What I haven't seen mentioned by anyone yet is the fact that the only way this could possibly work is by forcing the identity of everyone on the Internet to be verified by governments. Which is the way of authoritarianism.
this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2026
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Or, and I know this is going to sound crazy, regulate the social media companies to make them responsible for the content on their websites.
Banning kids doesn't work. They simply use a workaround. Do law makers not remember what it was like to be a kid, or adults telling them not to do something.
Yes but this would require intelligent legislature and risks pissing off Big Tech. Far easier to make a few vague proclamations and then throw public funds at more useless age verification tech instead.
Oh let's absolutely piss off big tech, starting by removing anti-circumvention laws.
Why wouldn't it be okay to piss off Big Tech? That's part of the point. They can either change their ways or fuck off. Governments and people are not the playthings of Big Tech. Intelligent legislature and legislation that is applicable to future technology would be a sensible approach rather than just the tech of current times.
To be clear, I was being sardonic.
Doing things the right way is difficult, and I don’t trust governments to do things that might piss off Big Tech because of all the money tied up in that sector. Politicians seem more interested in appeasing the Musks and Zucks of the world than in actually helping people. So it goes.
That's like making ISPs responsible for content passing through their network. Not a fan of this approach.
I highly doubt kids these days are as tech literate as kids 20 or 30 years ago.
they are as tech literate as boomers are, according to most studies.
they are used to be spoonfed information and entertainment and can't distinguish between either.
make them responsible for the content on their websites
How to kill the internet
Only the social media part of it....nothing of value lost.
They recently did this in Australia. The method just doesn't work. Most kids weren't banned at all, other kids figured ways around authentication, and the ones that were banned just use their family accounts or use the services logged out.
What makes it worse is that kids who now access the services by getting around the ban are being exposed to content aimed at adults like gambling adverts.
I'm not opposed to the concept, but the fact is that there is no realistic way to enforce it. It's an impossible ban but they attempted it anyway by putting the onus on the companies that have no interest in the ban.
There's too many articles appearing in papers here in the UK praising the social media ban in Australia but absolutely none giving any opposing view. It's genuinely concerning. The establishment here seems hell bent on copying Australia ignoring the absolute disaster that was the online safety act or that teenagers can and will find ways to circumvent this or the fact that teenagers use social media to socialise because guess what, we've made it even harder for them to socialise IRL.
I'm not opposed to the concept
That's such a poor way to say that you support blanket bans. Even if it worked, this approach has technological and egalitarian problems which are clearly missing from the scope of such laws.
It is important to highlight that we have teens grouped in there not just the children, so infact this kind of law will be doing more harm than good. But even if the law is rooted on ageism and discrimination, it is clear that all age groups are being violated of their human and youth rights.
Technologically, this blanket ban has no real effect, it has been proven that local parental controls for children and maybe for teens is way more effective - leaving the whole internet ageism free. In reality the internet should be safe for everyone rather than a select minority - taking half approaches like this is just an excuse to further segment the already segmented internet.
In addition, politically, these type of laws should be transparent. No matter what its aimed to do, non-transparent laws shall not be trusted. Open democracy was also what is missing from these laws.
I assumed it was clear what I meant,
I don't support a blanket ban because there's no way for that to work. I do support the concept of separating developing minds from predatory media.
How do you do it? I don't know. It's easy to say the answer is parental supervision, but if it were that easy it would be an already solved problem.
The way social media works means that by the time you identify predatory behaviour, it's already too late to prevent it. The way the government has gone about it is ignorant and embarrassing.
I assumed it was clear what I meant,
Unfortunately not. There are many individuals which are dissapointed due to the failed efforts of the blanket bans, but ultimately stand for them.
Aside from that, this problem is defacto already partially solved. As you said parental supervision - parental controls are proven to be extremely effective at what they do, if they are utilised correctly.
But even so, you are highlighting the need for separation of developing minds even if that statement has no basis on age. If you're serious about it, then the whole internet should be designed to be safe for everyone.
It doesn't need to work completely. It just sets a precedent that makes it easier to follow as a parent. If 95% of children have social media (which they do at age 13 in UK) then your hands are tied. You can ban your kid from social media but you're putting them into that 5% of weird kids, which is unfair and probably more damaging than the social media in the first place.
If a law comes in, and 50% of kids circumvent it, then it doesn't really matter. It changes the game. It becomes the parent's call, and the good parents will keep their children off it.
ban social media for people over 50
ban social media for people between 23 and 46
Such a lazy answer to the problems of the day. Banning is dumb. Teach how to spot misinformation, enforce empathy, and fucking get rid of the class system to remove interpersonal inequality. But no, England doesn't do what it's supposed to; only what it can to get by for now.
This generations morale panic. It was games then before that TV and before that music, all apparently corrupting our children to greatly they would never come out as functioning adults, except strangely no ban was required. Social media hysteria is all just the same thing, the long list of inventions that the elderly didn't understand and made bold claims about corruption of society that never came to pass. These things go a long way back and sometimes they are deadly (like witches) and sometimes just ridiculous (like short form stories).
Except no study ever found any evidence of video games or music being harmful to kids but there's plenty of evidence of social media being really bad for them. So no, it's not the same thing.
Social media is having a negative cognitive effect though. It isn't just panic about something new. It's affecting all users. It's a worthwhile discussion to have.
social media is re-wiring adult brains too. it creates a delusional sense of reality for those who are deeply into it and that distortion filters out to everyone else. i can't talk to social media users anymore because they live in a pocket universe in their heads and they are terrified to interact with people outside of the bubble.
music, movies, games, are all fictional. they aren't distorting reality for most people the way social media is.
social media is also algorithmically driven to push your worse fears, anxieties, and other psychological triggers to keep you hooked. video games aren't like that. nor is music or comic books or other new media.
That is true. The effects of social media shall not be applied to just the children and consequently also the teens, but to all the people. Such laws are basically half measures which do more harm than good.
Regulation is what should be done; if efficiency is what we strive for, why aren't the corporations responsible for this not being regulated. A safe internet shall be safe for all - It is important to realise children grow up to be teenagers then adults just like everyone, such a disproportionate effort is completely unacceptable.
Why is it that we look at the ways the children circumvent this ban but not corporations? This law is not made for the people, it is made for the corporations.
We need to stop these bans
I agree, we do.