I’m asking for public policy ideas here. A lot of countries are enacting age verification now. But of course this is a privacy nightmare and is ripe for abuse. At the same time though, I also understand why people are concerned with how kids are using social media. These products are designed to be addictive and are known to cause body image issues and so forth. So what’s the middle ground? How can we protect kids from the harms of social media in a way that respects everyone’s privacy?
Maybe its time for parents to parent their fucking kids…
I cannot emphasize this enough: I do not give a single living fuck what other people’s children do on the Internet.
Good for you. Have a cookie.
I like to think I’m a tech savvy parent and the amount of tooth gnashing to setup and maintain child accounts is incredible. I’m convinced the foxes guarding the henhouse are using dark patterns to make parents give up.
Why can’t I just get a notification on my phone saying “Hey, kiddo wants to have screen time. Approve?”
Hell, I’d love a notification saying “Kiddo started watching Mr. Blah.” If I got the notification and I didn’t want them watching that, I could block the video, or creator with a click. WHY ARE WE NOT AT THIS LEVEL OF CONVENIENCE?
A LOT of these concerns would go away if phones/tablets/tv’s had these simple controls. Move those privacy controls into the home and MAKE them so easy a neanderthal could operate them.
If I have to *.newsocialbook.com into my router, you can bet your damn ass that “LiveLaughLoveMom<3” is going to keep demanding that someone else do it for her.
Sounds like an opportunity to create something like that. Any devs around here up for it?
Better parent supervision is the main way to combat these issues.
Companies should also either ban minors completely or allow parents to set up child accounts linked to their account with expansive parental controls that then can be migrated to full adult account once they reach legal age.
I don’t think either will happen because there are so many stupid and lazy parents in America that don’t care what their kids do as long as it’s not bothering them
Agreed 100%. Enable parents, even not tech savvy parents, to parent. Ultimately, if the parent wants their kid to do whatever, they’ll just create an adult account for their kid. Do we really want the government parenting our kids? Sure, it may be an improvement for some, but it’s a slippery slope and could lead to a Brave New World.
Internet has replaced parenting. Kids are just another achievement after spouse and house and two cars.
Tracer Tong knew the way. We have to destroy the MKULTRA total control panopticon known as the internet.
This sounds interesting. Please elaborate
Best solution IMO: Don’t let them use social media. If they really need to communicate, just buy them a SIM and or let them use your phone and SIM to contact them directly.
And if you must let them use social media, set up parental controls on your router. I suggest NextDNS for this. And basically, monitor everything your child watches or interacts and engages with. If they’re using YouTube, check their accounts to see what content they’re consuming.
Kids these days have access to the internet way too early. When I wanted to use the internet up until 14 I could either go buy my own computer (with what job lol) or I could use the family computer in the living room. Now 11 year olds are shit posting to 18+ subreddits it’s disgusting. And it’s all the parents fault. No govt regulation will fix this, you have to discipline your kids!
Some of it can be accomplished by just setting universal demands for how social media works for all users:
- ban targeted advertising
- make it mandatory for companies to ensure algorithms don’t prioritize posts for making users angry, scared or depressed
Stuff like that. These kinds of regulations don’t involve ID checks, and could take care of a big chunk of the problem.
The answer is that we shouldn’t have most social media to begin with and parents need to actually fucking parent their kid’s usage. Social media is just the television replacement.
Home routers have something called parental controls which can help parents block certain websites and platforms at the home network level.
This together with parenting and education of ones children can help, all without sacrificing and giving away our privacy to third party corporations.
At a regional and country level I would suggest a government funded public service similar to a library to index the internet. Similar to how books are classified by age and genres.
These lists can be provided within each home router by defult for easy selection, or made easily available for upload by parents or users into existing routers.
These government funded publicly curated list can help parents offloaded a little of the “curration effort”. This can then simply be a setting or toggle in the router setup, applying the proper age appropriate whitelist and blocking everything else that is not on the “approved list”. The setup can even help parents classify specific devices on the home network as “child owned” so the list only works for those devices.
This would be the most “privacy respectful” option IMO over things like “age verification” or any other alternatives being suggested by corporate tech firms at the moment.
The tech for this is already here, where we are lacking is:
- A government funded public curation effort.
- Goverment funded public education campaigns and education programs.
- A incentive for router manufacturers to make home router setup as simply and straight forward for non-tech or non power users.
As for power users and tech literate individuals, public lists curated by individuals online already exist. For example Pihole and Adguard lists, these help people block and whitelist websites at the home network level.
Kill the engagement algorithm. Your feed should contain a chronological list of posts made by people you subscribe to. In one stroke you could end the doomscroll - not just for kids, but for everybody. Also, infinite scrolling should be banned.
Your feed should contain a chronological list of posts made by people you subscribe to
Should that be the only way the feed should be organised by law?
in my opinion, yes. the point is to make it less addictive- and this will take away some of the ‘fun’ without isolating kids. social media is entertainment that has been branded and marketed as an essential by the people getting rich off it. i find plenty of good things on youtube without ever signing in - i just search for them. if youtube or whoever wants to use its own ad space to promote channels, i think that is probably ok - provided that the choice is not personalized by an algorithm.
How is this even remotely enforceable?
It will destroy curation. It’s an absurd concept.
By making it so that social media can’t harm anyone, not just kids.
How can we make it so that social media cannot harm anyone?
For one a law that prevents infinite scroll and another that prevents algorithm that sole purposes is to keep people engaged on the platform.
Those are good ideas. I think another (somewhat radical, unlikely to be implemented) idea would be mandating that these services use open source code, so we can see exactly what shenanigans they’re up to.
Amen
Ban advertising.
No, seriously, think about it. Imagine a word where narrow, strictly defined thing called “advertisement” is illegal. I mean, obviously, we’re in magic fairy wonderland here, but y’know… I live in a state where billboards are illegal. Nothing’s truly impossible… just ‘unthinkable’ mostly. Without ads, the incentive to make the platform addictive evaporates, suddenly companies are competing just to, y’know, make a better platform.
How to say you’re from Vermont without saying you’re from Vermont. 😁
This is an interesting idea
Yeah, don’t give them phones.
Past a certain age this may start to become socially isolating for the children
There is not much in this world I care about less.
It’s true, at some point it becomes a necessity. I don’t know what to do about teens today, I haven’t gotten there yet.
This is the solution in my home… Seems to work pretty well…
Easy: by dropping social media completely.
In ideal world, yes. But unless this is done collectively then any one kid who does this may feel socially isolated
With “completely” I did not mean “for this. Or that child completely”. I meant completely. For everyone. No privacy issues for adults, no dangers for kids.
Better education especially for digital stuff and stop giving kids phones!!
Ideally we would need to find a system for collectively deciding to not give kids phones, so no one kid is socially penalized for not having a phone
