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Most Canadians support social media ban for kids under 16: poll (cheknews.ca)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/canada@lemmy.ca
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An Angus Reid survey says three-quarters of more than 4,000 respondents are in favour of a ban like the one in Australia, where youth under 16 are prevented from setting up accounts on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and Threads.

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[–] [S] 14 points 7 months ago (28 children)

People are so ignorant asking for Australia’s age verification. That’s basically asking Ottawa to take away their freedom.

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  • [–] 11 points 7 months ago (11 children)

    I mean the better option would be regulating social media companies and forcing them to change their design to not be as harmful or addictive for all users, but that is a lot harder to do, especially as a small country that isn't host to any of those companies.

    A social media ban for kids is not as ideal, but it's enactable now and will curb some harm.

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago (9 children)

    The issue is how it will be enacted. It will invariably require transmitting personally identifying information across a network and for it to be stored somewhere for processing. Even if this is done as safely as possible with government systems, there is always the risk of data theft and exposure as well as excluding people that don't trust the government at all, like pretty much every Indigenous person I've ever met.

    It as well provides the government with a system and store of information that could be used as tool of oppression.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago*

    Simple home router Whitelist enacted through a parental control setting.

    Completely "local" and no personal information is given to a third party website.

    Now the question is could we create a job/field were the persons responsible would curates and classifies each website? They could classify based on ages, genres and other useful tags.

    What could we call these creators of information?

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (7 children)

    I mean, in an ideal world, you just implement it at the OS level. You don't need to send PII off device ever.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Why does it matter if it's a checkbox when you sign up or a number held by your OS? Leave the OS alone and hold parents accountable for the actions of their children.

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago* (2 children)

    Lmao, and how many children do you have, oh wise one?

    I mean, with that logic, why do we ban cigarettes from kids too? Why not just let cigarette companies advertise and sell cigarettes to kids, and just "hold parents accountable for the actions of their children"?

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Boot lick harder

    My servers should not be legally required to verify my age. My TV should not be legally required to verify my age. Parents should be legally required to monitor and filter their children's access to the internet.

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago*

    Lmao, the guy defending using Instagram is calling others a bootlicker?

    Please social media companies, fuck everyone harder, we can't possibly have a TV maker have the ability to lock it down with parental controls, society would collapse if that were to happen!

    Oh wait, literally every single TV sold in the past 25 years has had that.

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  • [+] 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 child)

    You can choose not to use Facebook, but you cant choose to not use an operating system.

    So? If you're not using Facebook then it's not an issue. If you don't add your age to your OS it's not an issue.

    In an ideal implementation you just have the option of setting up a restricted device with their age, and if that's set, then the OS passes it to the browser and it passes it to the site, and if it's a restricted account and it's under age then the site and/or browser doesn't load anything.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago*

    Australian/Canadian here.

    I can assure you that kids in Australia are just using VPNs. You need global type of ID system to get around VPNs from a specific place. That didn't turn out well for Discord when they tried to implement global ID.

    My solution is government signed Zero Knowledge Proofs for age. Be weary of anyone who says we need to take away your freedoms to protect the children, when there's easy ways of doing it without taking your freedoms.

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (15 children)

    People don't seem to be asking for age verification. They (we) want social media ban. There's no question about age verification in the survey, let alone intrusive software. When asked who ahould be responsible:

    More than seven-in-ten (72%) Canadians agree that parents should be primarily responsible for regulating teens’ social media use, not governments.

    This could be easily handled by placing the respinsibility on parents, like it is for many other things.

    I've said this before and I'll say it again - it's much easier to answer my child's question as to why she's not allowed on social media with "it's illegal" when most of her peers hear the same at home, than some version of "it's bad for you" while most of her peers are allowed to use it.

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago (14 children)

    But how do you uphold a social media ban based on age without some form of age verification process?

    No thank you on submitting my ID just for it to be leaked in some data breach down the line.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago* (11 children)

    I imagine like other laws that threaten warnings, fines and such for parents who let their kids do this or that.

    No ID submission, def fuck that. If there's an electronic component it has to be gov't-run and it has to just divulge whether the user is allowed to use that service. Not share age, or other info.

    But again, ideally I want a law that tells parents to not let children on social media. That would be enough to mitigate the vast majority of the damage. It would let rebels (parents or kids) do it anyway if they're smart enough to not get caught, while keeping the 80% away from it.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    LOL!

    It has been known for a long time that social media is harmful for kids. If parents wouldn't parent properly for the good of their children before, then a toothless law (there would be no way to know children are using the sites) won't make them parent now.

    How would sites know there are children using the services? How would the authorities know to issue fines? The only way these things happen is with some form of ID system.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago* (3 children)

    Yes I'm looking for essentially a half-toothless law with punishment "if reported" like it is for the laws against leaving your child alone. Someone has to report you. If you're not reported, you aren't punished. Yet everyone I know complies with very few occasional exceptions, even if all of them think it's a stupid law. Even half-toothless laws can change the overall situation. All I need is the majority of her peers to have been forbidden social media. I can do the rest. If everyone she knows is on social... it's my word against the world and while I might be able to pull off argument that sticks, it'll be difficult, and the next guy might fail.

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  • [+] 4 points 7 months ago (2 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Completely agree. I just think an attempt to regulate the corpos would result in mandate for age verification by the corpos collecting IDs. There are obviously smarter ways to do such regulation, I just don't think a Liberal or Consrrvative gov't would go for such solution. That's why I'd be okay with shifting responsibility. It's not what I'd like but I'd tolerate it and it'll do the job I think.

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    Who goes to prison now when a kid is found to be using social media?

    And now what counts as social media? Is it only Facebook, or does it include things like WhatsApp, Mastodon, Instagram, Bluesky, Lemmy, a blog or chatroom?

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    You don't have to false dichotomy it. There's other options than prison. The gov't determines what's social media. There can be diff criteria. The determination can be made by a regulatory body similar to the CRTC that updates what counts as social media now and then.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    gov’t determines what’s social media

    No, they are not capable of that. Using the CRTC as an example only exemplifies that.

    Is Steam social media? IRC? Github? Kernel.org? This push for age verification is Red White And Blue, USA, red blooded republican agenda and should not be leaking into the rest of civilization. It is another step forward in the war on general computing.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    What do you mean they're not capable?

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

    The Canadian government is absolutely inept in the area of technology. It allows a duopoly to own telecommunications, we have the highest bandwidth fees in all of the western world, service websites have fucking monday to friday hours!?!

    They are literally not equipped to make decisions about technology.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago*

    I understand. I think our oligopoly situation and its regulatory capture has nothing to do with our gov't ability to create classification of services. It's a systemic failure of a different nature that's definitely pretty horrible. No point trying to convince me otherwise but I do understand your view.

    BTW, I do agree that the private corpo age verification bullshit comes from American corporate interests. Which is one of the reasons I DO NOT want age verification in Canada.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago* (1 child)

    All cars can go 160km/h and all speed limits max out at 110km/h.

    How can we uphold the law if cars are not speed limited to 110km/h?

    Also littering is illegal yet people are still able to buy single use plastics. We either NEED to make littering legal for everyone at all times or ban ALL single use plastic there is no in-between.

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