This seems too extreme. There are many positive aspects to social media.
It connects extended families. How else can you keep in touch with grandparents that live 300 miles away?
Shut ins, teens with disabilities world just shrank considerably.
Hobbies like online games
It’s not going to work. The children will simply find other places to meet on the Net. Places that are totally unmoderated.
It seems to do a lot more harm than good. Here’s a deep dive (warning, PDF):
https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/sg-youth-mental-health-social-media-advisory.pdf
Social media use by youth is nearly universal. Up to 95% of youth ages 13–17
report using a social media platform, with more than a third saying they use
social media “almost constantly.” 2 Although age 13 is commonly the required
minimum age used by social media platforms in the U.S., nearly 40% of children
ages 8–12 use social media. Despite this widespread use among children and
adolescents, robust independent safety analyses on the impact of social media
on youth have not yet been conducted. There are increasing concerns among
researchers, parents and caregivers, young people, healthcare experts, and
others about the impact of social media on youth mental health.
More here:
Apparently, Meta, for example, is well aware of the harms of social media to kids (and adults!), but does nothing about it.
Disagree that they do nothing. They deliberately, actively make it worse.
Can’t disagree with the ban. Our own kids aren’t allowed.
Through phone calls, or using your parent’s social media account if you must?
The number of shut in teenagers is probably higher because of social media, banning it for them is a good thing
I don’t see any online games that would be banned by this list. Their World of Warcraft account is safe (just kidding, kids don’t play World of Warcraft! Their Roblox account is safe).
Also, note that all of these websites already require you to be 13 to post. 16 isn’t a difference of kind, just degree.
Places like that will never be even a fraction as widespread or mainstream as Facebook and the like. That said, I’d add Discord to the list. And ban TikTok entirely, unless China sells it off to an American or European owner.
This is a problem. You can argue that we shouldn’t raise the age requirement in the US like Australia did; but we absolutely MUST start enforcing the guidelines that are already in place. Children under 13 don’t belong on social media. And that’s both a parental, societal, and legislative failure.
Why is Instagram included? Isn’t that only for sharing photos?
I’m not interested in posting images of my dinner. But it’s harmless.
Text messages? I’m not on social media and I talk to my in-laws and other family daily via text.
You might be surprised how many teenagers are in favor of laws like this. Off the top of my head, 60% of teens surveyed said they wished social media didn’t exist.
No, there’s direct messaging in Insta, comments on the photos, etc.
ETA: If you don’t know how Instagram works, are you sure you’re the right person to white knight the social media companies?
We restrict the grandkids screen use. They use screens at school and for homework. So they get plenty.
SM is not in the picture for them at the moment. The oldest is pressing the issue a little now she’s nearly 13.
But, I’m willing to bet they’ve all seen it on their friends phones. Many rimes. All the kids have phones at school.
The school can get no parental back-up to restrict phones at school. Some teachers have classroom bans. But that’s really voluntary.
I also know teens. These Australia teens will find a work-around. Guaranteed.
There will be some mandates, no one follows. A few smack downs.
And business as usual.
See, these things start at home. It’s the parents job. First and foremost.
If you’re addicted to SM, yourself, do you really think your child can refrain?
Get ready for an influx of Australian teens on this message board! Somehow, the SDMB didn’t make the list.
Yes, and captions on those photos. Like, for example, the eight kids from a San Jose high school who posted a picture (of themselves laying on a field in the shape of a swastika) with a caption (that quoted a Hitler rant about how international Jewery must be eliminated)
Social media feels like another moral panic, like transgender, comic books, gays, rock music, satanism, witches, etc.
I’m not familiar enough with how younger people use social media.
I stopped using Facebook a few years ago. I was concerned after reading that the algorithm is designed to be addictive. I also didn’t like having my news selection dictated by the algorithm.
But, that’s my personal choice.
I agree Facebook isn’t good for children.
The study I posted from HHS (issued before that department was destroyed by this administration) is pretty heavily footnoted. Maybe you can find something similar about comic books, if you’re going to throw all of these into the same bucket.
Speaking of photos, I’m surprised Imgur isn’t banned as well.
When everyone started leaving Facebook, my friends (in their late 30s at the time) along with their two pre-teen kids “moved” to Imgur. I was like “what do you mean you’re on Imgur all the time now? I thought it was just image storing?” Nope. Turns out the site is pretty much like Instagram or YouTube. Yes it started as just a photo sharing site, but if you look at the front page it’s very much social media now. It’s got comments and likes and followers and all that.
So were the Jack Chick DND Tracts!
Of course, the quality of said footnotes differed significantly…
It is, but it isn’t. That is, I follow this in the news, and particularly Jonathan Haidt, who is kind of a lightweight intellectual pushing this narrative that social media causes harm. The studies with regard to mental health look inconclusive to me, but there is no doubt that social media interferes with learning and it’s likely that it displaces protective factors for mental health in teens. That does not apply to all teens, but it is part of a general erosion of public spaces and community. People don’t go anywhere anymore. That is probably to everyone’s detriment.
It’s not a hard sell for me because social media has a devastating impact on my mental health and I know others who feel similarly. There is research that cognitive switching and short-form media like TikTok have a generally negative impact on people (not just kids.)
Furthermore, the brain is plastic, and kids’ brains especially so. Of course it’s affecting them, because it’s a different way of processing information. Whether it’s an inferior way of processing information is less clear, but it definitely puts young people at a disadvantage for analyzing and integrating complex data (see: The Shallows: What the a Internet is Doing to Our Brains for more research on this.)
And here’s probably the strongest argument for social media:
Right, but the numbers probably don’t add up. That is, the number of people helped by social media (because of a disability or social anxiety or whatever) may be vastly outweighed by the number harmed.
I wonder if this will turn out like Prohibition?
Bit runners in stock cars racing around with their homemade bits and bytes in the back their cars…