this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2025
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Both could be true at the same time.
I’ve got four kids. I’d love nothing more than ban social media for them until 16. It really is poison for developing minds.
There are these crazy things called "parental controls". You've probably never heard of them, but they're on nearly every single personal computing device. OR, and hear me out. You could just buy a dumb phone for your kids until they're sixteen, and if they want to take pictures, buy them an inexpensive digital camera. It would be cheaper overall than buying them an iPhone. But no, that's probably too difficult for you, so everyone else has to give even more of their personal information if they want to use Facebook Marketplace or whatever.
Lol. Yes it’s that simple.
Look, I’ve raised 4 kids. I run OPNsense with filters. I’ve enabled parental controls all on their mobile phone connections. My kids were and will be the last that got a smart phone in their year. I’m an active member of smartphone free childhood in the UK; I’ve engaged with U.K. members of Parliament on the topic. I’ve worked for tech giants whose sole purpose it is to create “habits” ie addiction in amongst children. Regardless I’m not talking about just my kids, I work in education and engage with multiple schools on the topic.
You come back to me when you’ve taken kids through the landscape they exist in today. What’s more, it is possible to verify age online in a way that doesn’t enable governments to see what sites you visit (not that they can’t already get that your ISP); of course I’m against government oversight of everyone’s internet habits. But both can be achieved; anonymity and age verification is possible.
It sounds like a pretty one sided view you’ve got there and maybe, just maybe, it could do with some nuance.
There is no such thing as anonymous data. It has been proven all data can be linked to you. The only data that is anonymous is the one they don't collect.
I agree that for the system to be anonymous the state has to live up to its commitment to anonymity. Have you read the EU’s regulation about this? In there is exactly a commitment that age verification has to be anonymous.
But, let’s take a reality check here:
Yes you can circumvent this logging (to some extent) through VPN - just like you can circumvent the requirement to verify your age with a VPN. But the vast majority don’t.
the only way to have privacy-preserving age checks is when there's a variable on the phone that stores whether the user is old enough. and gives that data forward to apps/websites trying to do age checks.
that variable can only be changed if you're the rightful owner of the device, i.e. if you paid for it and have a code that's on the purchase bill or sth. and children wouldn't have access to that.
This wouldn't work and be moot because phones and other devices are purchased by parents and guardians not children.
If you are saying the code should be changed by parents to access social media with default off. It would be difficult for most people due to low levels of tech literacy
Im not sure what youre arguing here? its possible to control access well as a parent, but so much easier if the state force everyone on the internet to provide id in order to prevent teenagers talking to eavh other?
You yourself csn target what you think is harmful but a law will hit everything and everyone, and like i implied in the driveby about roblox still might not actually block something you find unacceptable.
This is just the wrong approach to achieve the goal.
Youre on lemmy! This is like the one place people will decry facebook, x, reddit, insta etc. But what your arguing for will end up with them as the only services that can navigate existing legally, and children will still work around blocks because they simply dont care about consequences for lying about their age.
Our democracy regulates a lot of things that it (we) believe to be harmful to children: Cigarettes, gambling (also online), pornography, violence in media, alcohol etc etc.
Why is social media any different?
Because the line between "social media" and "talking to other people" is so blurry as to not exist.
Also, and more importantly, the power of these companies is so great in effect youll only enforce that facebook etc. are the only ways of talking to each other that can exist legally and entrench the very problem you want to solve.
For example, is whats app social media?
Who said that there can't be regulations? The argument that we're making here is that a ban that requires users to give out more information to companies that have a horrible track record in protecting user information is a bad form of regulation. I for one would be extremely happy if there were tighter and more severe penalties for advertising to children. Removing the profit incentive for any of these companies to have children on the platform at all.
Legally requiring human review for things like YouTube Kids (which nobody should be using anyway, especially when the PBS kids exists) and having a harsh penalty if an Elsa gate scenario happens again, like it ever stopped but still.
There’s nothing in the EU age verification structure that requires you to hand more information to the places where you need to verify your age. In fact the system expressly prevents it. Similarly in the ZKP architecture, it it not legal, nor possible, for the age verification service to know where you log in.
Maybe I’ve misunderstood your comment and so I say this in great respect; but if you don’t understand the technical details about the system the EU has defined, you may be basing your resistance on wrong assumptions.
Right, and while I understand what you're saying. The article is talking about the French legislature trying to introduce a social media ban, not a blanket ban by EU. That would be a different topic. Now I may just be a simple American, but it is my understanding that Nations within the union still have a sovereign right to create their own laws and set their own agendas. Now if you're saying that the French president and French Parliament do not have the legal authority to go through with an Australian style age verification ban, then that's good news.
Regardless, as stated in the article, the French president is calling on Parliament to start debating a ban, and in this discussion, I think most people, but specifically myself are speaking broadly about what those bands look like in the rest of the world. At the point I am making is that we don't need to regulate people, we need to regulate the companies. Evaluate and find ways to remove the profit incentive to have minors on these platforms. Personally, I think that might include things like harsher penalties for advertising to children as well as severe penalties and fines when a minors information is stolen in a data breach.
Would you upload your ID to Lemmy? Because that's what the "age verification" requires you to do. Maybe you'd rather upload a video of your face from many different angles, which is absolutely never going to be used for nefarious purposes, pinky promise.
Without Karens like you, we wouldn't have shit like the OSA. That's why there are so many angry replies. Now you have to pay for a VPN to have free access to the internet in the UK, many UK hosted sites had to shut down or block the UK wholly for UK users.
Once again, have you read the EU proposal? We are, after all, talking about France here, not the UK.
The UK, no longer part of the EU, of course have gone much softer and enabled non-anonymous verification. I am of course deeply against this.
What I AM talking about is the ZKP method mandated by the EU, which is anonymous.
I’ll ignore your name calling; not very conducive to a debate.
There's no such thing as anonymous age verification, you can browse the web freely without creating an account. Age verification removes that anonymity. I don't really care about the EU age verification shit, we already have that in Germany, porn websites of course ignore that law because nobody would use their site if they had to verify everyones age. They just removed all .de domains.
No ZKP system can work because someone can generate hundreds of tokens and hand them out to whoever wants one.
Yeah that person sucks ass. I won't tolerate that shit
Buy a dumb phone and make them feel ostracized from everyone else lol. Spoken like someone who isn't gen Z.
Let's say you do use a dumb phone. What about everyone else? Others have to make a lot of concessions in order to communicate with you in a group project for example.Best case scenario the group does its communication over social media and calls you directly. You're going to miss out a lot on communication.
There's also some aspect of "followers = clout". Basically what I'm trying to say is expecting your child to be OK taking a dumb phone to school while seeing everyone else with one may have a dramatic effect.
One, I'm not interested in making sure their coolest middle schooler. Well-Dressed and able to express their style through clothes, their bookbag etc. Two, I don't really want them in a bunch of group chats yapping constantly. Yes, they will miss out on a lot of communication but they don't need to be in constant 24/7 contact with anyone in elementary school and middle school. And finally, when I see them behaving maturely I may consider getting them a smartphone earlier. But if not they'll just be waiting until they turn 15. If they want to get on TikTok they can open up the app on the family room TV and they can be the same with YouTube.
I'm not going to go through every single scenario parenting in the digital age, but I have to be aware and I have to monitor. And over time the amount of monitoring I do will have to be reduced based on the maturity that they're showing but also out of respect for their autonomy.
But you know what's great about everything I said, you don't have to do any of that. You can give your kid the smartphone and let them get on FB messenger at 7 years old for all I care. And you know why I don't care? Because that's your decision and you can deal with the consequences or benefits of that parenting style.
Though I'll be honest, I'm not certain what point you're trying to make here. Are you saying you want the ban so you can give your child a smartphone without thinking about how they're using it? Or are you saying no ban and iPhones for preteens?
Yeah ... I was the kid that knew how to bypass those and "helped" other kids out in that regard.
Then hold the creators of the parental locks accountable. Why am i loosing rights?
Because they want a parent on autopilot.
It would be nice if there was an actual article discussing how the parental controls on android phones actually work.
Add & manage supervision on a current Google Account - Pixel Phone Help https://share.google/j9ZOyQbpZTh0rnRRs
You can.
You just don't want to either a) put in the legwork to do so, or b) be the 'bad guy' to your kids for doing it, so instead you just want the government to do it for you.
What's stopping you from setting up pihole or configuring your home router to block social media sites at home, or turning on parental controls on their phones and blocking the sites and apps?
Most parents either don't know how to do that, or don't care enough to stop their kids from using social media, despite how harmful it is for society as a whole, and especially children, and since all their friends are on social media, a child can credibly argue that they need to use it to maintain their social life. If social media is banned for under 16's, then children would have to communicate with normal chat apps. Also I know from experience that parental controls can easily be bypassed by a dedicated child.
A propely implemented (as in ZKP verification that gives no information to the service other than the age category) age gate is a good thing in my opinion, because at some point some systemic problems are better served by systemic solutions. We don't let parents decide if their kids should smoke or drink alchohol either.
I agree that big tech's social media is like digital heroin, not only bad for kids.
But it should be up to the parent to protect their kids, you also don't let them walk the park alone, why should you let them browse the web un-supervised.
There are parental tools to restrict your child's internet access, those should be applied by the parent.
Not every citizen should be under surveillance by the government under the rouse that they'll protect your kids, which they won't.
The real goal here is to detect people who go against the government and block them. While kids & criminals slip through the cracks by finding sketchy un-surveilled sites and messaging channels.
And if you really think your government gives a damn about your kids safety, then I urge you to look in the epstein ph/f-iles
Is something nobody discusses out loud is the fact that literally in you internet service where users can post is covered by these laws, they're not microtargeted at Instagram or anything like that. Also politicians explicitly say things like this is meant to stop transgenderism or this is about Gaza out loud
I appreciate the nuance. Thanks for a thoughtful answer.
You’ll see from different answers I’ve made to the reactions on my first comment that I also approach this with nuance.
I know many people that work in government. Not the US government, but across Europe. I can’t answer for the US government. But I can tell you first hand that the people I know aren’t in it to gain some kind of Orwellian control.
When I last spoke to a U.K. MP about this he was in fact understanding the complexity here, and the lens that many people want to see it banned and many see it as governmental overreach. Decent, hard working people are trying to balance these tough choices where I live. I’m sorry if that isn’t the case where you live.
I'm also living in the EU,
however I notice a global push to such mass surveillance. The EU has been under attack by Denmark for years now e.g. by pushing through chat control (a government backdoor into encryption).
However there ain't such thing as a backdoor only for the good guys, this can and will eventually be abused, either by extremist governments, which may not yet be in power, but might come some day, or external countries, hacking into the backdoor.
Privacy and technology experts have been warning against chat control and age verification for these reasons, however we do feel ignored, since the topics keep on coming back up.
I kinda doubt that most of the politicians graps these risks though, and kinda find it dissapointing and demotivating that our rights to privacy keep being put under scrutiny again and again.
However I'll refuse to give up, since maintaining your rights is important, and gaining them back once lost is often very hard / nearly impossible.
Thank you for being open minded and up for hearing my arguments though! :)
Chat control was an insane suggestion that wouldn’t work politically nor technically and, logically, has been abandoned. For Denmark not to check Germany’s position on it, and for the flagrant disregarding of all technical positions that called out the utter bullshit, was laughable and one of the major failings of Denmark’s presidency.
But chat control and age verification is not the same and one sensible suggestion shouldn’t fall on the insanity of another suggestion.
Why would you not just want social media to be better regulated by the law? You can't seriously believe that your children are going to have no access to social media, even with an age ban, unless you intend to lock them in a room and home school them till they're 18.
The absolute binary inability for children to access social media shouldn’t be the litmus test for whether we should try.
Some children manage to buy lottery tickets or gamble for real money online. Some manage to buy alcohol even when they’re underage. Some manage to buy cigarettes. Inadequate parents will even sometimes support this.
But we aim to create an environment where that is difficult. And by doing so we shape culture. And culture shapes patterns. My aim isn’t to remove the harm social media perpetrated on children, but to reduce it. All law works like this - speed limits are routinely broken but most drive sensibly.
That's propaganda
I haven’t got the foggiest idea what you mean. I’ve expressed my opinion. You choose to call it propaganda because you don’t like it.
The thing is it's a line being pushed with bad intent and I gotta push back against it where I see it
I don't give a flying fuck about your kids or your inability to parent your fucking children.
If you don't want them using social media stop them from using social medi. It's your fucking problem, and I am NOT okay with having the worlds turned into an Orwellian hellscape for the sake of a bunch of stupid fucking kids with dumber parents.
You’re a charming fellow aren’t you?
Consider for a second if my position came from knowledge and wisdom, rather than knee jerk. Consider if you understand all nuances here. Change your tone. Then maybe we can engage on this.
Sound like a you problem
Dont worry theyll get plenty of poison after the ban too from roblox chat