What if, instead of trying and failing to kick kids off social media, we focused our attention on the reasons why being online is so often detrimental in the first place?
Pre-fucking-cisely.
Then you’d have a massive “but what about the children?!” censorship situation for everyone.
We already have that, and it has solved absolutely nothing while potentially making online surveillance and privacy issues worse.
The answer isn’t age-gating or ID verification, it’s changing how the sites themselves operate. Get rid of the idea of “driving engagement”, no more stealth ads, and no corpo, media, political party, or lobbyist accounts. Hold influencers and podcasters to the same kind of standards we used to hold journalists to, where they’re required to tell you when the’re shilling for some kind of shady supplement company or political huckster.
You know, the kind of shit any sane species would do with this sort of tech, but when have we ever been sane?
Just because we agree with the news doesn’t make it correct.
The ban was brought about in December 2025. It’s clearly far too early to draw any conclusions about the impact.
If we are going to cherry pick data let’s make sure to cherry-pick data from both sides: https://yougov.com/articles/54334-new-yougov-research-shows-cautious-optimism-as-australians-assess-impact-of-under-16-social-media-ban
A 30% reduction of kids being exposed to these harmful platforms is a good thing and I’m glad to see it.
Also, all laws are imperfect, and expecting 100% efficacy is moronic.
This is nanny-state-ing, because webbrowsers and the web in general have lacking mechanisms for parental controls. Or to discover and control information in general.
Also, ID-requirements are just asking for abuse and data leaks.
Right it’s going to take longer than a few months to enforce properly and undo the damage and protect new generations from its negative effects.
At least it’s a start.
Or maybe it’s never going to work because you can’t enforce it properly because the parents don’t want it to be enforced. And the damage you’re talking about is not backed up by as good science as you think it would be if you were going to pass a law such as this.
But many people are of the mindset that oh my God. Oh my God we have to do something and this is something and therefore it’s better than nothing, and they’re wrong. If you don’t have a good plan, that doesn’t make your bad plan reasonable.
So your solution is to do nothing until there is a good plan. What is a good plan? How do we measure if something is a good plan before implementing it? Especially on the scale of moderating the internet… And what would your good plan be?
Children are the reponsability of parents. Enforcing parents control on device like it is in europe by exemple if far more useful than giving this responsibility to platform that have no financial interest of doing it. Also u can reasonably make internet education course the same way some do about drugs or sex.
Unfortunately, I think parents have by and large failed to parent this aspect of a child’s life. Do we continue to trust parents when they are so clearly failing? I suppose education is the long term answer but I rather just remove the ability for kids to access such harmful content.
But gouvernement isnt in mesure to apply this in any way. It wouldnt make it better for anybody. Do we have to learn parrent to control their kids action ? i thought they know but you got a point that a lot dont.
