So your answer to "young people doing dumb things" is banning young people from doing dumb things until they reach $arbitraryAge? That seems unlikely to happen.

There's a difference between 200 people in a square watching and filming you, and between an organization doing the same thing and then making it available to all of mankind for the rest of time.

Yes... We ban children from doing all sorts of things until they're an appropriate age to make better choices. From getting married to driving to smoking cigarettes.

As I said, I doubt it will happen, that doesn't mean it shouldn't happen.

This is why Snapchat became popular, and everyone seems to have forgotten the value in that feature-set. Instagram blatantly cloned half of the Snapchat feature-set and Snapchat itself has also gone to shit.

One of the first things I did when I graduated from high school was delete my twitter account. It was in an effort to get myself together and become more focused in school. Seeing people's careers damaged by tweets when they were kids makes me feel more and more that deleting my account was one of the best decisions I have made.

If I ever have kids, I'll make a concerted effort with other parents to prevent them from joining any social media before they turn 16.

> If I ever have kids, I'll make a concerted effort with other parents to prevent them from joining any social media before they turn 16

Honestly that seems unlikely. If all their friends are on some platform they will find a way to be on it also. Best you can do is really try to educate them on how badly things can boomerang and that the internet never forgets. But even at 16, most kids don't have the life experience and perspective to really understand this.

> It's no different than going to your local public square full of 200 people holding camcorders, and making a bunch of stupid statements.

I'm afraid it really isn't the same at all. Even when I was 25 I did stupid things. I would get drunk in a night club, like everyone else in my age, and on our way home we might have a piss in the middle of a big public square at 4am because we were drunk and stupid. Does that mean I would also get my bits out in the middle of a public square when there are 200 people staring at me? No.

Doing or saying things in a public place != Publicly saying or doing things

You can do private things in a public place, and that's how many people with a very small following feel on social media.

They're doing public things, regardless of their feelings. They could publish with more privacy if they wanted, but there's always the desire of winning the five minutes of fame lottery.