this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2026
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[–] RaoulDuke25@lemmy.dbzer0.com 79 points 1 day ago (5 children)

Or parents can do their job. We have to suffer with age verification bullshit laws that's just there to have us all in a database.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 51 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

Not having it be regulated makes it a lot harder for parents to do their job, because the kids with responsible parents are getting peer-pressured by the kids with irresponsible parents.

Or put another way: you're not making parents do their jobs; you're making their jobs impossible by forcing them to choose between ruining their kid's mental health by letting her be exposed to social media, or ruin her mental health by forcing her to be ostracised for not using social media.

The only way to have a successful outcome is to force everyone else's kids not to use it, not just your own, and no amount of rugged individualist good parenting can accomplish that by itself!

That said, I am extremely sympathetic to the arguments against age verification laws too, which is why my preferred solution would be to fucking outlaw and destroy corporate social media entirely, for kids and adults alike!

[–] PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

You are exactly right. We're all in this ugly, trapped situation, together, like it or not.

As a parent, do you remove the obviously ruinous toxins from the kiddo's environment, entirely? Seems like the only sensible choice.

But then again...for the kid, few things could feel worse. An entire childhood spent alienated from their peers? Permanently out of the loop, to where that becomes the personality trait noticed and remembered by others?

What a horrible bargain, I completely hate it.

"Well, a little hideous poison for you, routinely, I guess, dear. I wouldn't want you to end up weird, after all..."

[–] SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 4 points 18 hours ago

Agreed. Just the peer pressure for having a smartphone at all is immense. Some kids have one below the age of 10. That is absolutely insane to me.

[–] Retail4068@lemmy.world -1 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (2 children)

Or like, use the ample parental controls to limit their time to a reasonable amount 🤷‍♂️.

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 4 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

the parent can only do that on devices they own. they can't do that on classmates devices

[–] Retail4068@lemmy.world 6 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

Oh god, they'll get some access? Like, I can't completely control my children and they are individuals who have the right to start making choices? Jesus Christ, I'm not going to be able to exert my will over them indefinitely?

If your child is old enough to leave the house and sneak around on you they were going to do that. You should be teaching them to live in society, not just avoiding it and dumping them into an environment without the skills to process the reality of life.

[–] PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

Yeah man, you're on top of it.

It's just lazy parents, right? Like they're not even trying, huh?

Couldn't really have anything to do with - I dunno, NO parents except the born-rich, being able to parent properly, on account of having to make the dollars keep adding up.

Probably also NOT the wildly, disgustingly sophisticated Big Fucking Tech doing everything they can to pull our children into their hilariously successful maze of dissatisfaction.

If only the parents would just use the obviously available parental controls! Duh.

Fuck you, in every way, for real.

[–] Retail4068@lemmy.world -3 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Nobody can parent 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Clearly you've never been to a PTO/A meeting or town hall on education, or entire motorcades of parents spending days traveling with their kids for sports 🤣

Why do so many CLEARLY non parents react so strongly to a topic they have little to no experience in 🤣

Nobody has time 🤣, thank you so much for this chuckle.

[–] PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 10 hours ago

Quite the charmed life you apparently lead. If you manage to peer outside your own economic bubble someday you'll see what I mean. Doesn't sound like you'll be doing that though.

[–] Zoot@reddthat.com 13 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Oh won't someone think of the parents though?! How can they be expected to parent their own children, oh the humanity

[–] Spaniard@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

It's not their childrens they belong to the State / Corporations / System

[–] IronBird@lemmy.world 6 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

best thing on that front is same fix for most of the working classes problems... -more pay

-shift to 6hr/4d work week

-actually invest in education most people are good, amd would probably love to spend more time with their family, but in the US especially they're overworked and underpaid, one accident away destitution

[–] shawn1122@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

Durable societies are unfortunately bound to have such inconveniences for some in exchange for the betterment of many.

Tech companies have released the equivalent of digital opium so they and the government are accountable.

When we look back at the opioid epidemic of the 90s we don't blame the addicts or their families (well I suppose we did at one point, without the benefit of hindsight or a bigger picture view), we blame the Sacklers, pharmaceutical companies, doctors that took kickbacks etc.

I'd hate for us to make the same mistake just because the drug is delivered in a way we don't completely understand yet.

It's also not as simple as asking parents to simply be better at parenting, whatever that may mean. The drug is already out on the street, widely available, and ridiculously addictive. Keeping your child from it is not only depriving them of a dopamine hit that their brains are not developed enough to simply ignore (even most adults are addicted) and it is in many cases relegating them to social ostracization.

This is far beyond what one parent or group of parents can fix. It requires a societal level change which generally needs to come from the government, whether we like it or not.

I'd be happy to hear out possible solutions and, as a parent, share what is viable and what isn't. It would be nice to hear from other parents also.

[–] fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

This rhetoric is very dangerous. It's fueling censorship specifically targeting marginalized people

[–] wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

Some important context on this user before anyone else gets dragged into a discussion: check their post history, multiple to a "Youth Liberation" community.

No shade meant by calling it out, but I think that makes it much more clear how strong your opinions are on this. There's nothing to be gained in trying to talk to you about this when your opinions are set so strongly. You aren't going to see the dangers that the rest of us see because your focus is on allowing freedom from oppresive parental figures.

Edit: they also "won't give an inch on this"

[–] fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 0 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

"The dangers" are a moral Panic that's been kicked off by Nazis

[–] wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 14 minutes ago

You can't seriously be saying that in the comments of a post linking to leaked internal documents showing that one of these companies is aware of the dangers they pose and damage they are doing. Did nazis falsify internal documents and this leak?

Did you somehow miss the Cambridge Analytica scandal with Facebook, where they manipulated the emotional content of users' feeds and gathered scientifically significant measurable responses in the emotions of the manipulated users?

Have you missed where each of these companies has had many public job postings for positions requiring applicants have psychology degrees?


People like to think of 4chan as the website that drove people to suicide, but every single one of the major social media sites has a fucking body count at this point, and almost every one is in the double digits.


Beyond all that, lemmy's userbase trends older. I saw the tail end of the satanic panic into the moral grandstanding about the dangers of violent video games. I'd wager most of the users here lived through it.

I know firsthand what a moral panic looks like. They didn't have the amount of research papers (that hold up to peer review) and leaked internal documents we can point at. They didn't have body counts even remotely similar.


Keep on fighting for opressed teens to have more ways to get away from opressive parents. To have access to factual information that their parents don't want them to have. It's a good cause with not many people fighting for it.

That doesn't mean though that anything you think challenges or opposes it is a nazi plot.


Teens are resilient and have astounding amounts of time on their hands. They'll find a way to communicate, ways to make their own underground social platforms if they need to. The cat's out of the bag. It's the fucking internet. Corpos, government boots, no one can truly stop the signal. They couldn't back in the days of dial up BBS. Good fucking luck now that you can get a device orders of magnitude more powerful for $50.


Don't bother replying for my sake. I'm blocking you so I don't get increasingly shitty towards you. Your mind's made up on this, and so is mine. No point going back and forth if we're just going to get more frustrated and exasperated at each other. Best of luck in your endeavours.

[–] yeahiknow3@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Sure, legalize heroin for 12 year olds. Parents can regulate it themselves. Imbecilic reasoning.

[–] fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net -3 points 22 hours ago (2 children)
[–] wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

That's the point, it doesn't. Much like the argument about targeting marginalized people when you're talking about children.

Edit: Yes, there are plenty of children and teens without access to information and the support structures they should have IRL. I was one of them and it's fucking awful. The internet can help with that by offering exposure to different ideologies, evidence that you aren't alone in what you're feeling or going through.

But I don't look back on everything I did and encountered online in mid 00s - early 10s era internet and go "that was overwhelmingly a great thing that I should have had the sort of unrestricted access to that I did". And the internet has been even more corporatized and "skinner-boxed" since.

And with the benefit of hindsight, I can see a bunch of other ways that I could have gotten the good I got from the internet without all the bad, and through things in real life that I had dismissed in my youth.

[–] fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

we owe today's teens a better internet experience. we should focus on building something that would have been ideal for us to have had when we were their age

[–] wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

Teens and children, and the pushback you're seeing is because a lot of people, even terminally online people, believe that limiting or preventing children (and teens) from accessing social media as they currently exist is part of making that happen.

You have to slow the bleeding first. You can't just ignore the broken leg and start physical therapy.

Teens vary wildly in maturity and are likely to be unfortunately caught up in rules for children. There's no easy cutoff age before 18 for when one can be trusted to be online without guard rails. I can speak from experience that teens will find a way whether its legal or not, so I'm not really super concerned about the ones who need access. They'll find a way.

And for every person like you that says they are still alive because of unrestricted internet, there's another one who is dead because of it. 4chan, tumblr, reddit even (remember when they "totally figured out the boston bomber"?), and more direct cyberbullying all claim lives. There were 3 suicides in my highschool growing up, two determined to be cyberbullying caused and the third just rumored. I almost lost one of my younger cousins to cyberbullying as well.

[–] fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 2 points 2 hours ago

This isn't stopping the bleeding, the people who caused the bleeding in the first place of the ones doing this. I don't trust a single person in the Epstein files to have good intentions towards children or teenagers.

[–] Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world 1 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

I hate these people. I'm at a loss for words

[–] yeahiknow3@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

You’re confused by the assertion that access to social media is at least as bad for children as some banned drugs? Is this your first day on earth?

[–] Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

It's not as bad as drugs. Don't give your kids phones. Be a parent. Don't need to upload all our data and Id to palantir databases for tracking under the same old "protect the children" bullshit

[–] yeahiknow3@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

It's not as bad as drugs.

Hard disagree.

Don't need to upload all our data

This isn’t necessary. For instance, simply require any device to which children have access to preinstall software that blocks 90% of the internet. Problem solved.

[–] Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Can you explain how social media would cause worse outcomes than kids doing hard drugs

[–] prex@aussie.zone 3 points 1 day ago

It isn't (just) a technical problem for parents. Having the underage social media ban means that there isn't the peer pressure for kids to use - well there is, but its much lower

[–] lemming@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 day ago

Most parents won't. People are people. Those that would want to have to ballance the risk of excluding their children from the collective.

[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world -1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Or parents can do their job.

They don't, which is why regulation is essential. Not unlike how recycling failed because we expected individuals to behave responsibly instead of regulating manufacturers.

And you're already in the database.

[–] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Nanny

And you’re already in the database.

disgusting. they should be taking us out of the database

[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

I agree. But I think we're past that point.

[–] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 2 points 11 hours ago

well, then we need to go back before that point. There is no reason why laws that apply to my paper correspondance doesn't apply to my digital correspondence.

If you disagree, please send your personal email credentials and medical records.