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Comment by latentsea | Hacker News Reader

I think social media does more damage than porn. We should just instead legislate that all social media has to shutdown and just let everyone watch porn and be done with it. Sure, you wind up with ED if you watch that stuff since you were a kid, but hey, if birth rates around the world are anything to go by, no one seems to really want to bring children into this world anymore anyway, so it's not as if that actually matters anymore.

I think I have become far too cynical.

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The one good thing (in principle) about a service like this is that social media is much more centralized, so this kind of system could put seemingly-effective age restrictions on social media. For example, no under-14's, or under-14 requires a supervising guardian and has other guardrails.

But this still wouldn't stop determined kids from VPNing to another country to make their account, and wouldn't stop peer pressure on kids from bleeding to parents to help them.

Or you know the government could stay out of it and parents that wanted kids to stay off of social media could use the existing parental controls.

Be careful about telling parents to parent. For some reason people do not like being told that it is the parents' job, and not the Government's.

How does that work? I don’t have a kid but can imagine a ban on internet until they are 18 might not work.

I’m not suggesting a government ban. Android, iOS, Macs and Windows all have parental controls built in that allow parents to block access to websites, installing apps, etc.

What do you think will happen when the EU regulates the “centralized” social media companies? Kids will just flock to other services that don’t care about EU regulations or use a VPN.

We see something similar in the US with age verification for viewing porn in some states. Mainstream porn sites that I’m sure you have heard of that aren’t based in the US just ignore the laws and VPN sales skyrocket in those states.

Social media laws are actually being discussed, designed, and even implemented, targeting teenagers at the moment.

What classifies as social media? Is Reddit social media? Is Hacker News?

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