Why do people want teens on social media??

[theprincessthepea]

I have a teen.

Today I told her that by the time the ban comes into affect when she is 16, it won’t make a difference to her life. But it will affect my toddler, and I’m happy that he will be growing up during a time where social media will be banned for children and young teens.

What I realised is that there are so many parents against the ban.

I see it every day. I was the last parent (out of my DDs friendship group of 6 girls) to give her a smart phone and allow her on social media - mainly because I was aware of what it’s like, and I witnessed my friend abuse MSN and Bebo back in the day and end up with older guys and pervs - that’s another story. But I remember a parent (DDs friends mum) telling me “I’ve set up a Snapchat for my daughter” (there were in year 5).
I asked her “why”
she said “I was told it’s good for them to socialise”

WTF!? AIBU for thinking that a lot of the work will go into convincing the public and parents that social media is bad. Just like we had to convince the public that smoking is bad.

If the amount of exploitation, low self esteem, online bullying, literally having an online account that is borderline only fans when you are a minor, whilst mum and dad think you study and love school (me and my daughter are super open about socials, she might have an account I don’t know about - but this is the point - us parents don’t get to protect our kids when they are in a virtual world that could be harmful).

Anyways that’s my rant. I’m all for the ban. Good luck with them implementing it. But I think we will be in a better place 10 years later (if the multiple crisis don’t get to us first).

Im also all for educational videos - but I don’t think this falls under this. As I do tell my DD to find an appropriate video when she’s stuck for revision.

But many people are happy introducing safe alcohol drinking at home before their children are 16

Those saying it’s impacting their rights as parents to make decisions. I would say there are far too many people not imposing appropriate boundaries in relation to screen time and access to social media.

As a teen and tween parent I understand too well how challenging it is.

However, I support it. It is a pain for my tween as she loves to watch particular videos on it relating to a hobbie - but such is life!

And I’m sure there will be parents who facilitate their children in circumventing the social media age limit too. Does that mean it shouldn’t exist?

The only people are know on Bluesky are academics. I don’t even think teens know what it is.

Also wish people would stop comparing SM to alcohol or cigarettes. Apples and oranges. One kills millions of people worldwide every year, the other has been linked to a minute number of incredibly sad stories where someone has been bullied and taken their own life. It isn’t the same.

Even judging by this thread - yes, a lot of work will go into convincing thr public and parents and that is just so mind boggling, because we do have the research to prove it, we do have children who were harmed…

I know that many of the parents of the children in my dc’s class will ignore it. They are too ‘cool’ - I don’t know?

Social media has been associated by a large amount of damage particularly to this age bracket.
No one is talking about deaths, you’re being obtuse.

Exactly and parents that are determined to find away round it .why do you want your kids in social media so strange.

It’s not just deaths though, is it? It’s psychological damage. MN loves to make comments mocking this generation suffering from ‘anxiety’, but don’t seem to link it to usage of SM sites which are known to cause anxiety in teens.
SM is proven to be harmful to developing brains. Yes, it should be up to parents to limit usage. No, many aren’t doing that.

I completely welcome this and wish it had happened sooner. I think the current crop of teens who grew up with social media at a young age have been hugely damaged. I do worry for them.

They are overprotected in the outside world and under protected online.

I think generations later we will look back at wonder what the heck we were thinking.

And obviously many of us tried with parental controls and taking phones off them. By not allowing them to access certain platforms. But I don’t doubt they all have seen things they shouldn’t.

This law makes everyone more accountable of course it’s a good thing.

I’m torn on this.

On the one hand I think/know (my DC are early 20s) how SM can be dangerous with bullying, being sucked in to algorithms, grooming, time wasting (I’m just as bad on that!).

But my DCs made some genuine friends through their interests - bands and gaming (in fact the latter was through Discord which isn’t on the banned list, the former through Instagram).

We always told DC we could look at their phones up to age 16 at any given time - and we did.

i feel this ban will absolve parents of the responsibility of checking their DCs phones - and laptops/PCs - on which you can also access these sites.

So by all means, ban access (will be interesting to see how they do this), and also educate parents how to talk to their DC re safe phone use - WhatsApp will still be allowed and bullying can be rife on there too.

i do think overall the govt are trying to do the right thing but children will get around the ban as well like likely did in Australia.

So if they changed the law so that big-brand alcohol was illegal for under 18s, but beer from local craft breweries wasn't included - on the assumption that young people haven't heard of it and never would discover it or think to try it...?

I recommend you read the book, The Anxious Generation. Harm from the internet isn’t just about death.

That’s sad - in year 6? My DC got phones towards end of year 6 but DD’s was a Blsckberry (this was 14 years ago), DS had my own iPhone (by then no-one had Blackberries but he only used WhatsApp. SM wasn’t ubiquitous then abd tiktok didn’t appear until he was 16.

I recognise it’s not the definitive or final list, hence “reported”.

But reported from a govt press release that says it will adopt the Australian model and names several networks.

Frankly I think you are the one hard of thinking if you believe concerns that a govt ban on media by naming specific networks must be conspiracist thinking. I think govt banning media is a very serious step indeed, and this govt has come nowhere near the bar for demonstrating the harms needed to justify it.

Thats a solid liberal principle with a pedigree of hundreds of years, not an X-inspired fad.

In an ideal world I’d like parents to parent their children but it is staggeringly obvious that that is not an option. We have kids starting school in vast numbers unable to toilet themselves, zip up coats, sit when asked, turn the page of a book, follow very basic instructions, unable to identify colours or numbers etc let alone read or count.
Phones are a fact of life now. You can barely use our local bus service without the appropriate app (you can pay with card but lose daily/weekly caps so £100s more a month for a 2 bus school commute). Parents and kids want to be able to message each other, phone boxes for emergencies have all but disappeared, we can’t go back, but endless and addictive reels of shite, even “harmless” shite is not ok.
If parents could all say “I banned sm apps before 14 and checked messages for grooming/bullying/sextortion and had sensible conversations with my dc around those issues and installed an app blocker for my older teens so they can only doomscroll 30 mins a day and all phones stay downstairs overnight” then we wouldn’t need this but we can’t do that so we do need it. Incidentally the catastrophic drop off in parenting, according to my observations, occurred when parents started endless scrolling and streaming instead of interacting with their kids.

Yes, year 6. Mine will get a phone over the summer holidays but like her older sister she won’t have TikTok/instagram etc. Happy for her to message friends using the messenger service on her phone, or speak to them on calls or FaceTime.

The people that I know in real life who are in favour of this ban are the ones whose children are completely out of control online and think this ban will solve all their problems. I'm not judging their parenting because I know it is incredibly difficult to deal with and how worried they are. However, this won't be the magic bullet.

The ban in australia targets specific platforms but things like discord are not banned so it seems a bit pointless. There are chat functions on nearly all games, you can use VPNs and obviously fake your age or use shared devices.

The Internet is the issue, not just specific social media sites. A social media ban seems a bit l like trying to prevent people drinking alcohol by banning beer glasses.

But the direction we are going is that they are overprotected in the offline world and overprotected in the online world. The evidence for mental health harms of social media is fairly slight. Like the risk one might fall (or be pushed) from a tree and suffer harm. Yes it’s real. No we shouldn’t be banning tree-climbing or social media.

And is this law for the children or for the parents? Parents could always ban anyway, and parents who don’t care will just circumvent. This is a law to help parents win arguments.

DH worked in youth criminal justice and mental health I work in adult criminal justice, the problem you have is increasing numbers of parents not parenting, those children have no chance, and inevitably go on to have their own collagen in less than ideal circumstances without a clue how to parent them and the cycle continues. The threshold for social care intervention is ridiculously high. We are also seeing this attitude from parents spread further than the core demographic this imagine. Teenagers out until Christ knows what time on a school night getting up to all sorts, drill videos escalating gang activity, carrying weapons etc. I won't even go into what I see in terms of adults perpetrating sexual offences online against children often whose parents are just naive to the dangers of being online.

Unfortunately we live in a time where the standard of parenting and parental responsibility is in decline. Even beyond the extremes there are so many parents at DS' school who allow free access to social media, some of them have phones at7/8 years old. Parents find it hard to say no when lots of others don't. A legal position makes the stance clear, in the same way you will get 16 year olds trying to get alcohol, you don't really see 10 year olds drinking, the position embeds in society over time, so the youngest children will be protected and won't spend half their lives online. It's a blunt instrument and I'm not entirely sure how it will be properly enforced but I think something needed to be done.

It’s the opposite amongst people I know. The people who are against the ban are the ones whose kids spend their whole lives on SM and they don’t want to have to suddenly start parenting. The people who are pro the ban are the ones who are already putting in strict controls and trying hard to stem the tide of social media.
I am pro the ban. My teen doesn’t even have SM so it makes no real difference to our lives. But having read The Anxious Generation and other literature on the subject I think any reduction in SM usage in this age group can only be a good thing.

It might help some kids in areas where the parents find the ban helpful to maintain their own standards and rules but I think for a lot of kids in situations where their parents aren't bothered or are around other children who have managed to circumvent the ban then they will have just as much access to it as ever.

Bullying won't stop because they can't access social media either.

I was out for a meal the other day and the not-even two year old baby on the next table had its mum's phone - on speaker!

As I've said many times on these threads, I just gave advice to my kids around phone use and I never had any issues.

I saw hundreds of posts on X yesterday bemoaning that Bluesky was being left out of the bank (despite no actual full list yet being issued) because "it's he only place full of lefties" and "is full of paedophiles" (or "pedos").

Bluesky was even trending because of it. There were so many posts that were either word for word identical that you could actually understand people thinking it was some orchestrated campaign by someone on social media...

Do you think the current age limit of 13 for social media is also indicative of a nanny state?

This.

Do you want gov to ban bacon and force daily exercise? Gov should NOT do a parent's job.