First, if some parents let their kids use social media and some don't, all kids will eventually use it. You can't cut kids off from social spaces their peers are using and expect them to obey.

Second, this move by Denmark reflects a failure to regulate what social media companies have been doing to all their users.

e.g. What has Meta done to address their failures in Myanmar?[1] As little as was legally possible, and that was as close to nothing as makes no difference. More recently, Meta's own projections indicate 10% of their ad revenue comes from fraud[2]. The real proportion is almost certainly higher, but Meta refuses to take action.

Any attempts to tax or regulate American social media companies has invited swift and merciless response from the U.S. government. To make matters worse, U.S. law makes it impossible for American companies to respect the privacy of consumers in non-U.S. markets[3].

Put it all together, and American social media is something that children need to be protected from, but the only way to protect them is to cut them off from it entirely. This is the direct result of companies like Meta refusing to respond to concerns in any way other than lobbying the U.S. government to bully other nations into accepting their products as is.

Good on Denmark. I hope my own country follows suit.

------------

[1]https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...

[2]https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-fortu...

[3]https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2025/07/22/micro...

Cultures around the world have barred children from certain social places until they go through a rite of passage that the whole society, not just the parents, recognize.

Yes, cultures around the world have done this through parents parenting their child successfully, and not through arbitrary government overreach telling you how to parent.

Not really. The ideal you are describing, where there is no role for the community in regulating public spaces outside the household and determining when young people can enter them, strikes me as highly unusual historically and geographically. It’s an example of that streak of libertarianism that took off from early American internet culture and hardly exists outside internet pontificating.

Social media in the early 2000s is nothing like today.

You're right, kids in the 2000s actually wanted to use social media. It's a dying industry—appropriate timing for a government to make a law to save kids from the evils of it.

The issue is rather the algorithmic feed optimized for grabbing our attention. It's definitely addictive and should be regulated like other drugs.

Give people technology, but let's have an honest conversation about it finally. As a adult it's already hard to muster enough self control to not keep scrolling.

Okay, so explain this to your child, just like you tell them they shouldn't do drugs. Are there not people who are sober by choice? The only thing preventing you from going and smoking crack right now is most certainly not because it's illegal, but because you make a choice not to do so, knowing the negative effects it has on you.

I don't scroll social media. When I was 14-17, sure. But then I lost interest, much like most of my peers did.

(I do probably refresh HN more than I should though, but I think that's probably the least evil thing I could do compulsively...)

The part you’re missing is that the decision to be online isn’t like choosing to do drugs. It’s closer to deciding to go to parties and socialise at all.

Social media for teens is ubiquitous and where your peers connect. It’s being included in your social group, not opt-in thrill seeking.

Most teens will have multiple accounts for various networks - private accounts for their friends, and then again for closer friends. Or they use apps like Discord that parents have no visibility into at all. There is a lot that most parents never see.

For better or worse.

> You're right, kids in the 2000s actually wanted to use social media. It's a dying industry

You're either operating with an anachronistic notion of what constitutes social media, or you're very out of touch with the public. Not sure which one.

The "myspaces" and "facebooks" are trending down, but other forms of social media like tiktok, discord, reddit, youtube, etc are alive and well, still hooking kids young as they always have.

i think the ban on youtube accounts will just be mildly inconvenient, like not being able to subscribe to channels, or chat in a livestream. they can't ban just watching youtube without an account.

I feel like grouping discord as something hooking kids after we teliably took their third spaces is problematic.

You wouldn't have called the equivalent when you were a kid problematic or even had a word for it. It's often just how they communicate with friends.

I feel as though algorithms dedicated to grabbing as much attention as possible are a major problem (youtube, tiktok), while notification checking on public spaces is also similarly an issue.

But is it so hard to teach your kids how to internet? Id advocate for restrictions but banning seems silly.

Over what time scale are you suggesting that social media is dying?

I don't think it will ever disappear, but it certainly plays a less outsized role now than it used to, and it's not exactly an industry I see huge growth in.

What we define as "social media" I think is important. I don't really consider things like TikTok to be "social media" even if there is both a social component and a media component, since the social part is much smaller in comparison to the media part. People aren't communicating on TikTok (I think), which is what people concerned about "being left out by their peers" would be referring to. This type of "social" media probably is not dying, but I think is likely stagnant or will become stagnant in growth, while traditional "social media" continues to regress over the next decade.

The problem is the kid feeling left out at school when they're the only one without a smartphone and can't participate in their friends' activities.

...and this needs to be solved with a law? Kids feeling left out over something well and truly inconsequentual?

Not necessarily a law, but it requires some form of collective action.

I highly recommend discussing a smartphone pact such as http://waituntil8th.org with fellow parents before anyone in their friend group gets a cell phone.

> Find out why smartphones need to be delayed in your home (emphasis mine)

Do parents actually fall for this drivel?

Who needs laws! Let's also let them all smoke cigarettes too then while we're at it.

Lol you can order a cigar or pipe tobacco on the internet completely legally without any ID check. Most people don't know this. You can do it with wine, too, for the vast majority of the US. It's not really a problem.

I suspect you need a credit card though? Can kids sign credit card contracts without parent consent in the US?

Moreover just because that laws and regulations are applied inconsistently in the US (and we are talking about Denmark here), does not mean we should completely do away with them.

Not sure if it's changed but I had a debit card and bank account from age 15 when I started working as a kid. I got it without even involving my parents, not sure if you can still do that now, it was before the KYC stuff ramped up to the nines.

Yeh, no.

Parents are doing what they can, but it inevitably comes down to “but my friend x has it so why can’t I have it” - so all and any help from government / schools is a good thing.

This is so, so, so obviously a nasty, dangerous technology - young brains should absolutely not be exposed to it. In all honesty, neither should older ones, but that’s not what we’re considering here.

"Because I'm your parent, and I said no."

Do you buy your kids a toy every time you go to the store? Do you feed them candy for dinner?

Neither of those examples result in social ostracism from peers.

I think you are massively overstating how important it is to the kids that they have a social media account. How can it hold that kids would be ignored in real life because they don't interact virtually?

With all due respect, I suspect you don’t have teen kids. Almost their entire social life is organised online.

I don't, but I do have friends, and did have friends when I was a kid growing up during the rise and proliferation of social media and the beginnings of algorithmic content distribution, so I am familiar with it.

> How can it hold that kids would be ignored in real life because they don't interact virtually?

Easy. If half the conversation happens online, and your kid wasn’t part of that, they’d constantly need to be “filled in” when they got to school.

Imagine if your company used slack but you weren’t on it. You could still go to all the meetings, but there would have been conversations held and decisions made that you wouldn’t even know about. You would feel like you were on the out. Banning an individual kid from social media would be just the same.

> Imagine if your company used slack but you weren’t on it.

Ah, bliss...

With respect, you’re very out of touch.

Connecting online is the primary social space for many kids nowadays, not in person.

Some parents (or those without kids) have a bit of a naive view and think ‘social media’ and just imagine Facebook, instagram etc - things they understand and that don’t provide much connection.

The kids connect using private accounts, completely different apps, or even just inside the chat of other apps like games, if that is where your specific group hangs out.

I agree with what you're saying (including saying that arcfour is out of touch and doesn't really know what they're talking about), but... I do agree with them to an extent. And I have a kid (with another along the way). Kids adapt. They want to be on social media, or games, or Discord, or whatever because their friends are. If they have enough friends in real life doing something fun, that becomes where their specific group hangs out. The number of people you need in that group before it crosses that threshold is really low... 4, 5 people? That's all you need to have a tight knit friend group.

I've seen things like after school D&D club at the elementary school down the street where my son now goes to preschool. I'm optimistic that by the time he's older, there will be even more groups like this and more opportunities for him to have friends where they're doing activities that aren't mediated by screens.

To be clear, I'm not weighing on in on whether or not I think a ban is a good idea. I tend to think it is. But I do think the idea that there's nothing parents can do from the ground up without the help of government (which I'm not opposed to!) is also a bit misguided.

That's rather rude of you, especially since I was actually a kid and grew up during the mass proliferation and ubiquity of social media, to suggest that I am "out-of-touch" compared to... you? (who are likely much older than me, or at best the same age) is pretty ridiculous. I was on Twitter and Facebook at like 12 years old, I've experienced this. And to dismissively suggest I don't know what I'm talking about, on what basis do you say that? The basis that you just disagree with me...saying that a law for this is stupid and an example of paternalistic government overreach? Many people who decidedly do know what they are talking about agree, just as there are many who disagree and know what they are talking about; simply because you are on the other side doesn't mean I must be clueless.

> Parents are doing what they can, but it inevitably comes down to “but my friend x has it so why can’t I have it” - so all and any help from government / schools is a good thing.

You probably aren’t familiar with this, as it’s somewhat of a secret, but parents have a unique tool they can use called “no.”

Would you want your kid to be ostracised from their community at school? Do you think that would be good for them?

IMO it’s much better - for everyone - to ban this stuff at the community level. Then there’s no FOMO.

If social media is as bad for them as you seem to think it is, then why wouldn’t it be best for them?

I’m old enough to remember the same trash arguments over video games, rap music, even (for some unknown reason) the Disney Channel. This is just another moral panic.

There were also moral panics about teenage smoking, cannabis and alcohol.

There's three outcomes here, sorted from worst to best

- Kid uses social media, which is bad for kid due to social media.

- Kid doesn't use social media and everyone else does, which is bad for kid due to ostracism

- No kids use social media, which is best for kid because they don't get ostracized.

What you're saying here is to just settle for the middle option which is not as bad as the worst option but is still bad.

This is an overly simplistic, idealistic view of the world that leads to people thinking things like the OP are good and necessary. By recognizing that the world doesn't actually work this way at all—things aren't black and white, they're gray—you come to the conclusion that legislation is the worst way to solve these issues and is totally unnecessary.

That's an overly nonspecific criticism. It's more of a compliment of your own cognitive abilities rather than something tangible I can map onto my comment.

Name-calling now? I’ll give you the fourth option that you neglected to include:

- Kids continue to use social media despite the ban, with some using sketchy circumvention services or older friends to gain access, and with others driven to totally unsupervised social media in foreign countries and/or the dark web, with predictable results. The majority of kids rightly see the restrictions placed upon them as unreasonable and grow up with less respect for government and the law, broadly harming social trust as they enter adulthood.

It's a question of magnitudes. There will be at least one kid who does what you're saying, but how many? My strong intuition is that it'll be a small number, too small to cancel out the benefits. The appeal will be largely gone when the network effects are gone. So I say run the experiment in one country and observe the outcome and adjust accordingly. That is the least idealistic position.

As long as it’s not my country and you don’t try to apply your rules extraterritorially, fine. (And feel free to block US-hosted services if you don’t like the way we run things.)

> you come to the conclusion that legislation is the worst way to solve these issues and is totally unnecessary.

If you want to argue for that point of view, do so. Put forward actual arguments. Your comment reads as “if you were smart like me, you’d know I’m right”. Which is unfalsifiable and unconvincing.

Parent of a 21 and 18 year old so I’m somewhat familiar about how to do parenting, thanks.

Yes, “no” is a tool that more parents can and should reach for. But if you’ve got any experience at all of kids you’ll know it’s really not as straight forward as this. The more responsibility you can push off to others, such as government or schools, the easier this is.

We brought ours up with pretty strong guidelines and lots of “no” but we’re fortunate in having some time and some money and some knowledge about how to block stuff on the network and so on - lots of parents aren’t as lucky. They need all the help they can get.

Describe three hypotheticals to me of what you think will happen in the following circumstances:

* Kid who is told "no" by his parents

* Kid who is told "yes" by his parents

* Kid who "can't" sign up for social media because it's illegal to do so at their age, who then signs up for it when it becomes legal.

I would really like to see what you believe the outcomes of these three scenarios would be, because I doubt any of them are truly catastrophic, considering we are, at best, merely delaying the onset of social media use by the kid by just 2-3 years.

Read literally anything about brain elasticity and then come back and tell me those “just” 2—3 years are unimportant. These are key, critical years for development. Pretty much all the studies are saying it’s fucking us, and particularly our kids.

Personally I want to do something about this, and IMO every move in the direction that helps even in a small way is a good one.

Ok so what about selling alcohol to kids? Or cigarettes?

In example 3: Kid lies about their age. Just like they did ever since there was COPA.

Comparing the internet we grew up with and the modern internet where a army of psychologists have been unleashed with the express intent to massively increase addiction to everything they touch is very foolish

Demanding a law because you are unable to tell your kids "no" makes you the bigger fool.

This is not about telling kids no. This is about companies (and foreign hostile governments!) worth billions of dollars openly studying how best to prey on children's minds. There are things that are just poisonous to society as a concept.

You gonna at least gesture at one of these Cognitohazards that are so poisonous we can't even discuss them? Because I admit to being curious!

> You gonna at least gesture at one of these Cognitohazards that are so poisonous we can't even discuss them

I would show you but you'd need your shatter goggles.

The same people demanding the anti-smart phone laws will rat your ass out the second your kid is spotted walking alone, playing independently, etc. They want to put you in a catch-22 situation.

The real problem here is way less people are parents or people that have no idea what parenting is like, so they don't understand the practicalities of raising children so they come up with the dumbest laws possible and then lord it over you with the full weigh of the state so they can pretend to be parents but with none of the responsibility and all of the smug moral superiority.

Jonathan Haidt, the most prominent psychologist pushing for restrictions on social media use for children, is also the most prominent proponent of letting kids play and roam more freely. So no, those are not the same people.

The people doing that are themselves victims of social media and news fear mongering and engagement maxxing

As someone who sold their first joint at 11, which really spurred a lot of my later interests which are now part of my career or let to it indirectly, I am opposed to paternalistic authoritarian governments making choices for everyone.

/s

Absolute statements like yours rarely work, because the discussion is hardly ever about absolutes and more about where to draw the line.