Most positive things about my teenager years, especially when it comes to forming critical thinking by trial and error, was by actively using the Internet using a pseudonym and accounts with providers who didn’t require me to prove my identity. Learning English and programming skills, for example, and talking to people outside the local political bubble. Banning young people from the Internet will also make them more vulnerable, withholding access to the main public forum of nowadays. There was a popular saying in parts of the Runet, “ban kids from the Internet - they make it stupid”; these parts have since become openly fascist. We should fight fascists not kids.
Yeah, this is definitely a complicated issue with capitalists and pedophiles to worry about, but at the end of the day I think kids are ultimately safer and more able to intellectually develop when they have some degree of free speech and free association rights, and that’s exactly what use of the Internet and social media in particular is
Written by Zuck and Musk in fake mustage?
Social media in general isn’t the problem, for profit social media with manipulative concealed algorithms is
I have absolutely no answers to this issue but I do see the futility to this.
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Parents are wholly incapable to control their kid’s use of these apps as they will find alternate devices, borrow from a friend, outsmart any control apps, etc.
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The apps in question have been proven to be designed to psychologically entrap their users. They have also been proven to push psychologically-damaging content, regardless of viewer’s age.
So I can see a world in which it would be helpful to find a way to restrict what a child can see when online instead of the current situation in which a 10 year old can easily watch videos of beheadings and extreme porn, plan up a meeting with a pedophile or murderer and join 4chan’s /b where they can talk about anything under the sun.
The issue, as I see it, is that the suggestions made by the politicians will do nothing to curb teen use online as they will most assuredly find ways to bypass any checks. What will happen(and is probably intended) instead is that the gov’t will have more info to use against every citizen, corporations will have more data to compile on their ̶p̶r̶o̶d̶u̶c̶t̶ customers and people that should be able to view said content will be falsely blocked while people that shouldn’t will be able to.
I’m glad my daughter was growing up in a time before the streamlining and enhancement of the corpo trend of emotional and psychological damage for profit.
I see it like smoking.
If people have the idea that something is bad, they will try to cut down.
It’s not going to be perfect, but nothing ever is
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Put heavy regulation on social media. Also, ban the kids.
Teenagers should have actual autonomy and not be treated like prepubescent children
The autonomy to be controlled by technology?
This tech is pretty new. There were decades that passed with people thinking that cigarettes were fine and lead in gas was wonderful.
And at the same time people were saying that radio or television would destroy kid’s brains because they didn’t want rock n roll music and racially integrated TV shows getting to them. Lots of mistakes from the past to try to avoid repeating.
So, it’s safe to keep on playing Russian roulette because no one has died yet?
The actual makers of tech make sure their own kids don’t use it, which is the best argument I can think of.
Anyone over the age of 30 can tell you that teenagers are not much more capable of rationality than prepubescent children. In some cases, they are even less capable. Teen years are an insane ride. When you’re in them you feel so adult. In retrospect, you see that teen you was dumb as shit and did not have a clue about pretty much anything.
No.
If you support broadly banning teenagers from social media you are a fool and a jerk…
Why?
Lenin dismissed the Economist as “a journal which speaks for British millionaires”. Evergreen take, though maybe the British part is less salient as time goes by.
Lenin also founded one of the largest murderous authocratic regimes of the 20th century.
I say we only let kids talk to kids on social media. Adult accounts can only access adult accounts.
Obviously they could lie, and there’s no way to prove that. But, hypothetically…
