> As the parent of a teenager affected by this ban (plus one who has aged past it): I wish that it had been in place 8-10 years ago, before either of my kids got introduced to Rock n' Roll. We tried to be reasonably conservative in their introduction to music and lyrics, on the rationale that it would do them no harm to delay using those for a couple of years through their early brain development. The real difficulty turned out to be the network effect of their peers having access to Rock n' Roll, which increased the social pressure (and corresponding social exclusion) to be dealing with vinyl. Not having access to The Stones, AC/DC, etc. at that point meant that they were effectively out-group, which is a Big Deal for a teenager.
> We ended up allowing them a radio earlier than we'd have liked but imposed other controls (time and space restrictions, an expectation of parental audits, etc.) These controls were imperfect, and the usual issues occurred. My assessment is that it was a net negative for the mental health of one child and neutral for the other.
I'm being a bit facetious here but my point is that everyone who is in support of this kind of Parenting-as-a-Service is not identifying any real issue the government should concern itself with. Just that kids are doing something new and sometimes scary and gosh it's just hard being a parent when they don't listen.
On social media kids will be subjected to undisclosed advertising for all kinds of products legal and illegal. They will be directly targeted and manipulated into real world harm situations and mental manipulation into harmful mindsets.
Most of this cannot be prevented by "being a watchful parent". If your kid watches andrew tate and you see and put a restriction youtube will recommend them a tate adjacent channel or one of the 1million alts that posts clips. Same for tiktok, X and Instagram.The only control you have is to ban them from using the platform which is a roundabout way of achieving the same thing.
> So, you haven't identified any actual problems with them being on social media
Anonymous cyber bullying (multiple times), performative social exclusion (multiple times), anonymous death threats (twice), deepfake porn with their faces spliced in (twice).
Your straw-man example is absurd and TBH it comes across as patronising. I'm trying to avoid assumptions, but it reads like someone who hasn't needed to grapple with this issue personally as a primary carer. Apologies if that isn't the case; everyone has their own view for what parenting should be.
Somehow we've seen fit (as a society) to regulate the minimum age for sex & marriage, obtaining alcohol, acquiring a vehicle licence, etc. We (as a society) recognise that there are good & bad tradeoffs to these activities and have regulated freedoms around these (primarily via age). Somehow, our society hasn't spontaneously regressed into North Korea.
Maybe just don't do that? It's never helpful in good-faith discussions and just indicates a lack of empathy and maybe a lack of understanding of the actual issue being discussed.
> So, you haven't identified any actual problems with them being on social media though.
The problems GP raised seem pretty clear to me. Could gives us some examples of what you would consider to be "actual problems" in this context?
> Just that kids are doing something new and sometimes scary...
Any sane parent wouldn't send their kids to learn to ride a bicycle on the open road and without any supervision. You'd find a park or an empty lot somewhere, let them test it out, assess their ability to deal with potential dangers and avoid harming others at the same time, and let them be on their own once they are able to give you enough confidence that they can handle themselves most of the time without your help.
The problem with today's social media for children is that that there is no direct supervision or moderation of any kind. Like many have pointed out, social media extends to things like online games as well, and the chance that you will see content that are implicitly or explicitly unsuitable for children is extremely high. Just try joining the Discord channels of guilds of any online game to see for yourself.
Not all things new and scary come with a moderate to high risk of irreparable harm.
As others have noted, we already accept a long list of age-based rules: alcohol, driving, tobacco, gambling, movies and games, compulsory schooling, consent, marriage, tattoos, credit cards, pornography, firearms, etc.
Seen in that context, restricting social media for children isn’t some unprecedented intrusion - it’s another attempt to limit access to something that appears harmful for younger people. Will it work? I can only hope. But it seems reasonable to at least try.
I’m not claiming this opinion fits every country - it may be due to biases of where I live. Where I am (and in my opinion), social media seems like a clear and massive net negative, especially for kids. Perhaps in some places social media is a genuinely positive part of daily life, and from that perspective the same law might look like needless government overreach.
The question then becomes, how do we organise society instead?
The slippery slope claims by the anti-mask people have entirely failed to materialise, yet millions died needlessly. Far more people (including myself) were permanently damaged by getting covid before the vaccine.
Anyway, to get back on topic, which country do you think is the best example of the level of government you think is optimal?
I strongly disagree with this legislation and have found it hard to 'steelman' the other side, which your comment/opinion does well. I found it very informative so just wanted to share my appreciation for you posting it here.
Feels like a huge component to me as a parent. What do I now need to know and do and react to, and how does my behavior affect the mental health of my kids.
As the parent of a teenager affected by this ban (plus one who has aged past it): I wish that it had been in place 8-10 years ago, before either of my kids got smartphones. We tried to be reasonably conservative in their introduction to devices and social media, on the rationale that it would do them no harm to delay using those for a couple of years through their early brain development. The real difficulty turned out to be the network effect of their peers having access to social media, which increased the social pressure (and corresponding social exclusion) to be online. Not having access to Snapchat/Discord/etc. at that point meant that they were effectively out-group, which is a Big Deal for a teenager.
We ended up allowing them onto social media platforms earlier than we'd have liked but imposed other controls (time and space restrictions, an expectation of parental audits, etc.) These controls were imperfect, and the usual issues occurred. My assessment is that it was a net negative for the mental health of one child and neutral for the other.
I realise that HN is primarily a US forum and skews small-government and free-speech-absolutist. I'm not interested in getting in a debate with anyone about this - my view is that most social media is a net negative with a disproportionate harm to the mental health of non-fully-developed teenage brains. This represents a powerful collective-action failure that is unrealistic to expect individuals to manage, so it's up to government to step in. All boundaries are arbitrary, so the age of 16 (plus this set of apps) seems like a reasonable set of restrictions to me. I am unmoved by the various "slippery slope" arguments I've read here: all rules are mutable, and if we see a problem/overreach later - we'll deal with it in the same way, by consensus and change.