The UK’s minimum age for social media is 13, and has been for over a decade now. I’ll leave it to the reader to figure out if children are able to circumvent this airtight legal framework.
Heaven forbid we fix the actual problem, the exploitative nature of the sites themselves. No no, let’s control the kids and keep them off certain websites instead, that’s always worked so well before.
I can appreciate the argument that’s being made to counter this. That enacting such rulings would drive the affected children to lesser known pockets of the internet. However I think that’s a red herring by the industry, since that always happens anyway.
A new platform pops up and people go try it. It’s only a matter of time before there’s a new Tiktok in town. They will spin up and die off faster than legislation can keep up. Seems to me the industry wants to keep the children for the data, and the revenue that comes with it.
Something does need to be done though. Our minds are becoming mushy tomatoes and social media is partly to blame. A better solution might be education of course, but I’m not sure what that would look like, or if it would be effective unless integrated into curriculums quite early on.
This one is insidious. Pretty much everyone agrees that social media is addictive and repetitive exposure at a young age has a startling negative effect on mental health.
The downsides of this come mostly from the infrastructure that will be used to control access. If there suddenly exists a collective database that contains age and identity information for every citizen that is accessible online in some capacity to verify ID, that’s a really juicy target for online criminals and a huge blow to online privacy.
The effects of the recent SSN hack are still to be seen, but that was a release of identification information for up to 2.9 billion people. It’s insane that people aren’t making a bigger deal of that.
I was thinking the same.
If the age verification responsibility lies with the companies, it would mean each one spends as little as possible and we end up with a dozen poorly implemented databases, all ripe for a breach. If the government handles it, that’s better I suppose because one system could be made more robust, but that’s a big expense.
I suppose the companies that would need it could be taxed to cover the costs of this system, but you know how companies love being taxed. I’m sure smarter people than me are working on it though.
While I agree that it’s a good idea, I have no idea how they’re going to be able to implement its successfully. You already have to click the “yes I’m over 13” checkbox on these stupid things and there’s no verification system that you are, in fact, over 13. Hell they d o the same thing on porn sites, “I verify that I’m over 18.” It’s not like somebody is going to check, it’s just a way to deflect the blame from the website if the kid gets caught by anybody.
Just force the websites to have hour limitations, so they can only be used an hour a day.
… don’t force a whole country into an ID system.
Blame the billionaires making the stuff, not the addicts.
How do you know this website get is from the same user as the one two hours ago?
Or do you mean that all web traffic is firewalled except between 11.30 and 12.30? And not just 1h per person.
If love to see a proof of concept for that “just”.
Do you realise people generally login to scroll their specific social media accounts/friends/subscriptions, and to be able to comment ect…
Just force the websites
Ah, so only very specific “websites” get targeted.