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.

This is different. This is effectively removing a significant portion of adult voices (older ones who can't faff around with ID online) from SM making forums such as this even more like echo chambers. (I'm not saying MN is, as it clearly isn't! loool).

It is also exposing our personal data to over-powerful tech companies as well as potential hackers. ie MEN lots of them probably incels at that....

I used to have a perfectly nice life before the internet came along - but now, MN is a normal part of my life.

People used to manage just fine with horses and carts, and with throwing their crap out of the window. To bring it more up to date, people used to have nice lives paying for everything with cash; but now the vast majority have embraced the convenience of digital payments for much of their spending.

Things move on and change. Phones and the internet aren't a fad that's going to pass.

The wording of the press release if very clear that a couple of platforms named on the headline does not constitute as a list of the platforms that will be included on the ban.
The wording has been very clear that the full list will follow.
To deny this and continue to spread around false information is a conspiracy.

Sometimes it's good to listen to the voices you disagree with, to see if they have a point...

I am not (normally) a gov conspiracy nut. We are all too cushy in our free lives in this country that we don't think of these things in general. But look at other countries... We need to be watching Australia closely.

ID is not needed for age verification so your first argument has fallen there. What personal data is going to powerful tech companies?

I don't think I can without getting him his own phone number? I don't want to do that for a few years yet. If I bought a spare sim to activate a number for him I'd have to pay to keep it active or they'd reassign it.

Yes but I think until they are 16 the potential harm outweighs any benefits.

Their brains are still developing and need protecting.

Do you know anything about the regulations in Aus?
It’s ironic you mention watching Aus closely when there is no requirement for supplying ID in order to do the checks.

Nobody is comparing it to smoking. But it is harmful- proven so- for young children. Why would the death of even just one child caused by online behaviour (it’s more often blackmail involving nude images) not concern you? Did we wait until X figure before introducing smoking bans, or age restrictions on purchasing alcohol, etc. Do you want higher numbers of children losing their lives before you’ll worry about it and consider what we can do as a society to help?

Not sure how likely this is, has anything been said on that

If it’s just the private app putting in age restrictions and no link to the gov then that’s better.

Completely agree. And I despair at this thread.

@Delatronyes but because I actually parent my child, these issues were picked up on straight away and dealt with swiftly. I’m not the type of parent to just let my child get away with things. Actions have consequences and she was swiftly delivered to the doorstep of the child who was taking the brunt of the group chat - something which none of the other parents in the group did. And you know what, she never did it again. But equally, all of what she did could have been done on whatsap, and that isn’t being banned, so I don’t understand how issues like these will stop. Parents need to parent their children, it really is as simple as that. And take swift accountability when things go wrong.

Facial recognition. Biometric data. Are you comfortable with them knowing this about your kids? AI will only get more powerful in future. Once you give personal data, you can't take it back, not easily.

They've named far more than 'a couple'. OK, fair enough if they are going to capture every single SM site that exists in the legislation, and also pre-ban any future new platforms which currently don't exist but which could have a SM element to them.

It is a dog's dinner how they've announced it so far: talking about 'banning' YouTube for under 16s, then there's a suggestion that it won't include YouTube Kids (and nobody has ever deliberately misrepresented inappropriate content as suitable for kids for financial or other gains); then we hear that, in Australia - the model for all of this - they can watch as much YT as they like (except for videos specifically flagged as adults only), but just won't be able to sign in to upload their own content or leave comments.

It would have been much, much better if they had properly decided what they were going to do and then announced it as a complete plan, rather than piecemeal and erratically. Ironically, that would also have taken far less of a needless toll on the mental and emotional health of millions of young people if they'd cared about and respected them enough to clearly lay out the plan without all of the unanswered questions and endless uncertainty.

I won't be providing an ID to any pedophile like Elon Musk or weirdo like Zuckerberg. I use social media with a anonymous name like here, so it would not bother me at all.

Fantastic post!

Can you explain how that would be rolled out?

Generally speaking when biometric data is used for age verification it is not stored long term, it verifies the age, is stored for 30 days to allow for any challenge required, and is then deleted. It is not used for anything else, it would not be lawful. It is not used for training purposes. The government already does this with One Login, and as already stated this is already happening in the online gaming
sector.

The use of biometric data is heavily regulated.

Good news, as has been stated throughout this thread, you won’t need to!!

"It's good for them to socialise" because it gets them out of the parents hair- similar arguments were put up back in the day about TV- it was somewhere you could park your kids and get on with something else, but many people thought it should be banned or restricted.

Some of the worst bullying seems to happen via group chats. Some say that isn't social media. My feeling is that people 'speak' differently in texts and messages, nuance is missed or missing. Whilst it's true a bad bully will always find a way to be unkind, there are plenty of petty spats dodged by avoiding engaging too much with group chats.

Age based bans put off the inevitable. DS is in his 20s and at uni. A ridiculous toxic situation arose in a recent group chat. Most on the chat just left and alternative one was set up. It's possible to speculate that the swiftness with which this happened was down to years of experience. Perhaps too many years.

You can get a Lebara sim for £5 a month.

My 13 yo has this. When she was in y6, this is what I gave her- old phone with Lebara sim. I told her she was not allowed to give her number out and only gave permission for this at the end of y6.

Just an option you may want to consider.

I don't think hackers from foreign countries are particularly regulated.

I think OP that people can't think of it as anything other than the government getting into banning certain tv shows.

I think most people have a vague idea that too much is bad for kids. When the reality is it's like letting them drink gin on their cereal and carry it around in water bottle all day.

Researchers are already aware but as more of that research on brain development becomes available to the public, it is going to be as unthinkable to allow it as it would be to give kids cigarettes.

And what are they going to hack exactly? These systems are de-centralised, there isn’t a big pot of data.