The tech billionaire attacked the Spanish premier after Pedro Sánchez announced Madrid intends to roll out new rules to protect minors from social media harm, which would see executives potentially liable in court.
I agree with all of those, but they point towards adolescents, where people are gaining adulthood.
For kids under say, 14 years old, you can simply look at children in your direct vicinity and observe the impact of abundant use of things like Youtube, Roblox and others (sorry I’m not hip with it), where it is impacting their motor and cooperative skills, as well as their confidence.
Saying that the platforms used by minors are an important aspect of their social life feels incredulous to me, given that spending time together IRL is such a big factor in learning how to converse with people with differing opinions, without being shielded from them by some engagement-optimizing algorithm.
Where I live, all of that, combined with the enormous pressure social media puts on these kids to always have to take others’ cameras in mind, with the ads showing them all sorts of bs, makes me feel like I wouldn’t have made it out of childhood like I have done.
Of course there are positives too, as you pointed out. Having an easily accessible network of peers could be a great help with questions you’d never ask anyone in your direct vicinity. Except that no platform where kids gather is actually safe, and easily transforms into grooming platforms.
So yea, a ban is definitely a ham-fisted approach, but in my opinion, given the already sketchy situation surrounding the privacy for such an age check, I personally can’t think of a better solution or middle ground to keep the positives of social media. Maybe force the platforms to abandon their current algorithms?
Sorry if it’s hard to read, i tried to proofread but I’m on mobile.
For kids under say, 14 years old, you can simply look at children in your direct vicinity and observe the impact of abundant use of things like Youtube, Roblox and others (sorry I’m not hip with it), where it is impacting their motor and cooperative skills, as well as their confidence.
Where is are your sources for this?
Why did you throw Roblox in there?
Video games have been shown with abundant evidence to benefit hand eye coordination…?
So yea, a ban is definitely a ham-fisted approach, but in my opinion, given the already sketchy situation surrounding the privacy for such an age check, I personally can’t think of a better solution or middle ground to keep the positives of social media. Maybe force the platforms to abandon their current algorithms?
So because of your failure to imagine a solution, kids should be barred from all of it? The solution is take the money out of social media (like here) and have MORE human adult moderators in online communities who have a vested interest in clamping down on toxic people, not lock kids in a box in a way that destroys all of our freedom including theirs.
Yes, I threw Roblox in there because until just weeks ago it was primarily used as a social platform, at least by the few dozen kids I work with regularly. Cherry picking the fact that “games” increase hand-eye coordination is completely disregarding what type of game is being played, and is besides the point I was making.
As for a failure to imagine a solution, hosting a platform that
has appeal to kids
shouldn’t be monetized
actually verifies the age of its users
is MUCH harder than what you make it seem like, especially if we want to preserve the privacy that they deserve. Should it be run by the government for something like eID? Should it be run by a bunch of volunteers like lemmy, disregarding the age check? Neither of these sound very attractive to me.
Also, comparing “ban social media use” to “destroy our freedom” is completely unhinged imo. As I said before I do think there should be a space for kids to talk to other kids, but I just don’t see a way for this to be realistically achievable online.
At the risk of sounding like an old man yelling at a cloud, this space for me was based in “real life” (not online) and here I found friends for life
Edit: funny to see you’re the one downvoting me, isn’t this a productive discussion?
Yes, I threw Roblox in there because until just weeks ago it was primarily used as a social platform, at least by the few dozen kids I work with regularly. Cherry picking the fact that “games” increase hand-eye coordination is completely disregarding what type of game is being played, and is besides the point I was making.
It isn’t cherry picking, 3d games like Roblox absolutely train hand eye coordination? So do most games younger people are interested in?
Well to entertain the offtopic games point, yes it’s a 3d game, but it also isn’t. It completely depends on what you’re actually doing inside Roblox.
You can play extremely challenging parkour games, or literally just stand around in some lobby. To add onto that, it’s often played on tablets and phones, where all controls are condensed into left and right thumb controls.
And even giving that point to you that yes, some games are good for development, it isn’t at all related to the social media ban. I picked roblox specifically because of the chat function it has, and changed, to dodge the Australian age limit for social media.
An easier example would be discord, where, because of its more private nature, grooming has gone absolutely wild (youtube link). In these cases restricting their accounts to just DM’s would already help a ton, but having nuanced solutions like that for every platform that serves minors is nearly impossible I think.
In these cases restricting their accounts to just DM’s would already help a ton, but having nuanced solutions like that for every platform that serves minors is nearly impossible I think.
Because it’s not sustainable. It’s very easy to just start something new whenever the law catches up. And as you said, the law shouldn’t be too restrictive, lest you lose the whole reason for having a social platform. Striking that balance for every niche and edge case would be a gargantuan task, even disregarding the technical requirements for something like that.
For the same reason we don’t expose children to potentially addictive substances, we should not expose them to potentially addictive social media.
Each parent should se their own rules but sometimes folks don’t do that and we end up with a lot of adults who can’t take care of themselves cuz no one ever showed them how
For the same reason we don’t expose children to potentially addictive substances, we should not expose them to potentially addictive social media.
Comparing subjecting kids’ bodies to physically addictive chemicals is a poor comparison to the idea of communicating with others online through a digital identity.
I agree with all of those, but they point towards adolescents, where people are gaining adulthood.
For kids under say, 14 years old, you can simply look at children in your direct vicinity and observe the impact of abundant use of things like Youtube, Roblox and others (sorry I’m not hip with it), where it is impacting their motor and cooperative skills, as well as their confidence.
Saying that the platforms used by minors are an important aspect of their social life feels incredulous to me, given that spending time together IRL is such a big factor in learning how to converse with people with differing opinions, without being shielded from them by some engagement-optimizing algorithm.
Where I live, all of that, combined with the enormous pressure social media puts on these kids to always have to take others’ cameras in mind, with the ads showing them all sorts of bs, makes me feel like I wouldn’t have made it out of childhood like I have done.
Of course there are positives too, as you pointed out. Having an easily accessible network of peers could be a great help with questions you’d never ask anyone in your direct vicinity. Except that no platform where kids gather is actually safe, and easily transforms into grooming platforms.
So yea, a ban is definitely a ham-fisted approach, but in my opinion, given the already sketchy situation surrounding the privacy for such an age check, I personally can’t think of a better solution or middle ground to keep the positives of social media. Maybe force the platforms to abandon their current algorithms?
Sorry if it’s hard to read, i tried to proofread but I’m on mobile.
Where is are your sources for this?
Why did you throw Roblox in there?
Video games have been shown with abundant evidence to benefit hand eye coordination…?
So because of your failure to imagine a solution, kids should be barred from all of it? The solution is take the money out of social media (like here) and have MORE human adult moderators in online communities who have a vested interest in clamping down on toxic people, not lock kids in a box in a way that destroys all of our freedom including theirs.
Yes, I threw Roblox in there because until just weeks ago it was primarily used as a social platform, at least by the few dozen kids I work with regularly. Cherry picking the fact that “games” increase hand-eye coordination is completely disregarding what type of game is being played, and is besides the point I was making.
As for a failure to imagine a solution, hosting a platform that
is MUCH harder than what you make it seem like, especially if we want to preserve the privacy that they deserve. Should it be run by the government for something like eID? Should it be run by a bunch of volunteers like lemmy, disregarding the age check? Neither of these sound very attractive to me.
Also, comparing “ban social media use” to “destroy our freedom” is completely unhinged imo. As I said before I do think there should be a space for kids to talk to other kids, but I just don’t see a way for this to be realistically achievable online.
At the risk of sounding like an old man yelling at a cloud, this space for me was based in “real life” (not online) and here I found friends for life
Edit: funny to see you’re the one downvoting me, isn’t this a productive discussion?
It isn’t cherry picking, 3d games like Roblox absolutely train hand eye coordination? So do most games younger people are interested in?
Well to entertain the offtopic games point, yes it’s a 3d game, but it also isn’t. It completely depends on what you’re actually doing inside Roblox. You can play extremely challenging parkour games, or literally just stand around in some lobby. To add onto that, it’s often played on tablets and phones, where all controls are condensed into left and right thumb controls.
And even giving that point to you that yes, some games are good for development, it isn’t at all related to the social media ban. I picked roblox specifically because of the chat function it has, and changed, to dodge the Australian age limit for social media.
An easier example would be discord, where, because of its more private nature, grooming has gone absolutely wild (youtube link). In these cases restricting their accounts to just DM’s would already help a ton, but having nuanced solutions like that for every platform that serves minors is nearly impossible I think.
Why?
Because it’s not sustainable. It’s very easy to just start something new whenever the law catches up. And as you said, the law shouldn’t be too restrictive, lest you lose the whole reason for having a social platform. Striking that balance for every niche and edge case would be a gargantuan task, even disregarding the technical requirements for something like that.
and restricting kids from social media period is going to be LESS of a gargantuan task!??
Yes? Instead of creating a whole set of laws tailor made to whatever techbros come up with next?
For the same reason we don’t expose children to potentially addictive substances, we should not expose them to potentially addictive social media.
Each parent should se their own rules but sometimes folks don’t do that and we end up with a lot of adults who can’t take care of themselves cuz no one ever showed them how
Comparing subjecting kids’ bodies to physically addictive chemicals is a poor comparison to the idea of communicating with others online through a digital identity.
Ideas and actions can become just as addictive mentally. It’s the main reason kids aren’t allowed to gamble.
Please stop trying to argue from a place of intellectual dishonesty
Ideas and actions are fundamentally different than physically giving someone an addictive chemical!?
What?
This has been interesting, but, you not understanding the facts of addiction show the breadth of your ignorance on the topic