@AndreBoulay hows the forum being impacted by the recent Australia under 16 social media ban? My understanding reading it over the forum probably applies in this instance. How would the forum be impacted if other countries followed suit. Lots of folks on here are under 16 but supposedly over 13 which is the current COPPA age limit.
Just curious as this applies to silly things in my work world from a governance perspective and it’ll be interesting to watch how large platforms react as time goes on.
It’s interesting for sure - it is more targeted at true social media companies though…
There are exemptions for platforms used primarily for education, health, or niche community purposes (like certain learning platforms or specialized forums). Not sure where we land but I’m sure it will continue to further develop and become more clear.
I would hate to just see AU folks outright banned from stuff cause Australians are fun folks. I imagine if it works other countries will consider something similar. I admit social media is kind of scary I would rather my kids not use it.
As an Aussie, I’m all for the ban. Lets allow our kids to be miserable after the age of 16 instead of before. (I don’t mean the YYE forum here at all, this is a great place).
The government is classing social media as any online platform that allows more than 2 people to interact at once as far as I understand it.
I’m not sure how heavily that will be policed with a forum like YYE though. I’m guessing it would fly right under the radar.
Yeah I imagine it would be the stated fines are enough that many smaller platforms have already started grumbling about just blocking the AU outright in the short term.
I’ve been wondering whether they’ll even let the Gryffindor Quidditch team reform. I mean, they let Slytherin straight away but that’s because of their connections.
I don’t understand why there needs to be a law like this for that to happen though. Just don’t give them unsupervised access to the Internet…
Personally I wouldn’t be happy about being forced to upload ID just to use the Internet and I don’t trust any government to create an effective system to accomplish this anyways.
That would require parents to actually parent their children. Maybe Aussies are better at this than we Americans, but here in the U.S. I see very little that qualifies as responsible parenting anymore, especially when it comes to controlling Internet access.
no thank you ,we (the government) will parenting your child you can trust us!!! please upload your photo ID so we can track you and jail you for say unsavoury things online or criticize our laws we make
True, but that’s more of a social (or quite frankly, spiritual) issue that needs to be dealt with at the root. Giving the govt more power isn’t the solution.
I agree. The conundrum we face is that while social media addiction/abuse isn’t a problem that can be properly solved through legislation, it also isn’t a problem that is being solved through parenting, as it should be. Thus, it simply doesn’t get solved. So how do you convince parents to parent? How do you convince people to learn fundamental parenting skills before becoming parents? “I was a kid once. I think I know how to raise one.” isn’t cutting it.
Very temporarily while I sort out getting feedback for my Flying Lemon prototypes (which I now have) as well as seeing if YYE would like to stock any when I make a run. Have you seen your message, @AndreBoulay?
The problem is very deep. Many parents feel now its some kind of breach of their child’s freedom and rights to discipline them firmly and consistently. I don’t really want to discuss it further though as I find it pretty sad and distressing.
I’m under the age of 16, and I think that the social media ban would be wonderful, even though I wouldn’t be able to use it.
My friends are all around my age, some older, some younger, and yet with nearly all of them, I need to compete (to a point) with social media to get their attention. I can hardly hold a conversation without some brain-destroying junk getting in the way.
I don’t know much about mental health, as luckily, I’ve never struggled with it. I’ve never had any insecurities, and I couldn’t care less about being insulted-- the worst part about it to me is the time wasted. but I do see issues in others, I’m entirely confident that getting rid of social media for those under 16 wouldn’t solve the problem, but I think it could be a good start.
My social media access is fairly limited, mostly because I hate creating accounts on anything (I lurked here for a while just because I didn’t bother to create an account). so I’m not entirely sure what problems it may/may not actually be responsible for, but I’d also love to just see kids my age spending time off the phone and be within spitting distance of each other.
My dad will often tell us stories of High School in Minnesota in the 80’s, and it definitely seems like more fun than what we have now, he’ll tell us about spitting contests outside of the gas station, shooting model airplanes with airsoft guns, and driving a Ford Thunderbird just to name a few, these things are all still possible, of course. but who my age is willing to do anything like that? free time is spent rotting their brains out on Instagram or whatever; even if you managed to get them out somewhere you’d be competing with an iPhone again.
TL;DR
I would love to see a social media ban, and kids being kids again; having fun away from blue light.
Yeah. Because it’s soo much worse, if the government does stuff instead of private companies, who created the whole social-media-mess only to feed their greed. At least when the government screws up, you as a citizen have ways to hold them accountable or change the government. Try doing this with Meta and the Suck.
