Australia's social media ban for kids mostly isn't working, research suggests

[obsidian76]

Its a shame that the article does not have a brief explanation of who Molly Russell was, to put the story into context.

https://www.theguardian.com/technol...fell-into-a-vortex-of-despair-on-social-media

 

[LordVile95]

I mean halving the number with access is a decent drop and if parents are paying for VPNs then it’s on them

 

[Endymio]

If there is still a majority of kids using it, it is a failure. Pretty simple statistically.

Not even remotely correct. As @pnntmp and @Northy both noted, a near 50% reduction in just three months time is very successful, especially when one realizes the remainder may still be technically "using" social media, but on a much more limited basis.

Oh look, you mentioned trumpo so what you say is completely false." You just outed youself as a lefty.

A "Lefty" mentions Trump when discussing of current US politics. Deranged zealots bring up Trump when discussing rose gardening, shower curtains, Austrian mountain dances, and 17th Century French poetry. Or when discussing Australian Internet laws.

Where, my god, where did I say we shouldnt have murder as a law?

Did someone else use your account?

"You have to be some kind of gullible to think a law to not kill people works."
"If you are willing to kill another person, the law is of no concern to you. All actions have consequences regardless of what law is in place"

If you need laws to tell you right from wrong, you are already a lost soul.

The world today has tens of millions of laws, and have had laws since the dawn of civilization ... because people do indeed need laws. Without laws against shoplifting, store shelves would be plucked bare in minutes. Without laws against murder, an inconvenient wife, an annoying boss, or a wealthy relative slow to die would vanish in moments. After all-- why not? It's legal to kill them.

 

[TheFootPerson]

Hey Techspoters, when reading about social media here and other tech sites, I can't help but contrast the experience I have had growing up with using some of the platforms mentioned like that of the young people cited in the article.


I remember having a nokia c3 phone which was pre smartphone and bluetoothing that to my old hand me down windows vista laptop, vista is yucky so I could use the internet to make a facebook account in 2010. I had such a strong urge to make one after graduation to keep up with friends who I didn't realise at the time wasn't my friends, seeing the party pics as a teen/young adult and wondering why I wasn't invited cut deeeeeeeep.

Yes I understand the, be more resilient and get over it side of things but that's 1 factor amongst other things with my history of social media.

The other being the privacy nightmare such as with pre Android
marshmellow (Android 6) you couldn't uninstall facebook on your device or revoke app permissions. Current day samsung phones when taking screenshots via chrome browser allows, when pressing on the screenshot to go directly to where screenshot was taking. don't need the app I go to points of interest via the screenshots.

this post is long enough, so ill say that despite it all facebook is the best one when used to max benefit versus other platforms, why? because I have joined up to 3 different hiking groups and have met some awesome people and can say for the 1st time ever that I have community in my life. I go click on hike events to say going and I see a list of average 7 to 12 people attending, its great.

I have no reason to use other platforms, instagram and tiktok is phone videos (media consumption) twitter is hell no, snapchat is kiddish to me so old fashioned facebook is it for me, but maybe discord. That seems like a computer social network anyways this was typed on a macbook neo and im loving it.

 

[Draconian]

The most effective age verification would be a government issued ID like a driver's license, but kids who are under 16 don't have those.

You can't accurately determine someone's age by having them upload a picture.

 

[RudyBob]

Mostly implies some success. It's a start

 

[Karlos95]

Obviously it's not 100% effective, but that's simply impossible without strict identification laws. A little bit more pressure on the platforms can make it practically fully working.

Thank you! You just stated what my point was. They made it not 100% effective on purpose.
You think people will agree to uploading a drivers license to a platform that continuously gets hacked? No, they need something like the digital ID to make it work and that's how they will sell it.

I do believe limited social media use is a good thing, but don't believe for a second they are doing all of this "for the kids". They won't even go after the epstein freaks. And every country coordinating it at the same time. You have to be a ***** not to see what is in store.

 

[Karlos95]

Not even remotely correct. As @pnntmp and @Northy both noted, a near 50% reduction in just three months time is very successful, especially when one realizes the remainder may still be technically "using" social media, but on a much more limited basis.


A "Lefty" mentions Trump when discussing of current US politics. Deranged zealots bring up Trump when discussing rose gardening, shower curtains, Austrian mountain dances, and 17th Century French poetry. Or when discussing Australian Internet laws.


Did someone else use your account?

"You have to be some kind of gullible to think a law to not kill people works."
"If you are willing to kill another person, the law is of no concern to you. All actions have consequences regardless of what law is in place"


The world today has tens of millions of laws, and have had laws since the dawn of civilization ... because people do indeed need laws. Without laws against shoplifting, store shelves would be plucked bare in minutes. Without laws against murder, an inconvenient wife, an annoying boss, or a wealthy relative slow to die would vanish in moments. After all-- why not? It's legal to kill them.

First off, I don't believe their numbers for a second. As I stated, I work in a school in Australia, kids still using social media freely. Their "50%" accounting should be easily questioned as do you really think if some can get past, the rest wont? Please.

If you can't see the reference of trump to tie and argument in something, then yes, I think you are the deranged one here. Sorry to trigger you over a man.

Again, I didn't say we shouldn't have the law, are you thick in the head? I clearly stated, that level of thinking has no regard to what a law says.

We did not have laws since the dawn of time. We have always had consequences for right and wrong. Laws produced by corrupt individuals are not the same thing.
If you can't tell the difference then yes, you are brainwashed like I said.
If you can't tell the difference between right and wrong, then I truly feel sorry for you.
You think the elites don't get away with murder? Clearly you do not pay attention to anything in this reality. Maybe do a deep dive on the Epstein files and see your whole world view has been warped by the powers telling you how to think.

 

[Karlos95]

Without laws against shoplifting, store shelves would be plucked bare in minutes. Without laws against murder, an inconvenient wife, an annoying boss, or a wealthy relative slow to die would vanish in moments. After all-- why not? It's legal to kill them.

This is definitely coming from someone who would want to kill person A, because person B, called person A a Nazi.

Same logic.

 

[VectorVortec]

There is only a couple ways to keep children under a certain age off "social media" would be:
1. Dumb phones only. No texting...phone calls only
2. No screens of any kind

And even with that, they will still figure a way to get "online".

Most social media companies have more than 2,000 kinds of data on any member. Identifying their age, gender, and other demographics is very easy. For example, YouTube does it for their creators, but I suppose that others do as well. Good grief man! Meta's primary revenue is from targeted ads. How do you think that works? So yeah, they know everything about their users, and if you create a new account, you won't fool the social media company more than a few minutes.

However, I don't know whether banning the youth is a good idea. It would seem that it would spread some kind of social dysfunction.

 

[Squid Surprise]

First off, I don't believe their numbers for a second. As I stated, I work in a school in Australia, kids still using social media freely. Their "50%" accounting should be easily questioned as do you really think if some can get past, the rest wont? Please.

You have any better numbers then?

We did not have laws since the dawn of time. We have always had consequences for right and wrong. Laws produced by corrupt individuals are not the same thing.

We HAVE had laws since recorded history though... Look up "Code of Hammurabi" next time you feel like doing some "think before you post" time

While I DO agree that this hasn't worked as intended - your argument just makes YOU look like the deranged lunatic here...

 

[Northy]

You haven't done enough research on digital ID and it shows.
To think it will be limited to America is greatly mistaken and Id say it'll actually be the last place to be in place as the Americans still have guns to violently object to it.

They can collect all the data they want, without digital ID, they cannot tie it all together and use it to stop the way you spend or travel. Which is the ultimate end goal.

The "it's failed" headlines is merely a way for them to say, "well, the only way now to limit internet usage is to make everyone put in the digital ID to use it". It is no coincidence they want to roll it out at device level and now Mexico wanting you to register your phone number with it. Honestly, to say it is a conspiracy now, is just plain ignorance.

All mobile devices in Australia are already legally registered to a specific person and all the metadata from that phone is already collected and held for years. Australian government certainly doesn't see new policies as failed, I have heard the minister for communications talking about how this is an inter-generational policy. Who is the them you are referring to?

"It's failed" is media lalalalala, fingers in ears, clickbait.

Control the way you spend or travel? Like what? Can only buy government branded rice pops and only go to Bali and holiday not Iran? Please explain in a logical way what the actual agenda could be, what the government could be trying to stop people buying or places they're stopping them going that they aren't already doing.

Don't apply your gestapo conspiracy when thinking, we have preferential not weighted democracy in Australia.

 

[Stiqy]

It's been a grand total of 5 months. Talk about a premature pronouncement.

Lets just take a breath, wait and see or even let them fine tune the methodology a little rather than just shrugging our shoulders and throwing our kids back into the social media grinder. Every study says social media is ****ing up our kids, so lets at least give this a chance to be fine tuned and maybe learn a bit from it.