I saw this article, which made me think about it…
Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes world-first laws
Seeing what kind of brainrot kids are watching, makes me think it’s a good idea. I wouldn’t say all content is bad, but most kids will get hooked on trash content that is intentionally designed to grab their attention.
What would be an effective way to enforce a restriction with the fewest possible side effects? And who should be the one enforcing that restriction in your opinion?
I don’t understand. Are you honestly claiming that you don’t see any possible value in social media for teenagers? We could talk about people with eating disorders. We could talk about marginalized minorities who can find support in distant communities because where they live is ultra-conservative. We don’t have to work hard to think of those examples, they’re well documented, they’re very real.
Of course you could argue that the harms outweigh the benefits, but to pretend that there are no benefits is just mind boggling.
What I’m saying is that we don’t know the full scope of how social media affects developing minds. The harm might outweigh the benefits or not, we just don’t know yet. I will be very interested to see the academic research on the effects the ban in Australia has on Australian children.
Social media has benefits for adults and children, but the ways in which these platforms influence thought and behavior creates significant problems. As an example consider Elon Musk’s purchase of twitter and the subsequent effects it had on the American election and culture. On the one hand that is the reality we all live in and learning to adapt and compensate is a critical skill to teach our children, on the other there is no reason that things must be the way they are now.
If I could speak to a policy maker I would encourage them not to ban social media use for kids, for no other reason than bans (usually) don’t work to address the problem they set out to solve and are easily circumvented online by motivated individuals. If lawmakers were interested in addressing the safety of children online, regulating social platforms would be a better starting point. Unfortunately though, tech companies have a lot more money to lobby against those kinds of initiatives than teenagers and the adults interested in protecting them.
Platforms could address the issues that lead to harm and create a beneficial tool for it’s users, however there is little incentive for them to do so because the current system exists as the result of their efforts to maximize profit and furthers other agendas. (I don’t mean that in a cynical anti-capitalist way, just that it is the nature of the way social media companies are structured and funded.) The research suggests that we might need to reevaluate how we integrate social media into our lives and build these platforms.
If nothing else barring children from using social media will present us an opportunity to get a better understanding of how social media effects them.