Hacker News Reader

Comment by hopelite | Hacker News Reader

What is it about this 16 y/o cutoff that seems to be the focus everywhere? Why not 18?

It almost seems like this will make SM attractive by making it a kind of forbidden fruit and/or a social standing status indicator for impressionable, malleable minded, underdeveloped minds of teens seeking to feel like adults.

In other words, if I didn’t know any better, I would have guessed that it might actually be the likes of Facebook pushing these controls internationally (not the least because they seem so coordinated all across the planet) in order to manipulate target users into coveting having a fb/SM account again.

Tell me you think Facebook, the same Facebook that was caught running uncontrolled and illegal psychological manipulation testing on its users, would not do such a thing!

View on HN

Why 18? Why not 21, or 26?

I agree with you that this would create a forbidden fruit, and a combination of social media becoming more desirable to under-16yo and teenagers binging social media as soon as they become 16. But the solution to that is to push the age limit down, not up. 14 or 12 would be much more reasonable ages. That gives parents a clear cutoff when their kids have to be ready for social media, and prevents bans in the phase where teens are most rebellious

It seem to me the obvious counter is that the current age of things like FB is 13. Short of legislated controls, guardrails, limits on that access (e.g., parental responsibility for any and all online activities with parental notifications, reports, and clandestine surveillance abilities, limitations based on immediate proximity or same school attendance, limitations based on age difference, i.e., only +/- 1 year, etc) I don't see how the current state is ideal.

The problem now is arguably that parents are not really good at "teaching" children about SM, to a large part because they aren't "good" at it, don't underestand it, and it constantly changes too (Looking at FB here).

I would agree with you if there were some kind of solid, public input crafted specification and standard for SM to not just handle minors, but even transportability across SM/sites, and also hard user data protections and ownership laws. The idea being that possibly anything but boring BBS basically dying out because the data cannot be captured, collected, and sold like harvesting humans in the Matrix.

This was an argument that was used to not ban smoking for kids in the UK back in the day. From the parliment debate...

> [banning smoking would] afford a direct encouragement to children to smoke. Most boys of a tender age who might be seen smoking in public places did so, not because of any attachment to tobacco, but because they considered it a practice in advance of their years, and something moreover which their elders told them not to do, affording them, therefore, the added pleasure of disobedience which was so dear to boys of their age.

https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/1908-10-13/debates/6aa...

Perhaps it does make it cooler - but undoubtedly the restrictions reduced availability and reduced the number of children being addicted.

As for the actual age cut-off, it's always going to be fairly arbitrary, or a 'balanced judgement'.

I should have been more explicit, if I understand you. I support not just making it illegal for any minor to be on any big SM, but also creating standards and specifications for data ownership, controls, collection, and privacy that are hard and accompanied with extreme punishments, i.e., per intentional, negligent, or reckless violation; per data point, not incident. Make the companies aware that a single event can crater the whole corporation if the corporation cannot prove that its officers did not act in violation of the corporation and are therefore personally responsible, and they will keep the rules.

In the UK, 16 is the age of consent for medical treatments, driving licenses, joining the armed forces, etc, so it's generally the age when a child can lawfully make many of their own decisions.

You need to be 15 years and 9 months to apply for a provisional driving licence, but 17 to drive a car, in most cases, though I think there's an exception for some disabled people. You need to be 13 to give consent for processing of personal data. The age of criminal responsibility is 10 in England and Wales, but higher in Scotland, I think. It used to be 16 for getting married, with parents' consent (or without, in Scotland), but I think that's been raised. You can leave school on the last Friday of June in the school year (Sep-Aug) in which you turn 16, or something like that. There are lots of different age limits. I think the real answer to "Why 16?" is basically "Why not?".

You think Meta secretly wanted to remove 4.7m Australian users while saying:

> "We call on the Australian government to engage with industry constructively to find a better way forward, such as incentivising all of industry to raise the standard in providing safe, privacy-preserving, age-appropriate experiences online, instead of blanket bans,"

because ultimately they think it will attract more users to their platforms?

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-15/social-media-ban-data...

https://www.9news.com.au/national/australia-social-media-ban...

> What is it about this 16 y/o cutoff that seems to be the focus everywhere? Why not 18?

Some studies have found that puberty is the peak problematic age for people to be on social media and 16 is the rough point by which mostly this is finished. There is a book, "The Anxious Generation" that covers this pretty well.

> uncontrolled and illegal psychological manipulation testing on its users

Facebook is so uncool to the youth the only idea they could come up with to make kids want to be on it again was to "ban" it.

I'm not sure if you are trying to mock the idea, but it would not be the first time that something like that would work and although not sure, it seems that FB would not be above any of that given their history (having some inside knowledge from very early on) and that the demographics seem to be going against them in a major way.

Facebook, it's toasted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SsnkXH2mQY

Reply on news.ycombinator.com