It would be a fun exercise to replace social media with alcohol in this article so that it argues we shouldn't ban children from drinking because drinking is bad for adults too.
The wild corruption... no. That wasn't externally imposed on you/us. Estonia, Letonia, Poland, Czechoslovakia started the race to improve themselves at the same time, and they're far ahead now.
I found data on self-reported frequency of alcohol consumtion for teenagers and the results mostly sustain my opinion.
For example, "every week" reported consumption: Netherlands (58.9%, top of the list), Greece (39.8%), Czechia (23.5%), Croatia (21.9%), Bulgaria (20%), Poland (11.7%), Slovakia (10.3%), Estonia (10%), Romania (8.4%), Latvia (4.4%), Lithuania (3%), which proves my point...
But then, "not in the last year" reported consumption: Lithuania (51.7% top of the list), Romania (49.1%, second, but I highly doubt this data, I live here and I know better), Bulgaria (46.1%, third place), Slovakia and Croatia (35.2%), Latvia (33.8%), Poland (30.6%), Czechia (20.2%), Estonia (19.6%), Slovenia (18.1%), which is mixed and doesn't prove anything. It is my impression that "not in the last year" category includes most of the liars and is not to be trusted.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/hlth_ehis_al1... (you need to manually select age class)
Even for those though, opinions are all over the place: Everything from "no rules" to "kids should be allowed to own drink alcohol under the supervision of their parents" to “it’s fine for adults to drink, but not kids” to “alcohol should obviously be banned for everyone."
For most of these we settled into a happy medium that generally everyone feels is acceptable, but we still change our opinions semi-frequently: Cigarettes being a great example in our lifetime.
I get the argument that social media is probably closer to junk food than to firearms, but:
a) Plenty of people argue that junk food should be banned for kids too! Or at least tightly regulated.
b) It’s definitely not consensus opinion that social media is more like junk food than, say, cigarettes. People will vehemently argue either side of that.
For instance here in the UK it's legal for any child over 5 to drink in private.
Present? Or just buy it originally.
There are no laws similar to gun safes requiring alcohol safes.
It is usually legal for parents to give under-18s a sip of an alcoholic beverage. It is not legal for under-18s to buy any such beverage in a shop.
Not to mention that using social media does not require a phone number, and wifi is practically ubiquitous.
It's crazy that in 2026 when we literally have the knowledge of the entire world at our fingertips it's still easier to just say "I doubt it" instead of looking it up.
To save you those 5 seconds of googling - no, you don't need to present any ID to buy a sim card in the UK.
An analogy would be that social media consumed by children is surely less harmful when it's a parent holding their own phone towards a child to show them a few selected photos from their Instagram feed. I doubt most people would object to that, even those that want to ban social media from children.
This sounds really strict because of how it's phrase but the legal limit for drinking alcohol in a private space in the UK is 5.
All of this also applies to adults, I don't like how corporate profit-seeeking algorithms dictate public discourse and I think it's perfectly reasonable to combat this. The great question is how to do so without trampling on people's right to freedom. The EU tends to combat "misinformation", but this has loads of problems, and I think it misses the mark of what the problem truly is. In my opinions it's the algorithms that maximize fear responses and lead people down rabbit holes that's the true problem.
I think the best way to combat it is by supporting federation and decentralization of the internet and attacking the advertising industry that maximizes eyeballs and time spent on the platform, rather than providing service to paying users. It also has the beneficial side-effect of increasing freedom of thought and speech rather than limiting it.
I know some people see the fragmentation of communities as the leading cause of echo-chambers, but this is not my impression. Actually, the smaller internet communities are often less extreme than algorithmically dominated central-hubs. Pseudonymous small communities function more like the local village that tends to mitigate extremism as the loudest, more extremist, community members can be challenged, without those challengers drowning in potential oppressive moderation and hive-mind mentality.
I think you misspelled "cool".
You seem to be setting the bar at “if anyone violates the law then the law is a failure and should be revoked.” But that’s why we have court systems. They don’t just determine if someone broke the law, but also what to do when people inevitably do. You’re operating in a world where the only restrictive laws we should have are ones where it eradicates certain behaviors 100%.
You’re basically arguing against having laws rather than the merits of the law and its efficacy. Also “drinking like a a fish” when you were a kid was terrible for your development even if you turned out ok. Many people do not. It’s not even debatable, we know the numbers on this.
> Do you see the trouble with the logic here?
I think you misunderstood my comment. The second sentence was not intended to be an argument or justification for the first sentence. The first sentence stands alone: I think it's unprincipled to ban children from drinking. The second sentence is merely a corollary. Also, I think that legalization and the introduction of adult supervision would ameliorate some of the problems associated with youth drinking, would "moderate" it to some extent.
My view is that the government should not try to be a parent, should not restrict personal freedom, not even of kids, except in so far as one's exercise of freedom harms others, and even there it has to be significant harm, e.g., you can ban violence but not hurting someone else's feelings. The drunk driving laws, which apply to all ages, may be justified by the known role of drunk driving in car crashes. The same principle apples to public smoking bans: the issue is not the first-hand smoke, which is your own business, but rather the second-hand smoke, affecting people who choose not to smoke.
There are very well established and understood health impacts on adults too, for both smoking and alcohol.
> It is not because of secondhand smoke. The latter informs where we can smoke, such as (not) around a hospital.
Duh? I mentioned second-hand smoke in the context of "public smoking bans," by which I meant smoking in buildings and other public areas. That has nothing specifically to do with children. So it appears that once again you misunderstood my comment.
Come on.
They, more precisely I, was not making such an argument, as I already explained in another comment.
My problem with your previous comment is that it was written after my clarificatory reply to you, and indeed after your reply to that, so you obviously read my clarificatory reply, but instead of revising your initial interpretation based on my clarification, you chose, for whatever reason, to repeat the initial misinterpretation.