United Kingdom

As with most things to do with government the idea isn't necessarily the problem, it's the fact that their mandating something that isn't really realistic, simply because they don't understand how technology works.

The issue is if they are banning people under a certain age from using social media then how do the companies know whether you can access the content or not? So now they ask everyone for ID. And you just know that the contract for verification has gone to the lowest bidder, who will put zero effort into security and they'll absolutely most certainly will be a data breach.

Most people don't like how they are doing it - Papers please.

If it was just changing the current 13+ rule to 16+, then I would be all for it.

Whenever you see the words "social media ban" you need to substitute them for "mandatory ID checks for adults to use the internet," because that's the only solution they have to enforce the ban for children.

We don't want to provide our IDs so that we can be associated in perpetuity with every brain fart that we post to MySpace or whatever people are using these days.

Online pseudonymity is important for a functioning democracy. When people fear consequences for expressing their political opinions, this leads to the chilling effect.

The ban is not about children, it's about everyone, and it's about our freedom to speak freely online.

You're right that social media is poison, but the true solution is IMO to hold its owners to account for their harms.

I don't think the opposition is anything to do with restricting young people's access to poisonous social media - the problems are in application:

1. Applying it to any and all possible websites which have a comment section

2. Instead of local computer admin account options, which could be implemented safely at home and easily complied with by any website, large or small, they've chosen to go with the same method as their porn ban - every person over that age must upload a scan of their face, a copy of their passport etc etc and freely give this information over to proven untrustworthy websites

All these websites must use "authorised age checking technology" from "our list of approved vendors" who are not trustworthy, and sell on the data.

Even if those were secured, once people have normalised "please scan your face" on websites, it's very easy to set up a scam site to trick photos and IDs out of people. Horrific security risk for everyone in the country.

Anyway, the face scanning software is easy for large corporate websites to put in place, plus they get extra data gathering for free! This is difficult for smaller hobbyist websites to put in place, so it's easier for them to simply block the UK, like many already do.

Basically, the social media ban would include things like Lemmy, or small obscure hobby forums, and using them would be illegal (for website and user) unless they could be tracked to your scanned face and photo ID.

So if, in future, I were to say something like "Israel is not 100% correct about everything" on Lemmy, that can be easily tracked back to my name, face and address - and currently, that carries a risk of imprisonment as a "terrorist".

Basically it's literally nothing to do with kids at all, and simply part of a larger plan to destroy any privacy or anonymity on the Internet.

And this bullying thing, is that a new thing that never happened before the internet? The bans are this generations "video games cause violence" stupidity. You are only looking at negatives, never mentioning the positives things about the internet, I say the internet because the ban includes YouTube, which is hardly social media and is already incredibly censored. You probably wouldn't be able to comment on this post if Ofcom gets wind of the UK lemmy instance, because the owner would have to shut it down.

Here's what a more responsible person than me has to say about social media bans (machine translated with small edits from German):

Protecting children and young people must be a top priority. In the same way, children and young people also have rights that extend to the digital space: the right to access to the media, the protection of data and privacy, but also to the protection against violence and exploitation as well as the right to freedom of expression and information.

If children and young people are banned from using social media platforms, there will always be some or maybe even many that circumvent the bans. When these adolescents encounter dangerous or traumatizing things on the Internet, their inhibition will be much greater to talk about it and seek help. This will also be known by the adults who contact these children and young people on the Internet and put pressure on them. Cybergrooming, i.e. the initiation of contacts out of sexual interest, is already an enormous danger and we have to do everything we can to enlighten and offer help and not to slam the doors here.

In addition, it is problematic when young people are completely shielded from large parts of the Internet. They need to learn a responsible approach to it, and not only when they have turned 16 or 18 and can then be confronted with everything that can be found on the net without preparation. This only postpones the problems to a later date.

Children and young people also receive meaningful, interesting and socially relevant information via social media platforms. There is no daily newspaper in many families. Adults we young people receive information and news via social media. The media has adjusted to this and offers a lot of content there.

In rural areas, in the event of illness or for people with certain disabilities, social media is an essential means of keeping in touch. The same applies to people who have left their homeland and have contact with family and friends via social media. I think taking these opportunities from young people is wrong.

Also, the practical implementation is not as simple as it seems: in order to identify a certain age group, the age of everyone on the net must be checked. There are different options for this. This can lead to the platforms collecting even more data from all of us and, on the other hand, they are also error-prone. This means that some young people continue to have access and some adults do not. Both are problematic.

[source in German]