2d ago

The social media ban is coming, whether families like it or not: 5 ways to prepare kids and teens

In less than four months, world-first legislation will ban Australian under-16s from certain social media platforms.
Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, X, Reddit and YouTube will all be off limits for children and teens.
It’s still not clear exactly how the restrictions will be implemented. But the federal government says social media platforms must take “reasonable steps” to delete the accounts of minors before or on December 10 and stop them from creating new accounts through age verification software.
Parents will not be able to give their consent to allow under-16s to use these platforms.

4 comments

Personally I've been in favor of heavily restricting or banning social media for anyone below 15 or 16 (or even 18, for that matter) for a long time. To me it looks like these platforms do almost nothing but harm, regardless of parental intervention, because the parents are often clueless as well.
However, YouTube is a major source of educational content, a lot of which can be legitimately useful for both school and private life. Same thing with Reddit, but not so much 'educational' as maybe informational. I'm not sure about straight up banning these two. Unlike social media (I wouldn't call YouTube or Reddit that), they actually serve some positive purposes.
In cases like these I think the best solution would be to find a middle ground, e.g., let children browse or watch, but not post. Or create sections for kids and actually put in the effort to moderate them, as opposed to YouTube Kids featuring multi-million view suggestive or straight up erotic videos, as well as scam and pornographic ads.
Parents will not be able to give their consent to allow under-16s to use these platforms.
insane. the premise of this thing is parents arent being responsible enough with their children so the government is taking action.(which is also bs because we all know its really just about surveillance)
but then the adults who have raised critically thinking kids cant even give the kid consent.
then this article is about 5 things you as a parent can do to help ease the transition off social media. but if the parents were the type of people to follow these instructions, we wouldnt 'need' the ban in the first place.
its like some kind of meta comedy.
there is a verge article thats also saying the kids are too woke and are spreading pro Palestine messaging on tiktok and thats partly why it was banned.
so maybe on some level, this is really about protecting the parents from the woke ideology of children.
that being said, we need more 3rd spaces that are free to access and to hang in. where are these kids gonna go to replace their time on the cheap?
looking forward to the dramatic upswing in graffiti and property damage and petty theft.
- I'm hoping kids will discover the Fediverse and the dark net. Banning that will become quite the headache for the government. Whether they'll be able to even technically ban something like I2P or TOR, I don't know.
  Anti Commercial-AI license
Create an account for your kid
Verify your kid's account using your data
Register on social media and hand the account over to your kid
Let your kid use your account
Giver your credentials to your kid