Comment on France seeks to ban social media for children under 15
sunbeam60@feddit.uk 2 weeks agoBoth could be true at the same time.
I’ve got four kids. I’d love nothing more than ban social media for them until 16. It really is poison for developing minds.
You can.
You just don’t want to either a) put in the legwork to do so, or b) be the ‘bad guy’ to your kids for doing it, so instead you just want the government to do it for you.
What’s stopping you from setting up pihole and blocking social media sites at home, or turning on parental controls on their phones and blocking the sites and apps?
Most parents either don’t know how to do that, or don’t care enough to stop their kids from using social media, despite how harmful it is for society as a whole, and especially children. Also I know from experience that parental controls can easily be bypassed by a dedicated child. Also since all their friends are on social media, a child can credibly argue that they need to use it to maintain their social life, if social media is banned for under 16’s, then children would have to communicate with normal chat apps.
A propely implemented (as in ZKP verification that gives no information to the service other than the age category) is a good thing in my opinion, because at some point some systemic problems are better served by systemic solutions.
despite how harmful it is for society as a whole, and especially children
If you don’t understand what the motivation is to target kids with ads and influencer content designed to push products is, you’re not going to solve anything. Kids have to have spaces to communicate with each other in order to develop healthy socialization skills. Locking them in a proverbial box is not healthy, and guess what, we killed off 99% of third spaces that welcome kids.
If social media is banned for under 16’s, then children would have to communicate with normal chat apps.
I feel like you are envisioning “chat apps” to mean “text-only”, but chat apps have been multimedia/ multi-modal for a long time now, and can be just as easily infiltrated by the same actors targeting kids on social media.
at some point some systemic problems are better served by systemic solutions
This is not a solution, this is a band-aid that doesn’t attack the root cause whatsoever.
If you don’t understand that the motivation is to target kids with ads and influencer content designed to push products, you’re not going to solve anything.
I 100% agree that social media companies are incentivized to make their platforms toxic to children, and that people on those platforms are motivated to exploit them, but immoral people existing is not the problem…
Kids have to have spaces to communicate with each other in order to develop healthy socialization skills.
They don’t have to use social media for that though, not only are third spaces alive and well in many places including much of France (and where I live), chat apps are 100% enough for kids to socialize.
I know that every teen where I live uses instagram to communicate with friends, but only the group/1to1 chats and stories, which are available in chat apps. The main feed(s) never show you things from your friends anyways.
I feel like you are envisioning “chat apps” to mean “text-only”
No, when I think of chat apps I think of signal and discord. Both have a ton of social features, the difference is that there isn’t an algorithm that acts as a vector for harmful bullshit or public profiles. Public rooms are still an issue, but from experience being a tween/teen on those platforms, it’s not even close to being as bad. Said bad actors do not exist in anywhere near the same capacity. Imo the harm of public chat rooms falls under the “parents can handle this” umbrella.
If it was the case that it was just individual actors on the platform causing the harm and not the structure of the platforms incentivizing said harm, then we would see more of this type of thing in real life as well.
I struggle to think of a more complete solution to the harm caused by social media to children than just banning them.
Cite sources, I think you’re lying to me
Which part do you think I’m lying about?
I agree that big tech’s social media is like digital heroin, not only bad for kids.
But it should be up to the parent to protect their kids, you also don’t let them walk the park alone, why should you let them browse the web un-supervised.
There are parental tools to restrict your child’s internet access, those should be applied by the parent.
Not every citizen should be under surveillance by the government under the rouse that they’ll protect your kids, which they won’t.
The real goal here is to detect people who go against the government and block them. While kids & criminals slip through the cracks by finding sketchy un-surveilled sites and messaging channels.
And if you really think your government gives a damn about your kids safety, then I urge you to look in the epstein ph/f-iles
Is something nobody discusses out loud is the fact that literally in you internet service where users can post is covered by these laws, they’re not microtargeted at Instagram or anything like that. Also politicians explicitly say things like this is meant to stop transgenderism or this is about Gaza out loud
I appreciate the nuance. Thanks for a thoughtful answer.
You’ll see from different answers I’ve made to the reactions on my first comment that I also approach this with nuance.
I know many people that work in government. Not the US government, but across Europe. I can’t answer for the US government. But I can tell you first hand that the people I know aren’t in it to gain some kind of Orwellian control.
When I last spoke to a U.K. MP about this he want in fact understanding the complexity here, and the lens that many people want to see it banned and may see it as governmental overreach. Decent, hard working people are trying to balance these tough choices where I live. I’m sorry if that isn’t the case where you live.
I’m also living in the EU,
however I notice a global push to such mass surveillance. The EU has been under attack by Denmark for years now e.g. by pushing through chat control (a government backdoor into encryption).
However there ain’t such thing as a backdoor only for the good guys, this can and will eventually be abused, either by extremist governments, which may not yet be in power, but might come some day, or external countries, hacking into the backdoor.
Privacy and technology experts have been warning against chat control and age verification for these reasons, however we do feel ignored, since the topics keep on coming back up.
I kinda doubt that most of the politicians graps these risks though, and kinda find it dissapointing and demotivating that our rights to privacy keep being put under scrutiny again and again.
However I’ll refuse to give up, since maintaining your rights is important, and gaining them back once lost is often very hard / nearly impossible.
Thank you for being open minded and up for hearing my arguments though! :)
Chat control was an insane suggestion that wouldn’t work politically nor technically and, logically, has been abandoned. For Denmark not to check Germany’s position on it, and for the flagrant disregarding of all technical positions that called out the utter bullshit, was laughable and one of the major failings of Denmark’s presidency.
But chat control and age verification is not the same and one sensible suggestion shouldn’t fall on the insanity of another suggestion.
I don’t give a flying fuck about your kids or your inability to parent your fucking children.
You’re a charming fellow aren’t you?
Consider for a second if my position came from knowledge and wisdom, rather than knee jerk. Consider if you understand all nuances here. Change your tone. Then maybe we can engage on this.
Why would you not just want social media to be better regulated by the law? You can’t seriously believe that your children are going to have no access to social media, even with an age ban, unless you intend to lock them in a room and home school them till they’re 18.
The absolute binary inability for children to access social media shouldn’t be the litmus test for whether we should try.
Some children manage to buy lottery tickets or gamble for real money online. Some manage to buy alcohol even when they’re underage. Some manage to buy cigarettes. Inadequate parents will even sometimes support this.
But we aim to create an environment where that is difficult. And by doing so we shape culture. And culture shapes patterns. My aim isn’t to remove the harm social media perpetrated on children, but to reduce it. All law works like this - speed limits are routinely broken but most drive sensibly.
Well we definitely agree pretty much 100% about social media as it stands today, in terms of its ills.
I don’t know what “regulation” of social media would be without requiring identification of users, though. The vast majority of its ills comes from, as you identify, monetised engagement which promotes bots. Therefore it is in social media companies’ interest to allow bots to play, which enables an undermining of our democracy.
Though we will disagree on what “verification” of users mean in terms of privacy risks.
The EU proposal for age verification has a legal requirement for anonymisation. This means that your “age verification” app simply holds signed verification tokens that it hands over to the service. There is no way for that token to be tied back to an identifiable user.
And there’s a million ways that could be circumvented by the state, agreed, but if the state circumvents its own laws (“must be anonymous”) they are already able to circumvent ISP logs, phone records etc. We have laws for dealing with it.
My point being that you either trust your government, in which case the requirement for anonymity will be upheld, or you don’t, in which case this doesn’t increase your risk surface (as you already believe your government circumvents laws and accesses logs illegally).
That’s propaganda
I haven’t got the foggiest idea what you mean. I’ve expressed my opinion. You choose to call it propaganda because you don’t like it.
The thing is it’s a line being pushed with bad intent and I gotta push back against it where I see it
My intent isn’t bad. I want kids to grow up without the harms of social media, just like I want them to grow up without the harms of gambling, tobacco etc. I wouldn’t expect children to be let in to see an 18-rated film? Why is social media any different? If we define it causes harm, which it definitely does, then why can’t we attempt to minimize harm through regulation?
Dont worry theyll get plenty of poison after the ban too from roblox chat
Sound like a you problem
fantasyocean@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
There are these crazy things called “parental controls”. You’ve probably never heard of them, but they’re on nearly every single personal computing device. OR, and hear me out. You could just buy a dumb phone for your kids until they’re sixteen, and if they want to take pictures, buy them an inexpensive digital camera. It would be cheaper overall than buying them an iPhone. But no, that’s probably too difficult for you, so everyone else has to give even more of their personal information if they want to use Facebook Marketplace or whatever.
sunbeam60@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
Lol. Yes it’s that simple.
Look, I’ve raised 4 kids. I run OPNsense with filters. I’ve enabled parental controls all on their mobile phone connections. My kids were and will be the last that got a smart phone in their year. I’m an active member of smartphone free childhood in the UK; I’ve engaged with U.K. members of Parliament on the topic. I’ve worked for tech giants whose sole purpose it is to create “habits” ie addiction in amongst children. Regardless I’m not talking about just my kids, I work in education and engage with multiple schools on the topic.
You come back to me when you’ve taken kids through the landscape they exist in today.
It sounds like a pretty one sided view you’ve got there and maybe, just maybe, it could do with some nuance.
limerod@reddthat.com 2 weeks ago
There is no such thing as anonymous data. It has been proven all data can be linked to you. The only data that is anonymous is the one they don’t collect.
sunbeam60@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
I agree that for the system to be anonymous the state has to live up to its commitment to anonymity. Have you read the EU’s regulation about this? In there is exactly a commitment that age verification has to be anonymous.
But, let’s take a reality check here:
Yes you can circumvent this logging (to some extent) through VPN - just like you can circumvent the requirement to verify your age with a VPN. But the vast majority don’t.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
the only way to have privacy-preserving age checks is when there’s a variable on the phone that stores whether the user is old enough. and gives that data forward to apps/websites trying to do age checks.
that variable can only be changed if you’re the rightful owner of the device, i.e. if you paid for it and have a code that’s on the purchase bill or sth. and children wouldn’t have access to that.
FarceOfWill@infosec.pub 2 weeks ago
Im not sure what youre arguing here? its possible to control access well as a parent, but so much easier if the state gorce everyone on the internet to provide id in order to prevent teenagers talking to eavh other?
You yourself csn tsrget what you think is harmful but a law will hit everything and everyone, and like i implied in the driveby abiut roblox still might not actually block something you find unacceptable.
This is just the wrong approach to achieve the goal.
Youre on lemmy! This is like the one place people will decry facebook, x, reddit, insta etc. But what your arguing for will end up with them as the only services that can navigate existing legally, and children will still work around blocks because they simply dont care about consequences for lying about their age.
sunbeam60@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
Our democracy regulates a lot of things that it (we) believe to be harmful to children: Cigarettes, gambling (also online), pornography, violence in media, alcohol etc etc.
Why is social media any different?
Noja@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
Would you upload your ID to Lemmy? Because that’s what the “age verification” requires you to do. Maybe you’d rather upload a video of your face from many different angles, which is absolutely never going to be used for nefarious purposes, pinky promise.
Without Karens like you, we wouldn’t have shit like the OSA. That’s why there are so many angry replies. Now you have to pay for a VPN to have free access to the internet in the UK, many UK hosted sites had to shut down or block the UK wholly for UK users.
sunbeam60@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
Once again, have you read the EU proposal?
The UK, no longer part of the EU, of course have gone much softer and enabled non-anonymous verification. I am of course deeply against this.
What I AM talking about is the ZKP method mandated by the EU, which is anonymous.
fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
Yeah that person sucks ass. I won’t tolerate that shit
fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
What the fuck are you talking about? They want your damn photo ID of course they know who you are. Truth just wanna silence young people because they don’t like genocide
sunbeam60@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
What are YOU talking about?
I’m talking about French age verification, which is a national example of the EU’s ZKP age verification system.
To the instance that issues the ZKP tokens you of course have to prove who you are. Once you have the ZKP age verification tokens and actually use them to prove your age, those tokens are negotiated solely between your device and the asking entity.
Have you actually read the EU’s required structure for this?
ramenu@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Buy a dumb phone and make them feel ostracized from everyone else lol. Spoken like someone who isn’t gen Z.
Let’s say you do use a dumb phone. What about everyone else? Others have to make a lot of concessions in order to communicate with you in a group project for example.Best case scenario the group does its communication over social media and calls you directly. You’re going to miss out a lot on communication.
There’s also some aspect of “followers = clout”. Basically what I’m trying to say is expecting your child to be OK taking a dumb phone to school while seeing everyone else with one may have a dramatic effect.
fantasyocean@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
One, I’m not interested in making sure their coolest middle schooler. Well-Dressed and able to express their style through clothes, their bookbag etc. Two, I don’t really want them in a bunch of group chats yapping constantly. Yes, they will miss out on a lot of communication but they don’t need to be in constant 24/7 contact with anyone in elementary school and middle school. And finally, when I see them behaving maturely I may consider getting them a smartphone earlier. But if not they’ll just be waiting until they turn 15. If they want to get on TikTok they can open up the app on the family room TV and they can be the same with YouTube.
I’m not going to go through every single scenario parenting in the digital age, but I have to be aware and I have to monitor. And over time the amount of monitoring I do will have to be reduced based on the maturity that they’re showing but also out of respect for their autonomy.
But you know what’s great about everything I said, you don’t have to do any of that. You can give your kid the smartphone and let them get on FB messenger at 7 years old for all I care. And you know why I don’t care? Because that’s your decision and you can deal with the consequences or benefits of that parenting style.
Though I’ll be honest, I’m not certain what point you’re trying to make here. Are you saying you want the ban so you can give your child a smartphone without thinking about how they’re using it? Or are you saying no ban and iPhones for preteens?
oatscoop@midwest.social 2 weeks ago
Yeah … I was the kid that knew how to bypass those and “helped” other kids out in that regard.
Entertainmeonly@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Then hold the creators of the parental locks accountable. Why am i loosing rights?
fantasyocean@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Because they want a parent on autopilot.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
It would be nice if there was an actual article discussing how the parents controls on android phones actually work.
fantasyocean@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Add & manage supervision on a current Google Account - Pixel Phone Help share.google/j9ZOyQbpZTh0rnRRs
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
can i do that without google?