[HN Gopher] Denmark's government aims to ban access to social me...
___________________________________________________________________
Denmark's government aims to ban access to social media for
children under 15
Author : c420
Score : 347 points
Date : 2025-11-07 16:28 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (apnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (apnews.com)
| Aldipower wrote:
| Our current form of asocial media is nothing else like drug
| abuse.
| casesarplus1 wrote:
| How will they achieve that without introducing a requirement to
| identify yourself on every online platform, which some would say
| is probably the whole reason for introducing something promoted
| as being "for the children"(tm).
| OsrsNeedsf2P wrote:
| Given all the information companies have about users on social
| media, do you really believe they can't guess the real age?
| mlmonkey wrote:
| Some people: these online companies have too much information
| about us! They know everything about us!! Where's muh
| privacy??
|
| Same people now: how will the poor company know that it's an
| underage user?? Oh noes!
| delusional wrote:
| the EU is working on a system for age verification that won't
| identify you to the platform. The details are of course
| complicated, but you can imagine an openid like system run by
| the government that only exposes if you're old enough for Y.
|
| The platforms asks your government if you're old enough. You
| identify yourself to your government. Your government responds
| to the question with a single Boolean.
| Semaphor wrote:
| Our German national ID supports just verifying that you are
| over age X, with no other info given.
| high_na_euv wrote:
| But why would you give your id?
| Semaphor wrote:
| You don't need to, that's the thing. The site requests
| "are you over 18" and you use your ID to prove it without
| them getting any other information from it. Requires a
| phone with NFC, but the app is open source
| gumby271 wrote:
| hopefully the protocol is open source too. I'd hate to
| find that it just works on iOS and Google certified
| Android.
| Semaphor wrote:
| Should all be open, but I don't know for sure. Works with
| ungoogled android unless something changed.
|
| https://github.com/Governikus/AusweisApp
| gumby271 wrote:
| That's very cool and good to hear. Thanks for sharing!
| delusional wrote:
| I think that ends up being a more difficult problem than
| just open source. There will have to be some cryptography
| at play to make sure the age verification information is
| actually attested by your government.
|
| It would be possible for them to provide an open-source
| app, but design the cryptography in such a way that you
| couldn't deploy it anyway. That would make it rather
| pointless.
|
| I too hope they design that into the system, which the
| danish authorities unfortunately don't have a good track
| record of doing.
| bakugo wrote:
| How does the site verify that the ID being used for
| verification is the ID of the person that is actually
| using the account? How does the site verify that a valid
| ID was used at all?
|
| If the app is open source, what stops someone from
| modifying it to always claim the user is over 18 without
| an ID?
| Semaphor wrote:
| Not that I understand it, but AFAIK that's cryptography
| doing it's thing.
|
| And using someone else's Id and password is the same as
| every method of auth
| IlikeKitties wrote:
| And the reference implementation requires google play
| integrity attestation so you are forced to use a google
| approved device with google approved firmware and a
| google account to download the application in order to
| participate. Once this becomes implemented, you are no
| longer a citizen of the EU but a citizen of Google or
| Apple and a customer of the EU:
| Semaphor wrote:
| Quick google (on my phone, so not certain) says it works
| with microg as of August
| IlikeKitties wrote:
| Yeah, sorry I mixed up the old German Ausweisapp and the
| euID Reference App
| oblio wrote:
| It needs to be scaled to the EU level.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| This is an acceptable solution only if the government doesn't
| know which platform you are trying to access either.
| ulrikrasmussen wrote:
| *Only for Google Android and Apple iOS users. Everyone else
| who don't want to be a customer of these two, including
| GrapheneOS and LineageOS users, will have to upload scans of
| identity papers to each service, like the UK clusterfuck.
|
| Source: I wrote Digitaliseringsstyrelsen in Denmark where
| this solution will be implemented next year as a pilot, and
| they confirm that the truly anonymous solution will not be
| offered on other platforms.
|
| Digitaliseringsstyrelsen and EU is truly, utterly fucking us
| all over by locking us in to the trusted competing platforms
| offered by the current American duopoly on the smartphone
| market.
| kranke155 wrote:
| This sounds like a temporary issue.
| tokai wrote:
| With digital ID. They are releasing it in a couple of months.
|
| https://digst.dk/it-loesninger/den-digitale-identitetstegneb...
| stickfigure wrote:
| I look forward to being able to buy your porn surfing habits
| on the darkweb in a few years.
| buellerbueller wrote:
| *everyone's
|
| The difference is meaningful. It's mostly prisoners
| dilemma. If only one persons porn habit is available thats
| bad for them. If everyones (legal) porn habits are
| available, then it gets normalized.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Normalized or not, the risk is you get something akin US
| drug enforcement: ignored for certain demographics,
| enforced for others. The ability to see someone's porn
| history is irrelevant until a government (or employer
| perhaps) wants to weaponize it.
|
| The problem isn't my peers, it's the people in power and
| how many of them lack any scruples.
| Liquix wrote:
| this seems to run parallel to the "i have nothing to
| hide" / "well they have everyone's data, so who cares
| about _mine_ " arguments.
|
| this is too narrow a view on the issue. the problem isn't
| that a colleague, acquaintance, neighbor, or government
| employee is going to snoop through _your_ data. the
| problem is that once any government has _everyone_ 's
| data, they will feed it to PRISM-esque systems and use it
| to accurately model the population, granting the power to
| predict and shape future events.
| super256 wrote:
| The ID card allows age verification without disclosing the
| identity to the service which needs the age verified.
| ang_cire wrote:
| You don't think that the digital ID provider is keeping
| logs of which sites requested to verify which users? Even
| government websites are not exactly known for their high
| security.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| I don't know, this is a bad take. There is good technology
| to deal with that problem.
|
| https://github.com/google/longfellow-zk
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44457390
| edwin2 wrote:
| this scenario can be addressed without digital ID
|
| the social media platforms already measure more than enough
| signals to understand a users likely age. they could be
| required by law to do something about it
| boomlinde wrote:
| Would social networks accepting Danish users have to
| implement the other end of that, or will they also be allowed
| to use less privacy-oriented age verification solutions (e.g.
| requesting a photocopy of the user's ID)?
|
| It seems to me like it's either a privacy disaster waiting to
| happen (if not required) or everyone but the biggest players
| throwing out a lot of bathwater with very little baby by
| simply not accepting Danish users (if required).
|
| The wording on the page also makes it sound like their threat
| model doesn't include themselves as a potential threat actor.
| I absolutely wouldn't want to reveal my complete identity to
| just anyone requesting it, which the digital ID solution
| seems to have covered, but I also don't want the issuer of
| the age attestation to know anything about my browsing
| habits, which the description doesn't address.
| simongray wrote:
| > everyone but the biggest players throwing out a lot of
| bathwater with very little baby by simply not accepting
| Danish users (if required).
|
| The biggest players in social media are _precisely_ the
| ones that this law is targeting.
|
| No one in charge of implementing this law is going to care
| whether some Mastodon server implements a special auth
| solution for Danish users or not, they are going to care
| that Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, etc. do so.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| In the US they'd just make the platforms massively liable and
| let them worry about how to enforce. No idea what they'll do in
| another country.
| stOneskull wrote:
| we get to see how it works in australia next month. there's
| already stories of kids putting on fake mustaches to fool
| age-of-face recognition, which is one of the methods used.
|
| i think it'll get to: "these methods aren't good enough,
| we'll have to enforce digital id".
| lapsis_beeftech wrote:
| Child abuse is already illegal, the law needs to be expanded to
| cover these new forms of harm to children. It seems reasonable
| that I am held criminally accountable if I expose my child to
| harmful Internet content like social media.
| Telaneo wrote:
| It'll be interesting to see what they can cook up at home. Chat
| Control was pushed in large part by Denmark, and Minister of
| Justice Peter Hummelgaard is on record saying some pretty
| disturbing things regarding the right to privacy online.[1] Now
| for this, they don't need the entire EU to go along, and any laws
| already on the books might prove ineffective to protect against
| means that end up achieving similar goals to Chat Control.
|
| Denmark's constitution does have a privacy paragraph, but it
| explicitly mentions telephone and telegraph, as well as
| letters.[2] Turns out online messaging doesn't count. It'd be a
| funny one to get to whatever court, because hopefully someone
| there will have a brain and use it, but it wouldn't be the first
| time someone didn't.
|
| [1] https://boingboing.net/2025/09/15/danish-justice-minister-
| we...
|
| [2] https://www.grundloven.dk/
| Svip wrote:
| Whether internet is covered by SS 72 seems undetermined; as far
| as I can tell the Supreme Court hasn't made a decision on it;
| but considering that it considered fake SMS train tickets to be
| document fraud, even though the law text never explicitly
| mentions text messages: it seems clear that internet
| communication ought to be covered, if challenged.
|
| Regardless, this wouldn't run afoul of this. This is similar to
| restricting who can buy alcohol, based purely on age; the
| identification process is just digital. MitID - the Danish
| digital identification infrastructure - allows an service to
| request specific details about another purpose; such as their
| age or just a boolean value whether they are old enough.
| Essentially: the service can ask "is this user 18 or older?"
| and the ID service can respond yes or no, without providing any
| other PII.
|
| That's the theory at least; nothing about snooping private
| communication, but rather forcing the "bouncer" to actually
| check IDs.
| tokai wrote:
| >considering that it considered fake SMS train tickets to be
| document fraud, even though the law text never explicitly
| mentions text messages
|
| That has nothing to do with the medium of the ticket and is
| all about knowingly presenting a fake ticket. The ticket is a
| document proving your payment for travel. They could be lumps
| of dirt and it would still be document fraud to present a
| fake hand of dirt.
| Svip wrote:
| Except the Supreme Court deemed the case to be of a
| principal nature, and granted relieve (i.e. no cost to
| either party), since it was disputed whether a fake SMS
| train ticket counted as document fraud.
| Telaneo wrote:
| > Regardless, this wouldn't run afoul of this. This is
| similar to restricting who can buy alcohol, based purely on
| age; the identification process is just digital. MitID - the
| Danish digital identification infrastructure - allows an
| service to request specific details about another purpose;
| such as their age or just a boolean value whether they are
| old enough. Essentially: the service can ask "is this user 18
| or older?" and the ID service can respond yes or no, without
| providing any other PII.
|
| > That's the theory at least; nothing about snooping private
| communication, but rather forcing the "bouncing" to actually
| check IDs.
|
| Hopefully the theory will reflect the real world. The 'return
| bool' to 'isUser15+()' is probably the best we can hope for,
| and should prevent the obvious problems, but there can always
| be more shady dealings on the backend (as if there aren't
| enough of those already).
| jlouis wrote:
| Given the track record of digitalization in Denmark, you
| can be rest assured this will be implemented in the worst
| possible way.
|
| This is Denmark. The country who reads the EU legislation
| requesting the construction of a CA to avoid centralizing
| the system and then legally bends the rules of EU and
| decides it's far better to create a centralized solution.
| I.e., the intent is a public key cryptosystem with three
| bodies, the state being the CA. But no, they should hold
| both the CA and the Key in escrow. Oh, and then decides
| that the secret should be a pin such that law enforcement
| can break it in 10 milliseconds.
|
| I think internet verification is at least 10 years too
| late. Better late than never. I just lament the fact we are
| going to get a bad solution to the problem.
| delusional wrote:
| > Denmark's constitution does have a privacy paragraph, but it
| explicitly mentions telephone and telegraph
|
| That's very much not how danish law works. The specific
| paragraph says "hvor ingen lov hjemler en saeregen undtaglse,
| alene ske efter en retskendelse." translated as "where no other
| law grants a special exemption, only happen with a warrant".
| That is, you can open peoples private mail and enter their
| private residence, but you have to ask a judge first.
| Telaneo wrote:
| And yet they wanted to push a proposal where the government
| would have free access to all digital communication, no judge
| required. So if it happens through a telephone conversation,
| you need a judge, while with a digital message, you wouldn't
| have, since the government would have already collected that
| information through Chat Control.
| delusional wrote:
| I don't know where you get your information, but that was
| not in the chat control proposal I read.
| Telaneo wrote:
| Patrick Breyer has some good thoughts on this.[1]
|
| The relevant points I believe to be:
|
| > All citizens are placed under suspicion, without cause,
| of possibly having committed a crime. Text and photo
| filters monitor all messages, without exception. No judge
| is required to order to such monitoring - contrary to the
| analog world which guarantees the privacy of
| correspondence and the confidentiality of written
| communications.
|
| And:
|
| > The confidentiality of private electronic
| correspondence is being sacrificed. Users of messenger,
| chat and e-mail services risk having their private
| messages read and analyzed. Sensitive photos and text
| content could be forwarded to unknown entities worldwide
| and can fall into the wrong hands.
|
| [1] https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/chat-control/
| delusional wrote:
| > All citizens are placed under suspicion
|
| > No judge is required to order to such monitoring
|
| That sounds quite extreme, I just can't square that with
| what I can actually read in the proposal.
|
| > the power to request the competent judicial authority
| of the Member State that designated it or another
| independent administrative authority of that Member State
|
| It explicitly states otherwise. A judge (or other
| independent authority) has to be involved. It just sounds
| like baseless fear mongering (or worse, libertarianism)
| to me.
| tiagod wrote:
| Didn't the proposal involve automated scanning of all
| instant messages? How isn't that equivalent of having an
| automated system opening every letter and listening to
| every phone call looking for crimes?
| delusional wrote:
| Not from what I can tell. From what I can read, it only
| establishes a new authority, under the supervision and at
| the digression, of the Member state that can, with
| judicial approval mandate "the least intrusive in terms
| of the impact on the users' rights to private and family
| life" detection activities on platforms where "there is
| evidence [... ] it is likely, [...] that the service is
| used, to an appreciable extent for the dissemination of
| known child sexual abuse material".
|
| That all sounds extremely boring and political, but the
| essence is that it mandates a local authority to scan
| messages on platforms that are likely to contain child
| pornography. That's not a blanket scan of all messages
| everywhere.
| iamnothere wrote:
| > platforms that are likely to contain child pornography
|
| So every platform, everywhere? Facebook and Twitter/X
| still have problems keeping up with this, Matrix
| constantly has to block rooms from the public directory,
| Mastodon mods have plenty of horror stories. Any platform
| with UGC will face this issue, but it's not a good reason
| to compromise E2EE or mandate intrusive scanning of
| private messages.
|
| I would not be so opposed to mandated scans of _public_
| posts on large platforms, as image floods are still a
| somewhat common form of harassment (though not as common
| as it once was).
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| The proposal is about deploying automated scanning of
| every message and every image on all messaging providers
| and email client. That is indisputable.
|
| It therefore breaks EtoE as it intercepts the messages on
| your device and sends them off to whatever 3rd party they
| are planning to use before those are encrypted and sent
| to the recipient.
|
| > It explicitly states otherwise. A judge (or other
| independent authority) has to be involved. It just sounds
| like baseless fear mongering (or worse, libertarianism)
| to me.
|
| How can a judge be involved when we are talking about
| scanning hundreds of millions if not billions of messages
| each day? That does not make any sense.
|
| I suggest you re-read the Chat control proposal because I
| believe you are mistaken if you think that a judge is
| involved in this process.
| delusional wrote:
| > That is indisputable.
|
| I dispute that. The proposal explicitly states it has to
| be true that "it is likely, despite any mitigation
| measures that the provider may have taken or will take,
| that the service is used, to an appreciable extent for
| the dissemination of known child sexual abuse material;"
|
| > How can a judge be involved
|
| Because the proposal does not itself require any
| scanning. It requires Member states to construct an
| authority that can then mandate the scanning, in
| collaboration with a judge.
|
| I suggest YOU read the proposal, at least once.
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| You must be trolling.
|
| > it is likely, despite any mitigation measures that the
| provider may have taken or will take, that the service is
| used, to an appreciable extent for the dissemination of
| known child sexual abuse material
|
| That is an absolute vague definition that basically
| encompasses all services available today including
| messaging providers, email providers and so on. Anything
| can be used to send pictures these days. So therefore
| anything can be targeted, ergo it is a complete breach of
| privacy.
|
| > Because the proposal does not itself require any
| scanning. It requires Member states to construct an
| authority that can then mandate the scanning, in
| collaboration with a judge.
|
| Your assertion makes no sense. The only way to know if a
| message contains something inappropriate is to scan it
| before it is encrypted. Therefore all messages have to be
| scanned to know if something inappropriate is in it.
|
| A judge, if necessary, would only be participating in
| this whole charade at the end of the process not when the
| scanning happens.
|
| This is taken verbatim from the proposal that you can
| find here: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
| content/EN/TXT/?uri=COM%3A20...
|
| > [...] By introducing an obligation for providers to
| detect, report, block and remove child sexual abuse
| material from their services, .....
|
| It is an obligation to scan not a choice based some
| someone's opinion like a judge, ergo no one is involved
| at all in the scanning process. There is no due process
| in this process and everyone is under surveillance.
|
| > [...] The EU Centre should work closely with Europol.
| It will receive the reports from providers, check them to
| avoid reporting obvious false positives and forward them
| to Europol as well as to national law enforcement
| authorities.
|
| Again here no judge involved. The scanning is automated
| and happens automatically for everyone. Reports will be
| forwarded automatically.
|
| > [...] only take steps to identify any user in case
| potential online child sexual abuse is detected
|
| To identify a user who may or may not have shared
| something inappropriate, that means that they know who
| the sender is, who the recipient was , what bthe essage
| contained and when it happened. Therefore it s a complete
| bypass of EtoE.
|
| This is the same exact thing that we are seeing know with
| the age requirements for social media. If you want to ban
| kids who are 16 years old and under then you need to scan
| everyone's ID in order to know how old everyone is so
| that you can stop them from using the service.
|
| With scanning, it is exactly the same. If you want to
| prevent the dissemination of CSAM material on a platform,
| then you have to know what is in each and every message
| so that you can detect it and report it as described in
| my quotes above.
|
| Therefore it means that everyone's messages will be
| scanned either by the services themselves or this task
| will be outsourced to a 3rd party business who will be in
| charge of scanning, cataloging and reporting their
| finding to the authorities. Either way the scanning will
| happen.
|
| I am not sure how you can argue that this is not the
| case. Hundreds of security researchers have spent the
| better part of the last 3 years warning against such a
| proposal, are you so sure about yourself that you think
| they are all wrong?
| delusional wrote:
| > This is taken verbatim from the proposal that you can
| find here
|
| You're taking quotes from the preamble which are not
| legislation. If you scroll down a little you'll find the
| actual text of the proposal which reads:
|
| > The Coordinating Authority of establishment shall have
| the power to request the competent judicial authority of
| the Member State that designated it or another
| independent administrative authority of that Member State
| to issue a detection order
|
| You see, a judge, required for a detection order to be
| issued. That's how the judge will be involved BEFORE
| detection. The authority cannot demand detection without
| the judge approving it.
|
| I really dislike you way of arguing. I thought it was
| important to correct your misconceptions, but I do not
| believe you to be arguing in good faith.
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| Let me address your points here and to make it more
| explicit, let me use Meta/Facebook Messenger as an
| example.
|
| > You see, a judge, required for a detection order to be
| issued. That's how the judge will be involved BEFORE
| detection. The authority cannot demand detection without
| the judge approving it.
|
| Your interpretation of the judge's role is incorrect. The
| issue is not if a judge is involved, but what that judge
| is authorizing.
|
| You are describing a targeted warrant. This proposal
| creates a general mandate.
|
| Here is the the reality of the detection orders outlined
| by this proposal:
|
| 1: A judicial authority, based on a risk assessment, does
| not issue a warrant for a specific user John Doe who may
| be committing a crime. 2: Instead, it issues a detection
| order to Meta mandating that the service Messenger must
| be scanned for illegal content. 3: This order legally
| forces Meta to scan the data from all users on Messenger
| to find CSAM. It is a blanket mandate, not a targeted
| one.
|
| This forces Facebook to implement a system to scan every
| single piece of data that goes through them, even if it
| means scanning messages before they are encrypted. Meta
| has now a mandate to scan everyone, all the time,
| forever.
|
| Your flawed understanding is based on a traditional
| wiretap.
|
| Traditional Warrant (Your View): Cops suspect Tony
| Soprano. They get a judge's approval for a single, time-
| limited wiretap on Tony's specific phone line in his
| house based on probable cause.
|
| Detection Order: Cops suspect Tony "might" use his house
| for criminal activity. They get a judge to designate the
| entire house a "high-risk location." The judge then
| issues an order compelling the homebuilder to install
| 24/7 microphones in every room to record and scan all
| conversations from everyone (Tony, his family, his
| guests, his kids and so on) indefinitely.
|
| That is the difference that I think you are not grasping
| here.
|
| With E2E, Meta cannot know if CSAM is being exchanged in
| a message unless it can see the plain text.
|
| To comply with this proposal, Meta will be forced to
| build a system that bypasses their own encryption. There
| is no other way.
|
| This view is shared by security experts, privacy
| organizations, and legal experts.
|
| You can read this opinion letter from a former ECJ judge
| who completely disagrees with your view here:
|
| https://www.patrick-breyer.de/wp-
| content/uploads/2023/11/Vaj...
|
| I am sorry if you think that I am arguing in bad faith. I
| am not.
|
| While there is nothing I can do to make you like my
| arguing style, just know that I am simply trying to make
| you understand your misconceptions about this law.
| tokai wrote:
| The ombudsman will say some strong words and everything
| will continue as is.
| mrweasel wrote:
| People continue to believe that the "Grundlov" works like the
| US constitution, and it's really nothing like that. If
| anything it's more of a transfer of legislation from the king
| to parliament. Most laws just leaves the details to be
| determined by parliament.
|
| Censorship really is one of the few laws that are pretty
| unambiguous, that's really just "No, never again". Not that
| this stops politicians, but that's a separate debate.
| martin-t wrote:
| > Denmark's constitution does have a privacy paragraph, but it
| explicitly mentions telephone and telegraph, as well as letters
|
| And this is why laws should always include their justification.
|
| The intent was clearly to protect people - to make sure the
| balance of power does not fall too much in the government's
| favor that it can silence dissent before it gets organized
| enough to remove the government (whether legally or illegally
| does not matter), even if that meant some crimes go unpunished.
|
| These rules were created because most current democratic
| governments were created by people overthrowing previous
| dictatorships (whether a dictator calls himself king, president
| or general secretary does not matter) and they knew very well
| that even the government they create might need to be
| overthrown in the future.
|
| Now the governments are intentionally sidestepping these rules
| because:
|
| - Every organization's primary goal is its own continued
| existence.
|
| - Every organization's secondary goal is the protection of its
| members.
|
| - Any officially stated goals are tertiary.
| worldfoodgood wrote:
| Great. Please raise the age to 115.
| Alex2037 wrote:
| you are on social media right now.
| buellerbueller wrote:
| how would society even survive if under-15s couldn't access
| HN?
|
| the horror!
| everdrive wrote:
| And Tylenol is a drug just the same as heroin. Do you think
| that HN has the same sort of impacts on people as instagram
| or facebook?
| delecti wrote:
| Do you think a law which restricts "social media" will be
| crafted delicately enough to affect Instagram and Facebook
| but not HN?
| everdrive wrote:
| In principle, certainly. In practice, Congress can't be
| trusted to craft more or less any law these days. I'm not
| necessarily sure that the law will be able to help us
| here, but I also think it's not helpful to take the
| broadest possible definition of social media to try to
| shutdown discussion. (I'm not suggesting that you are
| doing that)
| dlisboa wrote:
| I'd gladly give up HN if it means Instagram and Facebook
| are eradicated. Yes, yes, "those that would trade liberty
| for security...", but we were better off without any form
| of social media at all.
| iamnothere wrote:
| I often wonder if posts like this, along with the people
| who want to ban all cars, etc are just rage bait.
| Fortunately most of the population disagrees with your
| preferences. I give "general social media ban" around a
| 1% chance of success.
| mothballed wrote:
| Of course not, instead kids will be logging into some
| russian/chinese 4chan-esque service which has no qualms
| about the opinion of US law.
| hobom wrote:
| Australia's soon-to-take-effect ban affects nine
| platforms, including Instagram and Facebook, but not HN.
| These bans often operate on the amount of users a
| platform has, so HN is unlikely to make the cut. Nobody
| cares about this site.
| sanswork wrote:
| Yes, plenty of users here compulsively posting and
| compulsively checking for responses/upvotes/etc.
| worldfoodgood wrote:
| I'm aware. If I lost the forum on HN as a side effect, I'd
| probably be happier overall.
| rwmj wrote:
| I was thinking I know a few people over 65 who are being
| radicalised, might be an idea to ban it for them too.
|
| The serious answer is that banning "social media" is a bit
| silly. We should concentrate on controlling the addictive
| aspects of it, and ensuring the algorithms are fair and
| governed by the people.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Even if you're half-joking, there's a very real point to this.
| It's really not solving the problem. It's moving it very so
| slightly down the line.
|
| I'm not entirely sure how I'd want to word it, but it would be
| something like: It is prohibited to profit from engagement
| generated by triggering negative emotions in the public.
|
| You should be free to run a rage-bait forum, but you cannot
| profit from it, as that would potentially generate a perverse
| incentive to undermine trust in society. You can do it for
| free, to ensure that people can voice their dissatisfaction
| with the government, working conditions, billionaires, the HOA
| and so on. I'd carve out a slight exception for unions being
| allowed to spend membership fees to run such forums.
|
| Also politicians should be banned from social media. They can
| run their own websites.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| You know that you can just, you know, cancel your ISP contract
| and live in a hut in Montana, right?
|
| HN is 'social media', btw.
| worldfoodgood wrote:
| > HN is 'social media', btw.
|
| Sure is! If you read the thread _before_ posting in the
| thread, you 'd see that it's come up already.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Good, IMO it should be 18 if not even higher, but 15 is a good
| start.
| ceayo wrote:
| here we go again...
| poly2it wrote:
| A reason to be cautious about propositions like these isn't just
| the inherent belittling of children's right to information, which
| can be argued for or against in certain cases, but the aspect of
| giving any proceeding government the ability to ban a form of
| media from children due to their perception of toxicity,
| derangement, danger, et cetera.
| Aldipower wrote:
| The inherent belittling of children's right to the enjoyment of
| alcoholic drinks... Our current form of social media is a drug
| and it harms our children in all ways and adults too btw.
| zurfer wrote:
| I don't buy it. The most relevant critique is see is that it's
| hard to control the age of your users without removing
| anonymous accounts thus limiting privacy. Well, it's a hard
| problem but it doesn't feel impossible to solve.
|
| To me there is no question that children should grow up
| protected from harmful substances. You don't want kids to
| smoke, scrolling algo feeds is not better. There is enough
| interesting internet out there without social media!
| DocTomoe wrote:
| > You don't want kids to smoke, scrolling algo feeds is not
| better.
|
| That's a dogmatic axiom until you can show how TikTok causes
| lung cancer.
| zurfer wrote:
| You're right, I didn't produce evidence in my comment.
| Smoking and lung cancer are more clear cut than social
| media problems in general.
|
| The effects of social media are more complex and nuanced
| than smoking. There are a lot of studies that show that
| social media has a negative effect on mental well being.
| When someones dies of loneliness or birth rates collapse
| and young people have less sex than ever, social media is
| never the only cause and might not even be the main reason,
| but it seems to play an important role.
|
| Also, I don't think all social media is bad. I do love
| these discussions on HN even or especially when we don't
| agree, but tiktok and similar services have a lot of bad
| incentives with regards to user well being.
| postepowanieadm wrote:
| I'm a bit suspicious: it was Denmark's government that pushed for
| chat control.
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| It sounds extreme, but I support banning usage of anything that
| runs software for children under 13. Under 13, children are still
| developing their minds, it is important for their welfare that
| they learn how to function without technological dependencies.
|
| You know how in school they used to tell us we can't use
| calculators to solve math problems? Same thing. It can't be done
| by individual parents either, because then kids would get envious
| and that in itself would cause more problems than it would solve.
|
| It is important for kids to get bored, to socialize in person, to
| solve problems the hard way, and develop the mental-muscles they
| need to not only function, but to make best use of modern
| technology.
|
| It is also important that parents don't use technology to raise
| their children (includes TV). Most parents just give their kids a
| tablet with youtube these days.
| ulrikrasmussen wrote:
| I was learning to program at age 11. This does indeed sound
| extreme.
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| Would it have made a big difference if you learned to code at
| 13? Is there a pressing need as to why kids need to code at a
| young age? Maybe there could be exceptions for children that
| develop sooner? If your other developmental metrics were met
| early on, I don't see why an earlier age would be a problem.
| ulrikrasmussen wrote:
| I don't know, maybe? Maybe it's not up to the state to
| decide whether my kids developmental metrics allows them
| screen time before age 13? What kind of nanny state is
| that?
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| I don't think that's a nanny state. you can't give your
| kid alcohol for example at that age, let them drive, get
| married (don't get me started on some countries!),
| operate a chainsaw or other dangerous machinery.
|
| This is a danger to their mental development. Look at
| teacher forums all over. r/Teachers on reddit should be
| illuminating. Tech and parents sticking devices to their
| kids instead of raising them properly has resulted in
| utter disaster. If there was no harm imposed on children,
| I would agree that it is a nanny-state thing.
| card_zero wrote:
| Stick it up your bum. Just because Reddit went terrible
| and TikTok is annoying and Discord is sinister doesn't
| mean we have to stop spending our childhoods pressing
| buttons to make lights flash and sounds play as nature
| intended.
| QuadmasterXLII wrote:
| I strongly suspect the network connection is the issue, not
| the software. Let the kids have graphing calculators!
| znpy wrote:
| I generally agree. But so much software today is useless
| without a network connection. Online help (anybody
| remember those chm files?) was often very very good,
| because it was supposed to be _the_ documentation for
| most software.
| amiga386 wrote:
| I was programming age 5 in BASIC. Raspberry Pis are the modern
| equivalent and I think every child should have one.
|
| > they learn how to function without technological
| dependencies.
|
| So like the Amish? Or are they still too technologically
| dependent and children need to be banned from pulleys,
| fulcrums, wheels, etc.?
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| I don't know much about the Amish, so I can't comment.
|
| Teaching kids how to code isn't all that meaningful on its
| own. knowing what to do once you learn how to code is. If
| your plan is to teach your kid how to code, teach them to
| solve problems without code at that age. Unless you're
| serious about thinking learning at age 5 vs age 13 would make
| a big difference.
|
| I think every kid 13 and above should have an rpi too.
| amiga386 wrote:
| I think you're missing the point. 5 year old me was writing
| their own computer games and at no point did I need or ask
| my parents how to do it (though they did buy the computer;
| thanks mum and dad!), they didn't know.
|
| There were a plethora of books in the library on how to
| program, and here you are suggesting I, and everyone like
| me, be banned from doing so. You'd probably also ban me
| from the library by assuming I couldn't read aged 5. I
| certainly could, especially computer manuals. The computer
| was an amazing thing which did _exactly_ what I told it,
| and I learned quickly how _precise_ I needed to tell it,
| and when I made a mistake, it repeated my mistakes over and
| over without noticing. I learned more about digital ethics
| age 5 trying to write games than the typical CEO learns
| going on a "Do Not Create The Torment Nexus" course.
|
| You'd insist I not be allowed to even _use_ software, let
| alone write my own. You 'd be actively cutting off my
| future professional life, and depriving entire nations of
| bedroom programmers cum professional software engineers,
| with your ill-thought-out ban.
|
| If your children show an aptitude or a fascination for a
| topic, I hope you feed that and praise them for it.
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| I think books are great, provided they're age
| appropriate.
|
| First, my proposal is a delay, not a ban. This is such a
| good idea, that a lot of FAANG CEO's are doing this for
| their kids welfare (more or less) already.
|
| I think the overall welfare of kids should be weighed
| against the benefits.
|
| I think you should have been learning to tinker with
| electronics, solve math algorithms and develop all kinds
| of curiosities. the future of being a programmer involves
| competing with LLMs, you have to be good at knowing what
| to program. Humans aren't needed when it comes to simply
| knowing how to write code.
|
| I acknowledge that there will be exceptions, and perhaps
| that should be considered. but also lookup terms like
| "ipad babies" and how gen-alpha is turning out. Most
| parents don't teach their kids how to code in basic. and
| content regulation for kids is futile, unless you want
| the government monitoring your devices "for the
| children's sake".
|
| > If your children show an aptitude or a fascination for
| a topic, I hope you feed that and praise them for it.
|
| Same, but I hope you let them learn things in the right
| order and consider their overall long term wellbeing
| instead of temporary satisfaction. Children did fine
| without computers for all of humanity's history. the
| nature of children hasn't changed in the past 3 decades.
| What you consider feeding might actually be stagnating.
| If there is a good and practical way to make sure that
| children are developed well enough to interact with
| computers, and we can also make sure that the content
| they consume is age-appropriate without implementing a
| dystopian surveillance state, i'm all for it.
|
| But pretending the problem doesn't exist, and letting 99%
| of children suffer because 1% of kids might learn BASIC
| doesn't sound like a good plan.
| jbreckmckye wrote:
| I think a better distinction is internet enabled software.
|
| I had a good time programming BASIC on my V-Tech
| pseudocomputer, at age 9. But that's a world away from
| tiktok, reels and the predatory surveillance economy.
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| I think my proposal is easier for parents to enforce, and
| programming can wait. matter of fact, programming isn't a
| special skill to learn.
|
| You can teach kids electronics, have them construct toys
| that work on batteries,etc... work on components that don't
| require programming. teach them algorithms, math,
| crypto,etc.. without using computers.
|
| If you're teaching kids how to code, you should give them
| the skills that will help them learn _what_ to code first?
| 9cb14c1ec0 wrote:
| Pulleys fulcrums, and wheels are not addictive.
| card_zero wrote:
| Do fulcrums even exist, as independent physical objects?
| What you say about them not being addictive tempts me to do
| an entire packet of fulcrums, but I don't know where I
| could buy any or what they'd look like.
| tintor wrote:
| This is very extreme take. I learned to program at age 10. It
| is an amazing tool for mind development. Had to invent sine and
| cosine tables to make my computer games, before even
| encountering the concept at school.
| awillen wrote:
| The one thing I don't see and always wonder about with these
| sorts of things is how they define "social media". Seems like a
| tough thing to do - if you cast too broad a definition you'll end
| up with just about anywhere one can communicate on the internet,
| including email. If you take the very narrow approach of naming
| FB, IG, TikTok, etc., you almost certainly miss out on whatever
| the next platform is that's relevant to kids.
|
| Remember YikYak? IIRC that was worse for kids than most of the
| big social media sites, but how do you write a law that
| anticipates the next YikYak without banning everything?
| dlisboa wrote:
| I don't think it really matters if the definition is too narrow
| as long as you ward off the worst threats. An easier way to
| classify them would be by size: any social network with over
| 1000 users should have to regulate their users. So as soon as
| something starts being relevant from a public safety
| perspective it'll fall under the law.
| super256 wrote:
| I hope they can differentiate between social media and social
| networks.
| trey-jones wrote:
| As a parent who gave my oldest child a (very used) smartphone
| just before she turned 14, I would be in favor of making
| smartphones illegal under age 15 (or some other number, higher or
| lower I don't care). I'm pretty sure they're worse than
| cigarettes for the future of humanity.
| t0lo wrote:
| Far worse.
| arcfour wrote:
| As a parent, you should be able to parent your child, rather
| than having the government arbitrarily and capriciously do so
| on your behalf, and for everyone else's kids, too.
|
| As someone who got my first BlackBerry at 11, which really
| spurred a lot of my later interests which are now part of my
| career or led to it indirectly, I am opposed to paternalistic
| authoritarian governments making choices for everyone.
|
| (Funny anecdote, but I didn't even figure out how to sign up
| for Facebook until I was 11-12, because I wouldn't lie about my
| age and it would tell me I was too young. Heh.)
| mrtesthah wrote:
| The problem is the kid feeling left out at school when
| they're the only one without a smartphone and can't
| participate in their friends' activities.
| arcfour wrote:
| ...and this needs to be solved with a law? Kids feeling
| left out over something well and truly inconsequentual?
| foobarian wrote:
| Who needs laws! Let's also let them all smoke cigarettes
| too then while we're at it.
| mothballed wrote:
| Lol you can order a cigar or pipe tobacco on the internet
| completely legally without any ID check. Most people
| don't know this. You can do it with wine, too, for the
| vast majority of the US. It's not really a problem.
| cycomanic wrote:
| I suspect you need a credit card though? Can kids sign
| credit card contracts without parent consent in the US?
|
| Moreover just because that laws and regulations are
| applied inconsistently in the US (and we are talking
| about Denmark here), does not mean we should completely
| do away with them.
| mothballed wrote:
| Not sure if it's changed but I had a debit card and bank
| account from age 15 when I started working as a kid. I
| got it without even involving my parents, not sure if you
| can still do that now, it was before the KYC stuff ramped
| up to the nines.
| angiolillo wrote:
| Not necessarily a law, but it requires some form of
| collective action.
|
| I highly recommend discussing a smartphone pact such as
| http://waituntil8th.org with fellow parents before anyone
| in their friend group gets a cell phone.
| dlisboa wrote:
| Social media in the early 2000s is nothing like today.
| arcfour wrote:
| You're right, kids in the 2000s actually wanted to use
| social media. It's a dying industry--appropriate timing for
| a government to make a law to save kids from the evils of
| it.
| zurfer wrote:
| The issue is rather the algorithmic feed optimized for
| grabbing our attention. It's definitely addictive and
| should be regulated like other drugs.
|
| Give people technology, but let's have an honest
| conversation about it finally. As a adult it's already
| hard to muster enough self control to not keep scrolling.
| arcfour wrote:
| Okay, so explain this to your child, just like you tell
| them they shouldn't do drugs. Are there not people who
| are sober by choice? The only thing preventing you from
| going and smoking crack right now is most certainly not
| because it's illegal, but because you make a choice not
| to do so, knowing the negative effects it has on you.
|
| I don't scroll social media. When I was 14-17, sure. But
| then I lost interest, much like most of my peers did.
|
| (I do probably refresh HN more than I should though, but
| I think that's probably the least evil thing I could do
| compulsively...)
| AOsborn wrote:
| The part you're missing is that the decision to be online
| isn't like choosing to do drugs. It's closer to deciding
| to go to parties and socialise at all.
|
| Social media for teens is ubiquitous and where your peers
| connect. It's being included in your social group, not
| opt-in thrill seeking.
|
| Most teens will have multiple accounts for various
| networks - private accounts for their friends, and then
| again for closer friends. Or they use apps like Discord
| that parents have no visibility into at all. There is a
| lot that most parents never see.
|
| For better or worse.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| > _You 're right, kids in the 2000s actually wanted to
| use social media. It's a dying industry_
|
| You're either operating with an anachronistic notion of
| what constitutes social media, or you're very out of
| touch with the public. Not sure which one.
|
| The "myspaces" and "facebooks" are trending down, but
| other forms of social media like tiktok, discord, reddit,
| youtube, etc are alive and well, still hooking kids young
| as they always have.
| stOneskull wrote:
| i think the ban on youtube accounts will just be mildly
| inconvenient, like not being able to subscribe to
| channels, or chat in a livestream. they can't ban just
| watching youtube without an account.
| bathtub365 wrote:
| Over what time scale are you suggesting that social media
| is dying?
| arcfour wrote:
| I don't think it will ever disappear, but it certainly
| plays a less outsized role now than it used to, and it's
| not exactly an industry I see huge growth in.
|
| What we define as "social media" I think is important. I
| don't really consider things like TikTok to be "social
| media" even if there is both a social component and a
| media component, since the social part is much smaller in
| comparison to the media part. People aren't
| _communicating_ on TikTok (I think), which is what people
| concerned about "being left out by their peers" would be
| referring to. This type of "social" media probably is not
| dying, but I think is likely stagnant or will become
| stagnant in growth, while traditional "social media"
| continues to regress over the next decade.
| dmje wrote:
| Yeh, no.
|
| Parents are doing what they can, but it inevitably comes down
| to "but my friend x has it so why can't I have it" - so all
| and any help from government / schools is a good thing.
|
| This is so, so, so obviously a nasty, dangerous technology -
| young brains should absolutely not be exposed to it. In all
| honesty, neither should older ones, but that's not what we're
| considering here.
| arcfour wrote:
| "Because I'm your parent, and I said no."
|
| Do you buy your kids a toy every time you go to the store?
| Do you feed them candy for dinner?
| davzie wrote:
| Neither of those examples result in social ostracism from
| peers.
| arcfour wrote:
| I think you are massively overstating how important it is
| to the kids that they have a social media account. How
| can it hold that kids would be ignored in real life
| because they don't interact virtually?
| josephg wrote:
| > How can it hold that kids would be ignored in real life
| because they don't interact virtually?
|
| Easy. If half the conversation happens online, and your
| kid wasn't part of that, they'd constantly need to be
| "filled in" when they got to school.
|
| Imagine if your company used slack but you weren't on it.
| You could still go to all the meetings, but there would
| have been conversations held and decisions made that you
| wouldn't even know about. You would feel like you were on
| the out. Banning an individual kid from social media
| would be just the same.
| arcfour wrote:
| > Imagine if your company used slack but you weren't on
| it.
|
| Ah, bliss...
| dmje wrote:
| With all due respect, I suspect you don't have teen kids.
| Almost their entire social life is organised online.
| arcfour wrote:
| I don't, but I do have friends, and did have friends when
| I was a kid growing up during the rise and proliferation
| of social media and the beginnings of algorithmic content
| distribution, so I am familiar with it.
| AOsborn wrote:
| With respect, you're very out of touch.
|
| Connecting online is the primary social space for many
| kids nowadays, not in person.
|
| Some parents (or those without kids) have a bit of a
| naive view and think 'social media' and just imagine
| Facebook, instagram etc - things they understand and that
| don't provide much connection.
|
| The kids connect using private accounts, completely
| different apps, or even just inside the chat of other
| apps like games, if that is where your specific group
| hangs out.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Comparing the internet we grew up with and the modern
| internet where a army of psychologists have been unleashed
| with the express intent to massively increase addiction to
| everything they touch is very foolish
| arcfour wrote:
| Demanding a law because you are unable to tell your kids
| "no" makes you the bigger fool.
| mothballed wrote:
| The same people demanding the anti-smart phone laws will
| rat your ass out the second your kid is spotted walking
| alone, playing independently, etc. They want to put you
| in a catch-22 situation.
|
| The real problem here is way less people are parents or
| people that have no idea what parenting is like, so they
| don't understand the practicalities of raising children
| so they come up with the dumbest laws possible and then
| lord it over you with the full weigh of the state so they
| can pretend to be parents but with none of the
| responsibility and all of the smug moral superiority.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| The people doing that are themselves victims of social
| media and news fear mongering and engagement maxxing
| hobom wrote:
| Jonathan Haidt, the most prominent psychologist pushing
| for restrictions on social media use for children, is
| _also_ the most prominent proponent of letting kids play
| and roam more freely. So no, those are not the same
| people.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| This is not about telling kids no. This is about
| companies (and foreign hostile governments!) worth
| billions of dollars openly studying how best to prey on
| children's minds. There are things that are just
| poisonous to society as a concept.
| ctoth wrote:
| You gonna at least gesture at one of these Cognitohazards
| that are so poisonous we can't even discuss them? Because
| I admit to being curious!
| beloch wrote:
| First, if some parents let their kids use social media and
| some don't, all kids will eventually use it. You can't cut
| kids off from social spaces their peers are using and expect
| them to obey.
|
| Second, this move by Denmark reflects a failure to regulate
| what social media companies have been doing to _all_ their
| users.
|
| e.g. What has Meta done to address their failures in
| Myanmar?[1] As little as was legally possible, and that was
| as close to nothing as makes no difference. More recently,
| Meta's own projections indicate 10% of their ad revenue comes
| from fraud[2]. The real proportion is almost certainly
| higher, but Meta refuses to take action.
|
| Any attempts to tax or regulate American social media
| companies has invited swift and merciless response from the
| U.S. government. To make matters worse, U.S. law makes it
| impossible for American companies to respect the privacy of
| consumers in non-U.S. markets[3].
|
| Put it all together, and American social media is something
| that children need to be protected from, but the only way to
| protect them is to cut them off from it entirely. This is the
| direct result of companies like Meta refusing to respond to
| concerns in any way other than lobbying the U.S. government
| to bully other nations into accepting their products as is.
|
| Good on Denmark. I hope my own country follows suit.
|
| ------------
|
| [1]https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-
| faceb...
|
| [2]https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-
| fortu...
|
| [3]https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2025/07/22/mic
| ro...
| HeinzStuckeIt wrote:
| Cultures around the world have barred children from certain
| social places until they go through a rite of passage that
| the whole society, not just the parents, recognize.
| arcfour wrote:
| Yes, cultures around the world have done this through
| parents parenting their child successfully, and not through
| arbitrary government overreach telling you how to parent.
| HeinzStuckeIt wrote:
| Not really. The ideal you are describing, where there is
| no role for the community in regulating public spaces
| outside the household and determining when young people
| can enter them, strikes me as highly unusual historically
| and geographically. It's an example of that streak of
| libertarianism that took off from early American internet
| culture and hardly exists outside internet pontificating.
| cycomanic wrote:
| As someone who sold their first joint at 11, which really
| spurred a lot of my later interests which are now part of my
| career or let to it indirectly, I am opposed to paternalistic
| authoritarian governments making choices for everyone.
|
| /s
|
| Absolute statements like yours rarely work, because the
| discussion is hardly ever about absolutes and more about
| where to draw the line.
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| Crazy to think how less government would need to act like a mom
| if there were one or two parents out there who were familiar
| with the word "no."
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Let's do away with the laws requiring shops to check ID
| before selling cigarettes. After all, a parent can _simply
| tell_ their child not to smoke cigarettes and that 's clearly
| good enough, right? All in the name of less government, which
| is clearly the most important priority here.
| card_zero wrote:
| You make a persuasive case, but nicotine is genuinely
| addictive. Something to do with releasing stored glucose
| and substituting for food, and causing irritability on what
| I take to be a physiological level on withdrawal. Otherwise
| I'd agree.
| benregenspan wrote:
| But in this context, is it so important to distinguish
| between whether something is physiologically addictive
| vs. just seriously habit-forming? Except for substances
| where withdrawal is genuinely life-threatening, the
| practical difference seems to be in degree, not kind.
| Nicotine withdrawal causes irritability, but (I know
| having experienced both) so can breaking a bad social
| media habit.
|
| (And it seems like there's a physiological basis to both
| cases, it's just that one involves endogenous chemicals
| and the other doesn't)
| josephg wrote:
| If all the other kids are on social media all the time, it
| makes it much harder to keep your kids off it. Would you want
| to be the one kid in school who's not online? Would you want
| that for your kids?
|
| Bans like this make much more sense at a community level. Not
| an individual level.
| jmye wrote:
| > Would you want to be the one kid in school who's not
| online?
|
| I mean, who cares what the kid wants? It's your job as a
| parent to be a parent. Sometimes that means telling your
| kid no, even if that means they're not your best friend for
| a day or two.
|
| > Would you want that for your kids?
|
| Unequivocally, yes. Social media is cancer. I'd prefer my
| daughter not be pathologically depressed and my son not
| turn into a little hateball because of Meta's shitty
| algorithms. I have no idea why this is even a question,
| aside from the pure cowardice of Millennial parents.
|
| None of this to comment on GP's suggestion that we don't
| need laws, or the idea that we shouldn't do this societally
| anyways.
| balamatom wrote:
| >I mean, who cares what the kid wants? It's your job as a
| parent to be a parent.
|
| Found today's please don't breed comment, logging off
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| The idea that it's "hard" therefore we need government to
| save us is exactly why the program itself will never work.
| The problem is much deeper than law or government can fix.
| pembrook wrote:
| Bans that don't make sense at an individual level do not
| suddenly make sense at a community level. This is terrible
| "we'll make it up on volume" logic.
|
| It's also the justification used for some of the dumbest
| laws in history.
|
| Think about what level of enforcement is going to be
| required for this (National IDs tied to online activity),
| and then think about the fact that Denmark is one of the
| main governments pushing chat control. Now start to think
| about how, once this tracking/enforcement scheme is
| created, that it might be expanded to things outside the
| scope of this law.
|
| Like communism, this idea sounds good in theory, but is
| going to turn into an authoritarian nightmare in practice.
| exssss wrote:
| Except it's not so easy, because there's social pressure on
| the kids to use them to fit in with the group.
| barbazoo wrote:
| If you live in isolation, totally! We live in a civilization
| so we have to coordinate and compromise to get along.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| For one there is no indication that parents are any more
| literate in regards to digital practices than their kids.
| More importantly the constant appeal to the responsibility of
| parents misses that this is a collective action problem.
|
| The reason most parents give up to regulate their children's
| online activity is because the children end up isolated if an
| individual household prevents their kid from socializing
| online. All the other kids are online, therefore switching
| individually ends in isolation. What might be beneficial for
| each household is unworkable as long as there is no
| collective mechanism. (which is the case for virtually every
| problem caused by social networks)
| SaltyBackendGuy wrote:
| > For one there is no indication that parents are any more
| literate in regards to digital practices than their kids
|
| This one hit me recently. My 4th grader has a friend who is
| on tik-toc and has a phone. Me, living in a bubble, where
| other parents I've met are terrified of social media and
| phones for their kids, was shocked when I met the mom and
| she wasn't aware of all the negative impact of social
| media. But, like with smokers, you can tell them it's bad
| for you but it's up to them to quit.
|
| It's absolutely a collective action problem.
| mtoner23 wrote:
| oh yeah, children famously do what their parents are told.
| especially when it comes to interacting with their friends.
| and they never are more adept at understanding technology and
| circumventing parental controls.
| sfpotter wrote:
| So... you don't have kids, I take it?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I, too, was a really great parent before having children.
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/teen-goes-viral-for-tweeting-
| fr...
|
| > Dorothy, who runs an Ariana Grande fan account, was
| suffering through a typical teenage nightmare: Her mom took
| away her phone. But the resourceful teen didn't let that stop
| her from communicating with her followers. First, she started
| using Twitter on her Nintendo DS, a handheld video game
| device.
|
| > Sometime after finding her DS, it was taken again, so
| Dorothy started tweeting from yet another connected device:
| her fridge. "My mom uses it to google recipes for baking so I
| just googled Twitter," she told CBS News.
| eszed wrote:
| That's the hacker spirit!
| willio58 wrote:
| Agreed. Teachers are seeing the massive benefits from banning
| phones entirely during school hours. I think once we get data
| from bans for certain things like social media for kids, we'll
| all want to get on the wave.
| colechristensen wrote:
| This has to be done carefully because prohibition breeds
| desire and adults will absolutely try to force the attitude
| of 35 year olds onto 15 year olds forgetting a lot of life
| lessons have to be learned through experience and not just
| told.
|
| Everybody wants to get on the wave about how children these
| days are so much worse because of the new thing.
|
| And literally as long as we have recorded human writing we
| have adults complaining how the children are being ruined by
| the new culture or new item... and I mean we have these
| complaints from thousands of years ago.
|
| So be careful, you don't have to be completely wrong to still
| be overreaching.
| logifail wrote:
| > prohibition breeds desire
|
| Sure, but we (as societies) have always had to deal with
| this. Wherever you are in the world there are things that
| simply aren't allowed under a certain age, whether that's
| 15, 16, 18, 21 or whatever.
|
| My (just turned) 16 year old told me last that he didn't
| think it looked to be that hard to drive a car.
|
| Me: "Umm. You'll find out. When you get to it."
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| It's _not_ that hard to drive a car! Unfortunately,
| physics motivates us to have unreasonable expectations of
| our drivers, like "doesn't drive off the road at 100km/h
| _ever_ ", and "avoids _all_ obstacles _all_ of the time
| ". That's the hard part.
| tintor wrote:
| It doesn't look to be that hard to be a dentist.
|
| You drill a dark spot on tooth and put some resin inside
| to fill it up. /s
| eastbound wrote:
| Many countries have the driving license at 16. In France
| it's accompanied by a parent; in USA it's the full
| driving license (I've learnt at 13 and never had an
| accident for 30 years). 16 is ok if you withstand peer
| pressure.
| cycomanic wrote:
| > This has to be done carefully because prohibition breeds
| desire and adults will absolutely try to force the attitude
| of 35 year olds onto 15 year olds forgetting a lot of life
| lessons have to be learned through experience and not just
| told.
|
| The interesting tidbit in the case of social media and
| smart phones is that they are at least partially pushed by
| the parents (I've seen plenty of examples of parents demand
| that their children have smartphones at school).
|
| > Everybody wants to get on the wave about how children
| these days are so much worse because of the new thing.
|
| > And literally as long as we have recorded human writing
| we have adults complaining how the children are being
| ruined by the new culture or new item... and I mean we have
| these complaints from thousands of years ago.
|
| I think there is a difference though. There is the "off my
| lawn" crowd of "children today are so bad because..." sure,
| but I think they are not the ones demanding social media
| bans. The bans are being motivated largely by health
| professionals ringing all sort of alarm bells because
| mental health indicators paint a pretty dire picture. These
| are based on actual statistics and have been confirmed many
| times.
|
| > So be careful, you don't have to be completely wrong to
| still be overreaching.
| pembrook wrote:
| Lots of bending over backwards and appeals to authority
| to rationalize an emotional feeling of "This time is
| different."
|
| Again, every generation thinks that.
|
| This time _might_ be different. But it 's probably not.
| AppleBananaPie wrote:
| Letting people figure out cigarettes were bad for them
| took a very long time, and if social media is another
| form of addiction why not treat it how we treat other
| addictive products?
|
| We could assume that this time is different and people,
| well children and minors specifically, will learn to
| avoid the addiction rather than banning them like
| alcohol, cigarettes and gambling.
|
| This time might be different. But it's probably not.
| card_zero wrote:
| Books, for instance. Some people will read for five hours
| without pausing, and they can use three or four books
| every week.
| Loughla wrote:
| What is your point? I'm afraid I missed the point of your
| statement.
| placatedmayhem wrote:
| > Again, every generation thinks that.
|
| > This time might be different. But it's probably not.
|
| And this is an appeal to tradition.
|
| This article[1] from 2024 discusses this the studies on
| this topic. It seems to me the results are mixed, but
| conclusions range between social media being neutral to
| harmful. There is a _lot_ in that article, so it 's worth
| a read.
|
| [1]
| https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/728739
| pembrook wrote:
| When appealing to the authority of academic studies, it's
| very important to be aware of the replication crisis for
| studies in the field of Psychology specifically, which is
| one of the worst offenders. Reproducibility has been
| found to be as low as 36% [1].
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproducibility_Project
| ghostpepper wrote:
| > The bans are being motivated largely by health
| professionals ringing all sort of alarm bells because
| mental health indicators paint a pretty dire picture.
| These are based on actual statistics and have been
| confirmed many times.
|
| Do the stats prove that cell phones are the cause of the
| dire mental health indicators? Or at least that there is
| a correlation?
| DocTomoe wrote:
| Teachers are not good indicators of measuring 'benefits', as
| they are both the beneficiaries of a more brain-dead, more
| bored, more asleep student body, they have rose-tinted ideas
| about the way things used to be, and they are also grading
| the success - which all too often comes down to compliance.
|
| That's why if this was a serious attempt to gauge whether
| smartphones are diametral or beneficial, we'd have a double-
| blind, standardised anonymously-graded test. If control group
| with smartphones gets consistently less points by graders who
| do not know them or their smartphone habits as compared to
| those who live in digital exile, we can talk. Until then,
| 'peace and quiet' in the classroom is mistaken for
| educational success.
|
| Funny how no-one seems to be eager to finance such a study.
| For me, that's an indication that the outrage is pearl-
| clutching.
| Jap2-0 wrote:
| > they are... the beneficiaries of a more brain-dead, more
| bored, more asleep student body
|
| > 'peace and quiet' in the classroom is mistaken for
| educational success.
|
| To clarify, do you think that phones or the removal of
| phones leads to these outcomes? Do you think that teachers
| like or dislike phones? Or is the point that there are many
| biases both ways?
|
| > they have rose-tinted ideas about the way things used to
| be
|
| Some do. Are teachers the only ones?
|
| > if this was a serious attempt to gauge whether
| smartphones are [detrimental] or beneficial, we'd have a
| double-blind, standardised anonymously-graded test....
| Funny how no-one seems to be eager to finance such a study.
|
| I am not sure how you would set this up in a way that does
| not fall victim to a dozen confounding variables. There
| have been comparisons of standardized tests before and
| after phone bans, of course, but those also fall victim to
| similar statistical issues.
| Sleaker wrote:
| You also can't have double-blind study on something both
| the participant and teacher know is present or not....
| But that doesn't mean the study is invalid, it just means
| you have to account for it.
| angiolillo wrote:
| I'm not sure how I feel about making it illegal, but it does
| benefit from some sort of collective action.
|
| If none of your child's friends and classmates have cell phones
| yet, I'd strongly encourage establishing a smartphone pact with
| the other parents. Our community used http://waituntil8th.org
| pledges but even a shared spreadsheet would work.
| colechristensen wrote:
| One of the things that seems necessary is to make it illegal
| for a kid to use a phone in class before a certain age.
|
| If you don't have that you get the rules destroyed by
| demanding parents bullying administrators and school boards.
| angiolillo wrote:
| > the rules destroyed by demanding parents bullying
| administrators and school boards
|
| True, but that's why you don't do it alone. You need to
| talk with other parents and encourage them to talk to
| others until the majority of parents understand the risks
| and let the administration, school board, and teachers know
| that they have your support.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| All that local level stuff doesn't work. As soon as a couple
| of kids have a smartphone, the online world becomes vastly
| more interesting than the day to day.
| angiolillo wrote:
| > All that local level stuff doesn't work
|
| I can't speak to anyone else, but it seems to be working
| well enough in our town. The overwhelming majority of kids
| don't have cell phones until high school. That doesn't mean
| your kids won't beg you for a smartphone, it just means you
| can say "no" without socially isolating them.
|
| > As soon as a couple of kids have a smartphone
|
| The point is to engage in collective action early enough
| that you can prevent these situations in the first place.
| Once a critical mass of kids have smartphones and their
| socialization and coordination moves to online spaces it
| becomes intensely isolating to be the only kid in a friend
| group without a smartphone.
| eikenberry wrote:
| I did close to the same with my kids.. their PCs were in a
| common room, they got their first phone at 14 and it stayed at
| the downstairs charging station at night until 17. IMO it
| worked great and both our kids have a healthy relationship with
| their phones and tech in general.
| teekert wrote:
| I got my first smartphone at 23 (an HTC touch) and have an
| unhealthy relationship with my phone ;)
|
| You're lucky. Some kids do prefer the real world.
| skapadia wrote:
| 1000% agree.
| pembrook wrote:
| Denmark's government has authoritarian aims and are one of the
| primary groups pushing chat control in the EU. I think you are
| falling for the "think of the children..." fallacy here.
|
| This is a stepping stone towards further control elsewhere,
| especially once a framework for enforcement is in place (which
| nobody actually thinks about when emotionally reacting to feel-
| good ideas like this). How easy would it be to expand ID based
| age enforcement to tracking ALL online activity and cracking
| down on "non-approved" speech? No thanks. I'll handle parenting
| myself.
|
| Also, if you don't care about the age number, and think social
| media is just objectively bad...why are you on this social
| media site? Isn't posting here the definition of
| hypocrisy...given you're supporting what you believe to be
| worse than cigarettes?
| nullify88 wrote:
| I don't think HN is a social media site. The goals of a
| social media site is to keep you engaged for as long as
| possible with the assistance of various algorithms, dark
| patterns while your data is sold to businesses so they can
| have a slice of your attention pie via ads and supported
| content.
|
| I dont feel as if any of that applies here. In fact HN has
| gotten further from a social media site by not displaying
| comment points.
| pembrook wrote:
| You can argue this, but if you hand over this authority to
| government, it will not be up to you.
|
| Fundamentally this is an upvote driven social media
| platform no different from Reddit, which everyone agrees is
| social media.
|
| If you live in Denmark, get ready to tie your State ID to
| your HN profile to login and hope that you don't say
| anything that would make the wrong official (or your
| employer) upset with you.
|
| As we know from history, well-intentioned government laws
| have zero unintended consequences, always work perfectly
| every time, and are very easy to remove once they've been
| created...
| lukasm wrote:
| I fully agree. There should be a complete ban on social media
| and similar addictive platforms for those under 16, and a
| nighttime ban (10 p.m.-7 a.m.) for users aged 16 to 18.
|
| We basically give cigarettes to children.
| porsager wrote:
| If you're a parent then act like one. You're perfectly able to
| enact that ban yourself - why do you need the governments help?
| owisd wrote:
| you can take a teen's phone off them and they can just walk
| into a store and buy an inexpensive second hand handset and
| use the WiFi from a local cafe.
| oytis wrote:
| I would be pretty happy about social media being banned for
| everyone if not the immense possibilty for the government to
| abuse this law to disrupt undesired communication altogether.
| tuveson wrote:
| This website is social media.
| oytis wrote:
| This is true, it's also not devoid of addictiveness :)
|
| But you know what I mean, right? The ones using intricate
| algorithms and tracking to keep you "engaged" and
| manipulate what you read and see
| tuveson wrote:
| I know what you mean, but I think the issue is not social
| media, but rather big corporations being shitty. PepsiCo
| makes addictive beverages that cause people develop to
| diabetes and heart disease, but that doesn't mean
| beverages should be illegal. I think it would be better
| to regulate or ban the specifically harmful things,
| rather than a blanket ban on something that is actually
| useful. And like you alluded to, banning social media
| could easily lead to a general crackdown on freedom of
| expression, journalism, etc, now that it is the primary
| way people communicate with one another.
|
| I'll also add that I'm not specifically opposed to
| banning minors from using social media. It would probably
| also be better if it was illegal for children to buy
| their own soda tbh.
| bluebarbet wrote:
| Technically true but I've found it to be less addictive
| than other text forums (like the R-site and Lemmy), let
| alone the algo-powered video-based abominations that
| normies are all hooked on.
|
| I'm thinking that it comes down to one thing in particular:
| the absence of response notifications. There's only so much
| addiction you can get out of a page of text without so much
| as a bell icon.
| elric wrote:
| The problem is not "social media", that's just an insanely broad
| and poorly category. HN is probably "social media". Many games
| are probably "social media".
|
| The problem is that certain platforms exploit people for profit
| by feeding them crap, from political propaganda to ads for weight
| loss drugs. Many of them are designed to be addictive so folks
| can keep up "engagement". Enough eyeballs make all crap
| profitable, or something like that.
|
| On the other end of the spectrum, there are tons of great
| platforms that young people can benefit from, and vice versa.
| Including HN. Many subreddits. Tons of forums. Loads online
| games.
|
| Ban the exploitation. Ban the propaganda. Ban the abuse. But
| don't ban young people.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| I agree that it's a broad category, and that Hacker News is
| social media.
|
| But of all the problematic advertising you could choose, you
| choose instead political advertising and semaglutide ads?
| mrweasel wrote:
| That's probably the solution: You can run a social media, but
| you have to do it ad free. Charge people if you need to, but
| you cannot run ads. What fucks up social media is the
| constant need to "engagement".
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| this is a familiar discourse. Ads are more than a thing you
| "run," they're an idea. You can't destroy the idea of ads.
| "Ad free" isn't possible to guarantee. Does this make
| sense?
| mrweasel wrote:
| First part makes sense, ad free seems very possible to
| me, especially if backed by legislation.
| davzie wrote:
| You can really tell the parents vs non-parents in these comments.
| porsager wrote:
| Indeed.. All those people that have kids but are not fit to be
| called a parent so they need the government to do their job!
| jvvw wrote:
| I'm curious as to how social media gets defined for these bans.
|
| I presume text messaging doesn't count whereas Discord/WhatsApp
| do? What about Minecraft and other games? What about school
| platforms which they can post comments/messages on? Is watching
| YouTube included? When I've filled in surveys about our
| children's social media use, they have included YouTube, which
| makes it look like every child is on social media.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| It does not really require a lot of nuance. Any platforms
| serving short-form content using algorithmic recommendations,
| giving any random account infinite reach, a la
| Instagram/Tiktok/Youtube/Shorts/Reels/Redbook/etc are part of
| the problem.
|
| WhatsApp groups are a source of slightly different issues -
| fake news, radicalization, social bubbles - but not a source of
| addiction to the same level, especially among the young.
| system2 wrote:
| Make it 21.
| dataflow wrote:
| > The move would give some parents -- after a specific assessment
| -- the right to let their children access social media from age
| 13. It wasn't immediately clear how such a ban would be enforced:
| Many tech platforms already restrict pre-teens from signing up.
| Officials and experts say such restrictions don't always work.
|
| This makes it almost sound like a no-op once enough children
| convince their parents to give exemptions. Hopefully it works out
| better than that.
| aanet wrote:
| This ban (or attempt to regulate), similar to Australia's, is at
| least 10-15 years too late to be honest. It likely would have
| stopped or lessened the negative impact of FB (and its ilk, but
| mostly FB, tbh) on much of the society.
|
| Now we know, of course, and everything in hindsight is 20/20.
|
| It's STILL worth trying to regulate social media, now emboldened
| and firmly established as a rite of passage among youth, adults,
| and older generations.
| zhengiszen wrote:
| Israeli genocide against Palestinians in Gaza has all crypto
| fascists governments become wary
| swframe2 wrote:
| There is an interesting exploration of human networks discussed
| in this veritasium video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYlon2tvywA
|
| Basically, when network connectivity increases, the "bad" nodes
| can overwhelm the "good" nodes. The other ideas discussed are
| really interesting; well worth watching.
| aborsy wrote:
| Even over the age 15, they have to be restricted.
|
| What are the benefits, with excessive use at least?
| everfrustrated wrote:
| A reminder, a ban on <$age is actually an ban on $everyone who
| doesn't provide positive proof of age using identity document.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| This is not enough, we have to ban under 15s from having smart
| phones in general.
| serial_dev wrote:
| OK very nice... Now tell me how will they use this law to
| increase surveillance on everyone.
| submeta wrote:
| Let's ban social media altogether. In twenty years from now we
| will have found out that social media is more harmful than
| tobacco and alcohol combined.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| every affliction people think children have is affecting adults
| as well
| worik wrote:
| I am in New Zealand and we are debating this now
|
| I am a dissenter. A ban for children is onerous and how can it be
| enforced? Who will be punished for infractions?
|
| Better a legal code of conduct for platforms that want to raise
| revenue in your jurisdiction (the important ones, that the state
| has leverage over). The code should do two things:
|
| 1. Prohibit the targeting of individuals below 21
|
| 2. Mandate moderation of spaces where young people gather, with
| resources to enforce it
|
| A ban is much more satisfying to the do goobers and much worse
| for those it is supposed to protect
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| how would you effect what you propose, though, and would such
| be significantly more difficult to realize than what denmark is
| proposing?
| Phelinofist wrote:
| Germanys ID has the technical means to allow something like that
| (age verification without disclosing identity), but knowing the
| German Gov and their absolute stasis something like this will
| never happen. It is absolutely necessary to do something like
| this, because social media has a net negative influence on
| society.
|
| A lot of kids in my daughters class (~7yo's) are consuming brain
| rot content already. They shout "SIGMA BOY" or "SKIBIDI TOILET"
| like little retards during lessons. Yeah memes are cool and all,
| but not at this age.
|
| While at it, ban lootboxes.
| VortexLain wrote:
| Seems like an attempt to enforce government ID identification and
| destroy online anonymity to <<protect the children>>, the very
| same way it's been done in Britain.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| Why is it always "ban something"? Do we have solutions other than
| ban everything?
| cryptoegorophy wrote:
| i am thankfull for cellphoneless childhood. Wishing same thing
| upon my children. Worst thing about all of this is the peer
| pressure, if all your friends have a phone then you become an
| outcast, so it is a team effort from all parents.
| standardUser wrote:
| As long as the workarounds the kids come up with aren't more
| harmful than what's being banned, which is usually the case.
| andsoitis wrote:
| Does that include YouTube? I couldn't tell from the article.
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| I grew up without access to social media until I was 17, had my
| first "smartphone" at 15.
|
| I am certain it prevented a lot of harm from me.
| andsoitis wrote:
| If you trespass (as kid under 15 or guardian of said kid), do you
| get fined?
| lolive wrote:
| Is chess.com considered a social media?
| bethekidyouwant wrote:
| Crazy how many people are cheering for this absolute nanny state
| of affairs
| slavik81 wrote:
| Why was 15 chosen? I assume there's evidence that older children
| and adults are able to use social media responsibly and therefore
| not harmed?
| mcny wrote:
| Reading these comments makes me very happy I decided I should not
| have children.
|
| I think we need fewer people having children but I also think the
| whole community should help raise these fewer children.
| Sleaker wrote:
| Why don't governments start at the source instead of at the
| access?
|
| I always have questions that go a bit deeper but maybe because I
| think differently. I understand it can trample on rights, but I
| guess I like to still ask and have the thought experiment anyway.
|
| If things like this are so harmful, and it's recognized why is it
| okay for a parent to give their child access to it in the first
| place? Why do kids get to control what they have access to just
| because parents don't want to parent well, and because they think
| it'll be a death sentence for their kids social groups? Is it
| feasible to police parents in that way? Would we even want that?
| kogasa240p wrote:
| IMO banning smartphone sales to kids and teens would be far more
| productive than digital ID shenanigans.
| bullen wrote:
| Consuming is not the same as producing.
|
| They should only ban consuming. (impossible I know, but that
| hints to the real problem)
|
| Kids need to create.
| casey2 wrote:
| >Denmark's government aims to alienate hundreds of thousands of
| citizens And people wonder why governments fail. Every time you
| carve out exceptions you are hollowing out the foundation of your
| government. Children of the elite' access to social media will
| remain of course, can't hollow out your true foundation
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