Summary
Meta has criticized Australia’s new law banning under-16s from social media, claiming the government rushed it without considering young people’s perspectives or evidence.
The law, approved after a brief inquiry, imposes fines of up to $50 million for non-compliance and has sparked global interest as a potential model for regulating social media.
Supporters argue it protects teens from harmful content, while critics, including human rights groups and mental health advocates, warn it could marginalize youth and ignore the positive impacts of social media.
Enforcement and technical feasibility remain significant concerns.
Their perspective? Up until they are 18 they should listen to mama and papa. And mama and papa voted for this government and live in a country that chose this ban.
Fuck off meta.
Fuck Meta but 16 seems a little bit old just because of the enforcement challenges. I’m not arguing social media is good for 14 and 15 year-olds. I’m just saying they’re often clever little shits who systematically test boundaries. They’re like the velociraptors in Jurassic Park.
Basically, I think a better strategy would be something like a ban for 13 and under. Then, a harm reduction strategy for 14-17 year-olds. Like maybe sequester them. They don’t want adults on their timeline anyway and (normal) adults don’t really want teens on theirs. Maybe allow them to follow approved pop stars and athletes or something but not random adults.
Basically, social media training wheels for older teens so they develop some social media literacy before they’re just tossed into the cesspool of adult social media.
I think this assumes that putting restrictions on the behaviour of young people doesn’t have value even if they will find ways to do things anyways. Taking responsibility in circumventing boundaries to pursue your interests is part of growing up and is valuable to explore while still under 18, and it also clearly signals that social media is dangerous and not to be treated without thought.
Kids also: do drugs, look at porn, get in fights, swear (restricted in many households and schools but obviously not usually by law), drink/smoke/vape, play with fireworks, play with gunpowder, play with fire/matches, play with knives, the list is basically endless. Restricting these things does not have no value just because people will do them anyways, we just need to always keep in mind that kids will be kids and our goal is to make things safer and put up guidelines without being overbearing.
Fuck Meta.
This is worthless because it’s not the children whose use of social media is destroying the world.
Fuck off, Meta. My children tell me they want to try cigarettes, driving, using an excavator, and rifles and every time I fail to consider their voices. Actually, I consider it and the answer is an easy, “no.” Considering the evidence, social media like FB appears to be quite deleterious to people’s mental health, young people in particular.
100% - Meta’s opinion on this matter is absolutely irrelevant.
I’d let them try out an excavator as long as I got a turn, too.
Pretty sure cigarettes went through the same thing. Harder to hook them when they’re older if you don’t hook em young.
Yeah. This rings of tobacco companies trying to convince everyone that cigarettes are good for them.
Well then those kids should have voted. … Oh. ;)
“considering young people’s perspectives or evidence” LOL eat shit fuckerberg
last i heard, the evidence showed that fb and other social medias overrun with “influencers” provide zero benefit, but instead cause self-image problems and depression at best, completely unaddressed cyberbullying and suicide at worst.
fuck the lot of social medias. it’s bad enough that grown ass adults are so addicted to it
I use social media from time to time. The amount of misinformation that is created and spewed without consequence is really alarming. A lot of it is dangerous. People give medical advice and pretend to be doctors. That should be illegal.
If they could filter out all the garbage content and just have children cartoons, comics, food, and cute animals, I would be fine letting kids watch it from time to time.
Pretending to be a doctor is illegal.
Some ways I saw around this is by being in another country, and/or getting some bullshit PhD. I see a lot of chiropractors giving nutrition advice.
Even if they don’t call themselves doctor, they will say they are a medical practitioner, or health expert because of their self published PDF book or their shitty blog.
Not only that, lots of things that sound like official medical titles aren’t. As such they aren’t protected at all but do mislead the public.
Doesn’t stop karen from pushing essential oils and crystal healing.
Did she do her own research at least?
Well, she didn’t publish so who knows?
You don’t consider Lemmy social media? Honest question.
That’s an actual issue I see with this law: how does one define social media? I’ve seen YouTube described as social media which I find highly dubious but I can’t really explain why.
Under 16 year olds probably shouldnt be on lemmy either.
Even this tiny social media network has plenty of misinformation and bullshit a tween/teen likely could not parse well.
I do consider Lemmy and Reddit and other content aggregators social media.
I might be mistaken but I think being able to comment on YouTube and anyone is able to upload a video puts it in the social media category.
Wouldn’t that make many (most?) news sites social media since they let you comment on articles? (IMDB dodged a bullet?)
Sorry I edited my comment. I think the difference, not just being able to comment, but is being able to post. Like not everyone is able to post an article in Gizmodo but anyone can post a video on YouTube, or a story on Instagram.
This is just my own thoughts on it. I don’t actually know what the official definition of social media is.
Ah, I see what you’re saying. That might be a way of looking at it.
Meta concerned with people when they can’t abuse them.
They can still go to school and watch tv, thats all the social and media they need respectively
What about the kids who come to terms with their gender or sexuality through social media?
What about the kids who use social media to connect with other people who share their experiences of being visible minorities?
What about the kids who get their sex education from social media because their parents pulled them out of sex ed classes at school and you sure as shit don’t get that stuff on the tv?
What about the kids who never understood that what their uncle is doing to them is actually sexual abuse until they were able to talk about it through the pseudo-anonymity of social media? The kids who learned survival strategies through social media? The kids who only managed not to kill themselves because of the friends they made online?
Do any of them matter?
There are plenty of places on the internet at large where those resources exist outside of social media. Restricting minors from posting (but not reading) might also be an effective alternative to a total ban. Though in either case there is little you can do to stop them from just lying during sign up
It’s not just about resources, it’s about connections. A lot of people don’t even know where to start looking into something. Asking a question is sometimes the most effective way.
And sometimes it’s not even about questions. Sometimes it’s about living in a small town full of conservative Christians where, as far as you know, you are the only gay kid. And you don’t dare breath a word of that to anyone around you. But online you can be your authentic self, or at least a version of it. You can connect with other people like you, and you can commiserate about what you’re struggling with, and you can maybe not feel so fucking alone.
I’m not sure you really understand just how damaging that kind of isolation is. Not being able to express yourself honestly to anyone is unbelievably destructive to your mental health. It leaves scars that last a lifetime - and in many cases, it cuts that lifetime very, very short.
A social media ban, for a lot of kids, basically locks them into solitary confinement. They live around people who may never love and accept the person they really are. They need some place where they can feel some sliver of human connection. Where they can feel loved and understood. It is, genuinely, very often the difference between life and death.
This is what worries me about social media bans for kids, there are no local resources as readily available and anonymous as the internet for dealing with the issues you mentioned, and I’ve not seen any talk about increasing funding for those sorts of services.
I’m not sure if the good social media provides to these kids outweighs the bad that it’s causing, but at the least I want to see alternatives being discussed.
Of course those things matter. What is important is that minus the social media, we as a society need to build healthy and affirming alternatives to compensate for this gap. The hard part is figuring out what forms those should take and how to keep them from having similar pitfalls.
The reason why the internet is such an effective tool for people in the situations I described is because it’s so incredibly accessible, and because it possible, to some degree, to do so privately.
You can create an LGBTQ club at school, but that doesn’t help the kid who isn’t allowed to go because their parents are hardcore Christians. And I say 'You can…" but the reality is that you actually can’t because this is smalltown Alberta and any attempt to do so would get you tarred and feathered.
The internet can reach at risk people in places that your “local alternatives” will take decades to be accepted in. Place still matters, and even in more progressive countries and states, there are still plenty of localities where local resources simply cannot exist in a way that will take the place of online resources.
You’re talking about abandoning those kids. The ones who need it the most. The ones who can’t talk to the people in their own lives about suicidal thoughts, depression, questions about their sexuality, or whether or not it was OK for the pastor to touch them there because they live the kind of fucked up backwater where you simply cannot have those conversations with the people around you.
The internet, not only the resources, but also the friendships and human connections it provides, can be a lifeline to young people in incredibly difficult circumstances.
There’s a lot of fucked up shit online, and it’s doing a lot of damage, but we have to find a way to address that that doesn’t involve throwing the baby out with the bathwater. These kinds of blanket bans are impractical, impossible to effectively police, and will cause far too much harm for the little good they can accomplish.
What about the kids who come to terms with their gender or sexuality through social media?
Seriously? This is legit a concern of yours?! Yall crazy.
