Under-16s will be banned from using social media, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced.
Starmer says social media is making children unhappy, making it easier for bullies to abuse children, and is “designed to be addictive”. A ban would give children more time, security, and more freedom to grow up - as well as more opportunities, he adds.
“That is all any parent wants. They want to know that Britain will be better for their children, that they will get a fair chance,” the PM says in a speech in Downing Street.
Starmer adds that the government is “not prepared to compromise” on the safety and happiness of children - and that includes in the regulation and enforcement of this ban. He says the government has listened to and learned from countries like Australia, where a similar ban has already been introduced.
" designed to be addictive ". So you think adults are somehow magically exempt from addiction?
All drugs to be legalized when?
Cowards. Ban it for everyone if you think its so bad, like you have tobacco. At least be consistent with your completely wrong draconian police state loving boot sucking prohibition ideology.
Thousands of people are already getting arrested every year in the UK over social media posts. Good thing the government cares so much about “protecting the children”, because their parents won’t be able to from jail if they say anything the Epstein class doesn’t like, especially now that every post will be conveniently linked to a verified identity. 🙄
Now how does banning social media give children a fairer chance growing up and adulthood. It’s just putting blindfolds on children so they it takes longer for them to learn what they should be complaining and uncooperative with
They learned from countries like Australia huh? Australian here, did they learn how much its not working 😂🙄! None of my kids have anything other than YouTube, but my 9yo knew how to get around it. He doesn’t because he just watches in a browser with ad blockers and we monitor it. My high schooler reports the many and varied ways kids just changed where they go online to continue their crap. Do I think under 16s should be on social media, no. But identity verification is not going to fix that.
This was never about protecting the children. That’s just an excuse to further promote mass surveillance and to exempt companies from responsibility for the additive design of their products and services. It’s easier and more rewarding to penalize the users.
what are you smoking bro? you sound like a meta and google simp
Social media is absolutely addictive and making people unhappy.
But how do you enforce this without removing anonymity?
Once again, they’re going the corporate/government friendly route of surveillance. Ban VPNs, age vefification, soon we’ll be required to use biometric checks to access the internet.
These chucklefucks will do anything other than attempt to solve the problem. Which is more education and help for parents while holding parents and the corporations accountable. But that would cost money rather than having lobbyists and donors fund them even more so 🤷♂️
It all comes back to capitalism.
First step would be to ban social media from using algorithm suggestions all together.
Maybe ban algorithmically-delivered content? So, for example, consider YouTube. The only way to get content would be to search for videos or to subscribe to individual channels. You can still have a user-curated experience, but that curation must be actively done by the user. This would at least prevent feed algorithms selecting for engagement and rage.
I would rather target the worst practices of social media companies in general, rather than try and keep kids from them. It’s not like adults aren’t harmed by this stuff either.
As I said, hold the corporations accountable. It was never about children in the first place.
This is my biggest issue with it.
Social media has become a blight on society on all levels. Not just children.
But, there’s a lack of education or push for children, and adults too, to be smarter online. They’re just instituting laws and legislation and pushing the onus on corporations to comply.
Sounds good at face value but doesn’t factor in smaller companies who are unable to afford the changes needed to comply (resulting in the pulling out of a region) or they institute dodgey 3rd party verification systems that will just on-sell your data.
Then, there’s the world of dodgey VPNs that kids and people have rushed to. Also, as other people have said, children have found work arounds for age verification.
So, what’s the point? What did we actually achieve? I sometimes defer to the old addage of never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity. Sometimes I feel it’s more like naievity or good intenaions being controlled by malicious forces.
I don’t know.
What I feel though is that it just doesn’t feel like it’s truly about the children. If it is, there should be a whole lot more factored into this.
Instead it feels like a half baked plan being sold to us as being for the children.
It’s a moral panic being co-opted by those in power. (Ironically, many of those in power being predators themselves, especially here in the US where they’re a major political party 🙃)
Some I can think of off the top of my head:
- The Patriot Act
- COINTELPRO
- The Satanic Panic and resultant legislation
- The War on Drugs
Legitimate concern gets amplified to a moral panic and then legislation is quickly put forth but is never tested or thoroughly understood. And given that most legislation today is written by lobbyists…well 🤷♂️
I’m sure stupidity is a part of it, but that might be a bit too convenient. It’s usually some genuine intention that then gets swept up and captured by malicious infrastructure. They know what they’re doing. They’re narcissists, unempathetic, and the most willing to exploit. Capitalism in a nutshell.
That’s why I’m saying hold the parents and the corporations accountable. Peel back data collection and restrict algorithmic content altogether. Enforce/provide parental education for online technologies and children. Basically, pay attention to your kids, be interested in them and their lives. The infrastructure exists on these social media platforms to restrict and monitor access, as well as it exists at the router level and at the device level as well. It’s the parents who purchase the device and provide internet access. Would we be ok with in home governmental inspections on all of us so that kids can’t have access to a gun or alcohol? No, it’s up to the parent to protect their child from danger. Why is this any different? Why should we all give up our privacy?
Typical. Punish the individual, but don’t ever address the underlying social causes.
Where and when can I protest this in-person?
What about if social media takes personal responsibility for what their platform does and stop making it addictive? Stops pushing anger inducing stories?
Great. Now how are you going to do that without violating anyone’s privacy?
That’s the neat part - they don’t.
“Oh no, this is terrible” cry the social media sites, while working out just how much your passport details and home address are worth to advertisers.
…and certain government agencies using corporate fronts.
And that fucking Eye of Sauron.
I think this is a very interesting topic. How can you verify that someone is of age without the problem with privacy?
Would you go to a kiosk or something and buy a code that is not bound to you as a person but the person who works there have verified that you are over 16? So it will kinda be like a steam code except they need to check your actual age with a valid identification (that is only shown to the person) and that code will be bound to an account when claimed. If it is per account then that could also make it annoying for kids to create multiple accounts if they aren’t of age.
How else could you do it without needing to trust someone to keep your identity safe?
Throw your ideas at me!
And we do not need perfect, look at alcohol consumptions, that is illegal for kids but some find their ways anyway. It just needs to be annoying so most don’t do it or do it less
A better example for me is driving, we don’t let children drive, millions of children have access to cars, there’s no age gate on the ignition.
Ultimately its the parents that stop kids driving.
Ban kids from using it. Then treat it like a public health problem and educate everybody on the problems, how to identify misinformation, keep themselves safe etc. And require the companies to provide the tools parents can use to protect their own kids. Parental controls exist but i feel they aren’t widely used because it’s difficult and complicated.
I’d go further and start regulating the use of algorithmic feeds for everybody but that’s probably harder to achieve.
give children more time, security, and freedom to go up
So can trans kids access puberty blockers now or nah?
… Announced on a social media site owned by a man who encouraged Pogroms and generates CSAM for profit.
Oh the hypocrisy… The fascists live on it, and no one bats an eye.
…and that is why we need the ban! /s
