Reports that I read on conventional media sites often summarize government reports, but they do so incorrectly. And when I go and read the government reports, they present a much more balanced picture than the summaries would suggest. In particular, for marginalized teens, social media represents a unique avenue to connect with teens in similar situations, which provides a significant support network.
I know it's popular now to say that social media is the root of all evil, but I would be very curious to see a scientific justification for banning it for kids under 16. Just a few years ago, this was a concern presented as 'screen time', but I had similar problems there. There's no real evidence to suggest that looking at a screen is the problem...the much more difficult and interesting problem is what you're doing when you're looking at the screen. There's a similar dynamic in play with social media, I think.
For example, Hacker News is the only social media that I use, and I feel that I use it very differently than folks that use Instagram, for example. Can they be effectively conflated?
The author mentioned by GP is currently working on a similar questions collecting, reviewing and categorizing known literature in these open access documents [1][2]. I suggest you take a look if you are interested in the topic.
> For example, Hacker News is the only social media that I use, and I feel that I use it very differently than folks that use Instagram, for example. Can they be effectively conflated?
Well, I would say no. But to have a meaningful discussion we need to first agree on what is meant here with "social media". Clearly, this law has been passed with the intent to affect Meta / ByteDance / Reddit and similar companies with a business model that hinges on capturing as much attention of their users as possible, which is very different from HackerNews. Most accusations to social media begin bad are towards of the former type.
> but I would be very curious to see a scientific justification for banning it for kids under 16.
From [1], it seems to me that there is a non-negligible amount of literature that has been accumulating, that could be used to justify the ban. Though, Australia is not a technocracy (I hope), so I would say that there is also a certain degree of "purely social" reasons why they might want to curb the access of social media companies to their youth.
[1]: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w-HOfseF2wF9YIpXwUUtP65-...
[2] : https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vVAtMCQnz8WVxtSNQev_e1cG...
> For example, Hacker News is the only social media that I use
Try spending an hour a day on tiktok (average tiktok user screen time) and 30 min a day on instagram (average ig user screen time) for a year and report back. This shit is crack cocaine for kids
Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company documents show (wsj.com)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28523688
Facebook proven to negatively impact mental health (tau.ac.il)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32938622
Testimony to House committee by former Facebook executive Tim Kendall (house.gov)
Just read the comments in your second link tearing apart the study.
Given the replication crisis in psychology, the authors make bad choices in the experiment design that are not justifiable in 2022.
I will say that the lengths the executive goes to to compare social media with tobacco degrade the quality of the argument in my opinion; science tends to ask the question and then seek the answer. Arguments like this seem to start with the answer (it's like Big Tobacco) and then construct the argument accordingly.
In the testimony, they explain it:
We took a page from Big Tobacco’s playbook, working to make our offering addictive at the outset.
Allowing for misinformation, conspiracy theories, and fake news to flourish were like Big Tobacco’s bronchodilators, which allowed the cigarette smoke to cover more surface area of the lungs.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210318063530/https://energycom...
If exec's views are science/truth. Then I bet you would have found execs in tobacco companies who thought they were doing good.
I don't understand why people are so against this? Isn't it possible that people do research to determine the validity of what they read online?
Thank you for bringing this up. I was one of those 'marginalised' kids who didn't relate to my real life surroundings so much. The internet was like an escape for me, where I was able to meet many close friends with similar interests on social medias like Twitter and Discord. Not to mention, free internet access in general taught so much about the world, developed my passions and helped determine what I'm now studying and planning to pursue as a career.
If social media was banned when I was younger, it would have made me worse off for sure. And if there were internet/device restrictions more broadly, like I'm often seeing suggested, it would have been absolutely devastating for me. My life would have turned out completely different, in a bad way.
On a site like HN, I would have expected there to be much more people who also had the same experience as younger me with the internet and social media. But for some reason, most of the dominant sentiment here seems to consider social media as a cancer, with no nuance. I'm not sure why they do, but I wish that these people would consider the experiences of people like me.
The majority of people who actively engage in discussions here are from generations older than ours (I assume we are similar in age) and hence are mostly unable to relate to our experiences.
I'm genuinely curious, is it? I don't know enough to be sure one way or the other, how you'd do it with some kind of private/public key thing or whatever. Can anyone here provide a quick example?
And I'm assuming it would involve some kind of code generated on the spot just for you, so somebody couldn't just post a code on the internet for all teens to use.
The social media ban is similar to the logic behind gaming limits in China. The idea is that while the controls themselves are easily circumvented, it gives everyone an excuse to do the right thing.
Parents don't have infinite "control tokens". I only have time & energy to put my foot down about a limited number of things. It is much easier to establish conventions around responsible behaviour if the whole community is behind it.
I am OK with this ban for the same reason I'm OK with tobacco sellers being not allowed to sell to under 18s.
And yet almost anywhere in Europe this ban is completely ineffective as the kids who start smoking get their hands on the cigarettes regardless. It only is a VERY minor inconvenience until they grow 18.
I haven't lived in Europe some years, but I was amazed at how smoking was perceived as more acceptable there.
Being honest here because just telling parents to deal with a societal ill seems very shortsighted and comes from an immense place of priviledge.
For network effect products (social media, drugs, and alcohol), the easiest solution is in fact to use the government to ban the sale of said products to minors. It’s a coordination problem that’s bigger than the family unit.
Only if preserving privacy is the goal and I'm sure we both know it isn't.
Kind of an "airport book"
It's unfortunate that truth is so hard to come by these days.
There's another podcast with Michael Hobbes called Maintenance Phase that I also enjoy when I have time to listen to it. Fen-phen in particular was something I hadn't really heard of before and reading about it after their episode on it was just fascinating.
And if you think the third parties they contract out the tracking to won’t sell that info/access for profit, I have some magic beans as well.
I support keeping kids protected. I’m just not naive enough to think the current governments of the world have any interest in achieving that goal while maintaining any semblance of privacy for their citizens.
SERIOUSLY! Is anyone claiming that childhood depression and suicide will go down to some range after this law is put in effect? Of course not. Will grades go up? "Government says I can't use social media, guess I'll study, go to sleep on time, and become a productive worker." - Average Australian kid? Will the number of sextortion caused suicides (in the <16 bracket) go back to 0 from 1 to the glory days of 2021 when social media didn't exist (nope, because he was 17 when he died and that was last year). Will the number of girls being sextorted for cash decrease? (reading this [1] you can just ask and they'll tell you, that's great, also it's the general sentiment between students that social media should be banned, another big win! Isn't it convenient when reality bends to ideology.) How exactly can you measure this? Is there a counter of the number of <16s who have seen porn/gore on social media and became too misogynistic or too autistic (or too much of a gay, trans, pedophile, brainrotted, degenerate, debauched, profligate, libertine, licentious, effeminate, wanton, vicious, perverse, recreant, lascivious, unrīht sodomite) for the government's taste? Anything more than a vague sense that cyberbulling will go down and irlbullying will go up a bit? probably Who knows, who cares! We allegedly have vague public sentiment! So grab away!
It's blindingly obvious that this ban can't and won't change <16s habits past switching from their favorite app to whatever their friends are using now.
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/australian-father-of-te...
When I say “ban”, I mean “heavily restrict and track”, which is how I gather we are using the term “ban” in this context as well.
Surely the problem of verifying a property of someone (the Boolean of “is over X age”) without sharing further details, is a surmountable problem given all the cryptographic technologies at our disposal. If a government wants to make this possible, given they know everyone’s birthdate, they could.