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Comment by benj111 | Hacker News Reader

Is there any evidence for all this?

This sums up my understanding of the current situation (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/understand-the-im...)

That isn't anywhere near definitive.

Further it seems to me, this will just allow the tech companies to assume there are no kids, and remove the protections currently available.

Yes there is an issue of quantity, but it seems that we should be focussing on social norms for what is acceptable parenting in the 21st century. I'm 42, probably the lower age range for having a teenage kid, I have a couple of kids myself, and I'm not 100% sure on what the correct approach to take is, as I suspect the situation is for most other parents as the situation is so different to what we experienced at that age.

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Seriously. I see at least one baby with a phone in hand every time I go out.

This is 100% an education issue and they don't understand how harmful that can be to their child's brain.

Governments are focusing on banning things because some reason but real solution is education and support imo.

Similar issue with school shottings. Government wants to ban guns or put controls on schools but they don't invest enough on mental health, it is almost if they are incapable of understanding that a healthy person wouldn't choose to do this.

The social media ussue is similar imo, parents don't understand how harmful it is to the brain. It is harmful for adults and it is even worse for children

Why not sell cigarettes and alcohol to kids, but also educate them that it's harmful?

A VPN can't get around a cigarette and alcohol ban.

Perhaps children should be given locked down phones, with fines for parents who buy non child safe phones for their kids. It would take time for this to take effect but a social media ban would actually be effective at the end.

Just like you can't get around a random adult buying for kids. It's just a imperfect deterrent.

Although I agree- hardware level control would be so much better. Apple's on-device age checks can be a good compromise.

> Just like you can't get around a random adult buying for kids. It's just an imperfect deterrent.

This argument feels really weak. Convincing an adult to buy alcohol for kids is dramatically more difficult on average than setting up a VPN.

If you’re on this tech website you should know that it’s not hard to get VPN access even with cash by buying cards at retail. You can also use one of the various free (ad supported or spyware) VPN products.

It’s nothing like trying to involve another adult and asking them to take on the legal liability of that action.

Is it though? Do you actually live in the UK? Do you want to know how often it happens in London?

I live in the UK, though not in London. I can count on one hand the number of times a group of children asked me to buy alcohol for them. So it's not that it doesn't happen, but it almost never happens.

Compare standing outside a supermarket, repeatedly begging passers by to commit a crime for you every time you want alcohol, with the one time action of installing a VPN client on your device and it's obvious one law is enforceable while the other is not.

What? - I live in London, if you walk through a high street where there is both a secondary school and a corner store (if you say you don't know what that is, I will assume you are Trump) at around 3-4pm - you either get asked to buy cigarettes; or, refusing to do so you will get asked if you have any cigarettes. Without fail.

You are trying to make it dramatic by saying it is a crime - in this context installing a VPN is as much a crime (arguably with more traces / evidence) as buying cigarettes for teenagers.

>and a corner store

You mean corner shop. We usually say shop in the UK. When you said you live in London, I didn't realise you meant London, Kentucky.

>You are trying to make it dramatic by saying it is a crime

It is literally a crime. https://www.gov.uk/alcohol-young-people-law

>installing a VPN is as much a crime

It is not. There is no law against circumventing age gates by means of a VPN. It is illegal to promote VPN services to children as a means of circumventing age gates, but the act itself is not illegal.

The harm hasn't been adequately demonstrated though. Whereas we know cigarettes are harmful to everyone.

Alcohol in the UK can be consumed in the house from 5 years old. Which is the point. That societal norms at work. Everyone knows it's not ok to let your young kids get drunk, but we trust society to let parents decide what is appropriate and when.

Following the same analogy, they can use parent’s phones to access social media under supervision.

Making it illegal will raise awareness about how addictive social media is, i.e. it will educate people

"This is 100% an education issue"

It is not. Most parents I know have seen what it does to their kids, but have zero childcare. I have a white-collar remote job and can police my kids. If I was dual-parent working class, I don't think I'd be able to pull it off. I'm glad these laws are getting on the books, so at least the peer pressure of a classroom can get to a good majority of kids.

The kid with the iPad at the restaurant is just saliency bias ("I see it everywhere!"). This is not that different from blaming parents for sending their kids to school hungry or for their kids getting abducted or some such.

Social media is a vortex with a very strong societal pull.

> It is not. Most parents I know have seen what it does to their kids, but have zero childcare.

And you are able to tell this ... how exactly? Why should other parents care about YOUR opinion in this regard? Because ultimately this comes down to a difference in opinion.

It is a parenting issue.

As a parent you can only get your children a smartphone when you decide they are old enough, and then iOS and Android have parental control down to app level.

Decent schools also ban phones now as well.

"Decent schools also ban phones now as well."

Yes and decent countries ban social media, because like schools, the countries recognize this is a collective action issue. You get your children a smartphone when it becomes the only way they can connect with their peers. That's my point.

That's very different from schools banning use of phone during school hours. And, no, your role as parent is not to blindly follow the herd if you think it is not good. That's certainly true for smartphones and, again, there is parental control if/when you get your children a smartphone.

You can only bring a horse to water, as the saying goes...

My cynical take is that social media are a convenient tool for government to justify more identification and control. ID cards, digital IDs, age verification systems, lack of anonymity, etc almost literally justified by "just think of the children".

"your role as parent is not to blindly follow the herd if you think it is not good."

This is just conservative individual responsibility pablum just re-imagined for IT.

"It doesn't matter if all of societies forces + giant multi-national tech corporations are conspiring to trap your child, individual responsibility is all that matters"

This argument doesn't work for smoking or drinking, and it shouldn't for social media.

I am describing basic parenting and you immediately and bizarrely jump to conservatism and corporate conspiracy... ok that's all for me.

Wait, you jumping to national ID's are a tool for national control is fine, but me saying social media is forensically designed to be hyper-addictive[1] is somehow bizarre?

Have a nice day I guess.

[1]: https://www.addictioncenter.com/news/2019/09/excessive-socia...

> Seriously. I see at least one baby with a phone in hand every time I go out.

Where do you live where this is normal?

I’m a parent who spends a lot of time going on walks and to parks with my kids most days of the week.

It’s rare for me to see kids with tablets or phones in their hands. When I do it’s kind of surprising.

Anecdotal evidence that made me smile a bit.

Was at my daughter volleyball game a few years back. Sitting in the gym. In walks mom with a baby girl and a boy that looked around 10ish. They sit down. Mom gives the baby the ipad to futz around with. The son? Takes out his book and starts to quietly read.

It was an interesting contrast to say the least.

This is also something I've heard from my son about more kids are getting off of social media, or giving it up for other means to communicate. My son just graduated HS and said all of his peers have left Facebook, Snapchat, X and several others. He said his generation now sees social media as something for Boomers and my (Gen X) generation. He said people think you're lame if you're still on social media. Everything is now back to Discord servers and other platforms like 4Chan. Anonymous, under the radar stuff, out of the prying eyes of adults.

> This is 100% an education issue and they don't understand how harmful that can be to their child's brain.

Which social media companies are acknowledging there is a problem and providing data to inform parents?

> Is there any evidence for all this?

There was a study shared on Hacker News a few months ago that looked hard to find correlations between different measures and social media use or gaming in kids. It didn’t find any evidence of negative correlations between social media or gaming with different negative effects.

The response here was largely skepticism and disbelief. This topic has jumped out of the realm of evidence and into the range of moral panic. Facts don’t matter any more. The conclusion is assumed.

It’s really sad to see how quickly Hacker News, of all places, is jumping head first into welcoming age restrictions and bans with barely a passing thought to what it means. We already saw with Discord that tech communities really don’t like what age restrictions look like in practice, but whenever you make the topic about “social media” everyone assumes it will only be Facebook or Instagram, never their Reddits or Discords that have to go through identity checks for age verification.

> It’s really sad to see how quickly Hacker News, of all places, is jumping head first into welcoming age restrictions and bans with barely a passing thought to what it means.

I'd avoid such generalizations. It's a divisive topic, but from what I've seen here, there's always lots of criticism (regarding implementation at the minimum) in the comments and it definitely isn't clear that most would be jumping head first into anything.

HN is so full of bootlickers. I really hope they choke on the boots they seem to love to fellate.

> Is there any evidence for all this?

> I'm not 100% sure

I don't think anybody was 100% sure social media would be the best thing since sliced bread when they subjected humanity to the experiment, so I don't think you have a whole ton of reason to freak out here. Either they're wrong and can keep moving forward, or they're right and can backtrack. The children will survive and so will you. L

Isn't that a bit naïve though? Will it actually get rolled back? Seems to me we've added another level of officialdom and it's never going to go.

The next generation of plucky startups now have more hoops to jump through, creating a moat around the incumbents.

And even if it is harmful, why is a complete ban the best approach? The internet is a tool. Should you not let kids cook because they might harm themselves? Or do you teach them, so that they can avoid hurting themselves in the future? While avoiding the downside of bringing up kids who can't cook?

My main worry is this is just another step towards government controlling discourse online. Once implemented it will become difficult to be anonymous on social media.

Some one in the UK civil service was quoted in the Times, they stated that the online safety act is not about protecting children. It is about controlling the discourse.

yes, plenty of studies of the effect on mental health. whether it's "definitive" is a matter of debate (and opinion). as a parent of teens/preteens, I 100% support this just like I support banning the sale of cigarettes to minors. And if future research definitively shows that social media is not generally harmful, then it can be allowed and no harm done -- meaning that it's not like the ban deprives them of some essential need.

It's not even so much the social media itself, but it's the companies controlling social media, who push every lever to try to increase engagement. It's not unlike the cigarette companies back in the day, trying to make them as addictive as possible, with ads everywhere, getting it movies so it's cool, etc.

If we had no-ads, paid subscription social media accounts, no endless scrolling, where social media companies revenue was not tied to time spent in the app, where you only see from people you follow, that would be a whole different conversation.

Meta/ByteDance/Snap/YouTube have f*ed it up, and this is why we can't have nice things.

Evidence?

This is the 21st century.

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