Social media ban under 16 in Australia

**boredjedi** · 30 July 2024, 09:44

Originally posted by Play_z

chuft the stuff BJ is talking about Dr. D and Chris from Mr. B sending inappropriate messages to minors and also groomed them

Yup. I remember it all started almost a year ago the new round of shenanigans getting called out. Miranda Sings (now Colleen Vlogs). That Ukulele female content creator.
So it's not specific to one gender. I never watched any of these "content creators". Most of those channels are popular with the 13-18 year old crowd.

I vaguely knew about Dr. D and Mr. B. Videos would pop up in recommended every now and again. I stick with mostly the tech and science videos
but the drama gets so big I invariably get recommended the drama due to youtube's algorithm. I'm like okay what's going on now.
And after I watch the drama unfold, I sit back and feel "Ignorance is bliss" sometimes.

**Play_z** · 30 July 2024, 10:03

Originally posted by boredjedi

Yup. I remember it all started almost a year ago the new round of shenanigans getting called out. Colleen Vlogs. That Ukulele female content creator.
So it's not specific to one gender. I never watched any of these "content creators". Most of those channels are popular with the 13-18 year old crowd.

I vaguely knew about Dr. D and Mr. B. Videos would pop up in recommended every now and again. I stick with mostly the tech and science videos

“Content creators” are getting out of hand at this point, same goes for TikTok “influencers”. I don’t get a lot of Dr. D videos but I do get a lot Mr. B videos. Personally I’m not a big fan of Mr. Beast since the way the videos are structured unless it’s helping out a small community. I’m not a tech person but I do love my science tho

**chuft** · 30 July 2024, 11:34

Originally posted by possessor

It doesn't affect me I don't live in USA

The law does not apply to US children, it applies to sites which provide services to the US, which this site does.

We will see what happens. It hasn't passed yet, maybe it won't, or it will be changed. It would affect so many sites that it is hard to see how they would enforce it. But sometimes the mere threat of enforcement is enough to get sites to comply with a law.

**possessor** · 30 July 2024, 22:00

Originally posted by chuft

It hasn't passed yet

Oh

maybe it won't

Let's hope it don't.

**chuft** · 30 July 2024, 22:32

Passed the Senate.

https://apnews.com/article/senate-ch...87fc3887aa710f

Next, the House.

**boredjedi** · 31 July 2024, 00:09

Originally posted by chuft

But sometimes the mere threat of enforcement is enough to get sites to comply with a law.

And all they have to do is target just 1 or 2 to put the fear in all others to force compliance.

**Buzz** · 31 July 2024, 11:50

It's none of my business, but don't children in the USA have other serious problems?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._by_death_toll

**Play_z** · 31 July 2024, 12:11

Originally posted by Buzz

It's none of my business, but don't children in the USA have other serious problems?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._by_death_toll

Yeah I don’t why they don’t anything about it in US. Same goes for Australia when comes to knifes and e-cigarettes. Social media is not really that harmful. It depends on the way the person uses it. I grew up in the generation where Social media just started to become big and I never had problems with it (except for here and here on online games)

**chuft** · 31 July 2024, 22:13

Social media does serious damage to a lot of children, the research on it is very clear. It is particularly damaging to teenage girls. It has resulted in a lot of suicides.

When you are asking "why do politicians do something about this and not that" you have to look at it from a risk management point of view.

School shootings (or mass stabbings of children, as happened in Britain this week) are a terrible thing, but they are rare. The chances of a particular child being injured in one of these events (remember America has over 330,000,000 people) is incredibly low.

Social media on the other hand is ubiquitous, virtually every child is now exposed to it and its harmful effects.

You can't really compare the two, because you WILL be exposed to social media's effects one way or the other. Not using it is likely to get a child treated as some kind of weirdo by their peers, and they will worry about others talking about them behind their back. In contrast, you are extremely unlikely to be involved in an incident of mass violence - and those are much harder to prevent than, say, targeting a big tech corporation that has a lot to lose if they try to ignore the law.

So social media is (a) going to affect virtually every child in the country and (b) can be addressed by the law because it is targeting corporations who will comply with the law because they have a lot of money to lose. An incident of mass violence, such as the mass stabbing that just took place in Europe, is basically impossible to prevent. Typically these perpetrators have no criminal record and have never done anything that would let you restrain their actions. No law is going to prevent that kind of incident.

So you fix the stuff you can fix, especially if it will benefit tens of millions of children.

As for guns - Switzerland, in Europe, actually has gun laws which are more liberal than the US's. I think the mass shooting problem in the US is related to culture more than guns. Culture is very hard to "fix".

**boredjedi** · 31 July 2024, 22:30

You know what annoys me about these type of bills?
There's not one ounce of responsibility put on the parents.
Where the onus really belongs.

Case in point

The bill, which passed 91-3, has been pushed by parents of children who died by suicide after online bullying or have otherwise been harmed by online content.

Where were you the parents?

**Play_z** · 31 July 2024, 22:44

Even though I might be wrong about the harmful effects of social media. It also, depends on what app (For example: Insta, snapchat, twitter and discord are the worst with bullying)

**chuft** · 31 July 2024, 23:14

It goes hand in hand with the internet and now smartphones. It used to be when you came home from school you were away from all that nonsense, your family home was a refuge from bad kids at school and you didn't know or care what they were doing. Now you can check and see, and get reminders and contacts from others, 24 hours a day wherever you are. Somebody not fitting in at school can't escape it even at home, they will see people's Facebook feeds with others doing things without them (including perhaps people they thought were their friends), or they can receive online bullying. And of course there is the risk of bad adults making contact with them online.

Teenage girls in particular tend to have a strong psychological need to fit into a group of other girls and the kind of meanness that is possible via social media just was not even possible in the past. And because young people tend to live on their phones and are communicating around the clock with people, there is no escape from a bad situation, it reaches into every time and place of your life.

**Play_z** · 1 August 2024, 00:55

I agree with your statement. As a teenager myself I had a fair share of fake friends who would non-stop vaping in my face and I always felt like I was a nobody in that group. Thankfully, I'm not apart that group anymore and I'm hanging out with few people who actually care about me.

**Play_z** · 8 August 2024, 05:32

Ok, I was kind of blasting this at break while playing cool math games today 😅

**possessor** · 8 August 2024, 05:40

I forgor cmg exsted

Social media ban under 16 in Australia

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