Seems to me like the wrong way to address the problem. But I guess it's easier to ban people with no political voice from a vital tool for social connectivity than it is to hold the large companies hosting those tools accountable for socially-damaging practices.
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“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: we’ve been too naive. We’ve left children’s digital lives to platforms that never had their wellbeing in mind. We must move from digital captivity to community.”
Powerful words.
Small question: Why are you giving these horrible platforms more leverage over their digital captives instead of just banning them or outlawing the worst parts of their business models?
Maybe instead of banning social media there should be some sort of consensus as to how social media should operate. Get rid of algorithms designed to become addicting or push products harmful to people. Reduce advertisements. Don't push content that's from around the world, focus on things immediately connected to someone's life like posts from friends and family not Rogan and Tate.
Denmark following Australia’s lead, who are following the UKs version.
The fact that these massive companies that have way too much sway over politicians already are only vaguely, fighting this, concerns me. Feels like this is more about feeding everyone into the facial recognition databases, with the added bonus of censorship
Let me guess, we're I Danish (or when this shit spreads to my country) I would have identify my accounts to the government and or corporations.
There will be loopholes and those loopholes will be exploited by children. The intention is good but the solution is the usual "we don't know what to do so let's ban it". There is a rule or law for everything in Denmark.
Would you say alcohol ban for children has loopholes and those loopholes are exploited by children enough to warrant discussion? How authorative should it be, more than the alcohol ban or the framework we have is ok enough?
Sounds like someone is trying to avoid regulating social media platforms.
How about "User must be subscribed to see an activity" so the algo doesn't just roll you into a rabbit hole.
Subscriptions can still recommend other subscriptions and people can share stuff from their subscriptions but liking something shouldn't qualify.
I think it's clear that there are problems with children's use of social media today.
But a blanket ban is not the way to go. Especially since it will most likely just lead to age verification and all the issues that brings.
I think kids shouldn't have smart phones at all. Banning from social media is the wrong way to handle it. Parent's need to be held accountable for allowing their kids to have too much phone time. It rots the brain. There are way too many kids that can't read, do basic math, or do anything by themselves without the help of AI. It's ridiculous.
As usual, here are my (extremely) unpopular opinions: 1: This ban is made to extend to smartphones for children overall, allowing some abuse situations to be carried out without risk. Furthermore, this might (later) extend to some workers, women overall, then lower “castes” and classes. 2: This is another way for Chat Control to also be implemented later, by setting the roots for such.
Oh, another thing: using age as a metric is darn stupid — aren't some of the worst leaders actually quite… elderly?
I think its simpler than that, its not about banning children its about identifying everyone else
Social media is to kids today what cigarettes were to teens last century. Might even be better compared to the Radium marketing blitz that poisoned so many while making a few very rich.
Social media is way worse, and it's not even close.
That's an apples to oranges comparison. One is physical health and other mental health and both are hard to quantify
It's not me who made the comparison.
"Way worse" is a comparison
Why are you ignoring the comment that I was responding to?
I'm not, he's not comparing cigarettes to social media, he's saying that social media has replaced cigarettes as the vice of choice for young people.
Hes does compare it to Radium poisoning though.
He literally makes an analogous comparison in the first sentence to cigarettes and social media.
So I say again, why were you ignoring the obvious comparisons that I was referencing with my reply?
And for the record, I completely disagree with your apples vs oranges dismissal.
They are not apples and oranges, as both cigarettes and social media use are directly linked to statistically significant poor health outcomes in people who use them.
But, if you really have a problem with that comparison, you should have replied to the person who introduced that lengthy line of conversation and not just people quickly responding to it.
She is right. I don't use a smartphone anymore. I now use a dumbphone. It helps me focus and reduce stress. Turns out you don't need the internet with you 24/7. If someone really needs me, he can call.
This isnt about protecting kids, its about age verifying and de-anonymising everyone. Australia has already gone down this road, dont fall for the trap.
When I called my federal representative about the laws and the miles wide holes in Australian privacy laws and more particularly who would be responsible for covering the costs associated with helping citizens recover in the cases of rampant identity theft these laws are going enable, I got assurances that the eSafety Commissioner would be able to hold large tech companies to account. I pointed out that if Meta was to suffer a breach that exposed the details of say a thousand Australians I could see them ponying up the fine, just cost of doing business, if the details of 2 million Australians got leaked then with potential fines stretching into the billions why would they even fight it, so much simpler to cut Australia off like a gangrenous limb. I was assured that the eSafety commissioner would be monitoring these large companies to ensure their data security was up to standard, I laughed. I was told that our parliament may be looking in to strengthening data protection laws and was promised an email with details about this (3 weeks ago with not even a message to say sorry for the delay). I was thoroughly disgusted, this I'll thought out plan to scrape as much data as Australians can be tricked into handing over is going to result in massive costs to the tax payer before too long. Discord has already leaked data related to age verification and Australia hasn't even got its law started yet.
I really think we need remove a lot of the protections from Politicians: "You want to spy on the Australian public at the behest of a shadowy cabal of Intelligence Community wonks? Ok we can do that, but you are personally liable for it when it goes wrong, you will be personally paying all the costs associated with the following scenarios we are categorically stating will occur if you proceed with this nonsense. If you do not have sufficient money to cover these costs all of your assets will be sold and you will become an indentured servant of the Australian public until your debt is cleared."
I got an interesting response when I told the guy at the MPs office that I would shutdown or abandon any app, website or service that demanded my ID. There is no service online which is worth providing a drivers license or sufficient photos to create a reasonable reproduction of my face.
I dont even think this is related to the intelligence community, who are happy to spy on anyone regardless of age, I think it's just a poorly thought out law.
They definitely need to own the responsibility though. When these ID databases leak, and they will, hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people are going to be caught up in the mess, such as:
- Closeted LGBTQ individuals, who may get outed.
- Domestic violence victims trying to escape.
Doxing/Outing these people will result in significant harm, upto and including death. These inevitable deaths with be on the politicians hands.
And the worst part? It won't stop kids getting online or bullying each other.
Personally, I may just intentionally leak my drivers licence online, and get it reissued or something. Give plausible deniability to anything that happens associated with the ID. Not sure exactly what the ramifications are for doing that though.
I think pretty solidly this is being driven by business and intelligence communities, our police and spy agencies have been trying to get around encryption and online anonymity for years. They desperately want to be able to tie every bit of data that moves around the internet to an individual without getting the courts involved, and bear in mind since Australia is a Five Eyes nation not all of that pressure is onshore. It is getting the limpest push back from these big tech companies though because how much more valuable is your advertising profile if they can associate it with tour government ID, or birth certificate, or confirmed validated biometric data.
I know of a Telco that had to pay to move a family to a different state after they provided their address to a man who posed a credible risk to their lives. They had to buy this family a new house, pay movers, and buy then a new car. The telco preempted the court on this so it wouldn't become a national story in the media and they could minimise the eventual fine they faced.
That one incident 2 decades ago cost more than half a million dollars to fix, uprooted a family and caused unknown amounts of trauma. Do we seriously think Twitter will take a similar incident as seriously? Google? Facebook? But I guarantee they will slurp up every bit of data they can.
Denmark has every right to protect their kids from becoming the property of US tech companies. And if this means they end up never joining Facebook/ X, etc, then it is a victory against the MAGA & fascist attitudes that those companies spread. People should not be so concerned when a state takes action against companies. When the US broke up Standard Oil it did everyone a whole heap of good. If other countries follow suit with a social media ban for under-15s I think it could be similarly transformative.
Yes, it potentially creates challenges around privacy, but for a law like this to have its intended effect doesn't entirely depend as much on age verification as people think.
The thing with a law is that its transformative effect works over a long period of time. For example, on the day when this takes effect, a heap of kids will still find a way to use these social media sites. But in a couple of years, kids won't want to, because their friends are not on there. This happens, because a few years, and perhaps a few test cases later, society as a whole deems it wrong and illegal for a kid to be on social media.
bruh fully grown adults aren't smart enough to use social media safely
Yeah, parents can totally keep up against corporations that employee dozens or hundreds of people to push the exact opposite /s
I'm no maths genius, but this wouldn't stop 15 year olds. Just those under 15.
I think it's perfectly normal to restrict things from kids and young teens that may be damaging. The same is done for other types of media like tv, movies, music etc.
Social media is more insidious in that, instead of art trying to inspire emotions, it is weaponising our emotions and addiction against us. Many adults can't handle it, but they can make their own mind up kids, we should protect as they can't make an informed decision.
They aren't though, they are easily manipulated, and the effects of kids spending time alone on "social" Media is having a lasting effect with depression, lack of real interaction with the world, even showing up as lack of problem solving learning situations. Lack of outdoor activity (due to psychologic developed apps that maintain engagment) is showing up as lack of spatial body awareness. The brain changes by actual physical activity and real world interactions, and they find the brain is no longer being optimized. Its just bad all around until the brain is properly formed.
No. 15yos are not smart enough to get pregnant, apply for a mortgage, drive, submit taxes, and represent themselves in courts. Because social media are corporations’ biggest network effect exploiter, and it addicts folks more perversely than some plant’s powder.
Social media is not the internet. And lemmy still requires guardian supervision. If my kids need internet, it’ll be for things they need, and maybe a few pleasantries. But not corporate manipulation.
15, you say? https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-25/united-nations-general-assembly-social-media-ban/105814246
As an anarchist, I wish it would go further, and only 21+years olds with OPSEC training could go on the internet.
One of the few instances I agree with Mette Frederiksen on this issue.
Social media is worse than heroin addiction.
How Denmark will implement the law remains to be seen.
Social media isn't the school's website, or the community news.
Are you one of those propagandized folks that believe anarchists don't like rules or something?
’Cause I’m talking about what article mentions: algorithmic manipulation of content.
Unless you think social media means something else.
Now I’m trying to comprehend how you think ad hominems support an argument you may have had on this issue at all.
!Sealioning@lemmings.world is two links down.
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