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Comment by andy99 | Hacker News Reader

I'm in favor of kids not using social media, but not of the government forcing this on people nor spinning up whatever absurd regulatory regime is required. And the chance of actually enforcing it is zero anyway. It's no more realistic to expect this to work than to expect all parents to do it as you say. It's just wasted money plus personal intrusion that won't achieve anything.

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There is a societal problem that is beyond just parenting. The peer pressure for kids to feel left out and ostracized because they are the only ones not on the socials is something a teen is going to definitely rebel against their parents on. It's part of being a teen. I'm guessing the other parents would even put pressure on the parents denying the social access.

To me, the only way out of this is by changing one nightmare for another giving the gov't the decision of allowing/denying access. Human nature is not a simple thing to regulate since the desire for that regulating is part of human nature

Is talking to other people online really so bad that we need the government to step in and tell us who we can and can't talk to? How quickly will that power expand to what we can and can't talk about?

I agree that neither solution is perfect, but exchanging an imperfect but undoubtedly free system of communication for one that is explicitly state-controlled censorship is an obvious step backwards.

"Thinking about the children" should also involve thinking about what kind of a society you want to build for them. A cage is not the answer, especially not with fascism creeping back into our politics.

I think you are willingly playing this down as "talking to people online" to make some point. However, it is beyond what one kid online says to another online. It is what predators say to those kids online. I don't just mean Chester and his panel van. I'm talking about anyone that is attempting to manipulate that kid regardless of the motive, they are all predators.

Social media has long since past just being a means of communicating with each other, and you come across as very disingenuous for putting this out there.

I think people are being incredibly disingenuous when they imagine that the government won't abuse this power to censor and harm marginalized communities. Many states are trying to remove LGBT books from school libraries for being "pornographic" right now, for example. All it takes is some fancy interpretations of "safety" and "social media" for it to become a full internet blackout, for fear of "the liberals" trying to "trans" their kids.

I don't deny that kids can get into trouble and find shocking or dangerous things online. But kids can also get in trouble walking down the street. We should not close streets or require ID checks for walking down them. Parents should teach their kids how to be safe online, set up network blocks for particularly bad sites, and have some kind of oversight for what their kids are doing.

Maybe these bills should mandate that sites have the ability to create "kid" accounts whose history can be checked and access to certain features can be managed by an associated "parent" account. Give parents better tools for keeping their kids safe, don't just give the government control over all internet traffic.

> when they imagine that the government won't abuse this power

I've suggested no such thing. In fact, I described putting regulations in place as a "nightmare". Parenting alone will not work. Self regulation from the socials will not work. The entire situation is a nightmare of our own making. There is no simple solution. These tendencies of human nature were present long before social media. It was just fuel for the fire for the worst qualities.

> I think you are willingly playing this down as "talking to people online" to make some point.

They won't engage on this topic in a fair and balanced manner. I've tried. They want unlimited ability to push agendas and incite strife and they just throw out keywords and thought-terminating cliches when criticised; diversity, marginalisation, fascism, they just gaslight and gaslight and gaslight.

I mean, don't stop trying, but you'll be very frustrated

> I think you are willingly playing this down as "talking to people online" to make some point. However, it is beyond what one kid online says to another online. It is what predators say to those kids online.

No, it's not about that either. It's the algorithmic nature of social media apps which rewire the brain's mechanisms in unnatural and unhealthy ways. Predators are a minor concern besides this one. See https://www.afterbabel.com/archive?sort=top

It seems like you are in favor of something that requires coordination, but don't believe in coordination. Is there a different way you think this could be achieved?

I don't believe in the disbelief of coordination so it seems like we're at a bit on an impasse. Please expound.

I think GP means the coordination between parents, and I agree on that: if you can’t get a strong majority of parents to agree on keeping their children off of social media & smart phones, you as parents have the choice between two outcomes: enforcing isolation vs. letting social media slip through and just trying to delay as much as possible.

Almost all parents either don’t care or opt for the second option (which I also think is the better one), but the dynamics today are that between 10-12yo the pressure to get your kid a smartphone will mount and you have to give in at some point. Being able to wait till 16 would be much better IMO.

We have a ban on gambling for minors, so if you see social media as more harmful than gambling (personally, I do) it probably makes sense.

Gambling is outright banned for a majority of regions in the US, not just kids. I don't think they are equally bad, just different bad. Gambling is addictive, and it destroys people. Social media is addictive and socially toxic, on the whole it erodes the very fabric of a society.

>Social media is addictive and socially toxic, on the whole it erodes the very fabric of a society.

It's interesting how every generation seems to decry new forms of media as eroding the fabric of society. They said it about video games, television, music, movies, etc. I'm sure we're right this time, though.

Yeah, none of those are comparable. TV never lead to children bullying each other anonymously which then leads to kids committing suicide.

Television clearly did something pretty significant to society. Cable news makes the country more polarized, that we didn’t do anything about it doesn’t mean it wasn’t a problem. We just missed and now the problem is baked into the status quo.

Video games are typically fiction, so the ability to pass propaganda through them is usually a little more limited. It isn’t impossible, just different.

Social media is a pretty bad news source for contentious issues. We should be pretty alarmed that people are getting their news there.

Apples-to-oranges comparison.

Plenty has been written already on the ravaging effects of social media on society and it's pretty plain to see.

https://www.mcleanhospital.org/essential/it-or-not-social-me...

> Rates of sexual activity have been in decline for years, but the drop is most pronounced for adults under age 25 (Gen Z).

> For Gen Z, a rise in sexlessness has coincided with a decline in mental health.

> Sexual activity can boost mood and relieve stress and may serve as a protective factor against anxiety and depressive disorders.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-myths-sex/2022... missing-out-the-benefits-sex

… we’ve been right. Television, music, video games, movies, etc., have decimated social capital and communication in the western world. It is not uncommon to “hang out” with people who are your “friends” without ever interacting with them in any meaningful way because everyone is focused on, e.g., a television. That’s assuming everyone isn’t too busy playing video games to leave their houses.

Whether you agree or not that they’re “eroding the very fabric of a society” (I would argue they are), it should be acknowledged that almost all the downsides predicted have come to pass, and life has gone on not because these things didn’t happen, but in spite of them having happened.

People are interacting through online games quite often though. You can't throw them all in one basket. You can make friends / longer term connections that way (I did) or keep in touch with people you don't live near to.

That's not community, though. You're not inhabiting the same space, share the same problems and try to work them out them together. You're not helping each other out if someone falls into trouble.

It's up to you what you build that way. You can build a real community, you can build a shallow friend group, the medium doesn't have to limit it. My boss met his wife in a MUD.

You can meet your wife on a Tinder, via ads posted in newspaper or on a cruise. It does not mean that those are communities.

You can do all of those things sans inhabit the same space with people you meet online. I met my 2 girlfriends online and we support each other through everything even though we aren't in the same place most of the time. I'm part of a niche group on reddit that supports each other emotionally in a way I've struggled to find in physical spaces. I still meet up with people in physical space, but I absolutely get meaningful social connection from online spaces.

It seems that all data on the subject of social media point emphatically to, Yes! It's terrible for adolescents[0] (and probably society writ large?).

[0] https://jonathanhaidt.com/social-media/

Social media isn't new. It's over 20 years old by now. If you count things like forums you're looking at 30+ years old.

Not anymore. A 2018 Supreme Court decision opened the floodgates to legalized sports gambling, much of it online. The only states with existing bans are Hawaii and Utah, which combined have only 5 million residents.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy_v._National_Collegiat...

Oof.

This is just blatantly not true, anyone who has tried to gamble on sports can tell you that companies go to quite incredible lengths to make sure that nobody outside of the few jurisdictions where they're legal can gamble online. I live in Nebraska, and I have to go travel across to Iowa before I can do anything.

True, it's state by state, but a lot of states allow it. And even if you're not in the right state you can always go to sites from other countries (e.g. betonline.ag)

The ban we have on gambling seems weak. From trading card games to loot boxes to those arcade games that look to be skill based but are entirely up to chance, children are allowed to do all. The rules feel very inconsistent to the point that they appear arbitrary in nature.

Agreed, the gaming industry has done it's damndest to undermine the restrictions of gambling.

There's a pretty clear difference between gambling and "gambling": whether you're winning money.

Is there an alternative? Self-control - as we have now - brought us here. If the government shouldn't step in then the only other option left (only I can see) is magic. And we have a bad record with magic.

Several governments have already effectively banned sites like Pornhub by creating regimes where people have to mail their ID to a central clearinghouse (which creates a huge chilling effect.) The article talks about “reasonable age verification measures” and so saying it’s unenforceable seems a little bit premature. Also, you can bet those measures won’t be in any way reasonable once the Florida legislature gets through with them.

>effectively banned

In my opinion, these governments haven't implemented 'effective' bans (though maybe chilling, as you say) but primarily created awkward new grey markets for the personal data that these policies rely on for theatrics. Remember when China 'banned' youth IDs from playing online games past 10PM? I think a bunch of grandparents became gamers around the same time...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01669-8

Which is exactly what happens for markets that are desirable enough. We compare bans of things not enough people care about, to bans of things that people are willing to do crazy things for. They don't yield the same results.

No policy is 100% effective. Kids still get into alcohol, but the policy is sound.

Another example is some Korean games requiring essentially a Korean ID to play. A few years ago there was a game my guild was hyped about and we played the Korean version a bit. You more or less bought the identity of some Korean guy via a service that was explicitly setup for this. Worked surprisingly well and was pretty streamlined.

At least from personal experience, when there was a period where my ISP in the UK started requiring ID verification for porn, I literally ceased to watch it.

Making something difficult to do actually works to _curb_ behavior.

You're proving the argument that the parent set forth. Anyone who wants to visit Pornhub can just visit one of the many sites that isn't abiding by the new law. However, that's not due to a lack of legislation, but rather a lack of enforcement, or, perhaps, enforceability. If laws always worked I'd be for more of them. My argument is not that we should never make laws because it's futile but rather that some laws are more futile than others and having laws go unenforced weakens government and enforcing them inequitably is injust.

Also social policy enforcement is a generational thing. The UK is only just getting toward outright banning cigarettes by making it illegal for anyone born after X date from ever buying them. Eventually you have a whole generation that isn't exposed to smoking and on the whole thinks the habit is disgusting, which it is.

Except that some people born after that date will still acquire them, get addicted, and then what? Prosecute them like drug possession?

It's infantilizing and dumb. Grown adults should be allowed to smoke tobacco if they so wish and smoking rates are already way down due to marketing and alternatives. Noone needs to be prosecuted.

You don't need to prosecute any buyers at all though. All you need to do is make it illegal to sell in shops, and illegal to import. There will be a black market, sure, but how many people are going to go through the trouble and expense to source black market tobacco? Not that many. And everyone benefits because universal healthcare means everyone shares the cost of the health effects that are avoided.

Should mention the govt. has to find budget to fill the gap of tobacco budget, but they've been slowly doing this as demand has slumped since 2008.

> how many people are going to go through the trouble and expense to source black market tobacco? Not that many.

Just see how many people already go through that trouble to source illegal drugs...

I think it's hyperbolic to look at tobacco like other drugs. Tobacco is a lifestyle thing, it doesn't get you high, it's a cultural habit. There are only upsides to getting rid of the social demand for it.

If you think taking tobacco away from consumers is infantilizing, why yes, yes it is. We are dealing with children's futures. Adults get to continue smoking, children less likely to even want to smoke as the social acceptance goes down and with that there is less and less desire to smoke. Nicotine doesn't do much other than get you addicted, no one is chasing after a pronounced high with it, people start smoking because it's perceived as cool.

I can't imagine an adult wanting to start smoking, most adults get addicted in their teens.

I think you have have an import ban, and a black market, and still see significant gains in eroding the demand. I do not think people should be prosecuted for possession, but the UK will probably make some bad decisions there, but that doesn't mean the overall policy is bad.

Does this actually work or does it just push those same people to sketchier websites?

Worked in my case when my ISP required ID for it in the UK.

I just noped out of it entirely.

My main issue is that the only effective way to ban access to a website is to also ban VPNs and any sort of network tunneling. A great firewall would have to be constructed which I am very much against. Even China’s firewall is surpassable and it is questionable how much it is worth operating given the massive costs which would be incurred.

I think the government should invest in giving parents the tools to control their child’s online access. Tools such as DNS blocklists, open source traffic filtering software which parents could set up in their home, etc.

I used to want no govt intrusion for this. Then I understood how there are teams of PHDs tweaking feed to maximize addition at each social network. I think there could be even limits, or some sort of tax on gen pop.

It would be less imposing on the populace if you just demanded a government hit squad kill those PHD's instead of demanding everyone submit to some onerous government crapware to access the internet.

There are plenty of middle ground approaches - one possible one: App default would be restricted time use. To get unrestrxistricted use you use a driver's license to authenticate birthdate only with OS. Mobile OS only confirming with app that user is above age requirement (does not share birthdate). App can only query if user is above 18yrs and nothing else. Easy peasy.

So more crapware?

I'm in favor of kids not using porn, but not of the government forcing this on people nor spinning up whatever absurd regulatory regime is required. And the chance of actually enforcing it is zero anyway. It's no more realistic to expect this to work than to expect all parents to do it as you say. It's just wasted money plus personal intrusion that won't achieve anything.

I only changed 2 words for 1.

We don't even have to speculate, isn't it already the case for <13yo? Or is just Europe? Anyway - yeah, of course they're still on it. Expect less compliance and harder enforcement the older they are, not more/easier.

The only protection in the Us is technically “collection of personal information” via COPPA[0] which you can argue would kneecap social media. Any parent can provide consent for their child, however. Children themselves can also just click the button that says they are over 13 if it gets them what they want.

[0]: https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/rules/childrens-onl...

So, maybe it a law - but requiring parents-guardians to enforce it, and not the state - sounds like a reasonable inbetween?

I think it should just be opt-out. A parent can opt-out without any stated reason, easily, and overrule the law.

So kids get a social media "license," maybe.

There are degrees of enforceability.

When I was first getting online, the expectation was that you at least had to be bright enough to lie about your age. Now I have to occasionally prune my timeline after it fills up with "literally a minor." Even an annoyance tax might have some positive effect. Scare the pastel death-threats back into their hole...

Social media's existence is predicated on their algorithms being good at profiling you. Facebook's already got some level of ID verification for names, where they'll occasionally require people to submit IDs. No reason that similar couldn't be applied to age if society agreed it was worthwhile.

I'm in favor of kids not using social media, but not of the government forcing this on people nor spinning up whatever absurd regulatory regime is required.

People said the same thing about age restrictions for smoking, alcohol, movies, and on and on and on.

It's not some unsolvable new problem just because it's the ad-tech industry.

Your comment begs the question of whether or not those age restrictions are a "solved problem." In the US, government age restrictions on movies DO NOT exist for the exact reason the government cannot impose age restrictions on social media: the First Amendment flatly forbids it.

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