Are you in favor of banning social media for users under 16?

And then there are teenagers using social media for good (entrepreneurship, art, activism, etc.)

Ban is never a solution for anything, Monitoring and proper guidance can help reducing criminal activities, its not social media ruining teenagers life, rather its bad Parenting I think so....

It's a nuanced thing.

Had I been isolated from the internet as I grew up, had I not found spaces that helped me understand certain things... I am certain I would not be alive.

that was back then. when the key rule of safety was to stay anonymous, to not give out any personal information,

Now? We have become so accustomed to the lack of privacy, we even become alarmed or suspicious of anyone caring about it beyond the basic idea of avoiding scams.

There are several issues with questions like these. Should we ban or not is incredibly reductive.

There are things we need to consider for the safety of minors, their privacy, and their cognitive and emotional development.

Above all else, blanket bans will do more harm than good, they will invite grey market apps, spaces with a lot less resources to make themselves safe. Age verification requirements are also a challenge to implement in a way that does not put people at risk. One data leak, one insider turned bad actor and boom! People get doxxed.

It's also a question of surveillance and how we tacitly accept in our day to day.

Social media poses dangers, yes, but it is not a monolith, and treating it as such will only hurt people.

Any platform with user generated content will need moderation or it will endanger people en masse.

There is another side to this, one I rarely see discussed. There has been a trend of sanitizing the experiences of kids growing up, making sure the media is rated properly. That is understandable. But when they turn 18, there is this cliff. Suddenly it's all fair game, And it is overwhelming.

To be clear: I am not suggesting bumping up the age of majority, that is a dangerous road and I'm not gonna get into it here.

But let's think about it for a second, imagine a kid, never had any contact with social media beyond learning about what it is. at 16, they jump right in. Wouldn't that be overwhelming? wouldn't that be disorienting?

Imagine being that kid, maybe you got lucky and got good faith education on it from your parents, maybe the school actually did well talking about the subject. But not everyone is lucky, not everyone gets parents who answer questions kindly and explain.

Ultimately I believe a blanket ban hurts minors, parents, and it puts a high level of responsibility on companies to verify someone's age. Companies that have a track record of privacy violations, predatory behavior, and selling customer data.

Some people will float the opinion that teens will go outside more, or spend more time making friends if they can't use social media. To them I say. Have you seen the outside? have you seen how cities treat teens as parasites? How hostile architecture forces them out of what 20 years ago would have been a good hangout space?

Put yourself in their shoes and do the math, are there any places to go spend time with friends? How would you make plans if chat apps get labeled social media and therefore banned? What about the kids in remote places?

It's so easy to proclaim "think of the children"

It's difficult to work through all the nuances of being a person of their age.

Answers here will be contextual, and varied.

I am not in favour of it. The problem is kids are smart and will simply create other online spaces that are even less secure.

I have done a ton of research in this space with my company pedocillin.ai & it is quite complex.

Also, it is about controlling adults, not protecting kids but protecting kids is an easy legal precedent to set... To quote the Australian e-safety commissioner directly in a 2023 podcast:

"You know, we have a long history of, you know, real pushback on anything that resembles censorship. And so they thought, well, we've got a longstanding scheme around illegal online content, particularly around child sexual abuse material and pro-terrorist content. Let's set up the first youth-based cyberbullying scheme so when companies fail to act when young people report to them, this eSafety Commissioner can serve as a safety net and compel that takedown. We'll start with children because nobody can argue that they're not more vulnerable."

Start with children.... and finish with whom?

I think it's hard to pick a side on this topic, as a full ban feels like too much, yet social media can be quite harmful as well. I would probably be in favour of adding way more restrictions.