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?
People said the exact same thing about books, radio, TV, movies, video games and music.
You come up with some sort of arbitrary rating system. Any child with intent will find a way around it, and eventually they’ll try to find a way to protect their kids from something else.
Social media does seem unique though just because of how addictive it is. If you look into the details of how meta targets children and intentionally tries to addict them it paints a pretty sinister picture: https://techoversight.org/2026/01/25/top-report-mdl-jan-25/
Well, with that comment, I think you have your answer.
Counter argument: alcohol, weed, tobacco, cocaine, drinking and driving, speeding, and acid were all so incredibly commonplace that people were confused when they were phased out or delegalised.
Social media is not on the same level as books, radio, tv, movies, video games and music. The sacred sextuple.
Social media is, however, similar to the afforementioned things, in that partaking in the substance or activity regularly gives you illusions that it benefits much more than it really does, whike ultimately just being bad for you and predisposing you to binging.
I think people are ao defensive over social media because A) they’re addicted and of course B) they’re worried kids won’t be educated on political issues, which i think is probably the more pressing issue than privacy. Becauae we already don’t have privacy on mainstream SM
Except when you went outside back then, or to school, you couldn’t take the TV with you. And parents controlled the TV at home
We do actually restrict many of those. And that’s not really an issue, because you either buy those in a physical store that has to check your ID in person if there’s any doubt that it’s legal to sell it to you, or you buy it on an online platform that already has all the info for payment processing. Can’t run hyperviolent content on daytime TV (in my country, anyway) etc.