Good, social media is cancer on society and will only get worse with LLMs, Deepfakes etc. All the astroturfing in favour of social media couldn't possibly change my mind on how harmful social media has been on society.
Not a great trend. Installing a OS that makes me tie provably verifiable identity directly to a install or session will be a pretty stupid liability for anyone to agree to. Feel bad for all the non techs that will just accept this lying down. Especially when the solution is so easy to solve with existing tech. Got a internet net connection? Block the domains at the router level. Then we need the cell phone providers to allow parents to do similar things at the network level with cell internet. Done. Let the parents do it.
"Almost every state has some sort of parental responsibility law that holds parents or legal guardians responsible for property damage, personal injury, theft, shoplifting,
and/or vandalism resulting from intentional or willful acts of their un-emancipated children."
"Parental responsibility laws are one vehicle by which parents are held accountable for at least a
minimal amount of damage caused by their children as a result of intentional acts or vandalism"
Using social media is not a crime. I think what we’re talking about here is child welfare or child protection laws (which all 50 states probably also have).
if disallowing social media use below the age of 16 becomes a law (like the article's proposed bill), and a kid breaks that law, this seems like a perfect example of holding the parents liable?
but also yes, child welfare laws and such are also pretty fitting examples. i dont think the person asking for an example was really asking in good faith, anyhow.
Fu Norway. This is an example of lobbyists succesfully make regulations based on a fake reason to serve their own totally different interest. Dumpsters in Norway have no idea how they are being played. Noone cares about children. They only care about introducing id verification for everyone everywhere. Again. Fu Norway.
It is funny to see all countries afraid of doing what should be done: fine and block the social media companies that don't fix their brainrot algorithms.
The UK considered blocking X over the generating of CSAM and the US responded by saying any such move would face retaliation. Literally today Trump has been attacking the UK for discussing a possible tax on digital services like Meta, and saying point blank he will implement massive tariffs if they do anything.
I feel like the response of the tech community in the US overlooks the fact other countries don't have many options, nor power to actually make these companies change their ways.
I don't want to see age verification either, but I have limited sympathy for these companies given they've spent the best part of two decades ignoring every attempt at getting them to change and do something themselves.
We've been seeing age verification stuff roll out for a couple of years now and still none of the major companies have done anything to clean their act up (and some, like X, have got way worse) so it's not like they're really helping make a case against these policies.
They just complain about the algorithms but they use also the same tool for propaganda / marketing. The only thing they literally agree on is "online hatred" because sometimes it goes against them, so they need to keep the system running.
For example, the previous German government was paying influencers for sponsoring heat pumps. All these "content creators" must be paid by someone - left, right, center, oil, nuclear, gas companies, it's like watching TV for its advertisements. Crazy what it has become.
So, that will most likely never change, although that's probably in the top 3 reasons why social media is unusable.
For me it's funny to see the discussion is completely black-white, like everyone is hooked.
I have 3 kids, 2 use their phones like half an hour at a time, the other is completely hooked, hours and hours. If I don't intervene he doesn't dress in the morning, and continues until he really can't keep his eyes open anymore somewhere around 3am.
For him I use the parental control on my router. All his devices have time limited wifi, and he has no data in his phone plan. Since I've done this he goes outside more, and has developed other interests. Today he actually prepared lunch for us, a 14 year old boy!
My point is, I think it's better to help your kids use their phones moderately instead of completely blocking. I once heard from an alcoholic who always keeps beer in his fridge. Not to drink it, but to be sure you learn to deal with this shit, and wherever the beer is, you can manage not taking it if you don't want it.
I find the black and white thinking scary and I see as a result of social media. Nowadays you even have to argue for the possibility of nuance because everyone immediately jumps to "for or against" mode.
I strongly believe humanity needs to find ways to slow down, but the prevailing culture is for everything to go faster and faster, which doesn't leave room for nuance and non-emotional reasoning.
I have to say that I don't believe in most people's ability to teach their children critical thinking, compassion, nuance, etc. Most people barely manage to feed their kids and not mess them up too badly on the emotional side.
Former alcoholic, I got similar advice early on. It was life changing.
Blocking social media is no different from existing laws for cigarettes, alcohol and various other substances. Nothing wrong with using them, but we do restrict self-serve access for developing minds.
Sure, kids will find a way. That said, like a glass of wine at dinner, parents are free to share their social media experiences with their kids; safely, supervised, limited.
It’s changing and the sentiment towards this crap is adjusting fast. Whoever is running the focus groups on the pushback campaigns aren’t finding good vehicles yet either.
The issue is not the age you come online, it's what happens when you do.
Delaying from 13 (COPPA) to 16 won't change a thing.
When I was a kid, I was obsessed with Home Alone -- I thought if I had one of those talkboys, I could get some changes made. But in an age where every teen has a recording device in their pocket, I continue to see the kinds of stories that made my blood boil... because when it came time to get the authorities involved they dragged their feet the entire time, if they would even file a report at all, and that inaction is paired with a "zero tolerance" policy on any kind of self defense that sends kids out into the world reluctant to give folks the rightful punch they deserve if they act out (and are entitled to give in most stand your ground states.)
Extending adolescence doesn't solve the root problems here, and conversely, more adults should reread a copy of "1984" and be a little more fearful they're held to the rules and norms they instill on the youth.
> Delaying from 13 (COPPA) to 16 won't change a thing.
There’s been a decent amount of studies to suggest it can actually, since you’ll be pushing the uptake of social media outside the peak age range where things like bullying, body image issues, grooming, etc. start to happen and, therefore, limiting the harm.
It’s also a time when a lot of life-habits start to get set down since 12-13 is when kids start having to assume more responsibility for themselves and begin learning how they manage their time, build their study habits, etc. Not being habituated into doomscrolling during that period seems like it can only be healthy. It’s not as if they’d be cut off from the internet entirely, they’d still have Wikipedia and all the boring, non-attention sapping parts of the web. And they’d still be able to direct-message or group-chat with their friends. They’re just spared the algorithmic feeds.
I’m over 40 and this trash works on addicting someone like me just fine. Social media companies went full Icarus and I couldn’t be happier watching the wax run.
How do you invest in ad companies that ran ad campaigns for smoking companies.
hah - 50 year olds have been amongst the worst offenders from what I've experienced. The only generation that I can see that hasnt completely fallen is the generation that were young adults just around the time facebook first released, i.e Millenials. They grew up with the internet but werent enslaved to it like the generation after (Gen Z). Meanwhile the generation above (Gen X) didnt have the survival instincts fostered whilst growing up with the internet so fall foul of all sorts of fake news pieces etc
No, they mean, the latest to implement mandatory id for all residents to access the internet. This is not a health issue, it's not demand from lazy parents, this is the elites desire to abolish anonymity on the internet.
The one part I was curious about was who would be responsible for this? The app or the OS? The article says the app makers, which I think is correct.
In the US, Meta in particular is pushing for OS-level age verification [1]. What a surprise. The company without an OS wants OS makers to do it and, more importantly, to be liable for it.
Many purists believe such a move is bad for freedom of expression. I'm sympathetic to this argument to a degree but I think we've shown that it's been a failure. More to the point, whether or not you agree with age verification, it's coming regardless so the only issue really is what form it takes.
This will go beyond social media too. I'm thinking specifically of gambling. I'm including crypto gambling as well as sports betting and prediction markets. In the real world we require you to go to a casino to gamble and you will have your age checked at the door. We've just been removing the barriers to gambling addiction and extending it to minors. My prediction is that this will change.
For anyone who thinks teens will just get around this with VPNs and other workarounds, of course some will. Not everyone will. And blocking such measures will get better over time. Also, network effects will come into play. What will it do if half your friends aren't on social media? What about 75%? 90%?
Also, this is going to cut into advertising to minors. That I think is a win. Companies won't be able to target minors in affected markets. Meta (etc) will be legally responsible for making sure they can't. That's good.
Just like tobacco bans to minors aren'100% effective, neither does this.
There are two outcomes. Either the implementation is freedom and privacy respecting and very easy to bypass (effectively just a setting the OS passes on to a website) or it comes with strong technical and cryptographic guarantees which destroy privacy and freedom (identity verification, OS and hardware attestation). There is no middle ground.
The comparison to ID checks when buying cigarettes is missing the point. Human ID checks have few downsides and are relatively high cost to fool.
In the real world, you show your ID to a human and they look at the date of birth and photo. They don't copy or photograph it, they surely won't read let alone remember anything else from your ID, it would be very obvious, costly and dangerous for a criminal to install a hidden camera and secretly record everyone and their IDs. We also don't attach the ID physically to your body and assign an individual police offier to follow you around 24/7 so you don't try to tamper with it somehow.
On the Internet, a securely (safe from bypasses) implemented age verification system makes sure your device is owned and used only by you, that you can't lend it to somebody, that you can't modify or inspect it... It also enables some level of reidentification for catching and prosecuting you if enable access to a minor despite this.
I claim this is not about "protecting children", but to mandate age sniffing on the OS level eventually.
I also find this all questionable. A 18 years old is not penalised? So why is that a difference? I should say that I don't use "social" media (unless commenting on a forum is called "social" now), but I find the attempt to explain this ... very poor. I could not try to reason about this. I could not claim it is meant to "protect" anyone at all. Is this pushed by over-eager parents, who don't understand what to do on a technical level? I really hate censorship in general. So, even while I think unsocial media such as Facebook should be gone, I hate any such restrictions. Then again I also don't trust any legislator who pushes for this - I am certain this is to force age-sniffing onto everyone. And then extend this slowly. Step by step. Salami by Salami. Until anonymity is gone.
> hackernews: "Good. It's about time government took action. The only cure for these abusive capitalist companies is government regulation."
> government: passes law requiring age verification at the OS level
> hackernews: "Oh no! How could this happen? We have to fight this you guys. For sure if it weren't for big tech lobbyists we wouldn't have to worry about draconian laws like this."
And your position is that the government doing anything is bad, then? Better to just resign yourself to abusive capitalists? The position that you're mocking is the belief that some laws are good and some bad. The fact that you seem to find that objectionable is baffling.
It's twofold, these are laws that are delving more and more into regulating the personal lives of its citizens and as a side effect forcing the de-anonymization of the internet. This in a way that makes it easier for the government to track your internet usage and if we're talking OS level verification, maybe even more than just internet usage.
If you really want to go after abusive capitalists, then go straight to the source. Regulate the things that are making this ban look like a good idea.
We've already had reports of the UK's Online Safety Act resulting in a convenient uptick in defamation lawsuits. Certainly not because the government can now easily track who posted a tweet that ruffled the feathers of someone important. So yeah, at cynical end I question the motivation of these laws and at the charitable end, I worry about the direction these laws are moving.
Actually no. The position I'm mocking is that we can somehow implement enforceable age restrictions on digital platforms without a verification mechanism that extends to the client level, even to the hardware. I think we need to suck it up and accept that the free-wheeling 90s are over, and using computers, the internet, and technology in general will become a much more regulated activity in the very near future, which is going to suck for people who make touching computers their entire personality, but greater society has decided that protection from certain severe social harms is worth the price paid.
This isn't a real dichotomy. There's not a lever positioned between safety and freedom that people can collectively choose to shift one way or another. The best way to enhance safety is to directly ban the harmful behavior, not install cameras everywhere to make sure that only the right people fall victim to it. A panopticon is both less free and less safe than the world we have now, and a world where Meta and Google are ground into silicon dust is safer and more free.
Knowing how kids are, they will just snicker and skirt their way around these bans anyway thinking they are some super bad ass. This is mostly symbolic.
The data we have on bans on underage drinking and smoking show that they work. Some kids will still smoke and drink, but the number is reduced, drunk driving accidents go down, and eventually fewer adults abuse alcohol and smoke cigarettes.
The myth about age limits making it forbidden and attracting more kids to do it is just that it’s a myth. Spend some time looking at the studies. They almost universally show that age limits on drinking and smoking are harm reducing.
There are a few differences. For one, it's much easier to regulate the sale of alcohol and tobacco, the level of friction is much higher and usually involves an in-person interaction with an adult. Visiting some dodgy website or downloading a VPN is much easier.
Second, the peer pressure to drink/smoke has never been as strong as the network effect of social media. Almost all 15-year-olds are on some form of social media, I don't think you can reasonably expect they will suddenly stop wanting to socialise outside school. Their entire identities are built around their online presence; that was never the case with smoking or drinking, at least not on this scale.
I'm sure it will have some effect, but kids are clever, and they have lots of time, they will find ways to bypass these fairly weak bans. Imo, the only way to do this is to provide an alternative along with the ban, like what the Russians are doing with Max as a replacement for Telegram/WhatsApp, though that's not entirely successful either.
In a way, it's nice because young people will find way to circumvent the limits and they'll learn "hacking", just like we used to do in the very different internet we grew up with.
I always find it entertaining to see the contrast and tech sites between everyone bragging about circumventing internet blocks when they were a kid, then when a story about blocking parts of the internet from kids comes up it’s just assumed that it will work.
Then there’s the contrast between calls for regulating social media for kids followed by the outrage when people realize that 1) products they use are considered social media (Discord, Reddit, Hacker News) and 2) you can’t keep kids out without age checking everyone who uses the product.
Since something has to be done (seemingly) to appease parents, I think tech companies and people here should focus on something that looks good like parentally controlled smartphones or whatever with age locks on the phone end. The kids will get around it anyway, but that's true in any set up (worst case they borrow an adults ID) and at least it might get the parents to not worry as much?
Age verification is coming. It'll come to all the countries - for one reason because it will be baked into the hardware and the same hardware will be sold everywhere.
Cigarettes don't get less addictive when they are banned. On the other hand, a kid is less inclined to use social media if most of their friends aren't on it. They're less likely to post a video on TikTok if there is a significant chance it will be removed if it goes viral. Even if the majority of kids continue to use social media, some of them will follow the rules and they can avoid social media without missing out on socialization altogether.
As the father of a girl, having struggled a lot to stop her from TikTok and similar when she was just 9, it would have been so much easier to enforce that if it had been forbidden by law. It's too late for us, but I'm happy that these measures are coming - it would have been good even without age checks.
Some will do that, but it will hinder the network effects which will be helpful overall. There is at least a good excuse not to be on social media for the ones that didn't really want to anyways, but felt pressured to do so.
Teens are famously resilient to that sort of thing though. Making something illegal is just about the only thing to get a teenager to want to do something.
I'm okay with that, I remember the "cool kid" at my school who smoked cigarettes and I see today how he turned out later in life. Doesn't mean everyone will do it.
There's a solid point to be made about the problem with brainrot algorithms and slop content pushed by default to every (instagram, tiktok, facebook, whatever) user even without banning anything. People in tech who've curated their social media feeds to unfollow/block/dislike brainrot content should seriously sit down with the phone of an average 15 year old (or 75 year old) and spend an hour scrolling.
I am equally as worried about slop content being pushed to the social media feeds of gullible people of the older gen-x and boomer generations as I am of young people. The general problem of human attention span being monetized as a commodity for social manipulation, political manipulation and just generally selling things (the advertising industry in general) is getting worse, not better.
No, we don't. This is big tech shifting liability off themselves with the added bonus of full de-anonymization. Take a look at who is lobbying for this.
We already have COPPA. The result of which I have seen in my child's classroom when the teacher instructs the class "enter a different birth date to get around this restriction so we can use this website for our class activity"
Further it seems to me, this will just allow the tech companies to assume there are no kids, and remove the protections currently available.
Yes there is an issue of quantity, but it seems that we should be focussing on social norms for what is acceptable parenting in the 21st century. I'm 42, probably the lower age range for having a teenage kid, I have a couple of kids myself, and I'm not 100% sure on what the correct approach to take is, as I suspect the situation is for most other parents as the situation is so different to what we experienced at that age.
Seriously. I see at least one baby with a phone in hand every time I go out.
This is 100% an education issue and they don't understand how harmful that can be to their child's brain.
Governments are focusing on banning things because some reason but real solution is education and support imo.
Similar issue with school shottings. Government wants to ban guns or put controls on schools but they don't invest enough on mental health, it is almost if they are incapable of understanding that a healthy person wouldn't choose to do this.
The social media ussue is similar imo, parents don't understand how harmful it is to the brain. It is harmful for adults and it is even worse for children
It is not. Most parents I know have seen what it does to their kids, but have zero childcare. I have a white-collar remote job and can police my kids. If I was dual-parent working class, I don't think I'd be able to pull it off. I'm glad these laws are getting on the books, so at least the peer pressure of a classroom can get to a good majority of kids.
The kid with the iPad at the restaurant is just saliency bias ("I see it everywhere!"). This is not that different from blaming parents for sending their kids to school hungry or for their kids getting abducted or some such.
Social media is a vortex with a very strong societal pull.
As a parent you can only get your children a smartphone when you decide they are old enough, and then iOS and Android have parental control down to app level.
Yes and decent countries ban social media, because like schools, the countries recognize this is a collective action issue. You get your children a smartphone when it becomes the only way they can connect with their peers. That's my point.
That's very different from schools banning use of phone during school hours. And, no, your role as parent is not to blindly follow the herd if you think it is not good. That's certainly true for smartphones and, again, there is parental control if/when you get your children a smartphone.
You can only bring a horse to water, as the saying goes...
My cynical take is that social media are a convenient tool for government to justify more identification and control. ID cards, digital IDs, age verification systems, lack of anonymity, etc almost literally justified by "just think of the children".
"your role as parent is not to blindly follow the herd if you think it is not good."
This is just conservative individual responsibility pablum just re-imagined for IT.
"It doesn't matter if all of societies forces + giant multi-national tech corporations are conspiring to trap your child, individual responsibility is all that matters"
This argument doesn't work for smoking or drinking, and it shouldn't for social media.
> It is not. Most parents I know have seen what it does to their kids, but have zero childcare.
And you are able to tell this ... how exactly? Why should other parents care about YOUR opinion in this regard? Because ultimately this comes down to a difference in opinion.
A VPN can't get around a cigarette and alcohol ban.
Perhaps children should be given locked down phones, with fines for parents who buy non child safe phones for their kids. It would take time for this to take effect but a social media ban would actually be effective at the end.
> Just like you can't get around a random adult buying for kids. It's just an imperfect deterrent.
This argument feels really weak. Convincing an adult to buy alcohol for kids is dramatically more difficult on average than setting up a VPN.
If you’re on this tech website you should know that it’s not hard to get VPN access even with cash by buying cards at retail. You can also use one of the various free (ad supported or spyware) VPN products.
It’s nothing like trying to involve another adult and asking them to take on the legal liability of that action.
The harm hasn't been adequately demonstrated though. Whereas we know cigarettes are harmful to everyone.
Alcohol in the UK can be consumed in the house from 5 years old. Which is the point. That societal norms at work. Everyone knows it's not ok to let your young kids get drunk, but we trust society to let parents decide what is appropriate and when.
Was at my daughter volleyball game a few years back. Sitting in the gym. In walks mom with a baby girl and a boy that looked around 10ish. They sit down. Mom gives the baby the ipad to futz around with. The son? Takes out his book and starts to quietly read.
It was an interesting contrast to say the least.
This is also something I've heard from my son about more kids are getting off of social media, or giving it up for other means to communicate. My son just graduated HS and said all of his peers have left Facebook, Snapchat, X and several others. He said his generation now sees social media as something for Boomers and my (Gen X) generation. He said people think you're lame if you're still on social media. Everything is now back to Discord servers and other platforms like 4Chan. Anonymous, under the radar stuff, out of the prying eyes of adults.
There was a study shared on Hacker News a few months ago that looked hard to find correlations between different measures and social media use or gaming in kids. It didn’t find any evidence of negative correlations between social media or gaming with different negative effects.
The response here was largely skepticism and disbelief. This topic has jumped out of the realm of evidence and into the range of moral panic. Facts don’t matter any more. The conclusion is assumed.
It’s really sad to see how quickly Hacker News, of all places, is jumping head first into welcoming age restrictions and bans with barely a passing thought to what it means. We already saw with Discord that tech communities really don’t like what age restrictions look like in practice, but whenever you make the topic about “social media” everyone assumes it will only be Facebook or Instagram, never their Reddits or Discords that have to go through identity checks for age verification.
> It’s really sad to see how quickly Hacker News, of all places, is jumping head first into welcoming age restrictions and bans with barely a passing thought to what it means.
I'd avoid such generalizations. It's a divisive topic, but from what I've seen here, there's always lots of criticism (regarding implementation at the minimum) in the comments and it definitely isn't clear that most would be jumping head first into anything.
My main worry is this is just another step towards government controlling discourse online. Once implemented it will become difficult to be anonymous on social media.
Some one in the UK civil service was quoted in the Times, they stated that the online safety act is not about protecting children. It is about controlling the discourse.
I don't think anybody was 100% sure social media would be the best thing since sliced bread when they subjected humanity to the experiment, so I don't think you have a whole ton of reason to freak out here. Either they're wrong and can keep moving forward, or they're right and can backtrack. The children will survive and so will you. L
Isn't that a bit naïve though? Will it actually get rolled back? Seems to me we've added another level of officialdom and it's never going to go.
The next generation of plucky startups now have more hoops to jump through, creating a moat around the incumbents.
And even if it is harmful, why is a complete ban the best approach? The internet is a tool. Should you not let kids cook because they might harm themselves? Or do you teach them, so that they can avoid hurting themselves in the future? While avoiding the downside of bringing up kids who can't cook?
yes, plenty of studies of the effect on mental health. whether it's "definitive" is a matter of debate (and opinion). as a parent of teens/preteens, I 100% support this just like I support banning the sale of cigarettes to minors.
And if future research definitively shows that social media is not generally harmful, then it can be allowed and no harm done -- meaning that it's not like the ban deprives them of some essential need.
It's not even so much the social media itself, but it's the companies controlling social media, who push every lever to try to increase engagement. It's not unlike the cigarette companies back in the day, trying to make them as addictive as possible, with ads everywhere, getting it movies so it's cool, etc.
If we had no-ads, paid subscription social media accounts, no endless scrolling, where social media companies revenue was not tied to time spent in the app, where you only see from people you follow, that would be a whole different conversation.
Meta/ByteDance/Snap/YouTube have f*ed it up, and this is why we can't have nice things.
i would need to see some data for that. no way the law had the effect of causing kids to sign up to social media who otherwise, before the law, didnt.
at worst, i could maybe see the law having a 0% effectiveness (i.e. the same number of kids using social media before/after the law). but i think even that is a big stretch.
I could see a scenario where well meaning parents prevent kids from going online, and with the promise of a safer internet through ID laws allows their children to get online more. Total conjecture though, I would like to see data on that too.
Yeah, there are arguments to be made about the benefits (less teenagers on social media) vs the drawbacks (having to hand your id card to some untrustworthy provider), or the fact that it makes people used to circumventing the law, or about the law addressing the wrong issue (so called “social media” being actively harmful by design in ways that ought to be banned) but claiming that the law increases social media consumption is ridiculous.
Good, social media is cancer on society and will only get worse with LLMs, Deepfakes etc. All the astroturfing in favour of social media couldn't possibly change my mind on how harmful social media has been on society.
Normalized credential-harvesting will make it possible for govt to enforce digital exile.
The govt will be able to deny computer access for anyone it doesn’t like, for as long as they don’t like them.
There will then be many ‘underground’ internets, which will all be banned, where the underclass lives. It is also where real innovation will live.
It’s a brand new day and our dystopia has new frontiers available for the brave.
The liability shifting and real identity linking to all online usage that big tech wants is proceeding nicely for them I see.
Not a great trend. Installing a OS that makes me tie provably verifiable identity directly to a install or session will be a pretty stupid liability for anyone to agree to. Feel bad for all the non techs that will just accept this lying down. Especially when the solution is so easy to solve with existing tech. Got a internet net connection? Block the domains at the router level. Then we need the cell phone providers to allow parents to do similar things at the network level with cell internet. Done. Let the parents do it.
This. Big tech shouldn’t rely on ID laws. We should hold big tech liable when we find them in violation. Shift the onus to them.
We used to hold parents liable.
Adults should be protected from these predatory services as well.
This is mindless paternalism.
Who gets to decide what is 'predatory' and why do those people have the right to make decisions in place of able-minded adults?
Can you give an example for this?
"Parental responsibility laws in all 50 states"
https://www.mwl-law.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/PARENTAL-...
an excerpt from above:
"Almost every state has some sort of parental responsibility law that holds parents or legal guardians responsible for property damage, personal injury, theft, shoplifting, and/or vandalism resulting from intentional or willful acts of their un-emancipated children."
"Parental responsibility laws are one vehicle by which parents are held accountable for at least a minimal amount of damage caused by their children as a result of intentional acts or vandalism"
Using social media is not a crime. I think what we’re talking about here is child welfare or child protection laws (which all 50 states probably also have).
if disallowing social media use below the age of 16 becomes a law (like the article's proposed bill), and a kid breaks that law, this seems like a perfect example of holding the parents liable?
but also yes, child welfare laws and such are also pretty fitting examples. i dont think the person asking for an example was really asking in good faith, anyhow.
Speedrunning the way for the loneliness generation. Everything remote yet you can't even meet people
I really liked this post by System76: https://blog.system76.com/post/system76-on-age-verification
Fu Norway. This is an example of lobbyists succesfully make regulations based on a fake reason to serve their own totally different interest. Dumpsters in Norway have no idea how they are being played. Noone cares about children. They only care about introducing id verification for everyone everywhere. Again. Fu Norway.
It is funny to see all countries afraid of doing what should be done: fine and block the social media companies that don't fix their brainrot algorithms.
Adults are not better at handling them than kids.
The UK considered blocking X over the generating of CSAM and the US responded by saying any such move would face retaliation. Literally today Trump has been attacking the UK for discussing a possible tax on digital services like Meta, and saying point blank he will implement massive tariffs if they do anything.
I feel like the response of the tech community in the US overlooks the fact other countries don't have many options, nor power to actually make these companies change their ways.
I don't want to see age verification either, but I have limited sympathy for these companies given they've spent the best part of two decades ignoring every attempt at getting them to change and do something themselves.
We've been seeing age verification stuff roll out for a couple of years now and still none of the major companies have done anything to clean their act up (and some, like X, have got way worse) so it's not like they're really helping make a case against these policies.
They just complain about the algorithms but they use also the same tool for propaganda / marketing. The only thing they literally agree on is "online hatred" because sometimes it goes against them, so they need to keep the system running.
For example, the previous German government was paying influencers for sponsoring heat pumps. All these "content creators" must be paid by someone - left, right, center, oil, nuclear, gas companies, it's like watching TV for its advertisements. Crazy what it has become.
So, that will most likely never change, although that's probably in the top 3 reasons why social media is unusable.
For me it's funny to see the discussion is completely black-white, like everyone is hooked.
I have 3 kids, 2 use their phones like half an hour at a time, the other is completely hooked, hours and hours. If I don't intervene he doesn't dress in the morning, and continues until he really can't keep his eyes open anymore somewhere around 3am.
For him I use the parental control on my router. All his devices have time limited wifi, and he has no data in his phone plan. Since I've done this he goes outside more, and has developed other interests. Today he actually prepared lunch for us, a 14 year old boy!
My point is, I think it's better to help your kids use their phones moderately instead of completely blocking. I once heard from an alcoholic who always keeps beer in his fridge. Not to drink it, but to be sure you learn to deal with this shit, and wherever the beer is, you can manage not taking it if you don't want it.
I find the black and white thinking scary and I see as a result of social media. Nowadays you even have to argue for the possibility of nuance because everyone immediately jumps to "for or against" mode.
I strongly believe humanity needs to find ways to slow down, but the prevailing culture is for everything to go faster and faster, which doesn't leave room for nuance and non-emotional reasoning.
I have to say that I don't believe in most people's ability to teach their children critical thinking, compassion, nuance, etc. Most people barely manage to feed their kids and not mess them up too badly on the emotional side.
Thanks for sharing.
Former alcoholic, I got similar advice early on. It was life changing.
Blocking social media is no different from existing laws for cigarettes, alcohol and various other substances. Nothing wrong with using them, but we do restrict self-serve access for developing minds.
Sure, kids will find a way. That said, like a glass of wine at dinner, parents are free to share their social media experiences with their kids; safely, supervised, limited.
It’s changing and the sentiment towards this crap is adjusting fast. Whoever is running the focus groups on the pushback campaigns aren’t finding good vehicles yet either.
Came here to say something similar. Adults are just as hooked to their addiction feeds as kids.
These are uber-personalized feeds optimized to keep you scrolling to the next item (story / video / post) so companies can show more ads.
"Social media" is a textbook example of a euphemism. We should be calling this what it is: "addiction feeds".
how do you plan the governments should decide what algorithms are brainrot, and what are not?
Because they don't actually care about social media use, it's just a pretext to force everyone to implement mandatory id checks.
At least in my country that is not the issue but the US government literally threatening counteract with tariffs and sanctions.
The issue is not the age you come online, it's what happens when you do.
Delaying from 13 (COPPA) to 16 won't change a thing.
When I was a kid, I was obsessed with Home Alone -- I thought if I had one of those talkboys, I could get some changes made. But in an age where every teen has a recording device in their pocket, I continue to see the kinds of stories that made my blood boil... because when it came time to get the authorities involved they dragged their feet the entire time, if they would even file a report at all, and that inaction is paired with a "zero tolerance" policy on any kind of self defense that sends kids out into the world reluctant to give folks the rightful punch they deserve if they act out (and are entitled to give in most stand your ground states.)
Extending adolescence doesn't solve the root problems here, and conversely, more adults should reread a copy of "1984" and be a little more fearful they're held to the rules and norms they instill on the youth.
> Delaying from 13 (COPPA) to 16 won't change a thing.
There’s been a decent amount of studies to suggest it can actually, since you’ll be pushing the uptake of social media outside the peak age range where things like bullying, body image issues, grooming, etc. start to happen and, therefore, limiting the harm.
It’s also a time when a lot of life-habits start to get set down since 12-13 is when kids start having to assume more responsibility for themselves and begin learning how they manage their time, build their study habits, etc. Not being habituated into doomscrolling during that period seems like it can only be healthy. It’s not as if they’d be cut off from the internet entirely, they’d still have Wikipedia and all the boring, non-attention sapping parts of the web. And they’d still be able to direct-message or group-chat with their friends. They’re just spared the algorithmic feeds.
Oh look another one. Funny how they seem to do this at the same time.
Should be banned for under 40s and over 70s really...
Also ban giving toddlers iPads with YouTube.
I’m over 40 and this trash works on addicting someone like me just fine. Social media companies went full Icarus and I couldn’t be happier watching the wax run.
How do you invest in ad companies that ran ad campaigns for smoking companies.
hah - 50 year olds have been amongst the worst offenders from what I've experienced. The only generation that I can see that hasnt completely fallen is the generation that were young adults just around the time facebook first released, i.e Millenials. They grew up with the internet but werent enslaved to it like the generation after (Gen Z). Meanwhile the generation above (Gen X) didnt have the survival instincts fostered whilst growing up with the internet so fall foul of all sorts of fake news pieces etc
No, they mean, the latest to implement mandatory id for all residents to access the internet. This is not a health issue, it's not demand from lazy parents, this is the elites desire to abolish anonymity on the internet.
The one part I was curious about was who would be responsible for this? The app or the OS? The article says the app makers, which I think is correct.
In the US, Meta in particular is pushing for OS-level age verification [1]. What a surprise. The company without an OS wants OS makers to do it and, more importantly, to be liable for it.
Many purists believe such a move is bad for freedom of expression. I'm sympathetic to this argument to a degree but I think we've shown that it's been a failure. More to the point, whether or not you agree with age verification, it's coming regardless so the only issue really is what form it takes.
This will go beyond social media too. I'm thinking specifically of gambling. I'm including crypto gambling as well as sports betting and prediction markets. In the real world we require you to go to a casino to gamble and you will have your age checked at the door. We've just been removing the barriers to gambling addiction and extending it to minors. My prediction is that this will change.
For anyone who thinks teens will just get around this with VPNs and other workarounds, of course some will. Not everyone will. And blocking such measures will get better over time. Also, network effects will come into play. What will it do if half your friends aren't on social media? What about 75%? 90%?
Also, this is going to cut into advertising to minors. That I think is a win. Companies won't be able to target minors in affected markets. Meta (etc) will be legally responsible for making sure they can't. That's good.
Just like tobacco bans to minors aren'100% effective, neither does this.
[1]: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/reddit-user-uncovers-beh...
There are two outcomes. Either the implementation is freedom and privacy respecting and very easy to bypass (effectively just a setting the OS passes on to a website) or it comes with strong technical and cryptographic guarantees which destroy privacy and freedom (identity verification, OS and hardware attestation). There is no middle ground.
The comparison to ID checks when buying cigarettes is missing the point. Human ID checks have few downsides and are relatively high cost to fool.
In the real world, you show your ID to a human and they look at the date of birth and photo. They don't copy or photograph it, they surely won't read let alone remember anything else from your ID, it would be very obvious, costly and dangerous for a criminal to install a hidden camera and secretly record everyone and their IDs. We also don't attach the ID physically to your body and assign an individual police offier to follow you around 24/7 so you don't try to tamper with it somehow.
On the Internet, a securely (safe from bypasses) implemented age verification system makes sure your device is owned and used only by you, that you can't lend it to somebody, that you can't modify or inspect it... It also enables some level of reidentification for catching and prosecuting you if enable access to a minor despite this.
These are two wildly different situations.
I claim this is not about "protecting children", but to mandate age sniffing on the OS level eventually.
I also find this all questionable. A 18 years old is not penalised? So why is that a difference? I should say that I don't use "social" media (unless commenting on a forum is called "social" now), but I find the attempt to explain this ... very poor. I could not try to reason about this. I could not claim it is meant to "protect" anyone at all. Is this pushed by over-eager parents, who don't understand what to do on a technical level? I really hate censorship in general. So, even while I think unsocial media such as Facebook should be gone, I hate any such restrictions. Then again I also don't trust any legislator who pushes for this - I am certain this is to force age-sniffing onto everyone. And then extend this slowly. Step by step. Salami by Salami. Until anonymity is gone.
It's often not allowed to sell nicotine or alcohol to those who aren't penalized either
> government: bans social media for under 16.
> hackernews: "Good. It's about time government took action. The only cure for these abusive capitalist companies is government regulation."
> government: passes law requiring age verification at the OS level
> hackernews: "Oh no! How could this happen? We have to fight this you guys. For sure if it weren't for big tech lobbyists we wouldn't have to worry about draconian laws like this."
And your position is that the government doing anything is bad, then? Better to just resign yourself to abusive capitalists? The position that you're mocking is the belief that some laws are good and some bad. The fact that you seem to find that objectionable is baffling.
It's twofold, these are laws that are delving more and more into regulating the personal lives of its citizens and as a side effect forcing the de-anonymization of the internet. This in a way that makes it easier for the government to track your internet usage and if we're talking OS level verification, maybe even more than just internet usage.
If you really want to go after abusive capitalists, then go straight to the source. Regulate the things that are making this ban look like a good idea.
We've already had reports of the UK's Online Safety Act resulting in a convenient uptick in defamation lawsuits. Certainly not because the government can now easily track who posted a tweet that ruffled the feathers of someone important. So yeah, at cynical end I question the motivation of these laws and at the charitable end, I worry about the direction these laws are moving.
Actually no. The position I'm mocking is that we can somehow implement enforceable age restrictions on digital platforms without a verification mechanism that extends to the client level, even to the hardware. I think we need to suck it up and accept that the free-wheeling 90s are over, and using computers, the internet, and technology in general will become a much more regulated activity in the very near future, which is going to suck for people who make touching computers their entire personality, but greater society has decided that protection from certain severe social harms is worth the price paid.
This isn't a real dichotomy. There's not a lever positioned between safety and freedom that people can collectively choose to shift one way or another. The best way to enhance safety is to directly ban the harmful behavior, not install cameras everywhere to make sure that only the right people fall victim to it. A panopticon is both less free and less safe than the world we have now, and a world where Meta and Google are ground into silicon dust is safer and more free.
Knowing how kids are, they will just snicker and skirt their way around these bans anyway thinking they are some super bad ass. This is mostly symbolic.
Depends on how it’s enforced.
The data we have on bans on underage drinking and smoking show that they work. Some kids will still smoke and drink, but the number is reduced, drunk driving accidents go down, and eventually fewer adults abuse alcohol and smoke cigarettes.
The myth about age limits making it forbidden and attracting more kids to do it is just that it’s a myth. Spend some time looking at the studies. They almost universally show that age limits on drinking and smoking are harm reducing.
There are a few differences. For one, it's much easier to regulate the sale of alcohol and tobacco, the level of friction is much higher and usually involves an in-person interaction with an adult. Visiting some dodgy website or downloading a VPN is much easier.
Second, the peer pressure to drink/smoke has never been as strong as the network effect of social media. Almost all 15-year-olds are on some form of social media, I don't think you can reasonably expect they will suddenly stop wanting to socialise outside school. Their entire identities are built around their online presence; that was never the case with smoking or drinking, at least not on this scale.
I'm sure it will have some effect, but kids are clever, and they have lots of time, they will find ways to bypass these fairly weak bans. Imo, the only way to do this is to provide an alternative along with the ban, like what the Russians are doing with Max as a replacement for Telegram/WhatsApp, though that's not entirely successful either.
In a way, it's nice because young people will find way to circumvent the limits and they'll learn "hacking", just like we used to do in the very different internet we grew up with.
I always find it entertaining to see the contrast and tech sites between everyone bragging about circumventing internet blocks when they were a kid, then when a story about blocking parts of the internet from kids comes up it’s just assumed that it will work.
Then there’s the contrast between calls for regulating social media for kids followed by the outrage when people realize that 1) products they use are considered social media (Discord, Reddit, Hacker News) and 2) you can’t keep kids out without age checking everyone who uses the product.
Since something has to be done (seemingly) to appease parents, I think tech companies and people here should focus on something that looks good like parentally controlled smartphones or whatever with age locks on the phone end. The kids will get around it anyway, but that's true in any set up (worst case they borrow an adults ID) and at least it might get the parents to not worry as much?
Age verification is coming. It'll come to all the countries - for one reason because it will be baked into the hardware and the same hardware will be sold everywhere.
Cigarettes don't get less addictive when they are banned. On the other hand, a kid is less inclined to use social media if most of their friends aren't on it. They're less likely to post a video on TikTok if there is a significant chance it will be removed if it goes viral. Even if the majority of kids continue to use social media, some of them will follow the rules and they can avoid social media without missing out on socialization altogether.
As the father of a girl, having struggled a lot to stop her from TikTok and similar when she was just 9, it would have been so much easier to enforce that if it had been forbidden by law. It's too late for us, but I'm happy that these measures are coming - it would have been good even without age checks.
Some will do that, but it will hinder the network effects which will be helpful overall. There is at least a good excuse not to be on social media for the ones that didn't really want to anyways, but felt pressured to do so.
People get around the laws of murder. It should still be illegal.
The ability to enforce a law doesn't mean it shouldn't be a law. No law is followed and enforced 100%.
> This is mostly symbolic.
sure, just like some kids sneak cigarettes; but the vast majority don't. I disagree that it's symbolic.
Laws can be normative.
Teens are famously resilient to that sort of thing though. Making something illegal is just about the only thing to get a teenager to want to do something.
We don't need to ban it to literally every kid ever. As long as most of them don't have access the law will be a net positive.
Not really, now the social network can be immune from prosecution by checking the complies with bad regulation box.
I'm okay with that, I remember the "cool kid" at my school who smoked cigarettes and I see today how he turned out later in life. Doesn't mean everyone will do it.
There's a solid point to be made about the problem with brainrot algorithms and slop content pushed by default to every (instagram, tiktok, facebook, whatever) user even without banning anything. People in tech who've curated their social media feeds to unfollow/block/dislike brainrot content should seriously sit down with the phone of an average 15 year old (or 75 year old) and spend an hour scrolling.
I am equally as worried about slop content being pushed to the social media feeds of gullible people of the older gen-x and boomer generations as I am of young people. The general problem of human attention span being monetized as a commodity for social manipulation, political manipulation and just generally selling things (the advertising industry in general) is getting worse, not better.
Europe slowly becomes a totalitarian fascist federation.
The social media and children protection bullshit serves only to introduce a mandatory identification for accessing the internet.
And we all laughed at the "conspiracy theorists" who were constantly warning us.
We need this in the US yesterday.
No, we don't. This is big tech shifting liability off themselves with the added bonus of full de-anonymization. Take a look at who is lobbying for this.
We already have COPPA. The result of which I have seen in my child's classroom when the teacher instructs the class "enter a different birth date to get around this restriction so we can use this website for our class activity"
We already have many companies to help, have Palintir de-anonymize every user.
Is there any evidence for all this?
This sums up my understanding of the current situation (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/understand-the-im...)
That isn't anywhere near definitive.
Further it seems to me, this will just allow the tech companies to assume there are no kids, and remove the protections currently available.
Yes there is an issue of quantity, but it seems that we should be focussing on social norms for what is acceptable parenting in the 21st century. I'm 42, probably the lower age range for having a teenage kid, I have a couple of kids myself, and I'm not 100% sure on what the correct approach to take is, as I suspect the situation is for most other parents as the situation is so different to what we experienced at that age.
Seriously. I see at least one baby with a phone in hand every time I go out.
This is 100% an education issue and they don't understand how harmful that can be to their child's brain.
Governments are focusing on banning things because some reason but real solution is education and support imo.
Similar issue with school shottings. Government wants to ban guns or put controls on schools but they don't invest enough on mental health, it is almost if they are incapable of understanding that a healthy person wouldn't choose to do this.
The social media ussue is similar imo, parents don't understand how harmful it is to the brain. It is harmful for adults and it is even worse for children
"This is 100% an education issue"
It is not. Most parents I know have seen what it does to their kids, but have zero childcare. I have a white-collar remote job and can police my kids. If I was dual-parent working class, I don't think I'd be able to pull it off. I'm glad these laws are getting on the books, so at least the peer pressure of a classroom can get to a good majority of kids.
The kid with the iPad at the restaurant is just saliency bias ("I see it everywhere!"). This is not that different from blaming parents for sending their kids to school hungry or for their kids getting abducted or some such.
Social media is a vortex with a very strong societal pull.
It is a parenting issue.
As a parent you can only get your children a smartphone when you decide they are old enough, and then iOS and Android have parental control down to app level.
Decent schools also ban phones now as well.
"Decent schools also ban phones now as well."
Yes and decent countries ban social media, because like schools, the countries recognize this is a collective action issue. You get your children a smartphone when it becomes the only way they can connect with their peers. That's my point.
That's very different from schools banning use of phone during school hours. And, no, your role as parent is not to blindly follow the herd if you think it is not good. That's certainly true for smartphones and, again, there is parental control if/when you get your children a smartphone.
You can only bring a horse to water, as the saying goes...
My cynical take is that social media are a convenient tool for government to justify more identification and control. ID cards, digital IDs, age verification systems, lack of anonymity, etc almost literally justified by "just think of the children".
"your role as parent is not to blindly follow the herd if you think it is not good."
This is just conservative individual responsibility pablum just re-imagined for IT.
"It doesn't matter if all of societies forces + giant multi-national tech corporations are conspiring to trap your child, individual responsibility is all that matters"
This argument doesn't work for smoking or drinking, and it shouldn't for social media.
I am describing basic parenting and you immediately and bizarrely jump to conservatism and corporate conspiracy... ok that's all for me.
> It is not. Most parents I know have seen what it does to their kids, but have zero childcare.
And you are able to tell this ... how exactly? Why should other parents care about YOUR opinion in this regard? Because ultimately this comes down to a difference in opinion.
Why not sell cigarettes and alcohol to kids, but also educate them that it's harmful?
A VPN can't get around a cigarette and alcohol ban.
Perhaps children should be given locked down phones, with fines for parents who buy non child safe phones for their kids. It would take time for this to take effect but a social media ban would actually be effective at the end.
Just like you can't get around a random adult buying for kids. It's just a imperfect deterrent.
Although I agree- hardware level control would be so much better. Apple's on-device age checks can be a good compromise.
> Just like you can't get around a random adult buying for kids. It's just an imperfect deterrent.
This argument feels really weak. Convincing an adult to buy alcohol for kids is dramatically more difficult on average than setting up a VPN.
If you’re on this tech website you should know that it’s not hard to get VPN access even with cash by buying cards at retail. You can also use one of the various free (ad supported or spyware) VPN products.
It’s nothing like trying to involve another adult and asking them to take on the legal liability of that action.
The harm hasn't been adequately demonstrated though. Whereas we know cigarettes are harmful to everyone.
Alcohol in the UK can be consumed in the house from 5 years old. Which is the point. That societal norms at work. Everyone knows it's not ok to let your young kids get drunk, but we trust society to let parents decide what is appropriate and when.
> Seriously. I see at least one baby with a phone in hand every time I go out.
Where do you live where this is normal?
I’m a parent who spends a lot of time going on walks and to parks with my kids most days of the week.
It’s rare for me to see kids with tablets or phones in their hands. When I do it’s kind of surprising.
Making it illegal will raise awareness about how addictive social media is, i.e. it will educate people
Anecdotal evidence that made me smile a bit.
Was at my daughter volleyball game a few years back. Sitting in the gym. In walks mom with a baby girl and a boy that looked around 10ish. They sit down. Mom gives the baby the ipad to futz around with. The son? Takes out his book and starts to quietly read.
It was an interesting contrast to say the least.
This is also something I've heard from my son about more kids are getting off of social media, or giving it up for other means to communicate. My son just graduated HS and said all of his peers have left Facebook, Snapchat, X and several others. He said his generation now sees social media as something for Boomers and my (Gen X) generation. He said people think you're lame if you're still on social media. Everything is now back to Discord servers and other platforms like 4Chan. Anonymous, under the radar stuff, out of the prying eyes of adults.
> Is there any evidence for all this?
There was a study shared on Hacker News a few months ago that looked hard to find correlations between different measures and social media use or gaming in kids. It didn’t find any evidence of negative correlations between social media or gaming with different negative effects.
The response here was largely skepticism and disbelief. This topic has jumped out of the realm of evidence and into the range of moral panic. Facts don’t matter any more. The conclusion is assumed.
It’s really sad to see how quickly Hacker News, of all places, is jumping head first into welcoming age restrictions and bans with barely a passing thought to what it means. We already saw with Discord that tech communities really don’t like what age restrictions look like in practice, but whenever you make the topic about “social media” everyone assumes it will only be Facebook or Instagram, never their Reddits or Discords that have to go through identity checks for age verification.
> It’s really sad to see how quickly Hacker News, of all places, is jumping head first into welcoming age restrictions and bans with barely a passing thought to what it means.
I'd avoid such generalizations. It's a divisive topic, but from what I've seen here, there's always lots of criticism (regarding implementation at the minimum) in the comments and it definitely isn't clear that most would be jumping head first into anything.
My main worry is this is just another step towards government controlling discourse online. Once implemented it will become difficult to be anonymous on social media.
Some one in the UK civil service was quoted in the Times, they stated that the online safety act is not about protecting children. It is about controlling the discourse.
> Is there any evidence for all this?
> I'm not 100% sure
I don't think anybody was 100% sure social media would be the best thing since sliced bread when they subjected humanity to the experiment, so I don't think you have a whole ton of reason to freak out here. Either they're wrong and can keep moving forward, or they're right and can backtrack. The children will survive and so will you. L
Isn't that a bit naïve though? Will it actually get rolled back? Seems to me we've added another level of officialdom and it's never going to go.
The next generation of plucky startups now have more hoops to jump through, creating a moat around the incumbents.
And even if it is harmful, why is a complete ban the best approach? The internet is a tool. Should you not let kids cook because they might harm themselves? Or do you teach them, so that they can avoid hurting themselves in the future? While avoiding the downside of bringing up kids who can't cook?
Evidence?
This is the 21st century.
yes, plenty of studies of the effect on mental health. whether it's "definitive" is a matter of debate (and opinion). as a parent of teens/preteens, I 100% support this just like I support banning the sale of cigarettes to minors. And if future research definitively shows that social media is not generally harmful, then it can be allowed and no harm done -- meaning that it's not like the ban deprives them of some essential need.
It's not even so much the social media itself, but it's the companies controlling social media, who push every lever to try to increase engagement. It's not unlike the cigarette companies back in the day, trying to make them as addictive as possible, with ads everywhere, getting it movies so it's cool, etc.
If we had no-ads, paid subscription social media accounts, no endless scrolling, where social media companies revenue was not tied to time spent in the app, where you only see from people you follow, that would be a whole different conversation.
Meta/ByteDance/Snap/YouTube have f*ed it up, and this is why we can't have nice things.
Ban them from tiktok, draft them for Ukraine. Lock-down the logins, and they can't complain.
You zoom zooms had better bust out the guillotines on the boom booms before they send you out to be boom boomed by drones.
They tried this in australia, now more kids than ever are on social media.
>now more kids than ever are on social media.
press x to doubt
i would need to see some data for that. no way the law had the effect of causing kids to sign up to social media who otherwise, before the law, didnt.
at worst, i could maybe see the law having a 0% effectiveness (i.e. the same number of kids using social media before/after the law). but i think even that is a big stretch.
I could see a scenario where well meaning parents prevent kids from going online, and with the promise of a safer internet through ID laws allows their children to get online more. Total conjecture though, I would like to see data on that too.
Yeah, there are arguments to be made about the benefits (less teenagers on social media) vs the drawbacks (having to hand your id card to some untrustworthy provider), or the fact that it makes people used to circumventing the law, or about the law addressing the wrong issue (so called “social media” being actively harmful by design in ways that ought to be banned) but claiming that the law increases social media consumption is ridiculous.
Source?
Liberal progressive democrat?
What?