Passing legislation to “protect the kids” is politically easy. Bans are simple. Much more effective, IMO, would be to legislate the way social networks behave. Stop their most addictive patterns. Adults are just as susceptible as kids in my experience. If there needs to be anything kid specific, perhaps a block on using the service during school hours, or only for X hours a day.
>Much more effective, IMO, would be to legislate the way social networks behave. Stop their most addictive patterns.
We are less likely to change behavioral pattern after that period though, like we probably won’t see someone start to smoke at 45. It doesn’t mean it’s impossible of course, but past that age it looks like brains are already on track to become old reactionaries and generate complaints about how things used to be better before.
Which are? While it's easy to say things like "oh, infinite scroll is addictive" or "autoplaying videos are addictive", those are only the most obvious ones; (social) media addiction comes in many forms. Old Reddit didn't have infinite scroll and you had to click to open items, but would you argue it wasn't addictive anyways? IRC style chat, news groups and forums didn't have any of the obvious dark addictive patterns we associate with harmful social media nowadays, but we still whiled away the hours on them regardless.
I don't think it'd be as straightforward as banning certain practices. Besides, it'd be a game of whack-a-mole since for every legislation they'll find a way around it, or make it so that the users clamor to bring it back - take the EU privacy directive, it told companies they needed user permissions first. But they - the companies, not the EU or the laws - implemented it in the most obnoxious and harmful way possible to spite their own users and hopefully annoy them so much that they would either just hit accept, or vote the lawmakers out in favor of more economically liberal people.
In my experience, the ads are the _least_ harmful parts of social media. It's the regular accounts that are causing FOMO and mental health issues by displaying unrealistic lifestyles that the majority of people won't ever achieve.
That's only one fragment of social media though, it's not helpful to focus on this part of social media alone; another big one is the rhetoric hidden in otherwise normal / legitimate content that seems to be a nontrivial factor in a hard shift to the right, politically.
Are they going to use some kind of video verification (which is just some AI/ML guessing the age based on the video?) and usual signals (ie. if the user likes too many stuff that kids like they will be flagged, and their account suspended)?
Well, I guess it will lead to kids getting a bit better at asking older folks for help.
Governments should not be in the business of telling tech companies how to design software.
Honest observers will look back on the anti-social-media movement as a moral panic. It isn't so much that social media is good, it's that the proper attitude toward new, scary things is to integrate them into your life in a healthy way rather than banning them.
And if we should ban anything it's drugs and gambling, not tiktok
> Governments should not be in the business of telling tech companies how to design software.
This sounds a lot like "Governments should not be in the business of telling tobacco companies how to design cigarettes." Social media use is a problem for developing brains. I'm not saying I like Australia's plan, but, like the person you're replying to, I like the spirit of it.
Isn't it more problematic because the nicotine causes addiction, making tobacco users orders of magnitude more likely to develop cancer? Social media sites are designed to cause addiction, to keep people doom scrolling and looking for their next dopamine hit for as long as possible. But even if addiction isn't our main contention and we want to keep the comparison to ailments, social media is also responsible for mental illnesses like depression, anxiety, eating disorders, etc. in developing children.
> And if we should ban anything it's drugs and gambling, not tiktok
You realise children can legally do neither, right?
Government should be in the business of improving citizens lives. As another commenter said, left to their own devices companies would still be using leaded paint everywhere if it was 1c cheaper per gallon. I’ve grown very tired of this “any regulation is bad regulation” viewpoint, it doesn’t hold up to the slightest bit of scrutiny.
I would say that it depends on the exact details of regulation being discussed, not just the target.
For instance, you could propose a regulation that says that any type of gambling with any wager, whether using real currency or fictional, for any age range, should be illegal. I think most people would consider that to be unreasonable.
You could also propose a regulation that says that companies cannot collect personal data on individuals for advertising purposes unless that individual is directly engaged with that company as a customer. This would hopefully render illegal Facebook's "shadow profiles"[1] that collect data on non-customers. While more controversial, I'd say that this would still be supported by most people you'd meet, while still falling into the category of "the government protecting people from Facebook".
Do you not see the difference between “my teenager is moody” and “depression”? Using minimizing language here helps no one.
I agree that there should be more formal research into the effects of social media but as a parent I see concern about the effects of social media in conversation with other parents and teachers all the time. It is something we all witness in our own lives to some extent or another.
“We should let this run rampant while we investigate it fully” and “we should block this while we investigate it fully” are both valid viewpoints. And if voters want the latter it only makes sense for the government to be responsive to that.
It's very hard, maybe impossible, to answer the question of whether social media harms people. It's like asking if TV, video games, etc harm people. Maybe -- but I don't trust the studies and at any rate, these are things people should decide for themselves and their families.
Facebook's internal documents showed that on 11 of 12 body image issues, Facebook was helpful to more teens than it was harmful to [1]:
> For example, lots of people rely on the reporting around the Frances Haugen leaks from inside Facebook to argue that “Facebook knew” that Instagram causes “body image issues” for children (and then most people leapt to the belief that the company then ignored and downplayed that finding). But, as we noted, the actual study told a very, very different story. As we pointed out at the time, the study was an attempt to do the right thing and understand if social media like Facebook was actually causing negative self-images among teenagers, and the study found that for the most part, the answer was absolutely not.
> It looked at 12 different potential issues, and surveyed teenaged boys and girls, and found that in 23 out of 24 categories, social media had little to no negative impact, and quite frequently a mostly positive impact. The only issue where the “negative impact” outweighed the “positive impact” was on “body image issues” for teenaged girls, and even then it was less than one-third of the teen girls who said that it made it worse for them. And the whole point of the study was to find out what areas were problematic, and which areas could be improved upon. But, again, in every other area, “made it better” far outranked “made it worse.”
Next, face filters are actually good for teenage self-esteem, just don't put mirrors in your house, or onlyfans... where women find the real mental glowup.
> Next, face filters are actually good for teenage self-esteem, just don't put mirrors in your house, or onlyfans... where women find the real mental glowup.
Did anyone suggest anything close to that? And why mention OnlyFans? If the number of teen users helped by a social media site with face filters is greater than the number of teen users harmed by the social media site, then the former group might already be avoiding or using the worse features (including but not limited to face filters) in a healthy way. Parents and guardians should be teaching children to use the internet in a healthy way, including by warning that photos on social media can be edited with internal and external tools. Some public schools include the topic of manipulated images on social media in health class. Removing face filters from social media sites that have them might be a good idea, but people with severe body image issues will resort to external tools and post the edited images in their group chats. But I digress.
Of the pressures that teen social media users attribute to social media, "overwhelmed because of all the drama" and "like their friends are leaving them out of things" are more prevalent than "worse about their own life" [2]; even then, most teen social media users report that social media makes them feel "more connected to what's going on in their friends' lives" and "like they have people who can support them through tough times" [3]. The percentage of teen social media users reporting that social media has had a net positive effect on them personally is greater than the percentage that report a net negative effect [3] (and the sample probably includes users of TikTok and Instagram, which have face filters).
> Written by Mike Masnick.....
Wherein he links to [4] the publicized results [5] of Facebook's internal research, provides a major infographic from the results, and follows up with infographics and excerpts from Pew Research, yes.
Also, I have to correct what I wrote in my previous comment. What I originally wrote:
> Facebook's internal documents showed that on 11 of 12 body image issues, Facebook was helpful to more teens than it was harmful to
The evidence I referred to was from public documents about internal research, not internal documents. The infographic was about Instagram, not Facebook. Instagram, which has an app with face filters. The reesearch was about 12 issues, of which one was body image. The corrected version of what I wrote is:
< Facebook's public documents on an internal study showed that on 11 of 12 issues (including problematic use, social comparison, and eating issues), Instagram was helpful to more teen users than it was harmful to.
The 12th issue was body image. Instagram was helpful to more teen boys than it was harmful to, but more harmful to teen girls than it was helpful to.
Among other things, there is solid evidence that the move toward gambling in the US has been a disaster. This is a topic that's fairly easy to study in objective terms.
The evidence for social media harming people is highly disputed and, I would say, largely unconvincing. For one thing, it relies on self-reported subjective well-being.
Sports gambling is nothing compared to Dave and busters or Chuck E. Cheese’s tickets. We hook our kids of disgusting gambling behavior (legally?). No one cares about this and wants to go after sports betters instead.
God damn boot lickers all over this thread. I’m so glad to not live anywhere near that godforsaken island.
> I've grown very tired of this “any regulation is bad regulation” viewpoint, it doesn’t hold up to the slightest bit of scrutiny.
This is sneering, where you don't respond to a particular poster's point, but instead attack an unrelated (and even fictional) group of people based on something you don't like, or an attitude that you subjectively perceive to be common. Precisely zero people in this thread have made the claim that "any regulation is bad regulation", and in fact the person you responded to specifically called out drugs and gambling as things that they would be open to regulating.
Sneering is against the HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), boring, unenlightening, not intellectually gratifying, and degrades the quality of the site. Please don't do it.
Ctrl-F for "sneer" - or just read the guidelines, as you should have before posting, and clearly did not:
> Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
> I for one find dismissing a thought by pointing to the big board of rules to be boring, unenlightening and not intellectually gratifying. But that’s just me.
You did not read the rest of my comment, then, which pointed out why sneering is bad. Or maybe you did, because you quoted it, but then chose to forget what you quoted?
Separate from the enumerated rules, it's pretty obvious why this kind of behavior - both in your original comment, and your reply - is generally anti-intellectual, and better suited for Reddit than HN.
If you're not going to follow the guidelines, and going to act in such a hostile and shallow manner, then perhaps you should go somewhere else.
> [EDIT: removed a snarky reply, need to remind myself not to engage with off topic trolling]
Reminding you of the HN guidelines that you repeatedly and blatantly violate, and calling out your hostile, dishonest, emotionally manipulative, and anti-intellectual behavior, is not trolling.
The only one engaging in off-topic trolling, by bringing up fictional positions that nobody adopted, is you.
You realize that video slots, financial software, HR software, legal software, educational software and MANY more all have some amount of regulatory compliance, right? Do you think social media is special somehow and should just get a free pass when aspects of it have been shown to be potentially dangerous?
I do. Social media is how we communicate with each other - governments should tread extremely carefully.
It is not governments job to ensure that certain viewpoints are not expressed or that people stay ideologically influenced by the views of other people.
I agree with you that changing the behaviour of the networks would be better, but what actions does a state like Australia really have here?
If they just say, "change", it must be backed up by a threat -- "we will fine you" or "we will ban you" are, I think, the most obvious threats available to a state.
But fines can be tricky to exact across borders, especially with bigger states, and if Australia says "change or we'll ban you later", the networks may play chicken and deal with it later, when the threat is real.
Starting with "you're banned" means it's painful now, and it's on the networks to prove they've changed and win a way back in, if they care. They might suddenly be willing to listen to how they need to change to get back in, and get that work done.
I'm not really in favour of bans on access to information or networks of people communicating, but a(n effective) ban does seem like a potentially effective tool to motivate action, even if it lacks nuance and doesn't solve the real problems.
I say "an effective" ban there because, come on, if it's just an age verifier then teenagers will figure it out and the whole thing is toothless, not ruthless.
i find it unfortunate that just because the ‘masses’ are on the internet now, everyone wants to play nanny and govern exactly how you design your website
Good luck with that, these companies weight more than most countries. Meta &co won't disclose their secret sauce and/or change their algorithms because a small country asked politely.
Social medias are like petrol, we're addicted and they provide way too much power to the people controlling them, we all know what the right moves are but nobody will pull the trigger.
What is their responsibility and what are they doing that is so insidiously addictive exactly? Endless shitposts by your friends for you to scroll-through is that the fentanyl of the internet?
To me this just seems like they're trying to get some control over what people are exposed to and to find out who's doing what.
Passing legislation to “protect the kids” is politically easy. Bans are simple. Much more effective, IMO, would be to legislate the way social networks behave. Stop their most addictive patterns. Adults are just as susceptible as kids in my experience. If there needs to be anything kid specific, perhaps a block on using the service during school hours, or only for X hours a day.