[Hugsbox]

I don't believe children should be on social media. Some other people might not share that belief. Should be up to parents to decide what's okay for their kids, not governments or companies.

Age verification will always lead to more surveillance. People need to just be more mindful of what their children are doing online, maybe stop giving them smartphones, and just be parents.

[armchairhacker]

I don’t think social media is intrinsically bad, just the toxic popular social medias. Did kids in the 1990s with access to internet forums have stunted social development?

[reaperducer]

Did kids in the 1990s with access to internet forums have stunted social development?

"He's intelligent, an underachiever, alienated from his parents, has few friends. A classic case for recruitment by the Soviets." — War Games

More seriously, internet forums weren't designed to be addictive. They were designed to communicate.

That's the difference between the past and the present.

[api]

Old school Internet forums and sites were not designed to be addictive.

The "time on site" KPI and its variants is the root of all evil.

[lmz]

Somehow this "leave it to the parents" logic isn't followed when it comes to cigarettes or alcohol. Why is social media different?

[sundarurfriend]

Because the patterns of consumption and harm are very different. It's the constancy and immediacy of social media that makes up the major part of its harm. It's not something where a 15 minute smoke break or a weekend binge is the main mode of consumption and harm. So the parents have a lot more opportunity and power to handle it if they give it reasonable time and attention.

[chadgpt3]

Are 14-year-olds always with their parents?

[roysting]

I think you’re missing that this abdication of personal freedoms to the government in the form of government imposed restrictions on cigarette and alcohol sales is precisely how we’ve gotten to this point over time; arguably following a planned strategy. People who normalized prior subordination to government in the case like cigarettes, alcohol and other things; are now already even more primed to abdicate even more freedom to mommy and daddy government than the prior generation.

It seems clear to me that America is heading into an extremely repressive system where even the nominal use of America may just end up falling by the wayside within the lifetimes of some people alive today. Functionally speaking the, notional or spiritual death of America happened a very long time ago, probably 1840 but obviously no later than the outcome of the Civil War which turned a decentralized union of federated states that formed a republic, into a centralized dictatorial federal power and later the groundwork for becoming the empire we are only 55-80 years after the Civil War, depending on how you want to look at it.

I think people forget that there would have been people who experienced the Civil War that destroyed the central premise of the Constitution, that sovereign states join in a Union to cooperate, and the formation of the Empire of America by no later than the end of WWII.

Those things never happen abruptly, they happen in following a long strategic plan based on objectives not timelines. Part of such a plan is causing ever increasing dependence, deference, and subjugation to government, which is really just someone else’s control over you, the people who make up the “government”, instead of your own control over you. Part of that is giving the impression that money and daddy government will take care of the children, as a tool to psychologically manipulate people by hijacking their instinctual care and concern for protecting children.

It’s why and how they’re more pushing age verification, not ban for minors with similar criminal penalties for anyone who allows minors on the internet/social media. No, you as an adult need to confirm and tie your identity to the digital fingerprint that is tied to all the data that was and is collected about your activity over the last 20+ years … to protect the children of course.

It’s why some people refer to the majority of humans as cattle. You just have to herd them around and they moo and then start fattening up on corn instead of grass, just like the last generation did before they were harvested.

[squigz]

Maybe because they're not comparable.

[insane_dreamer]

By the same logic, we should allow the sale of cigarettes to minors.

[phatfish]

We don't let kids turn up to school drunk because they went to the cornershop on the way to school. I guarantee that would be happening if alcohol sales were not age gated and enforced by the government.

In the same way kids should not be infecting their minds with social media slop, or porn, or plenty of other internet content.

The only way this is stopped is when a social norm is created which shames all but the most negligent parents into compliance.

At the moment the absent and bad parents have all the power. Their kids scroll all night for memes, injest YouTube brainrot and turn up at school disruptive. Kids with responsible parents either want to that as well, or can't escape it.

Surveillance from age gates is a red herring. That horse bolted long ago. You are surveilled already by tech bros when voluntarily logging in, or by making yourself stand out a mile by using a VPN and a uncommon browser setup. This data gets handed to your government on request.

Having an anonymous VPN won't stop the tech bros or an authoritarian government forming, or bring one down.

People taking part in their existing democracy and maintaining the foundation of that is the best course of action. Raising a generation of kids not addicted to internet brainrot is a key part of this.

[Hugsbox]

So maybe there should be better education for parents. Maybe there's other solutions. I can't accept that the nanny state parenting our children for us is the way to go. If people are being negligent of keeping their children safe, maybe they should face consequences for that. The point is, the parents should be solely responsible for deciding what's appropriate for their children, and if they don't have the resources maybe that's something that should be addressed, or if they're not doing their job that should be addressed, but age verification just ain't it.

[chadgpt3]

That's contradictory logic. If you have to parent your children a certain way or else the state will take them away, then you aren't solely responsible, and the state is a nanny state.