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
this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2025
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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?
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.
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
Australia is the first nation to fail to ban social media for under 16s.
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
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.
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.
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
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 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.
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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.
Social media is harming them in that case.
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.
They will create their own places... which might not actually be desirable for the government lol
If only this applied to the parents as well... No more using your children online to make a buck as an influencer.
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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?
Now kids will be forced to hide being a victim of cyber-bullying from their parents. Great work!
If they don't have an online presence and neither do their peers, how would they be cyber bullied?
I'm sure bullying will go on, old school, in the streets, but cyber bullying is one of the things that will go away with this
I think this is great. There are about one or two generations worth of people that had social media while being kids and I think they should stop acting as if it's the end of the world if it would go away. I fully understand that you grew up with it and don't know any netter but believe you me: you can do without, you can survive without, you will be better without.
Go outside, touch grass, have fun, be a kid again.
If they don’t have an online presence and neither do their peers, how would they be cyber bullied?
Fun fact, I was called by my bullies on my parents landline and bullied when I was a kid in the 1980s.
Bullies are gonna bully - the method varies but never the motive.
If you think this is going to actually stop kids from getting on social media, I have a bridge to sell you.
All it's going to do is push kids to hide their social media apps, which they'll get either through a VPN or faking the ID check, which gives parents even less visibility into what's going on with their children online.
A few years ago the Australian government spent an enormous amount of money on a proposed firewall to protect the children. After years of development they were ready to pilot test their white elephant, and discovered that, on average, the Australian 12 year old could bypass it in ten minutes.
It's unlikely that the government could even enforce an obstacle as robust as the "are you 18+" checkbox that porn sites opt in to. This new law will not have any influence on under 16s online presence.
I'm an Australian, and I don't remember the 'firewall' that you're talking about. Do you have a link or something to remind me?
This is the first result from Google. It's I guess ancient history now being it was the labor rights push to (probably) unintentionally discredit kevin07, but internal politics aside Conroy (famous for his opposition to adult rating for videogames) was for aong time a candidate for 'biggest piece of shit in Australian politics'. Stephen Conroy was the face of it, so search for him and firewall to your hearts content. The Alana and Madeline foundation were involved in some of the testing that damned the project, if I remember right (as if common since hadn't already damned it with seconds of the sales pitch).
I grew up before the internet dude. I just don’t underestimate the cleverness and resourcefulness of young people.
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It's still not entirely clear how the Australian government thinks they're actually going to enforce this.
Plenty of web services already require you to state your age to use them and I believe a large majority of users just coincidentally happen to be born on January 1st, 1900 as a result.
If they're expecting these tech companies to be gathering and storing peoples' government ID's, or something, somebody needs to carefully explain to them using small words why this is a monumentally stupid idea. Does something need to be done about social media addiction and the rampant sketchy behavior of the tech giants? Yes, probably. Is a blanket ban ever the actual solution to anything? No, very rarely.
It's just apparently all anyone can come up with when they've got government-brain.
I recently switched from 1 January 1900 to 1 January 2000. It feels good to be young again.
It’s still not entirely clear how the Australian government thinks they’re actually going to enforce this.
Since identity verification checks for minors is an absolute nightmare security scenario we are deciding to pull all operations out of Australia.
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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.
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