I'm very interested to see how their socializing evolves in response to such a shock. Do the social behaviors of pre-internet times re-emerge? "Third spaces" reappear overnight? We shall see!
This article, also crucially, does not relate to America
When they said they live in a country where a police force follows kids on bikes
The clues were all there.
My assumption is a lot of those people who proudly proclaim that lifestyle were raised in (segregated) suburbs and have rose tinted glasses. But I’m also making assumptions like them, so again I’m curious to find info on this.
And as far as the internet: I am part of the younger generation and I welcome this change. I see how it affects my generation every day.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States
No Such Thing as Bad Weather by Linda McGurk
I read this book in school and it's about this difference between Europe / Scandinavia and a rural part of Indiana
I'm not saying kids don't play outside, just that the violence is why some parents fear it. I agree the internet makes this fear worse but frankly, EVEN ONE CRIME is scary enough if you ask me
A 26 year old girl was set on fire in Chicago public transportation. It's really unforgiveable to me when people then say I'm "fearmongering"
Yes, I fear being attacked on public transport!
This is more about criminalising poverty than anything about parenting. I live in a rich part of Wyoming. The kids are fucking feral.
Whenever someone brings up this stuff, the politicians take the tone that "we won't let anyone get in the way of protecting children", and this is in response to people who in good faith think this can be done better. Media oligopolist love it because it regulates big tech, so they've been happy to platform supporters of the policy as well.
Third spaces won't reappear because the planning system in most cities shuts anything down the moment someone files a compliant. They get regulated out of existence the moment police express concern young people might gather there. The planning system (which in NSW/Sydney is the worse) has only gotten worse since the 80s after the green bans. It was largely put in place to allow for community say in how cities are shape, which sounds nice but it's mostly old people with free time participating who don't value 3rd spaces, even if they might end up liking them. They just want to keep things the same and avoid parking from getting overly complicated (and this is a stone throw away from train stations and the CBD).
Third places can be fixed by reforming planning which is slowly gaining momentum via YIMBY movements, but this social media ban is just not a serious contribution to changing that. If anything Social media phenomenon like Pokemon GO contributed more to these third places lighting up.
Governance in Australia is very paternalistic, it's a more high functioning version of the UK in that sense. I think it might be in part due to the voting system being a winner takes all single seat electorate preferential voting system which has a median voter bias for least controversial candidates.
As a kid I always felt being in Australia you missed out on a lot of things people got to do in America, that has slowly changed as media and technology has become less bound by borders but looks like that being undone.
They passed legislation, its not clear at all that they succeeded.
The Seventies are BACK!
This is misinformation. The legislation does not specify a single particular implementation for age-based verification and there's absolutely no single "age verification service" that platforms are legislated to use. Instead they're required to verify users' ages based on several recommended methods, including age inference. https://digitalrightswatch.org.au/2025/12/03/what-you-need-t...
Further, the Communications Minister herself regarding whether she's concerned about people bypassing authentication-based age verification checks: "If you’re an adult - you probably won’t need to do anything extra to prove your age, because like I said before, these platforms have plenty of data to infer your age." https://minister.infrastructure.gov.au/wells/speech/address-...
> Companies have told Canberra they will deploy a mix of age inference - estimating a user's age from their behaviour - and age estimation based on a selfie, alongside checks that could include uploaded identification documents.
It is still more ok then most of what any other todays tech provides. No matter how much geeks on HN hate it.
That's for the better, as far as I see it, I can just shout :p