Under-16s will be banned from using social media, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced.
Starmer says social media is making children unhappy, making it easier for bullies to abuse children, and is “designed to be addictive”. A ban would give children more time, security, and more freedom to grow up - as well as more opportunities, he adds.
“That is all any parent wants. They want to know that Britain will be better for their children, that they will get a fair chance,” the PM says in a speech in Downing Street.
Starmer adds that the government is “not prepared to compromise” on the safety and happiness of children - and that includes in the regulation and enforcement of this ban. He says the government has listened to and learned from countries like Australia, where a similar ban has already been introduced.
I think this is a very interesting topic. How can you verify that someone is of age without the problem with privacy?
Would you go to a kiosk or something and buy a code that is not bound to you as a person but the person who works there have verified that you are over 16? So it will kinda be like a steam code except they need to check your actual age with a valid identification (that is only shown to the person) and that code will be bound to an account when claimed. If it is per account then that could also make it annoying for kids to create multiple accounts if they aren’t of age.
How else could you do it without needing to trust someone to keep your identity safe?
Throw your ideas at me!
And we do not need perfect, look at alcohol consumptions, that is illegal for kids but some find their ways anyway. It just needs to be annoying so most don’t do it or do it less
How can you verify that someone is of age without the problem with privacy?
That’s the neat part!
Awww come on. Come up with some fun ideas!
There are no bad ideas, this is a safe space.
It is when we put them in action they could be bad (we have seen some versions already).
A better example for me is driving, we don’t let children drive, millions of children have access to cars, there’s no age gate on the ignition.
Ultimately its the parents that stop kids driving.
Ban kids from using it. Then treat it like a public health problem and educate everybody on the problems, how to identify misinformation, keep themselves safe etc. And require the companies to provide the tools parents can use to protect their own kids. Parental controls exist but i feel they aren’t widely used because it’s difficult and complicated.
I’d go further and start regulating the use of algorithmic feeds for everybody but that’s probably harder to achieve.
that was a good example.
So the police do checks when something seems off, they get a tip or just random checks (which could just be them looking at feeds) so everyone follows the law and parents has the biggest responsibility to make sure the kids follow the law/rules/ban/stay safe.
I like your solution, I would add that we should also add education about internet security (the things you wrote) in the curriculum. And also educate/inform parents at the school yearly or something like that as part of it.
Wouldn’t the last one (algorithm) be what they kinda try to do now (like Discord blocks you from 18+ stuff) and that is why they need to know your age so kids won’t se some stuff that adults can?
I’m not entirely sure how that’s panning out in Aus (a quick search suggests it’s a flop, but the sources aren’t great). I think the general consensus is that it’s not as enforceable as they hoped.
We are moving towards an era of a more locked down web in the UK. The main flag here is “robust age verification” - i.e. we’re moving from “you must provide ID to view adult material on social media” to “you must provide ID to use social media”.
One can quickly see “your id must be retained and linked to your account to reduce crime” and “any officer of the law may view this ID to better support crime reduction” slipping in over the next 20 years or so.
Overall, this feels like another Trojan horse to move towards a China-style de-anonymised web. Bad move all around really.
Oh, there’s pretty solid data about Australia. A large percent of kids are still using social media because the ones who no longer use it are the ones whose parents won’t let them use it, which is of course the same group as the ones whose parents always had that power. But we have heard from some vulnerable minority kids who now no longer get access to the support that they used to have. And that’s really f***** up.
those kids socialising other ways. social media isnt socializing anyway
Of course! Whyever didn’t the bullied queer kids or the kids in abusive households or the kids living in remote areas think of that? I bet they’d feel so silly if you told them they should just find support networks elsewhere 🤦♀️
there were support networks before the giant social media companies. and they didnt harvest your data!
In a lot of cases (like the ones I already mentioned!!) there weren’t!!!
sure there was. you dont need big corporations to have support networks on the internet
Believe it or not, those support networks on the old internet were still using social media. Whether or not a medium for interacting with other people socially is owned by a big corporation has no bearing on whether or not it is a kind of social media, and it hasn’t escaped my notice that your shifting of the goalposts here has not made any actually existing policy proposals aimed at getting youths off it any less harmful in any meaningful sense.
Fuck Keir Starmer
I’m all for it. The internet is unregulated, and it has a direct impact on people’s consciousness, it dictates what they think about.
Therefore, our minds, our emotions, our impulses and intentions are also unregulated.
My only concern is that this is a rather lazy approach when all it took was good digital literacy.
Edit: reading that back I’m putting over the wrong message. Our minds shouldn’t be regulated directly, what should be regulated is those who have the power to influence them. Otherwise, we’re no more free than if our minds were regulated.