The UK's Teen Social Media Ban Is Political Theater, Not Child Safety Policy

autoexec

> Again, every detailed study on the subject has found that the number of teenagers who have negative experiences on social media is tiny. The study they linked is just self reported data from an internet survey. I'm sure that 13 year olds who don't get enough sleep because they're endlessly scrolling through ads, influencers, and disinformation don't see any problem with it the same way that a survey of alcoholics will show that beer is great, alcohol improves their lives, and that of course they can quit any time they want. I'm not even suggesting that this ban will be effective or helpful, or that such bans are a good thing, but we know that these platforms are used to prey on their users, that "negative experiences" can be found easily, and that there's actual evidence of actual harms caused or facilitated by social media (including corpses). It should take a lot more than the opinions of just over a thousand children to discredit all of that and cause us to assume there's no problems with these platforms, how they're being used, or the effects they have on children.

raychis

The UK government's turn towards authoritarianism on these sorts of things is extremely worrisome! Invest in a VPN to keep yourself safe.

g-technology

Isn’t it normally the case when politicians in any part of the world say they need to do something for the children, it’s just theatre to cover up them doing nothing or to hide legislation with a different purpose?

Reason077

My 15-year old niece who recently visited her cousins in Australia assured me that the recently enacted Aussie law did not affect her ability to access socials while in Australia, nor has it affected her U16 cousins, who still have their accounts. Apparently the age checking there only applies to newly created accounts.

Bender

Fear not, Roblox will not be subject to the policy for the older games within Roblox and as such young children allegedly may be able to get the latest news from their possibly maybe perhaps adult groomers. The newer games within Roblox are purportedly going through a 16+ check. [1] [1] - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9824zvpz9po

basisword

The tone gave it away before he finally disclosed but - shocker - the author is on the board of a social media company. Social media has been a pretty clear net-negative for society. The opinions of a guy in away connected with the industry are irrelevant. As usual when tech people are asked to do something to control the harms of their products the excuse is "you don't understand, it's not possible". The author thinks preventing children sharing nude images on platforms is some impossible task - yet Apple has already implemented pretty good controls for this. I'm not saying the regulations are perfect but continuing to ignore the problems caused by social media is irresponsible. There was an interview with a kid in the UK that went viral yesterday. The interviewer pointed out the kid had spent 9 hours on a screen the previous weekend and asked what they would do now. The answer - stare at the wall. Funny. Maybe said in jest. But I think it still sums up the reason we need to do something about this. If kids literally don't know what to do with themselves without a screen the future isn't looking good. Another kid said it was taking away his planned career...as an influencer.

basisword

It would be great if we could test the harms of social media societally. Hypothetically if a democratic country with a free press was able to effectively ban Facebook, X, etc for a few years there's no doubt in my mind that the division we see in so many countries would clear up relatively quickly.

pj_mukh

Article mostly cites self-reported studies ie the kids think that the kids are doing alright, which is a different statement from the kids are actually doing alright. Most teachers seeing generational changes are raising five alarm fires around how badly the kids are doing. Actually testing kids is showing a startling reverse Flynn effect [1]. I’m curious what the author has in terms of actual evidence here? [1] https://pure.eur.nl/en/publications/the-negative-flynn-effec...

100ms

Like most I've been listening to this same old argument for nearly 30 years. Old enough now to know it doesn't have to be perfect, it doesn't have to even be 50% effective to mark a substantial improvement, a significant chunk of young people won't even need a technical restriction beyond being told the behaviour is against the law because it's bad for them. But keep goading with "it's technically impossible" and watch what's left of the Internet turn into a government licensing fest, because it is entirely technically possible. Imagine how much cleaner and shiny the nation's pipes would be if we simply throttled any ciphertext flow that couldn't be matched to an Ofcom license holder. They'd never do that. No country in the world has done that, right?

greatgib

Crazy to think that all of that happens in the country of George Orwell that was probably too in advance for his time with 1984 and the Animal Farm. It was supposed to be a kind of satire of his own time, but it was in the end a perfect prediction of what is coming to us now. Scary to see how far will go the Pigs that are in command in UK, France, Canada, ...

drivingmenuts

This is a "can't lose" for Starmer. If it inevitably doesn't work exactly the way he wants, then he'll just blame the tech companies for not trying hard enough. Best bet here is to require that the government provide exacting requirements for what they want done and to hew to those requirements exactly. Some form of malicious compliance is necessary here.

Lerc

I have to wonder how much of this is projected guilt. Parents can feel guilty about the amount of time they themselves spend on social media. Choosing for someone else to reduce their usage combined with choosing for someone else being required to make that happen seems like a way to feels as if they are acting against what they don't like, but at the same time doesn't require them to make any particular concession to their own behaviour.

Quarrelsome

Mumsnet CEO is apparently on their advisory board, which more or less explains it. They just want something cheap they can tell someone else to implement to win the votes off concerned parents. It doesn't matter if it works, it just matters if they can carve out votes in 2029 for it. UK has a relatively long standing tradition of fucking itself over in order to win a single election (e.g. the Brexit ref). Its particularly frustrating cos they ain't even done the OAuth properly like the Aussies have taken a pass at. Could even put an NGO as a shim in-between to protect privacy. But noOoOo, we'll ignore all the tech advice, do something shit and then follow it up by trying to "ban" VPNs when it clearly doesn't work, because we're thick.

fhub

A lot of issues require holding two ideas in your head at once. Age verification chips away at privacy and internet freedom. It likely also reduces harm to some/many/whatever children, even if it’s imperfect and won’t stop everyone. The interesting question is where the right trade off sits. People often end up arguing only one side.

tim-tday

No, it’s surveillance masquerading as “think of the children”. You can’t verify age without verifying identity.

herunan

as always… any ban of this type is lazy virtue signalling. it’s proving unsuccessful in australia and it’ll be unsuccessful in the uk. it’s way too easy to circumvent with vpns and social media is not going to prevent it because it’s not in their interest. governments should put their thinking cap on and regulate the addicting ux patterns that social media uses…

throwaway85825

I don't think the government that sponsors child rape gangs actually cares about child protection. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/6810978a41bbc42489eaf...

sneak

The requirement to show ID is not to perform age verification to ban children from services. The requirement to show ID is so that every user (especially adults) online can be real-world identified and located . This allows the state to privately and quietly retaliate for any sort of posts or publications or link-sharing that they don't like. It's a ban on anonymous publishing, anonymous speech. It's so that they can simply and easily retaliate against publishers that don't have a legal department and media team (i.e. you). This is a fundamental attack on freedom of expression by adults, by prohibiting anonymous use of the internet. It has precisely zero to do with children.

6stringmerc

Kids, like all humans, are subject to an uncomfortable reality that is dismissed far too often in discussions about leadership and regulations: 49% of all people are less intelligent than the average person.