Why Every Country Should Set 16 as the Minimum Age for Social Media Accounts

Re:Why Every Country Should Set 16 as the Minimum Age for So... by asdff on Wednesday January 14, 2026 @05:58PM (#46625165)

Put it this way: is it good for a child to spend an appreciable fraction of their day browsing social media? Did children previously just have free hours at hand to burn on this? The answer is of course no, there are not more hours in the day after the creation of social media, so its usage comes at the cost of something else in that child's life, usually their precious little downtime where they might plan and think about their own life. Or maybe at the cost of other activities that might be more engaging physically or mentally.

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Re:Why Every Country Should Set 16 as the Minimum Age for So... by eli on Wednesday January 14, 2026 @06:05PM (#46625261)

In the 1940s that was pretty much the same argument deployed against the moral panic of that time: comic books.

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Re:Why Every Country Should Set 16 as the Minimum Age for So... by Aerroon on Wednesday January 14, 2026 @06:23PM (#46625487)

And later you had the satanic D&D.

Every generation seems to pick their moral panic and then engages in "unintentional concern trolling" over it. The people mean well, but low quality evidence shouldn't be good enough to condemn things.

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Re:Why Every Country Should Set 16 as the Minimum Age for So... by ben_w on Wednesday January 14, 2026 @06:40PM (#46625665)

Indeed. The question is, how good is the evidence?

Serious question, given it kinda feels like Meta's been acting like cigarette companies back in their heyday, while X is acting like it's the plot device of a James Bond villain.

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Re:Why Every Country Should Set 16 as the Minimum Age for So... by TheOtherHobbes on Wednesday January 14, 2026 @07:28PM (#46626138)

D&D isn't designed to be addictive, and hasn't been used to psych-profile its users or influence elections.

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Re:Why Every Country Should Set 16 as the Minimum Age for So... by camillomiller on Wednesday January 14, 2026 @08:57PM (#46626962)

False dichotomies all the way. I feel like any discussion around meta and social media on this platform brings out the most obnoxious sycophants.

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Re:Why Every Country Should Set 16 as the Minimum Age for So... by johnisgood on Thursday January 15, 2026 @07:53PM (#46641675)

I stopped engaging in such discussions. There are some people who are reasonable and make sense, but the rest are just outright batshit crazy. They want more restraints, more censorship, more anti-privacy crap? Or they equate "good" with addictive? Come on.

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Re:Why Every Country Should Set 16 as the Minimum Age for So... by eli on Wednesday January 14, 2026 @10:52PM (#46627808)

It was designed to be boring?

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Re:Why Every Country Should Set 16 as the Minimum Age for So... by Pooge on Thursday January 15, 2026 @03:06AM (#46629545)

Just because it's good doesn't mean it's addicting.

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Re:Why Every Country Should Set 16 as the Minimum Age for So... by krapp on Thursday January 15, 2026 @07:57AM (#46631764)

Are we getting to the point where any enjoyment of anything is viewed as an addiction and a sickness?

Is the concept of a game just being fun that alien?

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Re:Why Every Country Should Set 16 as the Minimum Age for So... by asdff on Wednesday January 14, 2026 @06:08PM (#46625293)

The difference is children back then actually did see their day expand as they were removed from the workforce, making comic book consumption "free" essentially in terms of what it might have replaced just a generation previous.

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Re:Why Every Country Should Set 16 as the Minimum Age for So... by eli on Wednesday January 14, 2026 @06:14PM (#46625372)

That feels like a stretch. In the 1850s it was pulp novels and in the 1990s it was video games.

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Re:Why Every Country Should Set 16 as the Minimum Age for So... by AngryData on Thursday January 15, 2026 @01:06AM (#46628658)

More so in the cities, not as much in more rural areas where tons of kids were still doing farm work with 10 brothers and sisters along with them in the 40s-60s. After that farms had dropped quite a bit but it was still until the late 70s that farms and farm labor lost enough need for labor that caused most rural kids to completely exist the agricultural sector minus the direct sons and daughters of farmers.

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Re:Why Every Country Should Set 16 as the Minimum Age for So... by Pooge on Thursday January 15, 2026 @03:05AM (#46629544)

Were they addicting and correlated with a spike in mental illnesses? Genuinely asking.

Because I can hardly imagine 70% of people in a train reading comic books. Guess what 70% are doing in the train in 2026?

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Re:Why Every Country Should Set 16 as the Minimum Age for So... by techblueberry on Thursday January 15, 2026 @08:48AM (#46632483)

I think part of the problem is choice. 36% of teens wish they spent less time in social media. Only 32% say it has a positive effect.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/24/teens-and...

It’s addictive like smoking. Addictive algorithms take away agency. I don’t think there are a lot of kids wishing they read less comic books, or played less DND (there may be some percentage wishing less video games). But it’s not like a classic generational divide where parents don’t understand it and teens are fighting for this stuff, a lot are against it themselves!

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Re:Why Every Country Should Set 16 as the Minimum Age for So... by nl on Wednesday January 14, 2026 @07:59PM (#46626462)

Why not ban computer games then?

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Re:Why Every Country Should Set 16 as the Minimum Age for So... by asdff on Friday January 16, 2026 @06:29PM (#46653591)

I'd argue computer games are more mentally engaging than social media. It is also completely different than opening the door to anyone from perverts to ad men to foreign influence agents into your mind.

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Re:Why Every Country Should Set 16 as the Minimum Age for So... by rpdillon on Wednesday January 14, 2026 @07:27PM (#46626135)

This line of reasoning has been applied to TV for the last 50 years as well.

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Re:Why Every Country Should Set 16 as the Minimum Age for So... by lanfeust6 on Wednesday January 14, 2026 @07:48PM (#46626366)

Calling it the boob tube was not without merit

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Re:Why Every Country Should Set 16 as the Minimum Age for So... by techblueberry on Thursday January 15, 2026 @08:44AM (#46632440)

Were they wrong?

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Re:Why Every Country Should Set 16 as the Minimum Age for So... by rpdillon on Saturday January 17, 2026 @07:45PM (#46663706)

Every new generation of moral panic assumes that all the children are using their time fantastically if it were not for the latest issue. Except we've gone through this like five times before so if you did the math on that then probably no kids are using their time fantastically, so social media is probably taking away from time-watching TV. Or maybe playing video games. Or, if you're a satan worshipper, Dungeons & Dragons.

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