To think Social Media should be banned for under 16s

[Halfmanhalfcake]

Off the back of Esther Gheys campaigning about phone use and social media,
I was thinking how bonkers it is that we (as a society) haven't put in stricter controls over social media / internet use for kids yet.

It's as if the technology has developed too quickly, and parents have been left scrabbling around trying to control whatever they can, in what is essentially a completely unregulated cyber world.

I realise that some people are anti nanny-state, but imagine if CBBC started showing snuff films or porn in the middle of some teen drama. When mental health problems in children are soaring, and there is some evidence to show a link to phone / social media use, it seems totally nuts that regulation isn't being enforced at a higher level.

I see grown adults lose all perspective just from being on twitter, how on earth do we think kids can handle it better?

What benefit is it for children under 16 to be on social media? So they can do some tik-tok dance craze? If you want to do a dance just do it in your front room with your mates. To post posey-influencer style images at 13/14? For whose benefit?

I've heard people argue that its unrealistic to think that it can be changed now. Why? My kids are still young so maybe i dont understand.

I agree here. It's very common for university students to look back and know it all. Especially how to parent younger siblings stricter. 🤣

That's not saying that it wouldn't have been an issue for them at the time, or they're right.

I think they're wrong. because if you banned it for under 16s, then the kids getting the phone for the first time will be in the all-knowing, parents are wrong 16-18yos. That's the age you want to be relaxing a little, letting them have a bit of their own privacy etc. They're not going to accept you checking their phone and they'll know all about the evils and don't need telling, thank you.

For mine they all got it at an age it was perfectly normal to check the phone regularly. So they accepted it. And so it just continued.
At 16yo my dd had her own job and would have bought her own phone if she hadn't already got one. I very much doubt she'd have accepted me saying I needed to check it in that case.

If we can’t go back because the bus companies will be inconvenienced and it’s more faff to do homework in writing, aren’t we just saying that people’s well-being and kids’ lives are less valuable than commercial and corporate convenience?

Technology ought to do things to serve us - our lives shouldn’t be just fodder for whatever’s easiest for capitalism. Is being able to buy a bus ticket easily online worth your kid ending up with depression and stress, for example? Why are we just accepting that we should just prioritise technology that isn’t actually very good for us?

Is this thread about social media?

Because having a smartphone for buses/homework/internet isn't the issue

It's the SM

I also think one thing that should happen more is that parents should be less arsey with other parents who do things differently. I know a couple of people who “gave in” on TikTok in particular because not only were they getting grief from their child, but their own friends were critical. So they felt like they were getting it ‘wrong’

I faced this a bit with boundaries and curfews with my DD2. She didn’t have the same freedoms as her friends, in fact at one point she didn’t even have the same freedom as her twin sister. For good reason though. She wasn’t mature enough for it, she had a health condition that made certain things dangerous and it was for her safety.

But Jesus Christ you’d have thought I was locking her in the cupboard under the stairs for 23 hours a day according to some other parents! I was also told several times I obviously thought they were shit parents for being more relaxed - even though I was more relaxed with DS and DD1!!

Kids are all different so if someone parents different to you it’s not a slight against you. It’s just that their kid is different to yours!!

It is but a few posters seem to think that taking away smart phones or any devices that connect to the internet is the answer to everything.

Exactly, i have just set up a pc with microsoft safety centre. Youtube even blocks comments up to a certain age.
I get alerts for every download and requests for those that cost, and no access to anything below the age range set. 4 separate profiles, one for each person.
I get a weekly report with all websites accessed, time spent on each individual app/ browser.
You have to set it up for google too, but we had that for phones already.

The tech is there, it just needs to be used.

This is the question I always ask myself

The only thing I'd add is that IF it was outlawed, it might make refusal easier when faced with the inevitable whining and "everyone else has it"

@asterel but you can't really just decide to ban a useful piece of technology because some people can misuse it.
I mean people use cars to deliberately run people over.
We just need....I don't know... something more to understand why so many teens end up going on social media sites..What are they looking for? What are they hoping to achieve? Basically what makes them want to do it?
What is missing from their lives?

You can check on apps being dowloaded etc, what about internet searches? Can't you just delete your internet history??

This chat has actually reminded me of my Nana spending a Wednesday evening at the community centre for a few weeks on a course about “that Internet thing” when we first got a computer.

I was never allowed anything that she didn’t know how to work.

I think a lot of children being more tech savvy than parents is a massive part of the issue.

They arnt missing anythjng! They want to be involved socially and have a very strong desire to be accepted! As it always has been!
We all (mostly) have a strong desire to be accepted. That stems from our very survival. As early humans, if we weren’t accepted into a tribe, we wouldn’t survive. We must fit in at all costs. Very few humans don’t have that inate desire. If lots of us didn’t, the human race wouldn’t not have made it this far- it’s our ability to join and connect in so many complex ways that makes us the most successful race.
Teens feel this extremely keenly as they transition from child to adult.
Social media feeds into this like piece of a jigsaw. It can create great joy and on the flip side great sadness for teens.
They are not missing anything- just human!

100% correct! 🤣 Love the Nana memory. So relatable.

You can restrict safari to your approved sites only.
You can take safari off altogether.
You can make sure any googling is done in a family room if it’s needed for homework or to look something up.
You can allow google / safari but only for 5 mins if a teen thinks they might want to quickly look something up on the bus.
so many options rather than allow or don’t allow!

I agree, and the problem is parental. I know of 8 year old who have phones with internet access who use TikTok and instagram. I can't believe that parents don't check what their children access online, including social media. If parents were held legally responsible for allowing their children to access to social media and prosecuted for it, it would be a start. Lots of bullying in schools would disappear.

I think in years to come we'll be looked at as a backwards era in terms of understanding the effect of all this stuff on the brain, and the resulting effects on dopamine rewards, attention spans and overall brain development.

I agree it should be legislated against far more strongly but it probably won't happen until there is a generation or two who have been made very ill and - crucially - where the cost of that illness has a cost impact on society. For example, tobacco was available for a few hundred years, the health research in the twentieth century appeared, but it was only when those health impacts could be quantified as a cost, and an avoidable drain on the public purse through the NHS, was anything done to start seriously legislating to dissuade smoking.

@WhiteLily1 what I meant is what are they missing in their lives? Something must be to make them turn to social media.
The education system (at least in England) is full of making teens like robotic clones (school uniforms, teaching methods, what they have to study etc). They don't have much time for hobbies because of the high level of school work. Part-time jobs have become almost non existent for under 16s due to red tape. There is often no where to go (no youth clubs) - no where to simply hang out and discover who they are and what's they enjoy.
They are bored and full of energy which in turn becomes frustration - and their only escape is through social media.
Which sucks basically.

They should just ban and completely erradicate porn,violence and anything that's a safeguarding risk on the internet full stop.
If anyone's caught streaming it/uploading it/sharing it whether they are an organisation or a person the IP address gets immediately deleted, like zipo/gone, they can try another IP address but zip/gone too. Ban their access to the internet.
If roblox gets taken offline due to a few idiots trying to open up an S&M bar in there then I'm sure as hell that the people making money out of ROblox would do more to erradicate it to begin with.
Same with any game/app/website.

If people want to be sleazy and violent they can join an underground club and get the hell out of our faces.

If a kid sends a dickpic from their phone then they are banned from Inst - simple. We have AI now - surely it can take much to intercept and spot these things - they all look pretty much the same! 😄

They don't so much as reject it as ignore it - for example, I say "I want to review how we're using social media to meet the Children's Code", and someone will say:

• yep, great idea (but not be interested)
• no, we're doing everything right already (defensive managers usually)
• I really want this (concerned front end staff)

Then something happens that was entirely in scope of my predicted issues.

There's a bit of an obsession with what the auditors recommended three years ago - but they missed significant areas of the legislation and entirely lack the practical know-how I bring.

This has come about over an extremely delicate, tragic and heartbreaking situation.

But if we are talking about legislation here, how on earth would it be enforced?

You can check on apps being dowloaded etc, what about internet searches? Can't you just delete your internet history??

Phones can be set up so that all apps require permission to be downloaded.

For internet history - put all traffic that goes through your home router through an application which records the history. It can also block sites. They cannot access this application from their phone. You can do this for any device which goes through your home router.

If needed, eg if they access 4G - there are other controls you can use.

I don’t disagree with what you are saying, but social media isn’t a last resort - a form of entertainment of the lowest value. Many teens love what it offers- yes there are problems, but many teens have a great time socialising on there and getting involved. It needs to be more closely regulated in my opinion but why I’m saying is social media fits a teenagers need to fit in. It literally caters to that need and then some!
Even if there were hobbies and jobs galore - teens would still be heavy users of social media!
They arnt using it to plug a gap! It’s literally how they live and socialise day to day. Like telling you to give up your phone entirely because ‘what are you missing’ A smart phone is integral to our lives now- everything is on it! It’s no different for teens.

Meanwhile back in the real world..

@WhiteLily1 exactly - teens turn to social media because it interests them.
But sometimes it's because what interests them just doesn't exist out in the real world.
Put more activities out in the real world and make sure teens can access them - and they won't always need to seek out an online life.

Meanwhile back in the real world

But AI could be a solution. AI can analyse and correlate astronomical amounts of data sets. Organisations already use it to understand their networks, the traffic, security events - and this is old AI packaged up for commercial use.

As a 50ish woman who plays PoGo and I am on a number of group chats I agree.

There is this 16 year old kid in my group we keep on the straight and narrow :-D and also many of us bring kids to raids...

Re Social Media - it's a sad situation Brianna's mum blames social media for the killers attitudes but doesn't get that probably social media made her child believe they could change sex and dress inappropriately for school