Let the experiment take place, I say. Just like Oregon’s now-repealed drug use decriminalization bill. It didn’t achieve its intended goals, but there is now a mass of data about what assumptions were wrong, implementation issues, etc. IMO there is real value in letting states put such changes into play to get beyond the debate and actually test the hypotheses.
I only see these as approximate precedents in the rough sense that they involve limiting minors’ access to speech. Otherwise, factually, I can see several distinguishing features:
- social media being optimized for addiction
- social media potentially compromising minors’ physical safety
- social media use having documented adverse mental health outcomes for minors
- the fact that social media use requires an ongoing contractual relationship between the company and the minor
I could see these factors tipping the balance on the “compelling government interest” question, though I see less of an argument for “narrow tailoring”.
These rulings are 13 and 27 years old (the third is in progress), so I'd argue that revisiting the legal analysis of the laws and precedents is useful here in itself.
I think the experiment is more about the judiciary and about tribal politics. There's ample case law against something like this, so to me this seems unconstitutional, and I doubt it will stand. But DeSantis will win some more heart and minds of the folks who secretly do want big government protecting them from the boogieman.
Regardless of anyone's views about social media, the fact that the government wants 'papers please' for you to access a website should really scare everyone.
Laws are often just social signals in writing. A law indicates that a large group agrees that something is bad. Often times people find it easier to just agree with a law rather than navigate the mental gray area around behaviors that aren't black and white.
The case law actually supports this. Lots of speech is restricted from minors and since social media companies aren’t publicly funded institutions it’s even more ironclad. For instance public schools have more restrictions on limiting expression than private schools.
I think it’s excellent the government is taking a stand to protect kids when it’s obvious most parents are unable to. Kids have no business in the discourse.
That assumes (at the very least) that any data gathered from such an "experiment" would be representative of what the effects of such legislation would be elsewhere.
Perhaps... but my guess is that repeatability wouldn't depend on the children but on the wants and needs of the governing politicians.
That is, the data would, in my view, likely be worthless for its purported goal, but can give some insight into some political shenanigans.
I don't follow your logic. The legislation is designed to minimize the negative effects of social media on teens. This can be measured and compared to states other than Florida. How do 'the needs of the governing politicians' confound that data?
It depends on what the change is. I wouldn't approve states trialing slavery. I don't agree with the social media law as well. It's a cultural tool, so let parents dictate what they want their kids to see or use. If anything, they could push laws to give parents better tools/information to help them manager their kid's screen time, not just an outright ban.
No he's not because the experiment doesn't depend on them. Social science researchers use these kinds of sudden differences in laws all the time to study their effects. People in general can look at the outcomes too if they're obvious enough.
The problem is that once such a thing fails, it gives massive ammunition to future naysayers that get to conveniently ignore all the implementation failures because campaigning for/against will ultimately boil down to bullet points.
I disagree to an extent. Oregons drug decriminalization failed because of a few reasons that are plain to see:
- The people who wrote the measure did not prescribe how it should be done, just what it should achieve.
- The measure demanded changes be immediate, which didn't jive with a very slow running, heavy bureaucracy like Oregons government. More importantly, time was not given for the social services pipelines to fill with cash and plans.
- The law did not also ban public drug use, it depended on the legislature doing this - which they never did. This was the big tipping point. You don't forget the smell of meth or fent, especially outside your grocery store or kids school.
This was a master class in when head in the clouds thinking meets legislative elites who are outright insulted when the people flex their voice.
I do think we'll revisit this again in the future, but hopefully next time we at least ban public drug use.
Policy-making isn't supposed be, at least shouldn't be, some lab experiment. The hey at least we tried isn't the best reasoning for the lack of insight of those in charge.
Hopefully the courts cut this down in the cradle. It's clearly an attack on 1st amendment rights and state laws can't supersede the 1st amendment. Whether your kid is online on social media or not is the responsibility of parents. Conservatives rail against the "nanny state" and then pull this junk? I'm glad it will most likely be shot down in court quickly and decisively. Laws like this are toes in the water to see how much freedom repressive state governments can get away with.
"Whether your kid is online on social media or not is the responsibility of parents"
Really ?
I mean the entire point of the nanny state argument is to not act as a nanny toward ADULT citizen. Minor should still be protected, especially under 16
I recall hearing Professor Haidt (NYU) describe an experiment he ran with teenagers. He asked them how much they'd have to be paid (per month?) to not use some social media site. The typical answer was ~$40.
Then he said that they were going to get all the other kids in the school off the social media site, and asked again what the student would want to be paid to be off the site. The answer was that students would actually pay to be in that situation.
For some kids at least, this is a coordination problem, where they'd all rather not be on social media, but assuming others are, they want to be there. I could be getting the details/dollar values wrong, and I don't know that this bill is the right way to address the issue.
But it's pretty clear that social media is something that many teens wish they could avoid, but currently feel they can't. That doesn't mean we need to Do Something™, but it does mean that we're not currently in the optimal situation.
I know I've felt that feeling. I'm not a teenager, but I can imagine the FOMO and loss of social clout a kid would feel not being connected in ways that their peers are.
My solution was to not care if I was missing out. Counterintuitively, it's not until you do that that you're free to find the life you want for yourself. Good luck explaining that to a 16 year old though, they're not there yet, they're not building the life they want, they're finding their tribe, and you have to be connected to do that.
Your comment reminded me of one of the best books I’ve ever read… Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck. He talks about what he calls the “backwards law” which is about these counterintuitive truths like the one that you discovered.
Keep in mind that social media is pretty much the only outlet you have for social signalling as a teenager. Disconnecting from it at that age is social suicide.
Disconnecting as an adult is much easier/worthwhile because you now have other means of signalling.
When I was a child I used the argument "because others do it" and mom told me to not look at others and think for myself. I understood the idea just fine.
The biggest problem I see is that we’re now essentially requiring ID to use substantial parts of the internet. So many business only have a Facebook page, Google maps has social features.
I already didn’t want a Facebook account just to see a businesses specials, now I’ll need to present ID too?
Certainly interested to see how all this plays out.
H.B.3 only prohibits these minors holding accounts on social media. They can still browse, as can anyone without an account and age verification. You'd be able to view a business's information, watch videos, etc etc etc, just not create your own.
It also has conditions for which sites are affected by this law. The site has to have doomscroll and already be popular with kids. Google Maps isn't what they're targeting.
Honestly, mixed feelings. I'm in no rush to show Zuck my passport but the flagrant grooming comments on every kid's TikTok account is enough to show there's a significant problem, even if this isn't the right answer.
I agree, but I think your problem isn't Zuck, it's with passports.
Government issued licences aren't fit for purpose any more. They were when all you did with your paper drivers licence is show it to the police, but now they've become a form of ID you show man+dog who gets to scrape a whole pile of into from it that can be used to track you. For example, they can follow your passport number or drivers licence to connect a series of what should look like unrelated transactions.
As an example, now when a car rental company wants to know you have a valid licence they demand a copy of it. If you have an accident they use the copy to prove they verified you are licenced to drive, if you do something illegal they can hand over your ID so the police can chase you down. FIDO / WebAuthn / PassKey shows how those things can be achieved without leaking all the information on the licence. It can hand over a one time token saying you have a valid licence and signed by something that chains back to a public key held by the government. The token reveals nothing more than that to the car hire firm, but should they hand it over to the police they can decrypt it to identify you.
These tokens are useless if stolen. They can't link you to other transactions and don't identify you in any way, and yet are far more secure than a bunch of unsigned pixels. In other words unlike a copy of a passport, mostly harmless.
This is not true! I was looking at a hair salon and bakery recently. Both, being run by millennials, have nothing but a google maps listing and an Instagram account. But I don't have one and after looking at a few photos of cakes and hairstyles, it gives me the boot and asks me to sign in to see more! Adding mandatory government ID to that is crazy.
What I’m really unclear about is whether providers are required to use an actual ID to age verify. Does anyone know?
The bill summary on the Florida senate webpage says:
> Such commercial entities must verify, using either an anonymous or standard age verification method, that the age of a person attempting to access the material harmful to minors satisfies the bill’s age requirements.
It sounds to me like “anonymous age verification method” could just mean that the website asks how old you are? What constitutes verification here? That sentence makes it sound like they can choose to use whatever feeble method they want.
At face value this law seems like political points being scored by passing a widely popular law that changes very little in practice (bumping the minimum age from 13 to 14).
How many social media sites allow you to do anything without an account? Twitter used to be wide open but X competely locked down. Instagram lets you click 2 things and then the paywall pops up. I'm not sure about Facebook but it isn't much better.
I’ve gotten by for the last several years without Facebook or Google (I do use a YT account, but not for anything meaningful). It’s annoying, but doable.
>I’ve gotten by for the last several years without Facebook or Google (I do use a YT account, but not for anything meaningful). It’s annoying, but doable.
I think the point is that the internet and particularly social media is now the de-facto town square. States are basically requiring identification to speak or criticize government in the town square. If you take a step back and look at it that way, it's grossly anti-American.
Imagine back in the day, if you had any type of meeting/gathering to discuss anything that might be related to politics, and the police were there to collect everyone's Id. AA meetings, computer meetups, hobby gathering, HOA meetings, etc. This is essentially that, except on a computer. Just think of the children!
Apple, Google or any other trusted provider could do anonymous attestation of being over a certain age. Apple already has the framework in safari to attest that you aren't a bot.
I'll be the odd guy out and say it should probably be illegal to attempt to enter a contract (AUP, privacy policy, etc) with a minor anyway (for a lot of reasons around exploitation), so I don't _really_ have a major issue with this at face value.
I know the devil is in the details though, so kinda curious what the actual provisions are.
The alternative is a free internet, where we don't need accounts to do things, because we're not building or storing advertising profiles on users. Hmmmm... imagine that.
Generally speaking, in the US, contracts with minor (< 18) are voidable, that is, at any time the minor can break the contract. This creates a situation where no one would ever contract with a minor, which is obviously bad (how is an emancipated minor supposed to rent an apartment?) so there are statutory exceptions where the contract will be enforced.
Why would anybody rent to a minor otherwise, regardless of the contract breaking issues. They are unlikely to have much credit history. To say nothing of the maturity / responsibility and income (+ wealth / cash savings) problems.
I think the OP was saying that having minors agree to a social media sites terms and conditions is them entering a contract. So if you're against minors entering contracts, its logically consistent to also be against holding minors to a websites terms.
That's an interesting thing regarding this law. This law is entirely unenforceable on sites that don't make their revenue by knowing exactly who you are. Any social network that allows pseudonymous accounts and doesn't require real identity information can easily be used by a kid, just click "I'm over 16" when the dialog pops up. But Instagram or Facebook is going to have a hell of a time convincing a court that they didn't know that Brayden who is posting pictures from school wasn't actually 40, or that he was in Illinois when all his contacts are from the same town in the Florida panhandle. So laws like this actually further the concept of a free internet without constant tracking, companies that track you have no plausible deniability.
>The alternative is a free internet, where we don't need accounts to do things, because we're not building or storing advertising profiles on users. Hmmmm... imagine that.
Sure, so long as you pay for the service you're using. 10c per HN post, 50c per facebook photo.
That's a false dichotomy. The internet has and has always had plenty of sites (including social ones) that didn't charge money or spy on users. Just because many website would prefer to exploit their users for profit today, that doesn't mean that the internet can't exist without every website creator stuffing their pockets with cash.
Considering the real cost, it may be more accurate with 10^-5c per HN post, 10^-4c per Facebook photo (numbers made up). But they're a pain in the ass to pay, so we depend on people who do pay them in bulk, that is, the advertisers. But if we can invent any other method to properly trade this small amount of value, I think we can finally do away with them.
I don't think this is really about protecting minors, or hurting big tech, or scoring some short term votes, or anything like that.
I feel it's more likely that the long game is ultimately about de-anonymizing the Internet.
This particular objective is a solid plausible explanation of so many initiatives over the last few years. Perhaps not full public de-anonymization, but at the very least to make it easier for things like CALEA to exist in these spaces as well. The public is constantly shown techniques in whodunnit TV shows where the good guys can instantly look up an IP address or other identifying log entry and associate it with a name/address/etc.
IMHO, the plan is to make Business As Usual untenable and make it cheaper and financially safer for tech companies to give in and identify everybody as a survival mechanism. When its safer to record a passport/realid/etc as a legal defense then at some point it'll be done.
After that happens then it's easy to plug in something like CALEA. The public is already being primed to accept it with the benefits being constantly shown on the likes of CSI/NCIS/etc/etc/etc shows.
Of course, from a profit perspective, it certainly wouldn't hurt that all this valuable user data that is being being compiled is finally cross checked and validated.
Or maybe I'm completely wrong and there's no ulterior motive and there's nothing more to it than politicians trying to be seen to be doing the right thing. Hah! I'm way too cynical for that.
Although I don't support it, would the internet be a better place with people being identified? For this to be a constructive discussion, can we assume companies have a proper and secure way to validate identities and store your data?
A lot of the extremism we see online is because people hide behind their keyboard. I sometimes wonder if the internet as we know it and social medias pervasive influence would be much different if people were less anonymous.
Please convince me I'm crazy or provide anecdotes that suggest this to be a terrible idea.
I grew up with internet access in the early 90s and have been behind a keyboard ever since.
edit: Downvotes are not for disagreement, please provide constructive discussion to a reasonable question.
I have seen little correlation between absence-of-extremism here on HN and how much information people provide about their identities. You can see that brand new throwaway accounts are more likely than others to post extreme rants, but I don't see much difference between year-old accounts that are totally anonymous and year-old accounts that link to personal web sites, GitHub profiles, LinkedIn profiles, etc.
Our local newspaper used to allow people to comment on stories with a Facebook account. People who were using real names and had publicly posted enough information that you'd be able to quickly locate where they lived frequently went on extreme rants.
The newspaper eventually just got rid of Facebook-powered comments, but I see the same behavior (terrible comments under real names, easily linked to employers/homes/schools) on the neighborhood's Nextdoor discussions.
> A lot of the extremism we see online is because people hide behind their keyboard.
Maybe this is true, but we also have to think about the perfectly reasonable things we nevertheless wouldn’t want pinned on us. Political opinions, of which many of mine are half-baked and I am writing to test with other smart people, but I don’t want to necessarily be associated with them forever. I don’t want to worry that simply saying tech workers should unionize will impact my employability in the future.
> Although I don't support it, would the internet be a better place with people being identified?
Better for who?
Any system secure enough that a person could never face consequences for posting something unpopular would also be incapable of accomplishing the goal of censoring things online that are considered "bad".
You say that even our current pseudo-anonymous communication enables "extremism" but any system that would prevent it could be used to stop a whistleblower, or a protestor, or an atheist, or anyone else with an unpopular opinion. I don't see that as making the internet better, and I question how much it would even stop the things most people today would agree to want abolished.
> Although I don't support it, would the internet be a better place with people being identified?
I don't believe so.
> For this to be a constructive discussion, can we assume companies have a proper and secure way to validate identities and store your data?
What?! No, we absolutely can't assume that. In fact, good default is to assume that data stored will be eventually compromised with high probability. Assuming otherwise is like believing in some magical backdoors in cryptography that only "good" guys can access and other such nonsense.
> I sometimes wonder if the internet as we know it and social medias pervasive influence would be much different if people were less anonymous.
Social media as we know it today mostly stems from FB which has a real name policy. Don't think FB is much better than others (by any measure that interests me at least).
>Critics have said the bill violates the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment protections for free speech and that parents, not the government, should make decisions about the online presence of their children of all ages.
It's extremely difficult for parents to stop their children, especially early teens from using social media. This law should make it easier and it would put the work on Meta, Snap, Tiktok, Pinterest, Twitter to help parents.
I'm personally glad that I grew up without social media but I worry about the kids growing up now. The amount of random junk young kids are exposed to on social media is worrying.
Not speaking from personal experience. My kid is only 4.
Your argument seems like exactly what my parents would have said about me spending so much time on TV, computers and electronics instead of studying, playing outside, sports etc.
Almost exactly like your last paragraph..
“I’m personally glad that I grew up without infinite channels on TV, computers and its games, cell phones and your SMSes. I’m worried about your generation. You guys are exposed to a lot of junk and things that waste your attention.” - Dad.
Yet, here we are….
May be kids of now will just need to be educated about the real impact and not be treated as if they are in glass houses?
I understand what you are getting at, but to inject some nuance:
TV, print, radio, music and to a lesser extent games are all subject to some level of industry or statutory content regulation.
For example, in America, you're very unlikely to have a kids TV channel suddenly switch to videos of people being killed in industrial accidents. new media, not so much.
Watershed, age constraints and company ending fines existed (and in some cases still do) for violating those rules.
Large new media companies, such as facebook, youtube and tiktok can literally serve porn to kids and not have any legal ramifications. If a cable broadcaster knowingly broadcast frontal nudity before watershed, it would be fined. (yes, cable TV has less restrictions) but thats the point, regulation has not kept up with the pace of change. that has been a deliberate decision.
My kids are >5 < 12. They aren't allowed on insta/tiktok. They can have youtube, but its only when supervised. even then its 1/3 chance that they land on something toxic as shit.
The world has changed, and the guard rails that we had as kids have been removed. There is an argument about freedom of expression, I get that. But we need to think about whether its right to allow large corporations to profit from showing horrific content to minors. (adults, I don't give a shit, do what you want) The problem is, I'm not sure of the best mechanism, with the least bad outcome.
I think the empirical evidence is fairly clear, actually.[1][2]
Having struggled with various forms of screen addiction myself, I find it sort of odd that a lot of people are so laissez faire about giving children the most addictive device ever created.[3] Whether or not this law is a good idea, I think it's incumbent on parents to monitor and limit screen time and access to social media. Which is difficult! When my wife and I are tired, setting my daughter down in front of an ipad is the easiest way to get a break.
What if it was the responsibility of parents to make sure their kids didn't smoke cigarettes, but it was legal for stores to sell cigarettes to kids? Responsible parents could tell their children they are forbidden from buying them, explain all the reasons why it's bad, and then kids could just walk into a store and buy them anyway. Putting it all on parents doesn't work, parents aren't capable of supervising 24/7 and it isn't reasonable to act like they are or should be.
Lol at the infinite channels on TV part really highlighting.
As an adult, I don't have cable, I use an antenna. Yes, I have streaming some streaming services.
As adults and/or parents we can make decisions that help our kids (and they might help us too)
I also use Adblock.
The TV argument is the same as devices too; We had one family TV growing up; I still refuse to have a TV in my bedroom.
In conclusion, seems like we've hit the generation where our parents used TV to parent and so now we don't know how to parents -- or, for many people, be.
I think there are magnitudes and cliffs for this stuff.
TV --> has quality control, professionally done, goes through a team of editors/creators before making it onto the screen
Early internet --> Mostly harmless content, can find dark stuff if kids look for it but it's pretty hard to find. More dangerous than TV but not too bad.
SMS --> just chatting with people you know. Not afraid.
TikTok, IG Reels, Youtube Shorts, Snapchat, Twitter: Good luck to you. Your kid is going to see a ton of deep fakes, edited images of unrealistic body proportions that the influencer won't disclose, heaps of radical and extremist views, undisclosed sponsorships masquerading as advice, targeted ads that anyone can buy, etc.
The magnitude is much higher now - hence I think laws need to come in to make it easier for parents to get back some control.
Go ahead and try to teach your kid who is going to spend hours each day seeing hundreds of videos each day - probably tens of thousands in a year. What are you going to do? Watch 100 Instagram Reels per day with your kid and explain each and every single one? As an adult, even I'm easily influenced by this stuff.
Agree and disagree. Kids can't really understand the negative impact of the things made to alter their mind, and since their parents are responsible for them, it's their job not to just explain, but to do their best to limit or participate in their usage. This is only difficult if your children are not in your presence 24/7 (public school, hanging out at malls, etc).
> May be kids of now will just need to be educated about the real impact and not be treated as if they are in glass houses?
The problem with this argument is that TV had ads and while they are manipulative, they are absolutely no match for the shit that Meta, YouTube, etc pull. Kids (and quite obviously lots of adults) simply do not have the ability to deal with that.
tv, computer, radio, social media, and more broadly the internet, are mediums of communication and distribution. what tv content/substance did you grow up with? is that in and way comparable to the content/substance kids these days grow up with? the ban is on the medium but the import is on the content. too much junk on the internet these days. it doesn’t help that (1) they’re way cheaper to produce, and unfortunately (2) highly rewarded (by the platform owners) for their ability to keep users glued.
until it’s possible to have strong and reliable filters, the only way to protect tender minds is through controlled exposure.
Did you get exposed to far right propaganda, dehumanizing women, incitations of violence, practical suggestions of suicide, cartoons about rape followed by pregnancy and a miscarriage, or similar content on TV when you were a kid?
This is the kind of shit that’s everywhere on YT now, and your kids will stumble upon (father of one here). The “faces of death” stuff we had access to once in a blue moon is not even close.
As a parent, I’m concerned about social media, and it has been more or less impossible to stop my teens from using it. They were jailbreaking and using VPNs and bypassing my parental controls a lot earlier than I expected. I did notice that whenever my kids didn’t have access to phones and games for several days for whatever reason, they were less grouchy and more willing to engage with us and do family or social activities.
That said, one thing my teenagers clued me in to is that these efforts to require parental involvement by law have some underlying motivations that are not being said out loud. One of them is to out kids to their parents early and cut off online support for teens going through gender identity issues, especially gay and trans kids, perhaps under the assumption that gender identity is a choice and that online activities are somehow causal.
Considering the suicide rates among teens with gender issues, and the growing number of physiological indicators, I’m not sure cutting off all online support for them is a good idea. One of my kids does have gender identity issues and has considered suicide, and as a parent that breaks my heart and scares me more than anything. It was surprising to find out about the gender issues, and it started coming out around 14, so it’s easy to jump to conclusions that social media is a bad influence. But in retrospect, the signs had been there for a long time and we failed to see and acknowledge them. Our kid said that online support is what kept her from attempting suicide even earlier.
If there were anything else that harmed over 90% of kids while potentially helping a remainder we’d generally prohibit it.
I’ve known and worked with folks facing mental health issues over the decades and usually these kind of issues come from within. The idea that instagram is a cure-all for teen self-harm is not supported.
Anecdata—we knew a teen recently with very supportive parents and a smartphone and it didn’t stop a suicide attempt. Direct intervention did.
I'm an exmormon who grew up in Utah. I have seen a very significant amount of positive engagement over social media with people who desperately need it.
My state's version of this law is to force ID-verification for porn sites. For that stated purpose, it isn't even remotely effective. But what about convincing a child to admit to their parents (or Mormon Bishop) that they watch pornography? That's where it gets truly concerning.
Yeah, what a weird spooky coincidence that someone like DeSantis would make a move that’s cut off kids’ means to countermand their parents’ information lockout.
Send them to a private school, or even better, homeschool, control what kind of people they make friends with, keep them busy with church and Sunday school and bible study, burn the books and defund the public libraries, control what music they listen to and what shows and films they watch and the games they play… and, of course, control their means of communication.
Heaven forbid your child ever be exposed to anything that might make them question the reality of this little garden of Eden you’ve imprisoned them in.
So you grew up without AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo accounts, web forums and MySpace? Or for the generation before that, Geocities and Usenet?
The current form of interactive online platforms may be flawed but banning teens from using them is not the solution and any effective method of enforcing such a law is likely to run afoul of the 1st Amendment. Besides obviously the Tinker v. Des Moines precedent about how teens have the right to engage in non-disruptive speech at school which is probably sufficient to overturn this if the Supreme Court recognizes the precedent.
Under COPPA, the "parental consent" requirement for under-13s to sign up for online accounts turned into a de-facto ban because no parent or web site wants to deal with mailed permission forms. The informal "don't ask don't tell" policy works pretty well though because it functions as an IQ test to keep the kids who are too dumb to figure out that you're supposed to lie about your age (as I did to be able to use Geocities when I was 10) off of the internet. A "parental consent" requirement is effectively a ban which is what it was in the original law that DeSantis vetoed. But it sounds like this was a major priority for the Speaker of the state House so it was going to happen in some form possibly over the governor's veto in a worse form if he completely opposed it.
I grew up in a time when social computing was when we geeks of ages 13-15 brought each others Computers to a house and challenged each other to write games on another device.
Back in the days when I had an Acorn Atom and friends would bring their Spectrum, Oric—1, TRS-80, Commodore 64 etc.
> It's extremely difficult for parents to stop their children, especially early teens from using social media.
I'm trying to decide whether it's "extremely easy" or "extremely difficult" for parents to stop their children from having a cell phone. One the one hand, all you have to do is not spend money and not buy a phone, easy. And yet, almost every kid has a cell phone, so evidently it is hard for parents to say no.
This law will put social media in the same situation. It will be "extremely easy" for parents to simply not give permission, but, like cell phones, I think most kids will end up having social media accounts anyway.
From personal experience with a teenager - you can't stop it. They get a device from their friend, they are easy to find. They keep them hidden, and you only find them by being a total snoop and seeing new devices popup on your wifi network. Or, they only use them at friends houses on their wifi, etc.
I don't think half the people commenting in this thread have even one single clue about any of this, from real world experience. You can do everything right on your end, but they sit with their friends on their devices when not around your house.
Phones are not that expensive anymore. Kids can buy used phones for $100, or get hand-me-downs from friends. They can use them on wifi, or if they are able to get a prepaid SIM they can use them on cellular also.
I had a conversation with a mom recently where she wanted my input on her media choices because she thought what I was doing was cool and admirable.
It all fell apart when she realized that she'd have to yank the XBox, the PS*, the Switch, etc.
Her kid, and all of the other entitled ones with endless access to everything on the internet, are utterly intolerable when they come over -- until they go outside with my kids for a few hours and come back in with their heads reset!
Why should companies be forced to help parents supervise their own children? It's ironic that DeSantis is all about parental freedom yet wants to turn the companies into a nanny.
This trope that kids are more vulnerable to the influence of social media is dangerous. Media literacy, social media literacy, and internet literacy are critical for all ages, as without it you could be 10 or 40 and be equally influenced by some "influencer" you watch daily videos from. There are plenty of adults who react just as equally as a child would. Age does not guarantee maturity or competency.
It doesn’t work though. Using instagram web bypasses the app limit. If you set a website limit, it only applies to Safari. If you block TikTok, they will find video compilations in Spotify, which shouldn’t have to be blocked. It’s a mess.
The funny thing is Facebook already has restrictions on serving ads to and collecting data from kids under 13. They have a popup that asks, "Are you over 13?" at which point my then 11 year old daughter clicked yes.
This is feel-good legislation and is not realistically enforceable. People can argue about it all they want, it won't change anything because it's not enforceable.
>It requires them to use a third-party verification system to screen out those who are underage.
One thing I worry about, as a parent in Silicon Valley, is that my kid will somehow procure a phone and hide it from us. My kids don't have enough cash to go buy a new phone without us noticing, but used phones are pretty cheap. Also, a wealthy friend/boyfriend could buy a phone and pay for cellular (MVNOs are quite inexpensive these days), which would defeat router-based monitoring. My kids are currently too young to do any of this, but I foresee it as an issue in the future.
Yeah it is difficult being a parent. Welcome to parenting and adulthood. The solution isn't more big government and a massive police/surveillance state. It's no wonder Stumpy didn't get too far in the primaries, people could spot his deep state tendencies from a mile away.
> It's extremely difficult for parents to stop their children, especially early teens from using social media.
What are you talking about? Parents can use on-device controls, you can lock a phone down in many ways. There will be whiz kids who can get around these, but those few whiz kids can also easily get around any controls via legislation with VPNs.
It doesn't require a whiz kid to get around the absolutely terrible implementation of parental controls on iOS. Based on the number of bugs in ScreenTime (TikTok restricted to 15 minutes, but on the same screen shows 2.5 hours of use that day) I'm half convinced the feature is just parental control theater.
These critics have no understanding of the law. We’ve been making exceptions for children for decades at least, probably since the beginning of the republic
I assure you I have an understanding of the law. This is such a a rude and preposterous assertion in bad faith.
This is a law mandating ID verification for all children and adults.
If you require controls for everyone below a certain age, you de facto require controls for everyone of every age who does not prove they are over the minimum age. In other words, even if you can legally discriminate against children, my rights to speak anonymously as an adult are being taken away because if I don't show my ID, I will be treated as a child who has fewer rights.
We can disagree on the merits, but please don't imply that everyone who disagrees with you is ipso facto an idiot.
People might see it as harsh but looking at reality and the hard numbers collected about the gigantic negative impact it has on kids and teenagers this is the right move, would even push it till 18.
I'm a parent of an 11 and 14 year old and I have mixed feelings about this. First, I am concerned about the negative effect of social media on kids and my initial reaction to this was positive, but then I remembered my 11 year old daughter uses Messenger kids to keep up with her cousin across the country. They only see each other once a year so the fact that they have this connection I see as really positive, and the accounts on that platform are totally controlled by parents.
My son is old enough the law would give us a choice and I'd let him keep Discord I think as well. If there is something positive here though it would be forcing the companies to make it easier for parents to control what their kids do, it should just be up to them.
Because at 18 people are responsible for their own actions, and restricting them after that is unreasonable and contrary to personal freedom.
There's a consistent factoid going around that brains aren't done developing until the age of 25. It's frequently used as an argument to restrict young people.
Looking at performance by age in fields like math and music, declining brain plasticity seems more like a reason to implement the carousel from Logan's Run
Excellent, have a whole group of voters who aren't allowed access to certain political information. Or are you going to raise the voting age to 25 as well?
Perhaps we should also cut off people over 65, since they've proven to be more vulnerable to scams and financial exploitation over social media?
(there's real arguments to be had about the negative effects of social media, but a serious discussion would include those on adults and old people as well, and this ban, like the TikTok one, is definitely more a part of culture war than a well-intentioned effort to improve the effect of telecoms on people's lives)
I do wonder at what age social media is supposed to stop being destructive to mental health. Based on my experience, I'm also inclined to think the answer is never, but there's too much money to be made to stop it.
Why not ban the businesses entirely? Certainly all the interesting points about banning TikTok apply even more to domestic companies than they do to foreign ones.
In all seriousness, this is a great move that should be emulated. I'm a tech-optimist but the effect social media has on teenagers specifically and public discourse in general is absolutely toxic.
I grew up as social media came into being(mid 2000s). When I was 13, I got Myspace. When I was 16, I got Facebook. It wasn't until well into college that I realized the impact social media had on my mental health. I would go further and say nobody until 18 should have social media, but that may be unrealistic in 2024.
I grew up with the birth of the internet and social media and I have the opposite feeling. I know that sound the old one monologue but I came from the time that social media were exclusively social and not a bunch of people creating content endlessly in the hope of making tons of money in the internet.
I used aol, Microsoft Messenger, Facebook and a very famous Google social media on my country, called Orkut. None of these gave me anxious to see what's happening or any negative thoughts. In fact In using the internet and social medja learned so many things, meet different people outside of my country and from other states and learned about other cultures and other languages.
All these years and I think the way that social media works is rotting people's brain: people barely pay attention on you because they are too busy seeing their timeline, people even use it on traffic and all of these people are adults that doesn't knew about social media until some years ago. Internet and Social media for children must be supervised and not restricted.
I understand where you’re coming from but these were not social media.
I used Orkut too. It was a place to talk to your real-life friends, join local communities and organize events. You didn’t develop a personal following or post selfies looking for approval.
Social media, as we have it today, allows individuals to broadcast their twisted mind to millions, and not via text - only cute pictures, memes, and 30-second clips. These are worlds apart.
Setting it to 18 is obviously pretty ridiculous. That's just going to continue the weird trend of infantilizing people by pushing back the age at which they learn to deal with things that require self control.
At 16 there are at least 2 years where parents have the ability to actually interfere and help bring any negative effects under control.
Do you know at what age people are able to properly deal with things that require self control? I believe that part of the brain doesn’t mature until early 20s. At 18 a person is legally an adult so 18 seems like a much more reasonable cutoff than 16.
I would sit on facebook, refreshing and doom scrolling endlessly. When fb messenger came out I was monitoring facebook messenger when it first came out to see who was online. I was always a pretty lonely kid, and I thought social media would connect me with people. It didn't really.
Readit News
It is an unconstitutional law; it is following the path of similar unconstitutional laws¹²³. Where is the experiment?
¹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Entertainment_Merchan...
²https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reno_v._American_Civil_Liberti... (sections about minor access to indecent material struck down)
³https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/ohio/oh...
- social media being optimized for addiction
- social media potentially compromising minors’ physical safety
- social media use having documented adverse mental health outcomes for minors
- the fact that social media use requires an ongoing contractual relationship between the company and the minor
I could see these factors tipping the balance on the “compelling government interest” question, though I see less of an argument for “narrow tailoring”.
I think the experiment is more about the judiciary and about tribal politics. There's ample case law against something like this, so to me this seems unconstitutional, and I doubt it will stand. But DeSantis will win some more heart and minds of the folks who secretly do want big government protecting them from the boogieman.
Regardless of anyone's views about social media, the fact that the government wants 'papers please' for you to access a website should really scare everyone.
Those supporters aren't very secret about it. In fact, they are quite open about it.
We've been doing that for R and X movies forever.
Deleted Comment
I think it’s excellent the government is taking a stand to protect kids when it’s obvious most parents are unable to. Kids have no business in the discourse.
Perhaps... but my guess is that repeatability wouldn't depend on the children but on the wants and needs of the governing politicians.
That is, the data would, in my view, likely be worthless for its purported goal, but can give some insight into some political shenanigans.
Monumentally naïve. Zero understanding of the way things work in reality.
I disagree to an extent. Oregons drug decriminalization failed because of a few reasons that are plain to see:
- The people who wrote the measure did not prescribe how it should be done, just what it should achieve.
- The measure demanded changes be immediate, which didn't jive with a very slow running, heavy bureaucracy like Oregons government. More importantly, time was not given for the social services pipelines to fill with cash and plans.
- The law did not also ban public drug use, it depended on the legislature doing this - which they never did. This was the big tipping point. You don't forget the smell of meth or fent, especially outside your grocery store or kids school.
This was a master class in when head in the clouds thinking meets legislative elites who are outright insulted when the people flex their voice.
I do think we'll revisit this again in the future, but hopefully next time we at least ban public drug use.
Imagine that Biden campaigned in 2000 extensively off a hoax that Trump called nazis fine people. This was well supported by professional media.
"Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will have no other" -- Benjamin Franklin
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2021/05/25/dear-school/
Really ?
I mean the entire point of the nanny state argument is to not act as a nanny toward ADULT citizen. Minor should still be protected, especially under 16
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Then he said that they were going to get all the other kids in the school off the social media site, and asked again what the student would want to be paid to be off the site. The answer was that students would actually pay to be in that situation.
For some kids at least, this is a coordination problem, where they'd all rather not be on social media, but assuming others are, they want to be there. I could be getting the details/dollar values wrong, and I don't know that this bill is the right way to address the issue.
But it's pretty clear that social media is something that many teens wish they could avoid, but currently feel they can't. That doesn't mean we need to Do Something™, but it does mean that we're not currently in the optimal situation.
Edit: found the experiment. Haidt wrote about it, but it was done by University of Chicago economist Leonardo Bursztyn. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/03/teen-...
My solution was to not care if I was missing out. Counterintuitively, it's not until you do that that you're free to find the life you want for yourself. Good luck explaining that to a 16 year old though, they're not there yet, they're not building the life they want, they're finding their tribe, and you have to be connected to do that.
Disconnecting as an adult is much easier/worthwhile because you now have other means of signalling.
I already didn’t want a Facebook account just to see a businesses specials, now I’ll need to present ID too?
Certainly interested to see how all this plays out.
It also has conditions for which sites are affected by this law. The site has to have doomscroll and already be popular with kids. Google Maps isn't what they're targeting.
Honestly, mixed feelings. I'm in no rush to show Zuck my passport but the flagrant grooming comments on every kid's TikTok account is enough to show there's a significant problem, even if this isn't the right answer.
I agree, but I think your problem isn't Zuck, it's with passports.
Government issued licences aren't fit for purpose any more. They were when all you did with your paper drivers licence is show it to the police, but now they've become a form of ID you show man+dog who gets to scrape a whole pile of into from it that can be used to track you. For example, they can follow your passport number or drivers licence to connect a series of what should look like unrelated transactions.
As an example, now when a car rental company wants to know you have a valid licence they demand a copy of it. If you have an accident they use the copy to prove they verified you are licenced to drive, if you do something illegal they can hand over your ID so the police can chase you down. FIDO / WebAuthn / PassKey shows how those things can be achieved without leaking all the information on the licence. It can hand over a one time token saying you have a valid licence and signed by something that chains back to a public key held by the government. The token reveals nothing more than that to the car hire firm, but should they hand it over to the police they can decrypt it to identify you.
These tokens are useless if stolen. They can't link you to other transactions and don't identify you in any way, and yet are far more secure than a bunch of unsigned pixels. In other words unlike a copy of a passport, mostly harmless.
The bill summary on the Florida senate webpage says:
> Such commercial entities must verify, using either an anonymous or standard age verification method, that the age of a person attempting to access the material harmful to minors satisfies the bill’s age requirements.
It sounds to me like “anonymous age verification method” could just mean that the website asks how old you are? What constitutes verification here? That sentence makes it sound like they can choose to use whatever feeble method they want.
At face value this law seems like political points being scored by passing a widely popular law that changes very little in practice (bumping the minimum age from 13 to 14).
so...everyone - that Facebook or whatever considers to be in Florida - has to provide ID to post, then?
I think the point is that the internet and particularly social media is now the de-facto town square. States are basically requiring identification to speak or criticize government in the town square. If you take a step back and look at it that way, it's grossly anti-American.
Imagine back in the day, if you had any type of meeting/gathering to discuss anything that might be related to politics, and the police were there to collect everyone's Id. AA meetings, computer meetups, hobby gathering, HOA meetings, etc. This is essentially that, except on a computer. Just think of the children!
Deleted Comment
Hopefully this will make that problem less prevalent.
I know the devil is in the details though, so kinda curious what the actual provisions are.
The alternative is a free internet, where we don't need accounts to do things, because we're not building or storing advertising profiles on users. Hmmmm... imagine that.
Why would anybody rent to a minor otherwise, regardless of the contract breaking issues. They are unlikely to have much credit history. To say nothing of the maturity / responsibility and income (+ wealth / cash savings) problems.
Deleted Comment
Deleted Comment
Sure, so long as you pay for the service you're using. 10c per HN post, 50c per facebook photo.
Apparently some people haven't heard about Stacker News (okay it's more like $0.0001 per post, but anyways...)
I feel it's more likely that the long game is ultimately about de-anonymizing the Internet.
This particular objective is a solid plausible explanation of so many initiatives over the last few years. Perhaps not full public de-anonymization, but at the very least to make it easier for things like CALEA to exist in these spaces as well. The public is constantly shown techniques in whodunnit TV shows where the good guys can instantly look up an IP address or other identifying log entry and associate it with a name/address/etc.
IMHO, the plan is to make Business As Usual untenable and make it cheaper and financially safer for tech companies to give in and identify everybody as a survival mechanism. When its safer to record a passport/realid/etc as a legal defense then at some point it'll be done.
After that happens then it's easy to plug in something like CALEA. The public is already being primed to accept it with the benefits being constantly shown on the likes of CSI/NCIS/etc/etc/etc shows.
Of course, from a profit perspective, it certainly wouldn't hurt that all this valuable user data that is being being compiled is finally cross checked and validated.
Or maybe I'm completely wrong and there's no ulterior motive and there's nothing more to it than politicians trying to be seen to be doing the right thing. Hah! I'm way too cynical for that.
Deleted Comment
Please convince me I'm crazy or provide anecdotes that suggest this to be a terrible idea.
I grew up with internet access in the early 90s and have been behind a keyboard ever since.
edit: Downvotes are not for disagreement, please provide constructive discussion to a reasonable question.
No.
Marginalized groups __need__ their anonymity to be safe.
Should a teenager in Utah be doxxed by a message board where they're working through their gender identity?
What about a kid in Georgia that's working through whether or not they believe the religion they were raised in?
How about a wife who is beginning the research process and asking questions about whether what she's experiencing at home is spousal abuse or not?
Anonymity protects those of us most in danger.
Our local newspaper used to allow people to comment on stories with a Facebook account. People who were using real names and had publicly posted enough information that you'd be able to quickly locate where they lived frequently went on extreme rants.
The newspaper eventually just got rid of Facebook-powered comments, but I see the same behavior (terrible comments under real names, easily linked to employers/homes/schools) on the neighborhood's Nextdoor discussions.
Maybe this is true, but we also have to think about the perfectly reasonable things we nevertheless wouldn’t want pinned on us. Political opinions, of which many of mine are half-baked and I am writing to test with other smart people, but I don’t want to necessarily be associated with them forever. I don’t want to worry that simply saying tech workers should unionize will impact my employability in the future.
Better for who?
Any system secure enough that a person could never face consequences for posting something unpopular would also be incapable of accomplishing the goal of censoring things online that are considered "bad".
You say that even our current pseudo-anonymous communication enables "extremism" but any system that would prevent it could be used to stop a whistleblower, or a protestor, or an atheist, or anyone else with an unpopular opinion. I don't see that as making the internet better, and I question how much it would even stop the things most people today would agree to want abolished.
Deleted Comment
I don't believe so.
> For this to be a constructive discussion, can we assume companies have a proper and secure way to validate identities and store your data?
What?! No, we absolutely can't assume that. In fact, good default is to assume that data stored will be eventually compromised with high probability. Assuming otherwise is like believing in some magical backdoors in cryptography that only "good" guys can access and other such nonsense.
> I sometimes wonder if the internet as we know it and social medias pervasive influence would be much different if people were less anonymous.
Social media as we know it today mostly stems from FB which has a real name policy. Don't think FB is much better than others (by any measure that interests me at least).
It's extremely difficult for parents to stop their children, especially early teens from using social media. This law should make it easier and it would put the work on Meta, Snap, Tiktok, Pinterest, Twitter to help parents.
I'm personally glad that I grew up without social media but I worry about the kids growing up now. The amount of random junk young kids are exposed to on social media is worrying.
Your argument seems like exactly what my parents would have said about me spending so much time on TV, computers and electronics instead of studying, playing outside, sports etc.
Almost exactly like your last paragraph.. “I’m personally glad that I grew up without infinite channels on TV, computers and its games, cell phones and your SMSes. I’m worried about your generation. You guys are exposed to a lot of junk and things that waste your attention.” - Dad.
Yet, here we are….
May be kids of now will just need to be educated about the real impact and not be treated as if they are in glass houses?
TV, print, radio, music and to a lesser extent games are all subject to some level of industry or statutory content regulation.
For example, in America, you're very unlikely to have a kids TV channel suddenly switch to videos of people being killed in industrial accidents. new media, not so much.
Watershed, age constraints and company ending fines existed (and in some cases still do) for violating those rules.
Large new media companies, such as facebook, youtube and tiktok can literally serve porn to kids and not have any legal ramifications. If a cable broadcaster knowingly broadcast frontal nudity before watershed, it would be fined. (yes, cable TV has less restrictions) but thats the point, regulation has not kept up with the pace of change. that has been a deliberate decision.
My kids are >5 < 12. They aren't allowed on insta/tiktok. They can have youtube, but its only when supervised. even then its 1/3 chance that they land on something toxic as shit.
The world has changed, and the guard rails that we had as kids have been removed. There is an argument about freedom of expression, I get that. But we need to think about whether its right to allow large corporations to profit from showing horrific content to minors. (adults, I don't give a shit, do what you want) The problem is, I'm not sure of the best mechanism, with the least bad outcome.
Having struggled with various forms of screen addiction myself, I find it sort of odd that a lot of people are so laissez faire about giving children the most addictive device ever created.[3] Whether or not this law is a good idea, I think it's incumbent on parents to monitor and limit screen time and access to social media. Which is difficult! When my wife and I are tired, setting my daughter down in front of an ipad is the easiest way to get a break.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S23522...
[2] https://jeanmtwenge.substack.com/p/yes-its-the-phones-and-so...
[3] Sure, it's not technically "the device," itself, but rather what it makes possible.
As an adult, I don't have cable, I use an antenna. Yes, I have streaming some streaming services.
As adults and/or parents we can make decisions that help our kids (and they might help us too)
I also use Adblock.
The TV argument is the same as devices too; We had one family TV growing up; I still refuse to have a TV in my bedroom.
In conclusion, seems like we've hit the generation where our parents used TV to parent and so now we don't know how to parents -- or, for many people, be.
TV --> has quality control, professionally done, goes through a team of editors/creators before making it onto the screen
Early internet --> Mostly harmless content, can find dark stuff if kids look for it but it's pretty hard to find. More dangerous than TV but not too bad.
SMS --> just chatting with people you know. Not afraid.
TikTok, IG Reels, Youtube Shorts, Snapchat, Twitter: Good luck to you. Your kid is going to see a ton of deep fakes, edited images of unrealistic body proportions that the influencer won't disclose, heaps of radical and extremist views, undisclosed sponsorships masquerading as advice, targeted ads that anyone can buy, etc.
The magnitude is much higher now - hence I think laws need to come in to make it easier for parents to get back some control.
Go ahead and try to teach your kid who is going to spend hours each day seeing hundreds of videos each day - probably tens of thousands in a year. What are you going to do? Watch 100 Instagram Reels per day with your kid and explain each and every single one? As an adult, even I'm easily influenced by this stuff.
The problem with this argument is that TV had ads and while they are manipulative, they are absolutely no match for the shit that Meta, YouTube, etc pull. Kids (and quite obviously lots of adults) simply do not have the ability to deal with that.
until it’s possible to have strong and reliable filters, the only way to protect tender minds is through controlled exposure.
Education about the real impact will not happen if there is profit to be made in forsaking education.
Deleted Comment
This is the kind of shit that’s everywhere on YT now, and your kids will stumble upon (father of one here). The “faces of death” stuff we had access to once in a blue moon is not even close.
That said, one thing my teenagers clued me in to is that these efforts to require parental involvement by law have some underlying motivations that are not being said out loud. One of them is to out kids to their parents early and cut off online support for teens going through gender identity issues, especially gay and trans kids, perhaps under the assumption that gender identity is a choice and that online activities are somehow causal.
Considering the suicide rates among teens with gender issues, and the growing number of physiological indicators, I’m not sure cutting off all online support for them is a good idea. One of my kids does have gender identity issues and has considered suicide, and as a parent that breaks my heart and scares me more than anything. It was surprising to find out about the gender issues, and it started coming out around 14, so it’s easy to jump to conclusions that social media is a bad influence. But in retrospect, the signs had been there for a long time and we failed to see and acknowledge them. Our kid said that online support is what kept her from attempting suicide even earlier.
I’ve known and worked with folks facing mental health issues over the decades and usually these kind of issues come from within. The idea that instagram is a cure-all for teen self-harm is not supported.
Anecdata—we knew a teen recently with very supportive parents and a smartphone and it didn’t stop a suicide attempt. Direct intervention did.
My state's version of this law is to force ID-verification for porn sites. For that stated purpose, it isn't even remotely effective. But what about convincing a child to admit to their parents (or Mormon Bishop) that they watch pornography? That's where it gets truly concerning.
Dead Comment
Send them to a private school, or even better, homeschool, control what kind of people they make friends with, keep them busy with church and Sunday school and bible study, burn the books and defund the public libraries, control what music they listen to and what shows and films they watch and the games they play… and, of course, control their means of communication.
Heaven forbid your child ever be exposed to anything that might make them question the reality of this little garden of Eden you’ve imprisoned them in.
The current form of interactive online platforms may be flawed but banning teens from using them is not the solution and any effective method of enforcing such a law is likely to run afoul of the 1st Amendment. Besides obviously the Tinker v. Des Moines precedent about how teens have the right to engage in non-disruptive speech at school which is probably sufficient to overturn this if the Supreme Court recognizes the precedent.
Under COPPA, the "parental consent" requirement for under-13s to sign up for online accounts turned into a de-facto ban because no parent or web site wants to deal with mailed permission forms. The informal "don't ask don't tell" policy works pretty well though because it functions as an IQ test to keep the kids who are too dumb to figure out that you're supposed to lie about your age (as I did to be able to use Geocities when I was 10) off of the internet. A "parental consent" requirement is effectively a ban which is what it was in the original law that DeSantis vetoed. But it sounds like this was a major priority for the Speaker of the state House so it was going to happen in some form possibly over the governor's veto in a worse form if he completely opposed it.
Most the bad stuff I saw on the internet ~99/2000 was from IRC.
I had the unfortunate idea to nick myself TheGiver after the novel at 14.
Back in the days when I had an Acorn Atom and friends would bring their Spectrum, Oric—1, TRS-80, Commodore 64 etc.
Both.
I'm trying to decide whether it's "extremely easy" or "extremely difficult" for parents to stop their children from having a cell phone. One the one hand, all you have to do is not spend money and not buy a phone, easy. And yet, almost every kid has a cell phone, so evidently it is hard for parents to say no.
This law will put social media in the same situation. It will be "extremely easy" for parents to simply not give permission, but, like cell phones, I think most kids will end up having social media accounts anyway.
I don't think half the people commenting in this thread have even one single clue about any of this, from real world experience. You can do everything right on your end, but they sit with their friends on their devices when not around your house.
It all fell apart when she realized that she'd have to yank the XBox, the PS*, the Switch, etc.
Her kid, and all of the other entitled ones with endless access to everything on the internet, are utterly intolerable when they come over -- until they go outside with my kids for a few hours and come back in with their heads reset!
At least the other side doesn't hide the fact that they're in favor of regulations.
Should 7-11 be required to stop children from buying pornography magazines?
I give screen time more as a reward for hard work and getting chores done.
I use the screen time feature on Apple devices to limit my kids screen time and the type of apps they can access.
This is feel-good legislation and is not realistically enforceable. People can argue about it all they want, it won't change anything because it's not enforceable.
>It requires them to use a third-party verification system to screen out those who are underage.
We'll see how well that works.
Now do alcohol, cigarettes, adult bars
What are you talking about? Parents can use on-device controls, you can lock a phone down in many ways. There will be whiz kids who can get around these, but those few whiz kids can also easily get around any controls via legislation with VPNs.
This is a law mandating ID verification for all children and adults.
If you require controls for everyone below a certain age, you de facto require controls for everyone of every age who does not prove they are over the minimum age. In other words, even if you can legally discriminate against children, my rights to speak anonymously as an adult are being taken away because if I don't show my ID, I will be treated as a child who has fewer rights.
We can disagree on the merits, but please don't imply that everyone who disagrees with you is ipso facto an idiot.
My son is old enough the law would give us a choice and I'd let him keep Discord I think as well. If there is something positive here though it would be forcing the companies to make it easier for parents to control what their kids do, it should just be up to them.
There's a consistent factoid going around that brains aren't done developing until the age of 25. It's frequently used as an argument to restrict young people.
Looking at performance by age in fields like math and music, declining brain plasticity seems more like a reason to implement the carousel from Logan's Run
Perhaps we should also cut off people over 65, since they've proven to be more vulnerable to scams and financial exploitation over social media?
(there's real arguments to be had about the negative effects of social media, but a serious discussion would include those on adults and old people as well, and this ban, like the TikTok one, is definitely more a part of culture war than a well-intentioned effort to improve the effect of telecoms on people's lives)
In all seriousness, this is a great move that should be emulated. I'm a tech-optimist but the effect social media has on teenagers specifically and public discourse in general is absolutely toxic.
I used Orkut too. It was a place to talk to your real-life friends, join local communities and organize events. You didn’t develop a personal following or post selfies looking for approval.
Social media, as we have it today, allows individuals to broadcast their twisted mind to millions, and not via text - only cute pictures, memes, and 30-second clips. These are worlds apart.
At 16 there are at least 2 years where parents have the ability to actually interfere and help bring any negative effects under control.