To think the social media ban for kids is wonderful

[Walkyrie]

Just that really! Thank fuck this toxic brain rotter for impressionable kids will be limited (not gone completely, I’m not that naive).

Everywhere I go teenagers are barely speaking to each other, just staring at their phones. I catch a bus that it on the school route, they just sit in silence, just on their mobiles. Such a shame. I remember the school bus being filled with chatty happy kids liberated from their classrooms and eating chips when I was at school, and now they’re silent. Massive links with anxiety, poor sleep, poor mental health. Like addicted robots, totally dead behind the eyes.

Here’s hoping a bit of normal childhood returns and we have happier and less anxious kids in 10 years!

BBC survey?

?

They can still go on Bluesky, a confirmed haven for Minor Attracted Persons (MAP's ie pedos). You think that's okay, I guess.

Agree @Walkyrie. It's brain rot. For us adults as much as children.

Ah Mumsnet ‘logic’, you can’t beat it can you?

Agree preventing some children going on some social media sites is a good thing. However, driving children towards the most dangerous one, where MAPs openly post and Bluesky has openly admitted problems with them there, is illogical.

Why would you think otherwise, unless you're in favour of minor attracted persons / paedos mixing with children?

I think, given time, the internet itself outside of banking and shopping, will be limited.

the internet social media has been seized by those with the loudest voices and they are rarely the ones with the best brains.
society is stupider due to the internet.

Surely it is the government's logic, not a random MN user's logic?

Do you actually have a valid source for your assertion that BlueSky will be excluded from the ban? In other words, not GB News, X or some other right wing propaganda machine?

The FT and ITV are both reporting that BlueSky is "likely to be included".

ETA I intended to quote @PixeyandDixey but forgot.

I don’t know. I think it’s a nice headline but I would rather focus on the content. I think banning stuff rarely works out or is feasible in the long term. Shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted and all that.

I worry more that a ban will lead to complacency about the availability of dangerous content. From Australia, plenty of kids are circumventing the bans and still accessing material.

Molly Russell’s dad has been quite vocal on this topic and has opposed a ‘sledgehammer’ ban.

No because it's not about "safeguarding" but the government have worked out that the British public will swallow anything, no matter how restrictive, if it's for "safeguarding" (or Covid). So now they can track adult users on previously-anonymous SM platforms. Own goal, IMO. But given the billions of threads already started on this, I get the impression that people really just don't see it for what it is. As I said on another thread, the feckless "I can't say no to my child" parents will just do the verification and give the account to the child anyway.

Is there any evidence that blue sky is any more dangerous than Twitter or tiktok or any other social media site? Sadly there are Pedos all over the internet, why would there be any more on blue sky ? And why are you calling them minor attracted persons, not sure we need euphemisms.

VPN’s here. Keir Starmer is having no say in how I parent my kids. As if that’s what this is about anyway.

I'm a bit cautious about it. I've been parenting my kids though and taught them good habits with social media while they were young enough to listen to me. A condition of them having a phone was that they followed rules and spot checks were conducted to make sure they weren't speaking to anyone they didn't know. I still have their passcodes.

Would they have been so keen to listen to me at 16? Could I have asked for the same level of transparency once relationships became more complex and they have greater need for privacy? Probably not.

I don't regret my approach. In facr I worry for parents of kids who will discover this whole world of forbidden content all of a sudden at a still very impressionable age and won't be able to be supervised well enough to be kept safe.

Not my words, they're the words these people on Bluesky use to describe themselves! Join Bluesky and see.

You could be right. I've just seen that although it's not named as the other sites are, as a 'user to user platform' it's quite likely to be included in the ban.

I wonder if it's including Instagram as it allows disappearing messages now, it's basically a copy of Snapchat (which criminals use to access children).

The news reports that I've seen are reporting that Instagram will be included, yes.

To be honest I don’t think it will make that much of a difference. Kids will still use social media. If the government wanted to actually make a difference then they should ban the business model that allows it to be so addictive.

All that will happen now is the blame will be passed on to parents instead of governments and tech companies.

My children had mobile phones eventually but it was before smartphones I remember being told by them how unfair it was the Christmas they were in year 6 that they were the only ones who didn’t have a mobile phone in the whole year. If as parents you’re that bothered you can’t you just block access to certain apps putting measures in place to prevent them getting access - as much as you can with these things. You don’t need the government to make the decision for you.

I think a general recognition by parents that social media is not healthy would be a good thing. I mean anyone sensible knows it can be terrible for teen mental health and good parents limit access to it.

But the shoot from the hip announcement from Starmer is performative and just a cynical ploy to put some different headlines in the media for a few days.

We know bad parents will still be bad parents. We also know there will be ways around it. And it's a green light for new wannabe Tik Toks to come along who aren't named in the ban.

So like every other time we see government rush to "ban" something we know there will be unintended consequences.

Like Bill Clinton said "it's the economy, stupid" and Starmer should take his advice and make that his priority. He actually makes me sick with his "as a dad to a dad" stuff...so insincere.

Smoking ban has been very successful

Hi there,

We thought users on this thread might be interested to know that we're hosting an AMA with Baroness Beeban Kidron tomorrow. She's been one of the most influential campaigners behind efforts to regulate tech platforms and strengthen protections for children online, and her new book USERS: How Big Tech Took Control and How to Fight Back is published this week.

If you'd like to ask a question, you can post on the AMA thread here.

Thanks,
MNHQ

What's the justification for allowing access to Bluesky, but not other platforms?