Most Canadians support social media ban for kids under 16: poll (cheknews.ca)

submitted 13 hours ago by Sunshine@piefed.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca

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An Angus Reid survey says three-quarters of more than 4,000 respondents are in favour of a ban like the one in Australia, where youth under 16 are prevented from setting up accounts on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and Threads.

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[-] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 4 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

I do think parenting better is a lot of the problem though.

You don't have to buy kids phones, and you can set up parental controls. Parental controls have always been annoying and imperfect, but nobody bothers to set them up. For years parents have been setting up Facebook accounts for their kids too to post photos of whatever, bit that conf just be a freaking email.

And even with a ban, social media doesn't magically stop being a problem when you're 16 or 18. 20 year olds are less happy with it. 30 year olds are too.

So yeah, I'm okay with a minimum age on social media, but everyone just faked that before. I'm okay with on device attestation of age, in theory, but who gets to decide what's "mature"? If Polievre had won we would be blocking LGBTQ and pro trans content already.

Seriously, this tech fucking terrifies me. It's end game for democracy, protests, gay rights, minority rights, privacy, controversial politicians, and any corporate competition.

So here's what I'm not okay with:

building a (US run) surveillance state, where everything you look at and do is logged to your government profile
having to apply for a wank permit, or sharing my own sure with the government.
building a nanny state that can just block all access to LGBTQ different
making it impossible for Canadian companies to succeed because of unreasonable regulatory capture

[-] shinratdr@lemmy.ca 3 points 8 hours ago

Poor parenting is arguably some of the problem, but it’s not a realistic solution. The right loves solutions like “personal responsibility” because they are basically excuses to do nothing.

It’s your fault that tech bro oligarchs have hijacked your child’s brain with billions of dollars in research to create the most addictive thing possible, just like it’s your fault that your child is overweight when they are constantly exposed to food that is engineered from the ground up to manipulate the pleasure centres in their brain. Is it true? I mean, a little. Sure. But are there steps we can take as a society to make that job less than completely impossible and a constant battle? Yes.

I think it’s much easier to say to parents “just do this” than it is to do that when you have a real person in front of you pleading that your rules are way worse than their peers and will serve to alienate them from everyone they know.

Parental controls are not a solution, let’s get real. You can buy a SIM with data and a functional internet device for less than $50. Hell, you can get castoff devices for free. You can get free internet access anywhere. Parental controls are a tool that you can and should use to increase barriers, however they are not a panacea.

Regardless, the argument here still boils down to “wait for people to fix themselves and get mad when they don’t”. This is never a solution. We don’t say to people “just eat more iodine and you won’t get goiters”. We put iodine in shit that they eat and solve the problem.

I agree, this solution is painfully flawed. I don’t know what to do though, and I sincerely believe our fear of regulating online content has landed us in this current mess. I think the path we were on before Trump, deplatforming hateful content, was actually pretty good. You could see the temperature change as Nazis, misogynists and Trump himself were kicked off platform after platform and relegated to their own crappy little corners of the internet.

Then this shit came roaring back, Musk bought Twitter, Zuck went full facist and Trump came back into office and everything went to shit. In the space of a year, we now have the richest man in the world on one of the biggest social media platforms and the most followers amplifying literal Nazis, white supremacists and misogynists on the daily. You spend 10 minutes on YouTube watching gaming content and you will have videos from every right-wing influencer in your feed competing for your attention.

It’s so, so bad. Forget happiness stats, we’re letting the far-right brainwash a generation and make them actual Nazis under our nose and we’ve done fuck all about it. We will look back on this period as one of the biggest generational losses of control we’ve ever had and it will take decades to undo the damage, if we ever can.

I feel your concerns here, I really do. I have them all myself. I don’t want harm to come to marginalized groups as a result of tying online activity to a real world ID. But I’m not aware of anywhere to start that has any political support besides here, and I truly believe that letting this continue unchecked will be far worse for us in the long run.

[-] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 3 points 8 hours ago

It’s not correct to say social media is why kids are turning right wing.

A massive societal failure to meet boys where they are or engage with them for decades is largely at fault. Not parenting boys is a problem. Shutting down men’s issues discussions falsely as misogyny is a problem.

The right wing podcasters went and saw that these kids were lost and they lied to them and sold them out. That’s why we are where we are.

And those kids will be able to listen to Spotify or watch YouTube and will have no issue with finding Joe Rogan or Andrew Tate without ID. That’s not social media at all, it’s broadcast and hosted websites. Tate even offers a school to teach kids for fees and takes in millions. That won’t be getting tied up in social media bans either.

I just can’t watch us go “the only prevention is spying and giving up all personal autonomy”. It’s the subject of nightmares and 80 years of dystopian books. But now Meta is paying billions lobbying to track everyone everywhere and we fucking love it.

If your kid will go to the lengths of buying burner phones, SIMs, and hoarding devices to get past your age restrictions, they’ll go to the effort of using a friend’s ID or buying a fake one too.

There is no perfect solution here, but the presented age restrictions are orders of magnitude worse than doing nothing if you ask me.

These problems are not pure social media problems, they’re societal problems we can’t keep pretending are just due to bad people tricking kids on Facebook and Instagram and TikTok.

[-] shinratdr@lemmy.ca 2 points 7 hours ago

I think the issues you describe are arguably part of the situation, but we saw a massive increase these right wing, bigoted attitudes almost overnight. That doesn’t just happen because boys and men are neglected. Men enjoy massive societal privilege and power, married with some expectations and pressure. Mostly put on them by other men who benefit from retaining that power structure or who are deathly terrified of change. It’s toxic masculinity in a nutshell.

The position you describe is frequently dismissed as misogyny because it is one many misogynists hold. Men have had to give up privilege and make space for women, are no longer the centre of the universe and all things must cater to them, and that’s why they are easily swayed to right wing talking heads who tell them actually, society has failed you because they think women and minorities are more important than you. We think you’re great as is, so you don’t have to shut up, give up anything or make space for others. We’ll put you back where you belong, right on top. I can’t sympathize with that. It’s just hateful selfishness, pure and simple.

Kids don’t find Rogan or Tate. It’s shoved in their face by social media companies because it’s engagement bait. Social media is the starting point. I can’t stop people from seeking these things out, there will always be a group. But deplatforming this content from social media will massively reduce the number of people that are exposed to it. Short of that, removing children from these spaces will do the same, at least for them.

I don’t think this is worse than doing nothing. I think we have seen where we’ve come in a couple years. This is so much worse than anyone could have imagined. If it helps, I would much prefer deplatforming of hateful content enforced by the social media companies with harsh penalties and strict regulation. Pushing these people to the corners of the internet does help, nobody gives a fuck what happens on Truth Social for example outside of Trump’s ramblings. I agree that Meta amongst other companies is trying to push toothless legislation that will only further their ability to track and sell each individual user’s data. I also agree the idea of “submit your ID to every social media company” is about the worst shit imaginable and not a solution. So I don’t think we fully disagree.

But I’m not willing to turn a blind eye to it, and I’m not waiting for idealistic solutions like “parent boys better” to magically solve everything.

[-] for_some_delta@beehaw.org 1 points 46 minutes ago

I was a child on the internet. The first white supremicist I met outside of family was in an online game. They sounded like my parents and grandparents. I had a conversation with the white supremicist as a child. The conversation was about why their ideas were bad.

In the same online game, I was running around in spaces where IP sniffers and nukers were common. The community used hex editors to cheat. I became a technically compotent person because I was allowed online.

Children are not stupid. Voices from the left are muted across society. The left needs to get louder.