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Comment by mickeyfrac | Hacker News Reader

How many under 16s read newspapers or watch news anyway?

All you need to do is look up the mental health stats since the iPhone release to see why parents are massively concerned. There has never been a time when an alert parent didn’t have a fair idea of what info a kid was exposed to. This is why going to university is such an awakening.

Now the parents basically need a background in infosec to stop their kids accessing hardcore porn, violence and other mind bending content. That only works in your household. Do you stop play dates? Single your kids out as weird by banning all device use?

Societal norms do not move at the speed of technology, so regulation needs to be applied unless there’s another alternative.

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> stop their kids accessing hardcore porn, violence and other mind bending content.

Such sites are not among the social media sites required to verify Australian's ID/ages, which hints that protecting kids is merely a pretence.

They are planning to enforce access to these sites with the same mechanism.

https://www.esafety.gov.au/about-us/consultation-cooperation...

But it's the internet; for every one site that implements this, there will be a thousand that don't, and for every one that the government takes down, another thousand will pop up. And that's just the actual porn sites, there's millions of other ways to get access, be it websites, privacy-conscious apps, file sharing, etc. If people want porn they'll find it.

Of course, it being more difficult, technically involved, or otherwise shady will probably reinforce a message that it's not normal, because another issue is the normalization of porn to the point where people watch it in public. I'm also very aware I am just echoing the same thing an older generation has said about things like raunchy video clips on MTV, magazines like Playboy, movies with Marilyn Monroe, and painters painting a hint of ankle.

Well but that content is also distributed over this social media sites.

> How many under 16s read newspapers or watch news anyway?

Adults do, and the OP's argument is that everyone (not just U16's) will be driven away by the changes. Being asked to provide ID may result in some just noping out or not signing up to newer services when they otherwise might have.

How many under 16s read newspapers or watch news anyway?

That's exactly why there's a suggestion legacy media are driving this.

It’s not like 14 year olds were reading newspapers before, and this is not a legacy media cartel trying get more teenagers into watching the news. Not everything has to be a conspiracy.

No, the argument is, the under 16 of today will be hooked on social media and will never read “classic” medias when they are older.

Absolutely nothing you describe will be affected by an internet ID. And it doesn't even "Help a little", it just makes many things much worse.

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/05/03/hours-after-aussie-govt-...

If 16 year olds do indeed access pornography with such an amount of naiveté, there might really be a problem. But there is no indication of a problem, is there?

I think that’s the cover story (because I agree it’s extremely valid).

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