Most parties in the Danish parliament said they support implementing a 15-year-old minimum age requirement for social media. It is not yet known which social media platforms will be affected.
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And how would that be enforced? More surveillance?
You know it
It sounds like they’re using MitID, the Danish government personal verification software. It’s completely ubiquitous here, and it’s linked to your CPR number (like a social security number but more functional).
The apps, as far as I understand it, won’t know anything other than “yes they verified they’re over 18” from MitID.
I understand and definitely feel the surveillance fear, but this feels well worth it to me for less brainwashing of children by companies like Twitter and FB
Regardless of the practicality of enforcing this I think it’s a good idea. Most social media is very predatory and do not contribute in any positive way to a child that’s growing up. I’ve seen what especially TikTok does to a young kids brain, it’s almost like it’s reprogrammed to not have any focus and the addictive part of it makes them always want more TikTok.
Wouldn’t it be better to teach children how to deal with that kind of technology instead of just banning it? Bans similar to drug bans will only make this go underground, allowing the social Media companies to argue there are no children on the platform.
While I can see your point, I don’t think education can stand up to companies with more money than we can conceive that have teams of people making it as addictive as possible and shoehorning in into every aspect of life. If education were enough, nobody would use tobacco, either.
One of the biggest benefits of young people not being on social media sites or having to at least pretend to be somebody else that I see is that their mistakes can be private. Nobody deserves to be publicly shackled to who they were as a 14 year old dipshit.
I agree that education can’t prepare us entirely for social media or for life as a whole, but I see this proposed ban as the easy way out for the government. If social media is a toxic place for children, why and shouldn’t we try to fix it instead of just not allowing children? And if we agree that social media is toxic for children, what makes it ok for adults?
You can’t fix those companies because you can’t fix their incentives.
And if we agree…
There’s a ton of things that are acceptable for adults that aren’t for children. I bet you can come up with at least three.
It would be nice if we could simply teach kids, but there are things even adults don’t understand. That’s where govt comes in. What the major part of population doesn’t comprehend might be the things from which the govt tries to protect. Then there is a fine line between protecting people and plain breaking basic human rights (like the whole encryption ban fiasco).
Teacher tells a kid to be careful of social media, but the kid’s favourite influencer tells the kid their teacher is lame and they shouldn’t listen to that. Who is the kid going to believe.
Also we don’t let kids into bars until they’re of a certain age. Sure kids are going to still do shenanigans to get in and sometimes they might succeed, but it reduces children getting drunk at bars by significant amount. And even when kids are able to do something they’re prohibited from, they at least know it’s not a normal thing and might understand there’s danger in what they’re doing.
Exactly, I wouldn’t even shy from making it banned under 18 years old. Even teenagers are affected mentally and those few years more would make wonders. Just how many teenage girls comitted a suicides because of facebook/instagram.
Wouldn’t it be better to forbid these predatory features / dark patterns / addictive design etc. in a general way ? What is bad for young people is not good for older people either. There is a difference between free speech and using manipulation.
I’m still for an social media alternative for and only for young people, preferable gouverment based, so that it dosn’t need to make money. In Germany, a while back we had SchülerVZ (maybe the original StudiVZ is more broadly known) with excatly that purpose. It had all the trolling and bullying we know from social media, but all that was way less toxic for 12 year old me, because most were like at most 16 at the time.
When it’s administered is a good way, you give these young fucks the outlet to share their cringy shit with their friends like they want to and teach them how god awful people on the internet can be at the same time, while in an safe space from predetory adults and their companys.
It’s weird, seeing this praised on Lemmy.
I’m wondering if the Fediverse has a future in Europe as such laws spread.
Social media is doing serious damage to people’s mental health, especially the non-anonymous ones. It’s a good thing that it’s being clamped down on.
There’s a study being commissioned in the UK on why there are record numbers of young people that are NEETS, and why there is a mental health crisis. I’ll bet that social media is found to be a major factor.
Huh. I thought it was weed doing those things.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone on fedi that not of an age that would have at some point made a Facebook account.
