Landmark legislation sees the Australian government committed to the novel step of child protection by banning social media for under sixteens.
So where exactly are kids supposed to go? People will go on about “they should just go outside” but kids have literally had the cops called on them for the crime of walking around their own neighborhood “unsupervised”. I’ve seen calls to ban kids from all sorts of places - planes, theme parks, restaurants, libraries. I’ve seen these “mosquito” things put up to drive kids away from public places. Kids are spending all their time on social media because they have nowhere else to go.
So where exactly are kids supposed to go? People will go on about “they should just go outside” but kids have literally had the cops called on them for the crime of walking around their own neighborhood “unsupervised”. I’ve seen calls to ban kids from all sorts of places - planes, theme parks, restaurants, libraries. I’ve seen these “mosquito” things put up to drive kids away from public places. Kids are spending all their time on social media because they have nowhere else to go.
Outside. It may take society a bit of time to adjust, just like it took a bit of time before kids not being outside became normal, but it will happen. Kids run around my town all the time unsupervised, nobody is calling the cops, and parents are looking out for each others kids. Just because some places have gone off the deep end doesn’t mean everywhere has.
I’m old enough to remember I spent my days riding my bike around town, exploring the woods, hanging out at friends’ houses, going to the pizza place and hitting baseballs at the school field with my brothers.
I think this perspective (that teens have nothing else in their lives other than social media) is harmful. I don’t understand why they’re not able to do the same things teens did before social media…
Police being called on harmless teenagers by the same busybodies over and over again kind of sorts itself out after awhile.
This is the travel range for kids in the UK by generation. Such a map would be far worse in the US or Australia
They can’t do the same things teenagers did before because the world has been growing more and more hostile to teenagers. More places have banned kids. We have these mosquito things making noises to drive teenagers away. It’s become more difficult to get around without a car. Parents have become more helicoptery, not letting their kids out of the house. And “sorts itself out”? Here’s what happens. Some asshole calls the cops on teenagers just hanging out. The cops, with nothing better to do than harass innocent people, show up and chase them away. Now those teenagers don’t feel safe going back there, because they don’t wanna get cops coming after them. Or maybe the cops don’t stop at chasing the kids off! Maybe they get arrested for “loitering” or some nonsense. Maybe they get accused of dealing drugs because teenagers hanging around is strange and suspicious, and the cops love to frame innocent people. Cops getting called isn’t some silly and frivilous thing.
Have you actually witnessed that entire event pan out?
The police that I personally know, visit the caller and talk to them first to understand the complaint and often (but I agree not always) educate the caller that teenagers are just doing what the caller(s) did at their age… usually, there are no more calls and all groups move on with their lives.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t make headlines and it’s not emotive enough to discuss.
In my personal experience, the older generations trust the media and just believe / expect the worst will happen. Most parents, younger adults, just don’t see the problem.
The police that I personally know, visit the caller and talk to them first to understand the complaint and often (but I agree not always) educate the caller that teenagers are just doing what the caller(s) did at their age… usually, there are no more calls and all groups move on with their lives.
do you happen to be white
Me? I’m not the subject here… I’m just providing a real-life account of a counter point of view, which I guess you didn’t agree with.
Look, I don’t live in Australia, but the way you describe it makes it sound like every single person is a cunt and every place is exactly the same, urban or rural.
Tell me the places with these mosquito sounds.
Can they take public transport or their bikes? A group have their parent or other family provide rides?
Parents aren’t helicoptery enough of this is the kind of shit teens are up against day in and day out.
Here’s what happens when the cops show up to a busy body call. The cops show up, they ask what’s going on, they see nothing illegal is happening and leave. Kids continue living their lives. Can’t loiter at the park. Don’t trespass or loiter in a parking lot or other private property. If they keep calling, the cops start recognizing whose calling and stop questioning the same kids over and over. Cops always give warnings about loitering. If your police are arresting minors for loitering, you got bigger problems. Honestly, isn’t it just a ticket?
Whether or not cops are safe depends on many factors, but having the cops know where you’re kids are isn’t a terrible thing.
cops love to frame innocent people
Get off the internet and crime shows
How dangerous are the police in Australia? How many fatalities? How often?
Edit: advocating for after school programs / funding would be worthwhile. I think your perspective is exaggerated and dismissive, but we could potentially agree on this much.
This just isnt true at all and is fear mongering at its best. You are projecting your own fear and paranoias out in the open and then attributing it to society
Social media is harming them in that case.
Even excluding everything other than computers, you can still play games, talk to friends, code etc.
You can message your friends without all the misinformation and self-harm promoting algorithms
They didn’t say anything about that
They asked what they can do
It can be the same as they do now just without the damage
Hang on. Where I’m Australia have cops been called on kids walking around the neighbourhood? The kids around my neighbourhood go around on their bicycles, skateboard and play in the parks. A few of them graffiti and others put up ads to walk dogs for a fee.
That said, this law is dumb. Australia is so hostile to the tech industry.
They will create their own places… which might not actually be desirable for the government lol
They should go the fuck outside, what you said isnt true at all. Also, kids arent buying their own phones and internet, the parents are.
What happens if an Australian kid starts running their own Pixelfed or Lemmy site?
We are yet to see. My guess is they charge the kid for providing social media to an underaged user (themselves). Will be very interesting to watch ngl. Also idk how they gonna implement it cos i sure as shit aint handing over my id to the social media companies.
I’m not sure that a self hosted ActivityPub site with a single user could reasonably be called a social media site. I wonder how the law defines a social media site.
My instance is in Australia, and the new laws affect social media like Lemmy. The hard part is that there apparently isn’t much guidance on how to follow the law. Do you have to use ID? Is a location-specific popup making you state that you’re 16+ enough? Nobody knows.
If you are the sole user on your own ActivityPub site running on your own server, can it even be called a social media site?
I think a mastodon instance started asking aussies to send a pic of them with a bottle of vodka or a pack of smokes.
Hahaha, that’s just funny.
The problem is not teens accessing social media, they’re just bored or don’t know any better
The problem is what adults post on those social media.
If anything teens should have social media of their own, where no elder boomers are allowed
There was a German social network a few years ago that did exactly that (before Facebook was available in German)
They had SchülerVZ for kids/teens, then they had StudiVZ for university students and finally they had MeinVZ for adults. The problem was, that they weren’t interconnected at all apart from the option to move your account to the next platform. So if you were just starting to study but you still had friends that were in school, you could’t keep in touch with them.
I am so, so glad to see that at least one country in the world is willing to tackle this problem.
Also a little depressed that every comment thread about this law boils down to: “It’s hard. Might as well not do it at all,” especially from people who (rightly) think we need to ban guns every time a school gets shot up here in the US, which would be monumentally difficult socially but 100% needs to happen.
Yeah I don’t really understand the pile on.
Enforcement is not important in any way. If most kids are on social presently, then by making it illegal it just won’t be a place for kids to congregate any more. What would be the point of lying about your age to create a facebook account if none of your friends are there.
Sure, some kids will still be on social, perhaps most kids will be, but there’s no doubt in my mind that their usage will diminish dramatically. That’s how public health works.
especially from people who (rightly) think we need to ban guns
Oh no, it’s stupid…
In further news, millions of teenagers have become experts at vpns and bypassing online restrictions
Australia fighting the good fight to produce tech savvy youth
Problem: Higher childhood depression rates linked to social media usage, social media caused disruption in education (like usage in schools), privacy violation of minors, etc.
An enforceable, common sense solution: Very strict privacy protection laws, that would end up protecting everybody, including minors. Better, kid friendly urban infrastructure like dedicated bike paths protected from car traffic, better pedestrian areas, parks and so on. Kids will get outside their house if there is a kid friendly outside. A greener, more human friendly outside where you can socialize with other humans would always be preferred over doom scrolling online. For the disruption in education issue, it is very education system dependent.
What solution these people came up with: Make it illegal for individuals under the age of 16 to create social media accounts. How do they enforce this? No idea. Does this solve any of the above problems? No. Is this performative? Yes.
Speaking from personal experience, social media was one of the most liberating tools for me as a kid. I lived in a shitty, conservative country and was gay. Social media told me that I wasn’t disgusting. I was always more of a lurker than a poster, so I thankfully didn’t really experience being contacted by groomers and so on. However, many of my friends who posted their images and stuff almost always got pedos in their DMs, so that’s a very real issue.
I could ask my silly little questions related to astrophysics on Reddit and get really good answers. Noone around me irl was ever interested/able to talk about stuff like this. I could explore different political ideologies, get into related servers on Discord and learn more about this. None of this was possible without social media.
Banning social media outright is such a boomer move lol. Doing so isn’t going to solve any real problems associated with childhood social media usage. It’s just going to give the jackass parents complaining about this a false sense of security, when the kids still end up suffering.
This is a false dichotomy.
You can regulate social media platforms and have great infrastructure.
Your own childhood sounds tough, but advocating for social media as a way to mitigate shitty communities is a weird take.
This is false false dichotomy.
Privacy protection laws do regulate social media.
I’m not sure you understand what dichotomy means, maybe look it up.
I didn’t say privacy laws don’t regulate social media.
Better, kid friendly urban infrastructure like dedicated bike paths protected from car traffic, better pedestrian areas, parks and so on. Kids will get outside their house if there is a kid friendly outside. A greener, more human friendly outside where you can socialize with other humans would always be preferred over doom scrolling online.
Good luck with that, people and politicians love cars, parking lots and highways, and the media is demonising kids as criminals.
Exactly, which is why they’re doing performative shit like this
Well written!
All of a sudden their test scores start going through the roof.
That would be a bad thing. In Australia, you want your test scores to go through the floor.
Attention span >3 minutes would be something already.
Good luck with that.
It doesnt need to be 100% effective.
Escape!
Unenforcible Law.
Gotta require ID verifications and ban all VPNs in order to actually be enforcible.
Surely, the website owners would never sell your information, right? Right?
Banning the Three Letter Word is unenforceable too. If you ban Open*** and Wireguard - too bad, China has done that and people developed obfuscation methods. Even if you try to ban talking about them, they won’t go extinct. If there’s a supply, there’s a demand.
Preach
The ID verification is the purpose. Keeping minors off is a smokescreen, tracking every citizen on social media is the real reason for this law.
Gotta require ID verifications
that’s exactly what they are “evaluating” now along with “biometric (age and voice) estimation”.
government, politicians and media are constructing a parallel reality for themselves.
Introducing friction with massive population groups like this is actually effective at bringing numbers down.
Take the porn ID stuff in the US. Yes VPN usage is up but traffic is down as well. Not everyone is going to take the extra steps.
Put it on the parents. That’s enforceable, and the root of the problem…
this isn’t for the safety of kids; it’s to eliminate the ability for queer kids to find a community.
No offence but that’s shortsighted to be generous. I feel like half of lemmy will carry on about social media being cancer, the frequent articles citing negative effects of SM on mental health and the fact that multiple social media companies are accused of propagating misinformation (Zuckerberg face sure is in lemmy a lot lately for some reason). Like Zuck has all but greenlit harassing lgbt+ people on FB and the SM ban is to stop gay kids finding a community? Please. Corporate SM is a blight and before someone says lemmy/reddit check the mod logs or the fact that lemmy only got CSAM under control relatively recently before suggesting it’s fine for kids.
Besides, LGTB kids aren’t the only ones who need the internet to find refuge
Are you Australian? That just feels like kind of a US centric lens to analyze this through, though you’re right that loss of community is a byproduct.
Like, I’m not exactly happy with the Albanese government, but I would say that most negative LGBTQ things they have said or done have been cowardly attempts to avoid drama from the Liberals, not active bigotry
What community? This is social media we’re talking about. Have people really convinced themselves that these things are communities?
Social media is not a good replacement for real life community (look through my comment history and you’ll see me expressing exactly that repeatedly), but we can’t be oblivious to the fact that for many children their only connection to fellow queer people may be online. If you live in a small town or community where there are no other openly queer people, or if your school, peers, and parents are hostile to queer people you won’t have much choice in where you find community.
Based on what I’ve seen over the last few years, it’s the over-16s that should probably be banned from social media.
Absolute stupidity and a waste of taxpayers’ money spending so much time on this nonsense.
These incompetent morons are pretty much guaranteeing that they will lose the next election. In the middle of a housing and inflation crisis this is what these fuckheads decided was important.
I loathe the opposition, but it’s hard to defend the sheer incompetence the Labor Party has displayed their entire term.
With great sadness I have to agree with you.
It’s just one shit show after another. Voice to parliament, live export ban, and now this. Meanwhile Australians are being ground into the dust by price gouging corporations and interest rate hikes.
That said I am in support of this legislation, but it’s just not enough.
If only this applied to the parents as well… No more using your children online to make a buck as an influencer.
I assume that was already the case before, as far as I know that’s also not allowed here in my EU country (but I’m just making assumptions).
After a quick Google, I agree that your making assumptions as for the EU in general.
Yeah looking into it this morning I see that it’s only that some parents have forbidden their divorced spouses from posting pics of the kids online, basically you need to have parental approval (I know because the daycare asked us if we’d allow them, we don’t). So yeah I guess as long as the parents are doing it, it’s legal. Feels so wrong.
Fair dinkem mate. How are they gonna regulate this?
Dinkum
Cheese mate
Oh those poor kids.
I remember when we banned porn for the under 18s and now nobody under 18 can access porn.
This is my favorite argument against government regulation.
Anything not foolproof definitely isn’t worth doing at all.
Theres a scale of influence, with a big difference between foolproof and entirely unenforceable.
In this case, it’s effectively unenforceable, so what’s the point in wasting time and effort drafting something that won’t actually make any difference?
How is this a good argument? The law from the post being stupid notwithstanding, by this logic, why bother making any regulations or laws at all if someone, somewhere is gonna break it.
Are you aware of how much of society is held together with the duct tape of social obligation and the honestly system? Yes we have audits, and enforcement, but honestly in a health society, the vast majority is self-imposed.
This is a really poor argument against government regulation, is all I’m saying.
