[fraboniface]

It's very hard for parent to resist the insistent demands of their children to get a smartphone when their classmates all have one, and not having one means being or feeling excluded. This is the kind of coordination problem better solved by regulation.

[nulld3v]

> It's very hard for parent to resist the insistent demands of their children to get a smartphone when their classmates all have one, and not having one means being or feeling excluded. This is the kind of coordination problem better solved by regulation.

But they banned "social media" not smartphones. If they actually banned smartphones, this regulation would be much easier to enforce.

But by just banning a select few apos, kids are just going to move onto the next app.

And not only that, it only bans kids from having an account, they can still view content while logged out.

So Im going to bet that this not be effective, not be enforcable.

[XorNot]

If you're not going to police that smartphone then how will this legislation do anything? What stops "US Mastodon" being the new place all the kids in your school are posting?

Like that is the goal here, because observably any phone with a web browser has social media access, it just can't be a company which tries to do business in Australia directly.

But 4chan has existed for years (that's not the end point, but certainly creating a selective pressure to push teenagers to less regulated, shadier social media services doesn't seem like it's quite the result people want).

The short version I'd say is, this move seems solely aimed at taking away a virtual third space for adolescents and doesn't plan to offer anything back. But people didn't go seeking it because it offered nothing.

[_zagj]

Adolescents shouldn't have a non-anonymous presence on the internet.

[attila-lendvai]

...and no one talks about a toxic effect of comousory education in this context: your child is locked together with children whose parents you would never be friends with because of conflicting values.

maybe the peer pressure for phones issue would look completely different without compulsory education.