To think we absolutely have to ban social media for under 16s.

[Bitethehandthatfeedsyou]

I just don’t understand with all evidence that we have to say how awful it is for young people why we’re not banning in for under 16s. I’ve not spoken to 1 parent who wouldn’t be in favour of it.

I do know it’s not a silver bullet and there is ann idea that young people would be penalised for big tech not taking responsibility for exploiting children.

Quite rightly smoking, vaping and alcohol are out of bounds for under 18s and arguably access to social media and a young age is as harmful / more harmful than any of these.

On a cynical note too, surely it would be a huge vote winner for whichever party goes about implementing it too.

NIce idea but completely impossible. Kids will find ways to access it. Just like 50 years ago, teenage boys found ways to access girlie magazines. 10 years ago, teenagers found ways to smoke cigarettes. Today, teenagers find ways to access alcohol.

IF, you come up with guaranteed ways to ban youngsters from SM, then I'll be first to agree, but when it's just going to be yet another unenforceable law, no.

That is incredibly sad. I'm sorry it happened to your family. I hope you and dc are ok now.

I agree things can be improved. I suggested above certain locks and protection for children social media accounts. I don't think the suggested ban is the solution or even the right step forward.
If only we had more policing resources to track paedophiles instead of arrests 'for conspiracy to create public nuisance' iykwim

Would this result in all of us having to give more information to these companies and/or the state to verify though?

Of course!

I agree in theory but it’s impossible to implement. Under 16s won’t stop going on SM without parents buying into the idea and the fear of their child being left out means that the majority won’t. When I say SM I include WhatsApp etc which is likely to have links and images shared in group chats.

Australia voted for a ban but it’s not in force and they’ve not announced how it will be done. The average teen knows what a VPN is so will use one of those if age verification isn’t possible. Have they announced what SM will include? Many messaging apps and forums include SM functions like sharing images and video.

They make money on that so yes.
Those companies will be targets for hackers too.

The problem is implementation is next to impossible - we have no rules relating to alcohol for example at the moment within the house - parents can give children alcohol - making Smart phones illegal and parents responsible is next to impossible and would be political suicide for whoever implemented

so they make the companies responsible- fine but we already in society see VPNs and fire sticks as perfectly acceptable to use so how exactly would this work. Many things have an age but just based on the year.

Sending it underground won’t help either - banning something doesn’t mean they won’t use it. So that then becomes parents checking what their children use. Which frankly it what it should be anyway. So we could go all around in circles to end up back where we started.

The overall problem is that there is limited monitoring of sites - content should be regulated for everyone. Take Mumsnet and the horrific images that were posted recently. Sites should be more responsible for that. Recently on Facebook I am a member of groups relating to sport that someone has posted pornographic images on. That is what should be monitored.

How else could it be enforced? It's obvious that they'd need information like a credit, passport, photo driving licence, electoral register entry, etc. Of course, IF we had a national ID card system, it could easily be linked to that, but Blair/Prescott blew the chance to do it 20 years ago!

Because everybody is going to be thrilled in the world of Data Protection to hand over that level of information to access Social Media.

and the answer is of course we aren’t - no one is going to be happy with having that level of information being held - database hacking is already fairly common.

and that’s the issue isn’t it. Id for other things are quick and not held.

the problem is there isn’t an easy answer at all

I think that there will be a lot more identity theft if this happens and that the most likely victims will be elderly people who aren’t online so have no clue that someone is pretending to be them online.

You can already buy fake IDs, fake MOT pass certificates etc online, how long until kids are sold details of adults ?

There are defintely ways we could implement, for example my 14 year old wouldn't be able to open up a bank account online or an ISA, there needs to be a showing on ID or adding something like a national insurances number. At the moment because it's not law there are easy ways around it.

In person a lot of banking like that still gets done in person or with hard copy id (and via Government agencies)

National Insurance is potentially one way but again can be easily subverted by using a parents.

Personally for me cleaning up and making sure content is ok on these sites for ALL users is more important, removing anything dodgy and making them safe. I have a 16 year old nothing happened 3 weeks ago that makes her more equipped to deal with it than she was before.

But with a proper national ID card system, you could just provide the internet firm with your unique ID reference and they could do a limited search with a "yes/no" interrogation answer as to whether the person is over 16/18 or not. No need for them to have access to any other information.

A bit like that system they had for hiring cars abroad, where you applied online for a code via a UK website and gave the code to the foreign hire company, and all they could do was a very brief interrogation as to the validity of your driving licence.

There's really no need for lots of information on the card itself - it can all just be linked back to databases in the background with robust controls as to which users/organisations can access which bits of information.

@Cl0cks
There is no way to reduce the risk of danger to zero. Even locking your child in their bedroom with nothing but a book won’t completely remove the risk of danger. But that’s not the point and you know it.

Allowing children unsupervised access to social media vastly increases the risk of danger and mental health issues. That’s the point. Take it off their phone.

They'd just load it back onto their phone. They're not stupid, and if they can't do it themselves, they'll get a friend to load it back on, maybe putting access via a VPN to by pass any UK controls.

You would still find parents downloading it onto the phone though - most contracts are in the parents name - Apple ID, money information or equivalent. If parents wanted their children to have it

then how do you handle the families who post children on it - anyone who posts a picture of a child is that included?

the genie is out of the bottle - controlling content should be a priority and educating parents to have proper parental controls over these things.

Making it a state decision isn’t going to stop it educating parents is

@taxguruif the parental controls are set up correctly on iPhone, this can’t be done.

Then why not focus on getting parents to do this now - educate them and our children on sensible use.

I cannot really see any way if implementing this that isn’t either/or both a very expensive waste of resources and something that can be overruled by parents.

so if anything that is tried to implement can get overruled by parents why not educate now as to why parental controls shouldn’t be done now.

The support of the ban on this thread tells me that we do have a lot of people happy to give their personal details to any third party on the governemnt's command AND they want the governmt to give this command.

If you don't want your child being on social media, then don't let your child on social media.

Not sure why we need a law for it.

Because there’s a lot of people who won’t do that despite shouting from the rooftops about the danger of social media. They want someone (typically the government) to do it for them so they have the easy way out.
if a ban was to come in it would be still up to the parents to largely enforce it. Guess what? They won’t do that either. Every excuse under the sun will be put forward as to why their child is an exception to the rule. When something happens the child (or another child) as a result of the parents unwillingness to actually parent, it will be everyone else’s fault except theirs.
All everyone else can do is try to ensure their own child is kept away from social media as much as possible and for as long as possible.

I think social media companies need to be more accountable for allowing harmful content on there.
Maybe if there was the threat of an outright ban they would sit up and take notice and do better 🤔.
It terrifies me- the manosphere, telling teens how to kill themselves, what it does to our kids body images, and just the whole impact on their mental health.
Parents need to be better educated as well.

Quite rightly smoking, vaping and alcohol are out of bounds for under 18s and arguably access to social media and a young age is as harmful / more harmful than any of these.

Hows the ban on smoking, vaping and alcohol for under 18's going?

Young people will get around any safeguard you care to put in place, and they will be even more inclined to do something if it isn't allowed. Prohibition has never been effective, and it still isn't.

Crazy thing to say. Just because some people choose to break a law does not mean the law is the problem. The people are.

Crazy thing to think that that approach will get you anywhere. I didn't say the law was a problem, but when you ban under 18s from drinking and they are still down at the park throwing vodka and coke down their necks, how exactly are you going to stop them? Telling them not to drink or it's bad for them doesn't work. On the other hand, teaching them to drink sensibly may not be the best option, but it's the most realistic one. Banning social media will not stop it existing and it won't stop people being on it. It drives it underground. That underground already exists - the dark web. Do you really want it bigger and more accessible to young people, because if that is where social media for them is, they will find it. There are already "safeguards" and age limitations - oddly young people get around them. Especially when it comes to tech, they are more savvy that the safeguards. You don't get anywhere banning social media - you need to teach people how to use it, and how to spot the dangers.