[_coveredInBees]

Eh, I dunno. My son plays a bunch of Roblox and has spent a net $10 for a few custom avatar mods. While there is certainly a pay to win aspect for some games within, there is also a ton of "free" games to sift through, and since all of them are competing for players, they still have to make the experience compelling enough at the free tier. We've had conversations about the pay-to-win aspect, and even though he has several hundred dollars saved up, he has never once asked to spend money on pay-to-win aspects of Roblox. I'd argue that almost any modern videogame / mobile game is equally if not more "predatory" with the pay-to-win side of things. Just look at the menu screens in any modern first person shooter / battle royale type game. Those look far worse than anything I have seen in Roblox.

[micromacrofoot]

both should be regulated, this type of predatory gambling-like behavior shouldn't be allowed for kids under a certain age

[Aerroon]

So, no social media and no video games for kids? Man am I glad that I grew up before tomorrow when everything is going to be restricted.

[micromacrofoot]

social media generally bans kids under 13 in the US — there's a good amount of evidence regarding the harms it can have at this point

kids haven't been able to buy mature games from brick-and-mortar stores like Gamestop since I was a child decades ago

kids used to be able to smoke cigarettes too

[Aerroon]

>there's a good amount of evidence regarding the harms it can have at this point

Considering this evidence was produced during a time when the public opinion was looking for any excuse to blame social media companies and that the field of research producing those studies has an accuracy of a coin flip I'm unconvinced. I'd need to see a lot more than out of contact quotes from Facebook research or these questionable "we asked kids to taste xyz, they're totally more depressed and it's totally social media's fault."

>kids haven't been able to buy mature games from brick-and-mortar stores like Gamestop since I was a child decades ago

They pirated them instead because kids don't have money.

That being said, I would rather kids be banned from the internet outright rather than the internet becoming yet another watered down place.

[micromacrofoot]

Some of this evidence has been produced by companies with an incentive to not produce it (internal Facebook research has shown negative mental health implications for teenage girls on instagram for example — this is known as part of some whistleblowing efforts)

> They pirated them instead because kids don't have money.

I mean sure, a kid can break a window and rob a gun store too... we're not talking about creating rules that are impossible to circumvent, the answer to imperfect regulation isn't no regulation.

> That being said, I would rather kids be banned from the internet outright rather than the internet becoming yet another watered down place.

Content filters have come a long way, this isn't what anyone is suggesting.

[Aerroon]

>internal Facebook research has shown negative mental health implications for teenage girls on instagram for example — this is known as part of some whistleblowing efforts

This is one of the reasons why I have difficulty taking this rewatch seriously, because that is not what the internal research at Facebook said. That was a media headline that misrepresented the results.

They measured 12 different indicators problematic use of Instagram, body image issues, sadness etc. For teen girls 32% of respondents said that IG made their body image issues worse, what the media didn't say however, is that 45% thought Instagram had no impact and 22% said it made their body image issues better.

And that was basically the worst indicator out of all 12 of them. For example, the same research said that on the question of loneliness 12% of teen girls said that IG made it worse, 36% said it had no impact and 51% said that IG made it better.

On every issue Instagram eat mainly either neutral or positive. And that's the internal research that places like WSJ used to say Facebook causes negative mental health effects in teen girls.

>Content filters have come a long way, this isn't what anyone is suggesting.

No they haven't. It's still the same garbage it always was just dressed up in fancier words. You can look at AI and see how well censoring it works. It's crude and ultimately doesn't work, just makes for a worse experience.

[consteval]

> So, no social media

When I was a kid, everyone was absolutely riddled with self-doubt and insecurity. Jealousy and bullying was the norm. There wasn't a soul in my middle school who didn't deeply, deeply hate themselves.

This was before social media. Imagine that, but now kids ALSO get to form unrealistic expectations and envy at home on their devices.

> no video games for kids?

What are you talking about? You can still get your friends together and play mario party or super smash or kirby or whatever. That never went away, we still have co-op games where it's free to play for the other kids.

We just shouldn't have gambling for the kids. Probably.

[Aerroon]

>You can still get your friends together and play mario party or super smash or kirby or whatever. That never went away, we still have co-op games where it's free to play for the other kids.

Yeah, they don't add those free to play mechanics because they force you to buy an extra piece of hardware for $400 to play those games. It works great when you're rich, I guess, but then these f2p games shouldn't matter in the first place.

[consteval]

What? No, you don't need a console. One switch can play a 4 player or 8 player game just fine. How it's been for decades.

[Aerroon]

Yes, and you need the switch to play that Nintendo game in the first place. Thus forcing you to buy the piece of hardware.

[_coveredInBees]

Sure, I don't disagree with that at all. I'd love to see that happen. I was just pointing out that most of the industry is far worse than what I have seen with Roblox personally.