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?
Parental controls have been an effective way for decades. In combination with actually looking over your kids, of course.
Unfortunately a lot of parental controls aren’t that helpful, and they’re more of an afterthought
I agree with parenting in general though
The existing tools also extend poorly to cover adults with developmental disabilities who need a digital shepherd to make sure they’re using the web safely. There’s no substitute to being involved. Also, we should bring back the family computer. My parents had a computer in the public area of the house since I was in elementary school. Even in the age of laptops, we had a shared desktop.
yeah, but that would require, you know, parenting, which is something we can’t do.
By not allowing parents to outsource the responsibilities of being a parent.
I’ll reply to this random one with that statement. There’s no winning move as a parent.
Problem is being locked out. If your kid is the only one not on social media and all other kids are, your kid will be socially left out.
All kids are on a chat platform you don’t support. What do you? Disallow it and give them a social handicap that might scar them, or allow it and take the risk?
The same goes for allowing images on other platforms. Since GDPR schools seem to care. Yet if it’s a recording that will be put on social media you can explain your 4 year old why they weren’t allowed to participate… It sucks.
I don’t know what the right way forward is. I don’t think this is it. Something is needed though. We should at least signal what we find acceptable as a society. Bog stupid rules which are trivial to circumvent might be good enough, or perhaps some add campaigns like we did with smoking (hehe, if it’s for something we support then adds are good?).
Regardless, the current situation clearly doesn’t work. It would be great if we could find and promote the least invasive solutions.
I feel that communicating your concerns with other parents and their school can help. I feel it can make sense to have some forms of socialization when they are in middle school or high school, but even then you’d want a pretty locked down system, imo.
I feel that not every parent is going to let their kids use technologically to talk to their friends, especially not all the time. That’s not how I grew up and I was fine developmentally speaking. As a parent you can seek out other parents that live by similar philosophy locally for your kids to have as friends as well.
You’d be surprised with what parents let their kids do. My little anecdotal sample size contains mostly highly educated people but most of them don’t place any restrictions on screen time of their kids. They claim they talked to their kids and they have assured them they don’t look at anything they are not supposed to but that’s just not what happens in reality.
What really happens is that the kids with no restrictions will engage with all the predatory bullshit on these platforms, nonstop. I can see this with my own eyes and my kid brings their friends over.
Communication is key but unfortunately the business model of these platforms is based on addiction and children are not equiped to deal with it and parental controls are an essential component.
I believe the parent post is nicely sketching out what a “best” move is. I have seen no better approach myself. At the same time I see what you see. The best approach isn’t all that great. If you’re lucky and find the right people it could work. There’s a lot of luck involved there.
That’s why I do think there should be some regulations indicating what is tolerated. It seems to me parent poster may agree (and thus also woth your take).
Since GDPR you can tell the school you don’t want pictures on platforms you disagree with. You may miss out on seeing the photo’s, you might come across as crazy, but you can (and you should). We were given a choice at the cost of extra paperwork and some limitations.
Even without the addiction problem of these platforms we should nurture and find a good society around us. It’s a valid take to try and find likeminded people.
I don’t think that’s the end of it. Given the state we’re in, the network effect, and the fragile ego of developing kids, I suppose we need a stronger push.
AI enforced age verification or logins which allow you to be followed anywhere is not the solution in my current opinion, it’s a different problem. The problems are the addictive and steering nature of the platforms which seems to be hard to describe in a clear way legally.
I wonder how “these platforms” should be defined and what minimum set of limitations would give us and the children the necessary breathing space.
the minimum would be transparency for the algorithm. If users can see exactly what a social media algorithm is doing with their content feed, they would always have a way to identify and escape dark patterns of addiction.
But this minimum itself would require powers to compel tech companies to give up what they would describe as intellectual property. Which would probably require a digital bill of rights?
The most practical option would be to just ask your kids directly about the kinds of content they’ve been consuming and why. Dinner table conversations can probably reveal those dark patterns just as well
Wholeheartedly agree that the problem is the addictive and predatory nature of these platforms. I don’t see how that would change under the current perpetual growth economy we all live under
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/
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
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. 😁
busted!
Without ads, they just wouldn’t make the platform, not make it better??
Define “they,” and you might answer your own concerns.
Social media companies news sources would start to be corrupted without money from other sources, etc.
To put it plainly, I couldn’t muster a single shit if Facebook ceased to exist.
Actually, I’d celebrate. The web can survive without being commercialized. It’d look much different, for sure. That’s the point.
Edit: I’m not saying this isn’t a super idealized fantasy that will never happen. I’m just saying I’d partake in that fantasy.
Stop. Giving. Them. Phones.
Stop whining. No they don’t need one. NO THEY DON’T.
No.
No they’re not special.
No they’re not too busy. Neither are you.
No iPad either.
Stop. Shut up. No. Phones.
And or old school phones, that can call and text, but not surf the internet. Old smaller flip phones. Because parents will want to be able to communicate because they are worriers in many cases, there is no need for them to use smartphones for this.
