Australia launches bill to ban social media for children under 16

[Radiorum]

Social media platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, X and Snapchat, among others, would be affected.

Quote

 

Australia plans to trial an age-verification system that may include biometrics or government identification to enforce a social media age cut-off, some of the toughest controls imposed by any country to date...

“For too many young Australians, social media can be harmful. Almost two-thirds of 14- to 17-year-old Australians have viewed extremely harmful content online, including drug abuse, suicide or self-harm,” Communications Minister Michelle Rowland told Parliament on Thursday.

 

 

Australia launches bill to ban social media for children under 16

Should it be only with parental consent?

[Scott75]

37 minutes ago, Radiorum said:

Social media platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, X and Snapchat, among others, would be affected.

Australia launches bill to ban social media for children under 16

Should it be only with parental consent?

Social media was scarce when I was growing up. I remember that I was 17 when I logged on to my first bulletin board. It was around 1992. I'm not sure when I first started using the internet, but I do know that Netscape didn't even start until 1994. 

Now, there's a lot more choices. I remember that my sister, who had her first kid in 1998, did put some restrictions on how much they could use their smart phones that at least one of her daughters didn't always agree with, but I never heard of her outright banning them from using them.

So based on this rather limited dataset, I think Australia's going too far. If parents don't want their kids to use social media, they already have the power to do that. I don't think the government should outright ban people under 16 from using them.

[Radiorum]

It's a tough question, I personally know a 14-year-old girl who is totally addicted to her phone and her parents are helpless to pry it out of her hands. (Kids these days don't have the fear of their parents we once did).

It comes down to - what responsibility does the government have for the safety of our children?

[NAME REMOVED]

1 hour ago, phoenyx75 said:

Social media was scarce when I was growing up. I remember that I was 17 when I logged on to my first bulletin board. It was around 1992. I'm not sure when I first started using the internet, but I do know that Netscape didn't even start until 1994. 

Social media did not exist in the early 90s.

1 hour ago, phoenyx75 said:

Now, there's a lot more choices. I remember that my sister, who had her first kid in 1998, did put some restrictions on how much they could use their smart phones that at least one of her daughters didn't always agree with, but I never heard of her outright banning them from using them.

Smart phones did not exist in 1998.

[Scott75]

56 minutes ago, DUI_Offender said:

2 hours ago, phoenyx75 said:

Social media was scarce when I was growing up. I remember that I was 17 when I logged on to my first bulletin board. It was around 1992. I'm not sure when I first started using the internet, but I do know that Netscape didn't even start until 1994. 

Social media did not exist in the early 90s.

That depends how one's defining social media. Here's Merriam Webster's definition:

**

forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos)

**

I definitely considered the bulletin boards I started using at age 17 to be social media in that they were online communities, though ofcourse much smaller than the internet.

 

59 minutes ago, DUI_Offender said:

Smart phones did not exist in 1998.

Technically, they did, though they were pretty pricey and they don't compare to what we have these days. But my eldest niece had just been born in 1998. She certainly wasn't using them at that point. 

[Army Guy]

2 hours ago, Radiorum said:

It's a tough question, I personally know a 14-year-old girl who is totally addicted to her phone and her parents are helpless to pry it out of her hands. (Kids these days don't have the fear of their parents we once did).

It comes down to - what responsibility does the government have for the safety of our children?

we have created several generations that are addicted to their phones and whats on them...The other day me and the wife were in a restaurant sitting across from us were a group of younger people maybe 20 something, all 4 of them had their phones out, very little conversation going on for the entire time they were there....

Besides TV was the built in babysitter when i was growing up, and we were limited to what we could watch and how much....we were told to be in the house after the street lights came on....we were always outside...today, i need to bribe my grandkids to get our of the house...and if they are on that Playstation forget it...

Maybe this is what kids need....i mean we all met those parents that should not even have a pet goffer to be honest...maybe the government needs to intervene, in some way....How the heck they are going to control all of that is a mystery  

[Radiorum]

12 hours ago, Army Guy said:

we have created several generations that are addicted to their phones and whats on them

And it's interfering with their mental health.

Rates of adolescent depression increased from 8.1% in 2009 to 15.8% in 2019

Rising Rates of Adolescent Depression in the United States: Challenges and Opportunities in the 2020s

This year, 21% of adolescents ages 12-17 report experiencing symptoms of anxiety in the past two weeks, and 17% said they had symptoms of depression.

Roughly 1 in 5 Adolescents Report Experiencing Symptoms of Anxiety or Depression

It's time for the adults to step up.
 

[eyeball]

20 hours ago, Radiorum said:

It comes down to - what responsibility does the government have for the safety of our children?

Maybe a better question would be what responsibility does the government have for the effectiveness of a kid's parent's?

[Radiorum]

4 hours ago, eyeball said:

Maybe a better question would be what responsibility does the government have for the effectiveness of a kid's parent's?

We've got to recognize the limits to the government's sphere of influence. Can governments place restrictions of companies? Yes. Can governments monitor how parents do their parenting? Not so much.

[eyeball]

6 hours ago, Radiorum said:

We've got to recognize the limits to the government's sphere of influence. Can governments place restrictions of companies? Yes. Can governments monitor how parents do their parenting? Not so much.

You shouldn't need to monitor if there are more court rulings that penalize liable parents for their kids actions should they be tied to poor or lax parental oversight of their kids. Parents should, one hopes be learning to be more careful about their kids getting access to guns for example.

As for dealing with corporate bad actors, governments are who I'd be monitoring. As for who pays the biggest penalty for not keeping a closer eye on them, that's us.

[Radiorum]

6 hours ago, eyeball said:

You shouldn't need to monitor if there are more court rulings that penalize liable parents for their kids actions should they be tied to poor or lax parental oversight of their kids. Parents should, one hopes be learning to be more careful about their kids getting access to guns for example.

I don't think we can compare guns to phones. And trying to monitor the phone usage of millions of kids sounds like an impossible nightmare. More efficient to go after the companies providing the services.

[eyeball]

6 hours ago, Radiorum said:

I don't think we can compare guns to phones. And trying to monitor the phone usage of millions of kids sounds like an impossible nightmare. More efficient to go after the companies providing the services.

I'm pretty sure the usual suspects will treat going after these companies as an attack on their freedoms.

And in terms of harm to kids who commit suicide when poor oversight of available content victimizes them, guns and phones are perhaps more comparable than they seem at first blush.

[August1991]

On 11/24/2024 at 7:01 AM, Radiorum said:

I don't think we can compare guns to phones. And trying to monitor the phone usage of millions of kids sounds like an impossible nightmare. More efficient to go after the companies providing the services.

Guns and phones?

I see a huge difference: The State can control the use of guns; it cannot control the use of phones.

The US first amendment makes sense; the second does not. A civilised state should restrict who has a gun.

Edited November 30, 2024 by August1991

[August1991]

On 11/22/2024 at 4:28 PM, Radiorum said:

.... I personally know a 14-year-old girl who is totally addicted to her phone and her parents are helpless to pry it out of her hands.

,,,

Decades ago, parents said the same of telephones; teenage girls had the earpiece for hours.

And no doubt, centuries ago, parents worried about daughters wasting time in the market, gossiping.

Addicted?

 

[Dougie93]

typical authoritarian lunacy from Australia

which will of course backfire

when the Social Media companies easily comply with this toothless law

absolving them of any further liability

dumping all the liability thereafter on the parents whom are unable to police their children

[eyeball]

22 hours ago, August1991 said:

The State can control the use of guns; it cannot control the use of phones.

The state can control the use of phones for kids 16 and under at least in Australia now. Good on them, we should do the same. I say raise the age to seventeen and also start pressing telecoms to clamp down on what's accessible.

22 hours ago, August1991 said:

A civilised state should restrict who has a gun.

A state concerned about the safety of kids in a highly competitive and exploitative world should restrict who has access to kids. Parents can only do so much.

Too many kids have died when this access crosses a line and it's simply too easy to cross to leave unattended. Think guardrails.

It takes a village and community to raise a child.

Edited December 1, 2024 by eyeball

[herbie]

Held a service a couple years ago for the wife on a sunny hot day in the middle of summer. The park and the beach are around the corner about 150m from my house.

Every single kid 10 to 18, cousins from distant towns who hadn't seen each other in months or years, friends they dragged along and the kids of local friends were inside the house piled on couches and the floor absorbed in their cell phones. None of them even asked my wifi password.
Even the adults -  there were like 3 that didn't have their phone on the picnic tables in front of them.

This bullshit has to stop. Three kids in the backseat of my car on a 2 hours journey and I hear only the odd giggle. Their shoulders are rubbing and they're texting each other......
I wanted to smack a friend's wife in the head. Telling us all the reasons her kid in Grade 5 "needed" an iPhone.
 

[Army Guy]

On 12/1/2024 at 6:18 PM, herbie said:

Held a service a couple years ago for the wife on a sunny hot day in the middle of summer. The park and the beach are around the corner about 150m from my house.

Every single kid 10 to 18, cousins from distant towns who hadn't seen each other in months or years, friends they dragged along and the kids of local friends were inside the house piled on couches and the floor absorbed in their cell phones. None of them even asked my wifi password.
Even the adults -  there were like 3 that didn't have their phone on the picnic tables in front of them.

This bullshit has to stop. Three kids in the backseat of my car on a 2 hours journey and I hear only the odd giggle. Their shoulders are rubbing and they're texting each other......
I wanted to smack a friend's wife in the head. Telling us all the reasons her kid in Grade 5 "needed" an iPhone.
 

Sorry for your loss Herbie, sometimes we forget that the people online are real and have lives of their own. anyways you have my condolences.