AIBU to think banning social media for under-16s is a good idea?

I mean thats not true.. I've gained plenty from those sites. Books to read, cooking ideas, support for my own mental health and other issues. You cannot sweep social media with one wide brush to say nothing good comes from it. I do know bad things come from it, but it's nuanced, as opposed to this opinion.

My level of thinking? What damage has it done? More damage than having toxic websites encouraging bullying or eating disorders or violence?

social media is toxic. Nobody gains anything from TikTok or instagram.

It is. But in a few clicks you can easily end up on some dodgy stuff. For example, there's a lot of fan art of favourite kids characters. A lot of it is good! just NOT for kids. YouTube does have a filter of sorts and creators sometimes do try to warn you if it's not for kids, but nothing beats parental supervision.

I'm against it. Teach your children social media literacy, check their phones. I mean banning you tube? Snapchat has allowed my child to connect and chat with her friends in a really positive way. I know their passcode, I check her phone, and the agreement was until she was 16 I would. She doesn't add strangers to anything, only close friends, people that she knows. We have open conversations about the internet and social media literacy. Parents need to parent, and we all need to adjust to a world where it exists, so how do you use it safely.

Kids will find a way, and those that want to seek out stuff that its not appropriate will do so regardless. I would rather investment into literacy and education about how to be on phone and social media than this ban.

A couple of people have mentioned "Bluesky".
I have never even heard of it.

My kids are slightly too old for this (16, and nearly 20)
Whilst I think its a good idea i also think the platforms have some responsibility about potentially harmful content thats being shown.

Ive previously had an ED and I notice a lot of (what I consider,) pro ana stuff on MN Instagram, or "skinny tok" and because I looked at a few items my grid was flooded with it, I had to make a conscious effort to start looking at other stuff to reverse the algorithm.... and i do actually folliw a few people who are calling it out .... but if I had been in the grips of an ED it would have been very unhealthy and unhelpful. I wouldnt gave been able to deal with it at 17, or 22, or whatever.
Similarly if there are posts with suicide ideology or self harm, being 16+ wont make a person immune to being influenced by those

It was needed. I’d go further and not allow under 5s on phones or tablets at all. You can tell by children’s speech, development and behaviour in early years which ones are spending too much time on screens.

This. You Tube is not all bad. This is why a ban is a ridiculous idea. Instead of giving responsibility to parents to teach them how to use it safely, we are now taking away the good parts of social media. Mine use You Tube for watching clips of ABRSM exam music pieces or engineering type posts for example.

no they don't.

Adult sites are still easily available via a VPN which you can download in a couple of minutes. The age verification has had very little effect.

Kids talk and will just tell each other how to get around it.

When my DS was about 13, he was illegally watching premier league football matches streamed from abroad via "dodgy" links that were being passed around the school yard.

Something being illegal doesn't stop kids. Lots have sex under 16, lots smoke, lots take drugs.

I fear that pushing social media "underground" may actually make things worse. As someone else said, we really don't want our kids to be passing around links to get onto the dark web!

This is a good thing, Like others, not sure how it is enforced"

If you dont know how it will be enforced, why are you supporting it?

Your level of thinking has caused so much damage to society.

I'm not sure how this works. I don't really care in terms of my kids because one's 18 and never had much interest in it and the nearly-15-year-old has no interest, other than youtube. The latter is the only one that concerns me as he had GCSEs next year, and revision videos can be a big help. I assume it'll easily be worked around though.

Totally agree. I bought fags and booze at 14/15 easily because I also looked over 18.

and there really isn't that much difference in how A14 and 16 year old look. at 18 I needed iD cos I looked young. my mate, nanny a year younger, got served because she's clearly looked older.

Apparently Bluesky is given special privileges. Oh dear. Our leaders are idiots.

How is Youtube ‘awful’? I’ve never once seen anything even approaching inappropriate on there.
I use it to show my 7 year old Grandson all sorts of random stuff - History, Space shuttle launches, monster trucks, dragster racing, old kids tv programmes, it’s an invaluable resource.

Fine by me to protect the kids! Why is it different to showing my ID in a bar or supermarket?

So, effectively, digital ID. Which most people are opposed to.

SM posts will no longer be anonymous. It makes it easier for bad parties to track you if you say something they don't like.

Geez

Reddit is included in Australia so I assume it will be. I agree on messaging apps. Not sure on the plan there but personally in our house we haven’t allowed WhatsApp / large groups until 16 either, probably pretty hardline but as you say having it as the law will help so many parents (and the children of course) and behaviour in school, this policy is well overdue!

And provides millions of jobs. You do realise it wont just affect children. It will force all adults to submit their I.D or a selfie to access most Internet sites.

I totally support the ban, my 13 DD is feeling the pressure to join platforms. It will be much easier for us parents to push back on that. I hope this debate widens - this is also about online safety and addictive media use - both are connected.

I hope parents start to question device use in general a bit more.

Many MNs know it's hard bringing up kids with less screen time.

A generation of parents have, quite understandably, built finely-balanced livelihoods around kids being 'occupied by screens'.

And by this I mean streamed addictive, sophisticated, targeted digital content content for a good chunk of their childhood.

It takes a huge investment in parent's time and money to replace this content-use, especially for lively kids, it generally means going outside, supporting interests activities, setting up playdates, going on little adventures and so on. It's exhausting, expensive and maybe reflects the actual cost of parenting IMO.

Finally, this is not just about social media, I know the ban touches on AI chat, but AI chat / smart audio is now a ubiquitous part of many operating systems.

Most parents do not know their kids phones have access to AI chatbots and smart audio features, there are many workarounds and it takes a good deal of hacking to strip these out (as I have had to do for my DD).

My DD's brand-new Android, set up with parent-link and setting age-restrictions on everything imaginable, on the very first day an invisible Chrome-powered AI chat bot asked her 'what makes you sad?' and then 'I hope you don't disable me, I like talking to you'??!!!! After no small amount of hacking I disabled all chat functions (not as easy as it first looks BTW).

Every day parents need to support their children to make good choices about streaming content safety and addictive media use. This takes energy and focus from parents, we need to all support each other to do this too, and not just rely on a slow-moving gov.

it's good, but it won't be enforced. I worked in youth work 15 years ago and the 10-12 year olds were always trying to get us to open Facebook accounts for them, many of them had them due to siblings or parents. we banned them from using them in session but even back then, with kids having generally less access to tech, it didn't stop it

This is giving Orwell.

You haven't read the proposed have you?

It will apply to all peer to peer communications platforms. That's all social media, including this site. It will mean app development will abandoned the UK. The proposal is fines up to 20% of the global turnover for a single breach. The UK's Internet will effectively shut down at midnight on the day the regulations come into effect. We will all have to submit either our I.D or a selfie to almost every useful website you can think of. Any site that has a possibility of communicating directly or indirectly with others on the platform will be affected.