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Comment by academic_84572 | Hacker News Reader

Yes, this is flawed legislation, and yes kids will find ways to bypass these protections.

But I think this is a step in the right direction. There is clear evidence of the harms caused by social media, especially for adolescents. We have to start trying things - albeit imperfectly - to get to a better place. We can learn a lot from the outcomes of this experiment.

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The key feedback that was unaniamous from all the experts that managed to reply to the Government's 24-hour consultation period was that they all agreed a blanket ban is the worst way to approach the platform (they were all ignored by all but a few Senators).

An interesting part of the ban is that kids will be banned from Instagram, but sites like 4chan (and ovbiously anything on the dark web, which teens might now be more motivated to access) will be out of the reach of it...

Nice of you to volunteer others as experimental subjects.

World is divided by people who grew up with social media and people who didn't. I'd imagine there's already ample longitudinal metrics to extrapolate differences and draw conclusions between the two groups. The experiment's not really whether social media is bad for adolescents, but whether one can successfully legislate to reduce social media use among them. Not holding my breath.

We have taken such steps in many areas now, and it simply does not work. We can keep trying this old, tired method, but it does not work. I do not want ID verification for the Internet either, to be honest.

> kids will find ways to bypass these protections.

But this is a change in law. Yes kids will easily be able to access social media if they want to, but it will be illegal and punishable.

The fact that kids are going to circumvent the rules means that it's going to be a wild back and forth between companies and the courts when they do.

could you share the clear causal evidence?

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