20OS%20Programmer'...
[3c] RISC OS Programmers Reference Manual [Volume 3] - https://www.4corn.co.uk/archive/docs/RISC%20OS%20Programmer'...
[3d] RISC OS Programmers Reference Manual [Volume 4] - https://www.4corn.co.uk/archive/docs/RISC%20OS%20Programmer'...
And as tge other person says, how do you define social media? Forums?
* No recommended content. Chronological feed with basic search functionality is okay. Auto-generated "popular posts" section is social media.
* No targeted ads. Static banners which everybody sees are okay. Decision-making about which ads to show based on user data is social media.
I think those two simple rules would keep a "not social media" company's incentives aligned against invective and towards relevant discussion, even if they were in the business of facilitating discussion amongst like-minded people. And it's not like social media would be banned: just more tightly regulated.
No USER targeted ads. Ads based on page content should be allowed. I say this as someone fully against ads as a concept entirely. They are not helpful nor a benefit for consumers. Consumer awareness and product fit for purpose tests should be funded and expressed in other ways. Maybe a competition (think 'buy ins' like poker tournaments) as an idea / one example.
I subscribe to hot rod magazines for the express purpose of the ads.
But somehow, the targeting of ads by Amazon, etc., have never turned up anything I wanted to buy.
Which is fine, but probably something to keep in mind when debating definitions.
Most of what you mentioned is more about privacy. Which could indeed do with some additional protections, though attempts at an age restriction tend to run into the paradox that you need to know someone's age to enact the restriction, which means you need their personal info, which is what we're trying to avoid.
I'm not sure preventing targeted ads or recommendations it is enough though. Part of the problem with social media is that they accelerate all types of social interaction, which may be harmful in and of itself (you don't need recommendation algorithms or targeted ads for something to go viral after all, viral memes predate both of those).
It is not the same experience anymore. The driving forces are algorithmically lead platforms, which will decide what you get to see and are more likely to promote the latest fad with the largest traction.
There's no hard and fast rule the government can apply which would serve the people, for sure.
But from a parent's point of view it's not that hard to evaluate. If a forum is about things, and people rarely enquire about each other's personal life, it's probably safe. If it's about feelings and dividing communities along personal lines, it's probably not. If adults and children commonly come into contact and the community isn't on guard for creeps, it's not okay. If your kid really wants to participate in an unsafe seeming community, do it with them.
What government could do is mandate that social media sites of a certain scale run only from known domains, with clearly separated subdomains by activity, and have other tools to express parental control - and then leave the application of those to parents. Right now it's technically hard or impossible to enforce parenting rules, often by design.
Then again that is basically the same fear that is preventing children from playing outside unsupervised. And not letting children play unsupervised may end up doing more harm, whether it is playing outside or exploring the internet.
That said I'm not sure if not doing something is an option here, partially because I'm getting the impression it's not simply the (luckily) rare 'bad people' that are a problem on the internet, there's whole industries that profit from children without concern for their wellbeing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pester_power
Sadly there's no chance of a moral panic ever happening over this, because the media which stoke the panics, are funded by advertising from the #1 predator of children, the marketing industry. So the media are never going to bite the hand that feeds them.
And of course the traditional media loves focusing on their competitors such as social media and saying that it causes harm. While completely ignoring the advertising towards children that likely causes a different type of harm, but it's still detrimental to children.
However the severity of the harm from social media is much greater, because we have an enormous increase in suicide rates in teenagers since 2012, and the prime culprit is the smartphone.
i think browsing the internet via terminal like w3m does might take out a lot of the addictive nature of what catches your eye, and you can keep the utility of stack overflow
another equivalent would be teaching them to scrape each individual web-page for text on their own
We are already raising a coddled generation who have little concept of basic liberties and natural rights. We will have a disaster on the horizon when they grow into adults, and who will accept the same treatment from the government this time.
For instance, I follow powerlifting pretty closely. A lot of folks who have been around for a while will tell their viewers something similar to, “don’t structure your training like the people on Instagram”, or “don’t believe everyone is like the people on Instagram - it’s just a highlight reel”. Because of the algorithms they use, you only see the strongest people on your feed, because that’s what people want to see. It’s exciting. But even if the algorithms were tweaked so that somehow this didn’t happen, while still providing content you wanted to see, it wouldn’t solve the issue.
Continuing with my above example, nobody posts their grueling, three-hour-long workouts. They post the single PR (personal record) they hit, or some motivational song played over their heaviest set of the day. They post the four-month diet transformation, not the daily low-calorie meals, the times they have cravings, the unremarkable week-to-week changes. They do that because they know that’s what people want to see, but more than that, they do it because that’s what they’re proud of.
The reality is that people are much more than what they are proud of. People have good days, and people have bad days. People have motivated days, and people have days where they drag their feet. People have strong and weak days, heavy and light days. Sometimes these phases last for weeks or months. When you assess others through the lens of their social media profile, you see a minuscule sliver of who they are and what is going on in their life. That sliver is curated by them to be exactly what they think makes them look best.
So to come full circle, even if all the algorithms on social media platforms tried to be less detrimental to mental health, I don’t think it would work. Instead of seeing the strongest people on the planet hitting PRs and thinking themselves weak, people would see whoever they followed hitting PRs and think themselves weak. Social media encourages you to compare yourself to what others are posting, which is a cherry-picked sample of the best moments in their life.
No one's bad lifts made it into the magazine either. No one posted off season pictures in a bodybuilding magazine basically ever. Ever picture the person was in the absolute peak shape of their life.
The users need to take responsibility for their use because there is no other solution. Users need to stop blaming other people.
We tried prohibition before to protect people who can't control their alcohol use and it was a disaster. The solution is if you drink too much you get help for your addiction.
With kids, parents need to actually be parents. Parents have basically abdicated responsibility for their kids when it comes to social media. Over protect the kid in meaningless ways but then send them to bed with an unlimited porn device and complete access to all kinds of mentally unhealthy behavior.
"Everyone is doing it" is not an excuse for shitty parenting.
This gets said often and it's true. But it's also self sustaining, and not just at a societal level, at an individual level. I previously worked with many people who lead full lives with minimal online interactions besides group chats with family. They were not significant people in a significant place but they lead meaningful lives. I personally find it helpful to remember that.
Children have the right to be protected until adulthood.
Kids in the USA are "protected" to/from walking to school. They must be driven. etc...
Also they don't have this right. Parents might have a responsibility to protect them, children don't have a "right" to protection.
If a student does not pass the class they are sent to an advanced training camp to fix their nutrition, get them off all prescription drugs and teach them how to verbally joust with the master trolls.
Personally, I'd be happy if there was some magic way to stop people under 30 interacting with me online in any way (as long as it _was_ magic, and didn't laws or "technical" fixes).
This article is 80% opinion and 20% descriptive statistics. There's no experimental, quasiexperimental, or qualitative research cited.
A systematic review from 2020 found that the evidence is mixed at best, and more research is needed: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02673843.2019.1...
Ultimately, we have responsibilities to ourselves and our loved ones. Reflect on your life, talk to your friends and family, and if you think introducing restrictions on your social media use would improve your/their wellbeing, then do so and see if it helps. Xx
Absolutely, and I'm not suggesting I shirk my responsibilities as a parent. One of the things that annoyed me when I was a kid was parents wanting to restrict TV and video games, because they didn't want to take their precious "me-me-me" time and devote it to actually raising their children.
This isn't the same thing though. You can be as present and involved as possible in your kids life today, but the web trumps all. It's all pervasive, all encompassing, and normalised. You could switch the TV off, or talk about problematic themes on it, but the web is a different beast.
If you lived through the before-times, you saw the difference between then, during, and after the iPhone. The kids have never been alright, but as one of those kids who was on the wrong side of the outer-edges of not-alright, I can tell you that the situation now is dire in comparison.
In fact I feel somewhat, that some of the these types of discrimination is just a way for one group, i.e. adults to exert their dominance over younger people. Just as way of showing power. There might be some kind of unconscious primitive behavior at work here????
It's "almost" like you're making an underage sex argument.
In fact, to not suspect that one would have to give you a lot of credit.
What do you think, are internet strangers going to give you the benefit of the doubt? Yes or no?
Children are restricted from some things because their minds aren't fully developed.
Downstream from that hardest of facts is general environment that commonly presents dangers to development, a unique vulnerability to adult criminal predation, an inability to give informed consent, and an inability to make independent judgement in service of their long-term welfare.
In contrast and in light of the above points, there are individuals like yourself whose aim is to undermine child protection.
Rational adults ask: to what end?
The other poster's "discrimination" argument is kind of stretching it, but I feel like the core of the issue is that social media has a lot of positive aspects, and we should at least consider the relative significance of positive and negative effects of social media before banning it altogether.
How much do kids lose by not being able to communicate through social media? Is it more or less than how much they gain from such protection?
In fact, it's to do with autonomy and freedom of choice of children during their teenage years. I am opposed to coercive education and want to give children more choice in what they can do during their teenage years. Such as choosing their subjects at school.
I believe that teenage children are being micromanaged, they are being developmentally delayed by the restrictions imposed by adults, especially in this day and age. They might be exhibiting the same behaviors as a micromanaged subordinate in the workplace does.
And I am campaigning for children's rights because this micromanagement has severely affected me personally, and I do not want other people to go through the same.
“You are seeing this ship, all of us, from a unique perspective - from a child's point of view. It must seem terribly unfair and restrictive to you. As adults, we don't always stop to consider how everything we say and do shapes the impressions of young people, but if you're judging us, as a people, by the way we treat our children - and I think there can be no better criterion - then you must understand how deeply we care for them. When our children are young, they don't understand what might be dangerous. Our rules are to keep them from harm, real or imagined, and that's part of the continuity of our Human species. When Clara grows up, she will make rules for her children, to protect them - as we protect her.”
ST TNG - Imaginary Friend
I cannot wait for the uprising or revolution to come against this in the decades to come. And I hope it will be spectacular. It's not a matter of if, it's just when.
> "As adults, we don't always stop to consider how everything we say and do shapes the impressions of young people, but if you're judging us, as a people, by the way we treat our children - and I think there can be no better criterion - then you must understand how deeply we care for them."
And it's reminiscent of a controlling partner who doesn't allow his wife to go out at night, over an absolute deep feeling of care for her. That still doesn't make it acceptable.
Also "give me liberty, or give me death". A thought experiment: As an adult, would you choose personal freedom over other adults controlling your life, even if that control was found to actually make you more successful in life?
> "When Clara grows up, she will make rules for her children, to protect them - as we protect her"
Well, for me I'm not having children at all because of how society treats and micromanages them, especially teenagers. And when I was younger, I have even encouraged other people not to have children too (!). Take that, dogmatists (I'm not speaking against the original poster of this phrase, I'm just speaking towards society in general, especially those people who coddle children).
Took me a decade+ to dig out from that hole socially... one resulting from a lack of competent parental guidance. The experience limits my career to this day, a glass ceiling due to credentialism prevents me from taking advantage of the best opportunities.
Also, no one told me until many years later that your brain does not fully mature until you're about twenty-five. So expect to do a lot of stupid shit until that age.
There _will_ be a revolution, but it'll be in your head — when you're older.
It’s ok to gate keep certain things based on experience. Experience is valuable.
Experience discrimination is a cornerstone to how we credible resource the most important problems in our society.
It's called "being young", you'll get over it.
I remember feeling pretty pissed off about this very thing around 16, but I had completely forgotten until just now when I read your comment.
An unpopular truth — that'll no doubt send you into a fit of rage, apologies — is that "you'll understand when you're older" is a cliche for a solid reason. Every one of us who says that, was your age, and felt the same way you do now. There's nothing new under the sun.
Some constructive practical advice though: Prove the adults wrong by working around the limitations and restrictions placed on you. You'll be amazed how quickly they scramble to move them out of your way. You don't even need to succeed, it'll be enough that they see you're trying your best despite the obstacles.
• dislike, hostility, or unjust behaviour deriving from preconceived and unfounded opinions
Let me tell you that my opinions on people under 30 are 100% based on reason and actual experience. Some of it is even judgement on _me_ when I was under 30.
Don't take it personally, people just haven't gone through a certain amount of life before 30. It doesn't make them bad, or less deserving of respect. But let's be real, giving someone respect as a human being isn't the same thing as taking their opinions on say, how society should be run, as seriously as someone who's older.
This is of course generalising, as you're going to get a few 21 yearolds wiser than a few 51 yearolds, but that's how generalisations work; they're true in _general_. It's become common-place to see generalisations as an automatic bad thing, but bear in mind they serve a function, and are even how brains work.
And prejudice also serves (as an excuse, most likely) to impose power structures and dominance hierarchies as well. It keeps those being discriminated against powerless. Where those with power want them to stay. This happens on every level of society.
Much of this prejudice, in all walks of life is nothing more than social dogma which is pushed aggressively from parent to child, down the generations, without any rational thought. Just emotions. And challenging these dogmas is taboo, sometimes it's even heresy, depending on what dogma it is.
Generalisations _can_ be used to push "social dogma", but it doesn't have to be, and it doesn't mean generalisations are automatically a bad thing. They are a useful evolutionary shortcut our brains invented.
If I see 100 people with easily identifiable attribute X, and 90 of them are mean to me, my brain makes a useful shortcut in the form of a label and says "attribute X" is connected to being treated meanly, avoid those guys. It's not that I don't know 10 of them treat me fine, it's just that it's less of a problem to miss out on 10 potential friends to avoid having to deal with 90 meanies.
It's probably important to say that I'm speaking as a "brown person", who has been "discriminated" against plenty in my life. I don't make a fuss when I get "randomly selected" every single time at the airport, because they're working with statistics.
IMO we should try to outlaw that and see what happens, before legislating on the downstream effects. Might still need stuff like social media account age minimums, but... might not.
They were detaining thousands annually by 2016, for speech deemed innocuous enough in any other country, and the number has only grown.
And I am unnerved by expressing some of my opinions here on this forum, fully knowing that intelligence agencies such as GCHQ are likely monitoring my controversial posts. Well controversy is required for society to progress, and the chilling effect on other people is hindering the development of society itself.
However I am not going to let the chill have any effect on me here. And I am thus going to continue to speak my mind. Because I don't think I'll be in the UK for much longer, being able to get an EU passport relatively easily. The faster I get out of this sinking ship of a country, the better.
Source: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/234197/at-least-million-chil...
2. I think we need a better term than "social media". I suspect it's mostly not the "social" side that are causing mental health problems, it's the celeb / influencer / brands that are the problem. Maybe we need a social network where all messages disappear after more than 10 people read them or something.
How?
Social media sites already don’t allow accounts for those under 13, but kids can just lie…
There's plenty of precedent. I'm allowed to give my kids alcohol, but you're not. Something similar could make sense for social media below a certain age.
You mean, ban it everyone under 16? Why ban social media for boys if it only negatively affects teenage girls?
The implication is that society is also very hostile to men and boys right now, demonstrated by them becoming incels in large numbers.
Thus, while it may linguistically be the western version of some exotic-sounding Japanese word that translates as "single adult", the implication is the exact opposite causality of your question: they are single because they are bad, not vice-versa.
Being an incel is something you choose. Everyone else just isn't having sex.
But a lot of them act in bad ways because they believe/have been told to believe that their difficulty in finding a relationship is someone else's fault.
This often makes them utterly insufferable to be around, which is a positive feedback loop.
And then, hey, look, here's a disaffected community of angry young men, all feeling that society has taken a great big dump on them, all ripe for radicalization by some cynical ideologue.
They are bad people because incel forums are normally filled with crab-bucket mentality users who regurgitate highly misogynistic tropes up until the edge of being openly violent to women.
If you are unable to see the misogyny towards woman in many incel communities for whatever reason, at the very least I would say that they are bad for men because they tend to grow by reinforcing the idea that their community will never be good enough, that there is nothing that they can do, and it is the fault of society for all their problems.
If you are going to sit here and pretend Elliot's manfesto wasn't misogynist, then so be it, there's no point to carry water for these guys.
The first paragraph speaks for itself. The whole "involuntary" part of "incel" implies that your celibacy - the fact that people don't want you as a partner - is totally out of your control. Incels are the epitome of "nice guys".
It is common to see some one with that mindset to see outcomes as inevitable or as a function of things wholly out of their control such as looks or a perceived social dynamic involving 'chads' and 'staceys' that they are ineluctably locked out of.
Just some real bad vibes.
Meanwhile, boys struggle just the same, society just doesn't really accept vanity in teen boys the same way they do teen girls. Being a teen is very rough these days in terms of mental health, and this applies to all genders and sexes.
We had IRC, BBS et al in the '90s, they weren't designed to be addictive. It's such a different landscape these days for so many reasons. Models were airbrushed, then models started being Photoshopped, that affected how people felt too. It isn't necessarily a problem unique to social media.
Imagine reading a magazine full of ads and perfectly good-looking people almost every waking hour as a teen. You're going to end up very unhappy if none of what you're seeing looks like you. This is why representation is important, but when it's reduced to a box-ticking exercise then we have a problem, albeit a different one.
Teen suicide has been a problem for a long while though, even pre-internet.
MySpace was interesting because you saw average looking people generally instead of algorithmic focus on the best x. Not saying MySpace was healthy though, the "number of friends" popularity contest and hoping to be in someone's "top y friends" was miserable.
In 2018 "obesity prevalence was [...] 21.2% among 12- to 19-year-olds." [1] according to the CDC. That's one out of 5 being obese, not just overweight. And it has more than tripled since the 70's [2]. I have to wonder if it's related. A lot of teenagers are bombarded with images of their peers' perfectly healthy bodies that, quite simply, won't match what they see in the mirror. The solution? Ban mirrors.
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/childhood.html
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/obesity_child_15_16/obe...
Social media shows you whatever the algorithm is designed to show you at any given moment.
These two things are not the same.