I’m asking for public policy ideas here. A lot of countries are enacting age verification now. But of course this is a privacy nightmare and is ripe for abuse. At the same time though, I also understand why people are concerned with how kids are using social media. These products are designed to be addictive and are known to cause body image issues and so forth. So what’s the middle ground? How can we protect kids from the harms of social media in a way that respects everyone’s privacy?
Stop using it entirely.
Funny seeing this comment on a social media platform
This isn’t a platform dunce.
Yeah, don’t give them phones.
This is the solution in my home… Seems to work pretty well…
Past a certain age this may start to become socially isolating for the children
How many generations grew up without smart phones? Basically all of them. Why did it suddenly change that they are now “socially isolated” because they don’t have smart phones?
It’s actually proven that children and teens benefit from quality over quantity of their friendships. They don’t need to have surface level relationships with everyone they meet. They just need a few really good friends they interact with in real life.
I’m relatively young so I can attest to the fact that, even when I was in high-school, not having a phone would put you at a social disadvantage. Thats how kids kept in touch out of school hours and coordinated social events. It’s not ideal but thats how things work now.
I’m also young. I had smart phones ans social media in highschool. The “disadvantage” no longer exists if parents make a coordonated effort to get their kids off smart phones. You don’t need everyone, just a large enough group. I highly recommend The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
@Bazoogle @ageedizzle I’m ok with my kid interacting with his friends on his phone, I’m not ok with mindlessly watching YouTube or playing pay-to-play mobile games
So, he just needs a cell phone? Seems like they don’t need a smart phone. Regular cell phones are still an option
It’s true, at some point it becomes a necessity. I don’t know what to do about teens today, I haven’t gotten there yet.
There is not much in this world I care about less.
People said the exact same thing about books, radio, TV, movies, video games and music.
You come up with some sort of arbitrary rating system. Any child with intent will find a way around it, and eventually they’ll try to find a way to protect their kids from something else.
Except when you went outside back then, or to school, you couldn’t take the TV with you. And parents controlled the TV at home
We do actually restrict many of those. And that’s not really an issue, because you either buy those in a physical store that has to check your ID in person if there’s any doubt that it’s legal to sell it to you, or you buy it on an online platform that already has all the info for payment processing. Can’t run hyperviolent content on daytime TV (in my country, anyway) etc.
Counter argument: alcohol, weed, tobacco, cocaine, drinking and driving, speeding, and acid were all so incredibly commonplace that people were confused when they were phased out or delegalised.
Social media is not on the same level as books, radio, tv, movies, video games and music. The sacred sextuple.
Social media is, however, similar to the afforementioned things, in that partaking in the substance or activity regularly gives you illusions that it benefits much more than it really does, whike ultimately just being bad for you and predisposing you to binging.
I think people are ao defensive over social media because A) they’re addicted and of course B) they’re worried kids won’t be educated on political issues, which i think is probably the more pressing issue than privacy. Becauae we already don’t have privacy on mainstream SM
Social media does seem unique though just because of how addictive it is. If you look into the details of how meta targets children and intentionally tries to addict them it paints a pretty sinister picture: https://techoversight.org/2026/01/25/top-report-mdl-jan-25/
Well, with that comment, I think you have your answer.
You also cannot blame parents here. Most of us live in societies where a 13 year old can walk home from school on their own, and if they buy cigarettes, alcohol or visit a strip club then the business owner is in trouble. Business owners should figure out how to provide their products safely.
Ban advertising.
No, seriously, think about it. Imagine a word where narrow, strictly defined thing called “advertisement” is illegal. I mean, obviously, we’re in magic fairy wonderland here, but y’know… I live in a state where billboards are illegal. Nothing’s truly impossible… just ‘unthinkable’ mostly. Without ads, the incentive to make the platform addictive evaporates, suddenly companies are competing just to, y’know, make a better platform.
Without ads, they just wouldn’t make the platform, not make it better??
Define “they,” and you might answer your own concerns.
Social media companies news sources would start to be corrupted without money from other sources, etc.
To put it plainly, I couldn’t muster a single shit if Facebook ceased to exist.
Actually, I’d celebrate. The web can survive without being commercialized. It’d look much different, for sure. That’s the point.
Edit: I’m not saying this isn’t a super idealized fantasy that will never happen. I’m just saying I’d partake in that fantasy.
How to say you’re from Vermont without saying you’re from Vermont. 😁
busted!
The answer is that we shouldn’t have most social media to begin with and parents need to actually fucking parent their kid’s usage. Social media is just the television replacement.
It is by nature very different from television. Television is purely entertainment, and is one sided. It’s also only available when you are at home in front of a TV.
Social media is two way, you engage with it directly. You are now comparing yourself to the perceived lives of those around you. For most adults, this is fine. It had proven to have a very negative impact on developing children/teens, especially young girls. Not to mention it is now always with you, always in your pocket. You have access to it 24/7, which is nothing like TV.
TV has been around for a century and has not shown massive negative consequences on mental health. Social media and smart phones has been around for ~15 years and has ruined a generation. It is definitely not just the television replacement
When you go to a bar, the bouncer checks your ID and determines your age. He will not remember your name. He will not inform the government you are at the bar. He will not write down who you met with or talked to. We as a society trust he will not do these things. You are still anonymous from the perspective of the bouncer.
If humans really truely tried I am sure we could design a transparent system for verifying age or human-ness that we (tech paranoid Lemmings) could trust.
I don’t know what that system would look, but I also didn’t know how a “cryotographic decentralized digital currency” would work without the backing of a centralized government in 2008.
By making it so that social media can’t harm anyone, not just kids.
Amen
How can we make it so that social media cannot harm anyone?
For one a law that prevents infinite scroll and another that prevents algorithm that sole purposes is to keep people engaged on the platform.
Those are good ideas. I think another (somewhat radical, unlikely to be implemented) idea would be mandating that these services use open source code, so we can see exactly what shenanigans they’re up to.
Stop. Giving. Them. Phones.
Stop whining. No they don’t need one. NO THEY DON’T.
No.
No they’re not special.
No they’re not too busy. Neither are you.
No iPad either.
Stop. Shut up. No. Phones.
I agree, if you limit “phones” to “smart phones and portable computers”. There are reasons to give a kid a small, no internet dumbphone. But yes, don’t give kids unrestricted access to the family PC, and DEFINITELY dont give them their own.
And or old school phones, that can call and text, but not surf the internet. Old smaller flip phones. Because parents will want to be able to communicate because they are worriers in many cases, there is no need for them to use smartphones for this.
That’s the tack I’m taking. My eldest goes to high school next year and most of his peers are automatically getting a smartphone at that point. He’ll be 13. He can forget it. A dumb phone at a push, for safety. That’s it.
I think this point is getting buried, but the regulatory change that needs to happen to start with is not the algorithm alone, but Monetization realignment!!
- Shift ad models to reward completion (e.g., pay creators per finished video) rather than scroll depth
- Offer paid tiers where users pay $2-5/month to disable all addictive features (no A/B testing on these users)
- User-controlled ad preferences with revenue sharing
- Behavioral cost transparency
Or others. Basically disincentivize addictive apps. I would also suggest penalizing harshly those that do, as many of these companies make so much off of this that only the harsher enforced penalties will force change (if they don’t avoid it through regulatory capture).
Just normalize talking about those online irl abuse/exploitation stuff instead of yelling at em nor grounding. And stop victim blaming even some of the professionals do that.
Maybe we should do normalize about talking about other stuff too, to body images in head including “problematic” ones to in some anormal/atypical attraction types to possible self diagnosed but not so loud neurodiversities such as realizing you are might be plural or have too specific kinds of ocd.
Ive seen many abusers online are aiming kiddies online with those stuff and since there are not much help and many stigma surrounding mental health and bs kind of therapists that does victim blaming, they will have either to go online with predators watching em and prey on them for those vulnerabilities thrn thus preds will shift blame to those kids or smth.
Ive seen kids young as 12 or smth in some high risk mental health communities. You can tell someone did not wanted em but predators def do. Basically do not give birth to kids if you cant accept em in any way, if you think your kid becoming dangerous after some time, methinks you are also responsible for some aspects of it if they are under some of age.
In not in favor of providing ID for anything. If a service requires it, I won’t use that service. Also, I can’t think of a verification system like this that hasn’t been bypassed or exploited, so it’s largely an exercise in futility.
However, a compelling argument is to use your phone’s biometrics to perform a challenge and verification. Basically, your device acts as your ID so sites never have it. I think this way better than all websites to keep a copy of the identity.
Using biometrics is an interesting idea. It could be similar to Apples face-scan to unlock feature, where the model of your face never leaves your local device but can still be used as two factor authentication to access your banking, for example.
Exactly this. If I had to chose between hundreds of third party websites having my ID and my phone, I’ll take my phone.
We already have very sophisticated ways of validating payment and passport information with our devices. Validating age could be as simple as a registration procedure between the device and the identity issuer , validating the device is held by a person “of age” and then that’s it. If that user successfully completes a biometric challenge, then allow the activity.
So web browsing goes from “I’m John Doe and here’s my ID proving it” to every site (which has HUUUUUGE PRIVACY ISSUES) to “This anonymous user is over 18; this one is over 21, this one’s not”.
Also, if this behavior of forcing websites to ID you continues, it will enable a renaissance in data mining. Right now companies see “actor is in ZIP code 90210; rain in the forecast “ and put the two together to show “maybe they need a new slicker”. That’s simplified of course, but that’s basically the trick. You can use hundreds or thousands of these data points to paint an ever clearer picture of the person, but you never know exactly who they are. These ID laws are changing this rapidly.
This also has the potential to be used for some very dark purposes. Example: said something on Instagram critical of the US President? You don’t get to vote because of some label.
My position is still if the site or service requires my ID, then I don’t need it that badly.
Punishing parents for giving their kids access to social media is one way, maybe only dumb phone for kids?
Mandatory education about safety for children on the jobs and the midia is a good one.
I would go as far to forbid children photos on the internet/social media, so AI Porn and Pedophiles would not be interested anymore eventually.
And all of this has to be state policy (not goverment policy), because government changes from time to time.
Thats an interesting idea. Smart phones sales could be restricted to minors, similar to nicotine products.
And yeah, with the AI any photos posted to social media seem like a major privacy breach
You can’t, however you frame this issue there’s going to be a sacrifice. We have to all digest this.
The best kind of sacrifice you can make though for the best outcome is to limit your child’s screen-time, AND ALSO YOUR OWN. Spend more time together, practice what you preach, you are also a child being harmed by social media.
ban social media metrics and information trading/markets. make it a truly anonymous service like it was in the early 2000s.
if protecting children was the point they would stop corporations from identifying all users and selling their identities/profiles online.
but, protecting the children is NOT the point. the point is control of freedom of speech, or rather who gets to have the freedom of speech.
Most people don’t want social media to be anonymous. They want to be themselves and connect with real people. How exactly is an anonymous tinder supposed to work?
Glory holes
the great thing about the early internet was that you had the choice to expose yourself.
now you don’t even need to be a member to be exposed.
And banning non anonymous social media is supposed to bring the choice back?
ban social media metrics and information trading/markets.
try reading that again.
“make it a truly anonymous service”
Reading what you said?
Blind dating
/s
